An update- hope this will be helpful for other parents looking to begin advocating for their kids. And I'm always open to comments/advice from those who've been through this.
Parent/Teacher conferences were tonight. I got the results of the assessments the school uses and it was about what I thought. Here's what they use:
DRA2: Teacher said she tested at a level 26. I thought that seemed pretty low for her, so I asked to see the paper- she didn't get anything wrong. I asked when she would be given the rest of the assessment to determine her reading level. Teacher said she doesn't have access to that and wouldn't be able to do it. Next step: contacting academic director again, ask for full assessment to be given to determine actual DRA level.
AIMSWeb: Again, she was only given the Kindergarten level assessment, which is identifying letters ("She knows all her letters, both upper and lowercase!") and also identifying letter sounds. Only thing she missed was she said the sound "u" makes is "you", like the long U sound. Well, I guess she should have figured they were asking for the short vowel sound since that's what she answered for the other vowels, but "u" does make the sound "you" a lot of the time so to me that's not really a miss. Next step: also ask academic director if they can give her the next level of this assessment.
Saxon Math: DD was wrong (not surprising) about what this assessment contained. It was part A of this:
http://www.learningthings.com/samples/SAX/SAX_Placement-Inventory-Math-K3.pdfShe scored 10/10, and right below where the teacher had written her score, it says, "If the child scores 8–10 in Part A, give Part B of the assessment." So I asked if she had given her part B of the assessment and she said, "Oh, no- because we knew from this that she'd be in the highest group anyway."
(The highest group they offer is one year ahead- she's doing 1st grade Saxon math with other K kids. It's super easy, but the plus is her homework takes her about 30 seconds to complete.)
And guess what? I gave DD the rest of that Saxon assessment and it placed her in Grade 3 Math. I'm not saying she could thrive in a 3rd grade math classroom at this school, but she's definitely capable of more than what she's getting right now.
Next step: Not sure- 1-year subject acceleration in math is very common at this school, but I think there's only 1 kid out of 800+ who's accelerated 2 grades in math. The principal & academic director were strongly against it but the parent had gone through the whole next year's curriculum with the student over the summer, asked the AD to test the child, who passed, so they relented. At any rate, DD could not do 2nd grade math with the 1st graders because it's after lunch and she's in AM K which ends before lunch. I'm not keen on having her stay at school an extra 2 hours just to do 2nd grade math which I could do at home with her in maybe 15 minutes a day.
The meeting was pleasant and cheerful, I feel like we expressed ourselves kindly but firmly so I'm happy about that. The teacher said DD is "way out there" above the others in the class by every measure, including spelling/writing. She said she'd do what she could but there was no way she could give DD private instruction at her level for various reasons- no time, no access to higher level materials, etc. I said we really need to know where she is achieving right now so we can be sure she makes a full year of progress this year. Teacher thought it was a great idea to have the AD assess her further. We've also decided to pay to have the WJ-III achievement test done privately. I was hoping they could get her in in time to have the results for this meeting but it won't happen until next month.
So there it is, what do y'all think of our next steps?
