Spring Testing At School
It’s quite likely your child has undergone some form of standardized testing this season. You may have gotten a letter home or email that provides the academic information about your child.
Schools/testing companies have gotten better about providing relevant information about the test, but interpreting your child’s results can be challenging.
Maybe you’re wondering…
What’s a “good” score?
Maybe your child’s scores are concerning or below expectations…
What do you do now? Should you be worried?
Here are a few things to consider along with the actual test results…
Testing captures a moment in time - a snapshot. It was their performance at one point in one day. Consider how that day was for them and factors that could have affected their score (for example, sleep, illness, distractions, nerves, motivation). Think about what some “snapshots” of us might look like if we were forced to take a picture when we didn’t want to or didn’t feel ready. It does not mean we aren’t able to take good pictures, but you just got caught on a bad day.
A test is usually measuring a specific skill or set of skills. High or low, be careful not to overgeneralize to every area.
When a score says average, know that average can be a wide range. Regardless of a test’s scoring system, there is also always a percentile. A percentile is a number out of 100 and sort of serves as a "rank” in how one’s performance stacks up with others. For example, the 29th percentile means that the child’s score was higher than 28 of their peers’ scores out of a sample of 100; the 98th percentile means the score was higher than 97/100 peers’ scores. Percentiles will be consistent across tests and often allow for an “apples to apples” comparison. Many tests consider the 25th to the 75th percentile “average”… but in real life, that actually represents a huge range!
What if my child consistently scores below average?
If your child has consistently scored below expectations for their age and/or grade, hopefully a teacher has spoken with you about it. If not, it’s time to reach out. One unexpectedly low score can sometimes be “explained away” by other factors but two, three, or more scores are harder to ignore. With that said, these tests provide quantitative (numeric) data, but your child’s teacher can provide qualitative (observational) data regarding your child.
Some questions to consider asking your child’s teacher:
Do you feel this test score matches your observations of my child in your class?
Are there factors related to the resting process that could affect my child e.g., Are they very nervous? Do they seem distracted? Do they seem motivated? Do they complain of headaches when completing computer-based tests? This is the case for our daughter!
If you feel your child continues to underperform, consider asking the teacher what support the school could put in place to help your child. This can look different depending on whether it is an independent school, a public school, and can also vary within districts. Your request should move the process along, but it’s no guarantee.
If a team meeting/PPT/CSE meeting is not called by the school, you have the right to request one. Make that request to the teacher/SPED director in writing (an email or sometimes there is a form in the office). This puts the school “on the clock” to respond to the request. These meetings can vary from collaborative to contentious. I would encourage you to hear out from the school their plan/options, before assuming there will be major disagreements. If that does occur, it’s time to seek guidance outside of the school system. This person could be an educational advocate or psychologist, depending on your goals. And if you aren’t sure what to do at any of these steps, feel free to reach out to me (ethan@evergreenpsyched.com) or Christina (christina@evergreenpsyched.com).
What are these tests anyway?
School-based assessments are used to make sure that your child is making progress with different areas of academics. In our children's school, students take the NWEA tests (Math, Reading) online three times per year for this purpose. Emerging readers may also be given the DIBELS or another literacy-based assessments. As a parent, it's important to know what skills and/or knowledge these tests are assessing and if you don't know, or don't understand the printouts that come home, ask your child's teacher if they have an explanation sheet for parents so you can better understand the results. A quick Google search can help too! Often teachers have additional resources on these assessments and it's as easy as emailing it to you. If your child is given or has been given the DIBELS assessments, here is a super helpful parent FAQ from the University of Oregon and if your children take NWEA / MAP, here is a link to help you better understand those tests.
State tests, like the “SBACs" in Connecticut and California, are administered to all students in the state in certain grades. These scores are used as a more global measure of schools, grade-levels, and overall achievement levels, but they also provide information on how your individual child performed in comparison to other children their age that year. Often you won't get these results until months later, but again, if your child's scores aren't making sense or you just want more information, contact the school, their teacher, or look online for more information. For example, here is a page explaining the SBAC tests from the State of Connecticut. You have the right to opt your child OUT of these tests if you don’t want them to take them! For whatever reason. It’s as simple as that.
The Big Picture
There is a balance we want to maintain with our children about taking the tests seriously and doing their best, but not overemphasizing the importance of test results. As Ethan reminded us earlier, this is a snapshot, on a given day at a given time in a certain environment, and there usually many factors taken into account when considering a child's academic progress. On the other hand, we do want to be aware of when the testing is happening, what the general format is, and what the results mean.
If you need any help looking through assessments and test scores, we offer consultations to do just that. You can reach out to either of us, Ethan (ethan@evergreenpsyched.com) or Christina (christina@evergreenpsyched.com), if this is something that you would like help with.
