Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Score Goes Down Significantly from Fall to Spring

My son is in eighth grade. He was doing quite well in the fall, scoring 273 for reading, but in the spring he scored 257 for reading. As far as I can tell, there is nothing wrong with him, and he has been reading just as much as he used to and has been writing a whole lot more. My only concern is that he tends to read more stories online than in print. I wonder if that could possibly have affected his scores. His test-taking technique (according to him) was just as usual. Is there any conceivable solution to this problem?

I wonder if it is possibly an issue of growth in vocabulary and material difficulty? Scores for the Spring would be based on harder material I would think. If he hasn't been sufficiently challenged during the school year there wouldn't be as much advancement.

It's just a thought.

What test is that score from? There'd be various possibilities depending on whether it is level score (e.g. anyone in any grade scoring 100 translates to a 2nd grade reading level) or a standard score (e.g. 200 is the average score for kids who take the test in 9th grade Fall.)

By the way if the assessment is NWEA's MAP, then reading has a ceiling effect starting around 245. Basically it means, you can tell nothing useful about variance in scores above that range.

Here's a bit more detail at the NWEA site:
http://www.nwea.org/support/article/532