ROBOTIC USE OF TEST SCORES In 2009 I was very disturbed about how an IEP Team was using a single grade equivalent from a well-known standardized, norm-referenced test to place a student in reading materials and make other important IEP decisions. The Team made no attempt to confirm or disconfirm the finding, which simply compared the student to other students on short, contrived reading items. Similarly, the Teams professionals failed to develop a knowledgeable interpretation of the scores meaning, limitations, and implications. It failed to do the necessary follow-up work, such as finding out which recently used instructional strategies fully engaged the child in reading and accelerated his progress, and which didnt. This was bad educational practice. It was a lazy, robotic, unreflective, and uninformed knee jerk. And yet, its something Ive seen often. About a week ago, I received a similar question from a member of the group concerned with her childs below grade level reading score and Common Core Curriculum requirements. My answer remains the same as it did in 2009: Single test scores alone are inadequate to make major decisions about struggling learners. They can help or hurt. They may be wrong or misleading. If theyre right, theyre a tiny piece of the jigsaw puzzle of designing an educational program that will substantially help the struggling learner academically, socially, emotionally, and recreationally. The Common Core Curriculum standards may raise the bar for what struggling learners are required to master, but they dont solve the mystery of the jigsaw puzzle: designing an educational program that will substantially help the struggling learner academically, socially, emotionally, and recreationally. And for each subject they dont identify the struggling learners independent, instructional, and frustration levels. They dont identify effective instructional or progress monitoring strategies. They dont provide teachers with the consultation and assistance they need to help the struggling learner. And they dont provide ways of replacing the many fine teachers that struggling learners need, but who were excessed (fired) to support political careers and the politics of budgets. Many of the problems with test scores and Common Core Curriculum mandates arise from how theyre used. Most uninformed and unreflective educational decisions will hurt struggling learners. And without certainties, informed and reflective ones will increase the odds of helping them (see Reading Disabilities: Beating the Odds, Amazon). Within the federal and state framework of requirements, local uses differ markedly, from caring to uncaring, informed to uninformed, from carefully coordinated to uncoordinated. Without high-quality, continuous training, consultation, and guidance from knowledgeable state specialists and large numbers of Quality Assurance Teams, its doubtful that we will see widespread improvements, especially in overstretched districts with poor tax bases, staffing needs, and little political clout. Below is my 2009 response. I hope this and my first set of comments help. © Howard Margolis, Ed.D., LLC 2009 RESPONSE Why Aren’t Test Scores Good Enough to Understand Your Child’s Reading Needs? Recently, I reviewed the Gray Diagnostic Reading Battery-Second Edition for The Seventeenth Mental Measurements Yearbook. In the Grays manual was a wonderful quote thats so important, its worth memorizing: Too often examiners forget the dictum that tests dont diagnose, people do and base their diagnoses exclusively on test results, a hazardous enterprise at best. Test results are merely observations, not diagnoses. They specify a performance level at a given time under a particular situation, but they do not tell the examiner why a person performs as he or she did.” Scores alone don’t tell you if the child with reading disabilities paid attention, gave up quickly, or had comprehension problems because he read in a slow, laborious fashion. And scores alone don’t tell you the amount of error associated with the score. They don’t tell you that a grade equivalent of 4.3 is no better than one of 4.1, as the error [standard error of measurement] for these scores makes them equivalent. Nor does the grade equivalent of 4.3 tell you that many disabled readers with this score cannot read fourth grade materials. And some would struggle with third grade materials. Yet too often learning consultants, reading specialists, and school psychologists report scores as if they are absolute and definitive—theyre not. Without a knowledgeable interpretation of test results and ongoing monitoring of progress, children with reading disabilities are unlikely to make meaningful progress. So, if the results are not knowledgeably interpreted, ask the school to have someone do so, and make recommendations that will help your child and his teachers. © Howard Margolis, Ed.D., LLC, and Reading2008
Posted on: Sun, 19 Oct 2014 11:40:09 +0000
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