I got a first look at my son’s MAT-7 tests today. Those are the standardized tests our school administers. We did PACE and MTC this year, and he made huge jumps in his oral reading and writing and a good jump in spelling. I was looking forward to getting the test results to finally see some improvement—and the results were nearly flat from last year. He scored in the 4th, 5th and 6th stanine on most of the batteries. I know that his level of functioning is what it’s all about, and I generally take standardized tests with more than a grain of salt, but I’m perplexed by this newest development. Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.
Re: I need some perspective
Do you get percentile ranks? Look at those instead- stanines are a really large category relative to seeing gains. Percentile rank is a little more focused.
And again- group standardized tests are valuable for their information about a group- not necessarily an individual. They can also be helpful in determining trends over time. Their value as an individual measure of progress is pretty limited.
Robin
Re: I need some perspective
Obviously, having never met or worked with your kid, what I am about to describe may not apply to him, but here’s something I often observed in my remediation.
Students had strategies that enabled them to get scores around that 4-5 stanine despite seriously deficient skills. We’d do intensive remediation and the kid’s reading and spelling and general use of language would improve significantly. However, the standardized test was still at a high enough level so that his skills weren’t that much more help *in that setting* than those strategies. (Standardized tests are pretty contrived chunks of arbitrary language — usually carefully picked to be *boring* so that one kid’s background doesn’t give him an unfair advantage over another’s.) So the scores didn’t reflect the real progress the kiddo had made.
INdividually administered tests often do reflect those changes (but not always — if a kiddo is starting ‘way at the bottom, it’s sometimes a devil of a time getting from that first percentile to the fifth or sixth, and then into double digits — these are the kids nobody includes in their research studies…).
It’s a really good idea to administer one of these tests (and not the WRAT — something like Gray Oral Reading Test or Woodcock-JOhnson Reading Mastery, and there are others) every year or so to get a better measure of progress. The big group tests really weren’t designed to test progress from one year to the next — just not their purpose.
Re: I need some perspective
Connie,
First of all the 4th, 5th, and 6th stanines are considered good. It’s when you get up to the 7th, 8th, and 9th that you are really, really doing well. I really wouldn’t worry about it too much. He’ll get another chance next year. Just keep working with him.
My daughter’s MAT scores this year are double over what she received last year. Now she is in the average range and not below average in everything. I credit Audiblox with her progress. Last year she was falling behind academically. I expect her to do even better next year. It takes time.
By the way my middle daughter scored VERY low on her ACT test for college last spring. She never does well on standardized tests.All through High School she was on the Honor Roll taking college prep courses. Her first year of college she has a 3.97 average and is on the Dean’s List. So don’t take those scores so personnally. They are only ONE part of your son’s academic achievement.
Good Luck
Standardized tests are hard to explain. It could be anything. I did worse on my SATS the second time I took them.
His level of functioning is what it’s all about. Do you see improvement there? Take the standardized tests with a whole shaker of salt.