encouraging lang.arts skills

What do you mean, the shaded area for reading?

On the terra nova test score sheet given to parents, the scores are given on a graph, the average range is shaded gray while the below and above ranges are left uncolored. Historically my son doesn’t do well on standardized tests. My son had typically scored anywhere from the bottom of the score box, to the almost average range.

I am talking about the grade wide standardized tests. For instance in spring of 1st grade when he was a non reader, his scores on the California Achievement Test were in single digits (like one, three and five out of 100 points possible). By fifth grade, with almost a year in sp.ed and accommodations, he took the SOL test in VA, passing was a 500, he scored anywhere from 468 to 498, still not passing.

In 6th grade,he took the terra nova with sp.ed accommodations and scored average in the parts that were read to him but below average in math, reading and lang. arts. He took the terra nova in 7th in the resource room but his teacher told me he completed it with minimal assistance from her.

It is the first time he has gotten into the average range for reading, ever, and he was only one point from the average range in math, which I consider pretty good since he wasn’t doing all that well in math the last part of the last year.

Everything looked good except the lang.arts part of the test. Which is why I asked the qestion because he made very good grades in english last year. A complete turnaround to the reason we entered sp.ed in the first place, he didn’t learn to read until the 2nd grade and was still way behind by 4th. He seems to finally be catching up to where he should be. Now math is a concern and apparently so is lang.arts.

Sorry for the long winded answer but hopefully I helped clarify my question.

I have been thinking about this for a while, I have looked at his writing and while it is still not perfect, at the same time it is legible and coherent. His stories are often very good but he’s not so great with spelling and punctuation.

One correction, in order to pass the SOLs, you have to have a score of 400. If he had the scores you mentioned, he would be almost be able to receive an advanced diploma. I teach in VA. Check your sons scores again. If he actually has those scores you have nothing to worry about. I would recommend that you log onto Sopris West website and order the program, Step Up to Writing. When I started teaching my 11th grade self-contained special ed class last year, I had to teach first reading and then how to write. I had to start at the sentence level, teach grammar and work the kids up to a resarch paper. I only had 7 months to get my kids ready for the editing/written portion of the SOLs. I just looked at their test scores and they ranged from 385-420. I was very pleased. It is an excellent program and I highly recommend it no matter what the age.

You’re right, I have an extremely imperfect memory and was trying to pull scores from memory. I just remembered his science score was just below passing and all the rest were in the range I mentioned, meaning that although he had done better than on the 3rd grade SOL, he still didn’t pass any of the 5th grade SOL subjects even with sp.ed help. Here goes, he got a 381 in writing, a 371 in reading/lit, 338 in math, a 399 in science and a 370 in computer/tech.
He had scored in the 200’s in 3rd grade, after I had been told in second grade child study that he was a ‘late bloomer’.

I’ll give another example of how poorly he has scored on standardized tests previously, these are scores from his 4th grade Stanford Binet
total reading 1
total math 2
lang. 4
science 4
soc. science 14
partial battery 2
total battery 3

The title above the graph says nat’l grade percentile ranks. I used these scores as part of my ammunition in getting him qualified for sp.ed at his 4th grade child study meeting, he has average IQ, he’s a hard worker, the bloom has blossomed and fallen off the stem, now explain his school difficulty.

Anyway, I mostly was very well pleased with the majority of how my son did on the terra nova this year, I was just still concerned that lang.arts needs some help still even though he had A’s and B’s in class. Thanks all for listening.
Amy

My daughter always read excellently and once she got the hand coordination in gear wrote very well. Partly because of the physical difficulty of writing and partly out of good taste, she developed a nice terse to-the-point writing style.

Well, she had to do the Maryland Functional tests. (I believe these have since been replaced by another system) She sailed through math, reading, and citizenship. Then we came to writing, first test in Grade 10 I think. Her handwriting still looked immature, large and loose, but the spelling and grammar were perfect and she wrote what she meant. They weren’t supposed to grade handwriting but I suspect that it came into the picture more than it should have. Although she was getting A’s in writing in a selective high school program, she failed the Functional test by ten points. Next year in Grade 11, exactly the same thing. They were going to drop her from the selective program where she was getting A’s down to the basic remedial program because of this, but we fought it. By this time her teacher was the very demanding head of the English program and she looked at the score rubric and found that Grace was being downgraded because she didn’t go on long enough. She answered the questions well and clearly and to the point, but they *wanted* the kind of horribly repetitive writing that is typical of the junior high student with nothing to say. The teacher and I begged and pleaded with Grace to repeat herself five times in different positions — and she passed with a good score.

Meanwhile a neighbour had a kid who could barely write a correct sentence who was in the remedial program, and he wrote three pages repeating himself ungrammatically all over the place and passed with the top score.

In the middle school, they had the MSPAP which was theoretically going to grade the school and not the individual ( you can guess how long that theory held up when the grades were reported.) In this one, someone had the idea that the modern format of education was group work, so the kids were going to have to work in groups for the testing. Well, they took the entire school population including a large number from a drug and violence ridden housing project with a very weak elementary program, picked groups of five at random and told them OK, you’re all being tested together. Grace was with four complete strangers three of whom were essentially illiterate. This test reported her as failing in reading. Of course every other test before or after showed her as off the top of the chart so we weren’t worried about her, but it sure isn’t good to have on her record.

As I keep telling people, tests can give useful information but have to be put in context . . ,

Unfortunately, my older son was a nonreader up to 2nd grade. That’s actually when he got the reg. and reading teachers’ attention, between the two of them plus tutoring in summer he seemed to do ok in 3rd (still in reading class, tutored in summer after 3rd) but hit a wall in 4th. Took all of 4th gr. to do evals, eligibility, iep. He started pullout in March, school ended in June. Tutored during 4th grade. Pullout in 5th grade for lang. arts and reading caught him up pretty well, he was put in inclusion for 6th and 7th with support, he made good grades in english both years.

I think we used heroic measures for math this past year though (his teacher, his father and I). This next year(8th) is going to require a tutor :o(

In addition to having academic troubles, he scored in single digits for so long (1st grade up to 4th) on standardized tests that I am almost skeptical of passing scores. However, I have seen his progress, so I am hopeful.

Honestly, I wouldn’t be so worried about how he scores if it weren’t for the high stakes testing in high school. I have been very worried that he won’t get a diploma even if he does well in class because historically he hasn’t done well on the standardized tests.

I understand how tests that are given grade wide can be misused, I actually do well on multi. choice tests but am clueless with math past maybe 6th grade, I was put in 8th grade algebra because of test scores but was failing the class miserably. My mom had to fight to get me out of the class, the counselors kept holding up my test score to her.