OFF TOPIC - any experts on the Iowa tests

What are Iowa tests Cheryl ?

Do you mean the Iowa Basics? (Iowa Test of Basic Skills)

And (sorry, I'm a bit slow today) did your daughter do poorly on the Iowa test but gets good grades in school or does it look like she did poorly on the test but still got "exceeds expectations" on the test?

Karen E., who actually remembers the Iowa Basics with fondness.

Oh, dear. I'm no expert at all, but it would seem to me that two things are possible: Your daughter is lousy at test-taking, it was a bad day for her. Or, grade inflation.

I would certainly take this up with the school authorities. But having had years of "taking things up with school authorities", I wouldn't believe anything that came out of their mouths. :-)

N> Because we finally got them back and it appears my daughter did pretty

When I took them (a loooooooong time ago) our results showed how well we did compared to the rest of the state and to anyone in the nation who took that same test. I believe the school office had results which showed how the entire class performed as a whole. Ask to see what they have. It is possible the rest of her class did even worse--which would indicate that the class standards need to increase.

It is also possible that she has test anxiety or simply isn't a good standardized-test taker. One of the top five students in my class was like this--brilliant as all get-out but absolutely forgot everything he ever knew when facing a "bubble-sheet". If she scored in roughly the same percentile on all sections and the rest of her class performed as expected, this is most likely the problem. If she scored outrageously worse in a particular section, I would say the instructions or concepts in that section weren't explained well or that material hadn't been taught well. You might want to talk to the school counselor to see if they have practice tests or any other way to prepare for these and ease anxiety since your DD will have many more of these to come.

Side-note: My MIL wrote much of the math porti> Because we finally got them back and it appears my daughter did pretty

Standardize educational tests - taken in various grades.

Cheryl

That is the one.

She got good to excellent grades, but the Iowa test show she scored poorly on reading comprehension (bottom third) and word analysis (bottom tenth) and spelling (bottom half). The rest is marginally acceptable.

Cheryl

Iowa Testing is nice enough to give you the relationship to the local scores and the national scores.

And she (like every other student) needs to learn how to take this kind of test, as they determine where she places in future classes and eventually college.

Thanks though.

Cheryl > Oh, dear. I'm no expert at all, but it would seem to me that two things

Is the object to test the child, or test the teachers ability to teach?

It would explain the night mares the entire time she was taking the test (over 5 days). We get where they stand town wide.

I begin to wonder if I did her a disservice when I started her in school - she's a September baby, socially quite mature and an eager learner. BUT, there is a wide spread trend of starting July, August and September birth date kids a year later to give them a leg up in the maturity stakes. So there are lots of 7 and 8 year old first graders - reading and doing math and further skewing the numbers.

We been part way down this road once - last year they did "Dibels testing" for phonetic awareness. She scored quite poorly and they wanted to slap her in special ed to "correct" it. We refused and asked to have her retested. Mind you - they never did any phonics in kindergarten and the test is normalized to a 6.5 year old, not a 6.0 year old. She can read quite nicely now thank you and sounds out new words. But they were ready to code her by October 1st.

Cheryl

Supposedly both!

Cheryl

Well do let us know what you manage to find out about how they arrived at these results. She didn't come over to me as a child in the low percentile! The danger with tests is as people have said, she might be poor at tests, feeling off that day etc etc.

Wow. I don't know why there'd be such a discrepancy. Did she say whether they'd done any practice beforehand? Our kids practiced, not so much on the tested subjects, but taking the test itself - coloring in the little ovals properly, etc. I wonder whether that might be the problem? Sure hope you can figure out what's up...

Karen E.

Seems to me that your daughter might have problems taking standardized tests as her grades are good. If you know a guidance counselor who you trust in the school system or a teacher with whom you have a good relationship, you might want to talk with them to see what could be done to train your daughter in test taking. If there's a reputable tutoring company, you might want to investigate to see if they have test prep programs.

I'm far from an expert on the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills, but I assume they're like most of the state-wide achievement tests. There are usually a few possibilities:

1) She's a poor test taker or wasn't prepared well to take a standardized test. Some kids can know the material very well and just don't react well to some aspect of the testing situation (filling in bubbles, being timed, formats of the questions, whatever). 2) The curriculum in her classroom didn't match the content of the test well. 3) Some kind of fluke--she was sick the day of the test, or she was "off by one" filling out the bubbles or whatever. 4) Low standards on the part of the teacher (i.e., the teacher is handing out good grades even though she hasn't learned the material). 5) Poor retention--she knew the stuff when it was taught and tested in the classroom, but had forgotten it by the time of the test.

Any of those sound like possibilities? You should be able to pick up prep books for the tests and have her take a couple of practice tests to see for yourself how she does with the questions. Some states even publish practice tests or old test questions online.

Best wishes, Ericka

Find out if you can see her answers.

One of my teachers was puzzled by my lower-than-expected scores, and figured I had some good explanation for the wrong answers. I did. On one question, pick the one that doesn't fit, we had microphone, microscope, magnifying glass, and something else. The correct answer was that the something else was the only thing that didn't make something small seem larger. MY answer was that magnifying glass didn't fit because it was the only word in English. My only problem was that I was smarter than the guy who wrote up the test, and saw things in questions that he didn't.

Yep. Our valedictorian was one of those. She repeatedly got 400s (out of 800) on the SAT. For the AT, she was going to be my ride, so I spent the night at her place. I watched Johnny Carson's monologue and went to bed. She was going to stay up and cram for another 3-4 hours. I ordered her to turn off the light so I could sleep, and to go to bed. She got up a couple times during the night to be sick. We got our bubble sheets, and the proctor said "bubble in your name", and I had to lean over and prompt her "A...N..." If you can't even spell your own name, then it's real obvious why you can't remember the Pythagorean formula to save your life.

Well, it is the discrepancies that bother me, supposedly above average in reading and vocabulary, but bottom of the barrel in Word Analysis and below average in spelling. Huh? Don't they go together.

Cheryl

I don't know that I want to prep her for third grade quite yet, but she reads, can talk about a book afterwards (hurrah, they are doing book reports in second grade). I trust the first grade teacher, she agreed when we turned down "assistance". She normally did pretty well in spelling, so I am confused.

Too bad the interpret the test meeting is a hockey night...

Cheryl