Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Son not scoring as expected on DRA test at school

wow, the LIBRARIAN restricting books? That's even worse than if a teacher did that. Shouldn't the librarians be happy with the kids wanting to read more advanced books? None of this is making any sense ... but I guess it comes with the gifted territory, right?

Same here. The schools my kids have been in have never restricted what level books the children read as long as they'd been able to show the teacher they'd read the initial set of leveled books in their K-1 classrooms.

I also see the DRA as giving some valuable feedback when children *are* making small mistakes in reading but have a higher level of comprehension. Both of my dds had lower scores on the DRA than would be expected due to their comprehension ability and in both cases, it was an indication that they had a reading challenge that needed to be addressed. My older dd had a vision issue, and my younger dd has a type of associative memory challenge which means that she can comprehend at a much higher level when she listens to audiobooks than she can retain when reading with her eyes. So she listens to audiobooks for comprehension but she still needs to develop her reading skills when reading with her eyes, so to practice that she practices with lower level books than she's capable of comprehending. For a typical child with no challenges, I still think there may be some value in practicing reading skills on books that are below their level of comprehension, things like tracking, not skipping ahead etc. I also suspect that for some of our gifted children who had reading challenges might slip through the cracks until a bit later in school if they didn't have an assessment such as the DRA, simply because they were able to get around reading blocks by putting together contextual clues.

polarbear

Our school librarian had a restricted access policy initially. I emailed her politely and explained that because she had restricted the kids to a certain section, and then told them to make sure their book wasn't too easy for them, my kid came home with no book. I told her that because he has access to almost any book he wants at home, and has plenty of books at his "just right level" at home, we wanted him to learn to pick books by interest at school. I gave her some ideas of things he was reading at home and asked for her expertise for other things he might like.

She emailed me back and said, "he can pick books from anywhere in the library" and gave me some ideas for him for future selections.

Sometimes, those policies are in place to manage the crowd, and when evidence is provided to show that the policy is unnecessary, the school is happy to adjust for the individual child.

I find that easy to believe, but fwiw, here in the UK I haven't come across DRA, children having to do quizzes on what they've read, etc., either. It's common that children in the first two years of school (ages 4-6, we start younger than in the US) will be on a "reading scheme" i.e. reading books specifically written for teaching reading and carefully graded. Once a child can read, though (so in DS's case, immediately on starting school except that his teacher had him read a few scheme books so that he'd know who the standard characters were when it came up in class discussion), they are described as a "free reader" and would, indeed, normally choose school reading books freely. (With some restrictions sometimes, but these relate to subject matter rather than reading level. E.g., the school library at DS's school has fiction shelved under "junior fiction" (mostly for the under 10s) "senior fiction" (for those up to 13) and "scholarship fiction" (things considered challenging for 12-13yos) - this is guidance rather than rule, though.)

There is "guided reading" in which a small group of children reads the same book with an adult, e.g., taking it in turns to read pages aloud and discussing in the group what's going on, what the characters are like, what might happen next, features of the language, and all that jazz. But this is quite separate from what they read for their reading practice, and indeed, they are not allowed to read the guided reading book on their own because they are not supposed to know in advance what will happen next!

I know the feeling. I've read justifications including wanting children to focus on comprehension instead of just decoding (which doesn't make sense because if children weren't getting meaning out of material they wouldn't tend to read it for pleasure) and wanting to keep children from reading above their comfort zone (ditto).

i just wanted to add that attitude and understanding what is being asked of them is HUGE in DRA assessments. When DS took his first assessment at the beginning of K last year he tested at a mid 2nd grade level (I can't remember the level). Both his teacher and I agreed at the time that this was probably a slight underestimation due to a relatively lower oral fluency rather than comprehension or decoding ability.
In the spring, after spending several months in the second grade classroom doing second grade work, he tested at a mid first grade level. At the conference that we had immediately after this I got a chance to see the actual assessment sheets and the second one was quite revealing as it contained numerous comments that DS was 'climbing over the back of the seat', reading sections 'in a robot voice' or just plain not answering the teacher. This was in the middle of a very rough period last year where he has decided that he hated everything to do with school. This attitude was reflected in the questions they ask at the beginning. Things like "What's your favorite book?" ('None. I don't like books.') or "How do you choose books to read ('Just take it for no reason.')
The other aspect was understanding what was being asked of him. Specifically, when the teacher asks "Start at the beginning and tell me what happened." that they want specifics. and lots of words. DS's answer was basically a one sentence, six word synopsis ('She helped everyone with the stopwatch'). While this was, in fact, correct, DS did not realize that he was to walk through the story step by step (They get rated based on repeating specific information from the story). When asking DS about the story later he was very capable of going into greater detail but either didn't realize he was supposed to or found it stupid (I'm still not sure which). He was not given any extra prompts except for 'Tell me more' and 'What happened at the beginning?' even though the assessment clearly gives the teacher the latitude to ask more leading questions (ie "What happened before/after _____")
In the end on the level 18 test he was scored 'Advanced' on accuracy, 'Independent' on rate, 'Instructional' on phrasing, and 'Intervention' for expression. As a kid that has difficulty with peer interactions and a slightly irregular speech pattern anyway (he tends to pause his sentences in odd place sometimes, a trait that he picked up years ago as he overcame a stuttering issue), I think using these a features to judge his reading ability greatly changed the outcome.
Sorry for the rant, its just that we've been burned by these too.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid books are Lexile 900-1000, which would be DRA 50 or above according to the chart I have. I think the books are overrated in the Lexile system, but still. DOAWK is high-interest and has a lot of pictures, so I think many kids stretch past their level to read it.

FWIW, DD has never been disallowed from reading anything in school libraries or in her classrooms as far as I know. All has been fair game. She entered K reading very well so perhaps it has never been an issue. However, I have never--that's right, never--been given a reading level for her. She has also attended somewhat unsual schools (a charter and a magnet).