If your DC attends school, how do you track your high achiever's academic progress?

I am feeling at a loss over the recent experience of realizing that the school is utterly uninterested in the fact that my DC's MAP test scores have not grown at all in one subject for an entire year (score over the 99 percentile for grade, but this will slowly slip over time if no growth takes place).

As I sit back and try to regroup, I find myself asking the question - how does a parent know whether their high achiever is actually making progress at their school? How do you track your DC's progress when they might be (repeatedly) hitting ceilings on grade-level assessments?

DS had a 1 point growth in math MAP from last spring to this spring. I was told the difference is in primary MAP vs MAP 2-5. Could you be seeing the shift as well? I know the 6 plus is what dd wil be taking for math next year as she will be in 5th grade taking pre- algebra

My DC's school tests "out of grade level" on DRA and the Gates reading test. We see a lot of growth- DC jumped four grade equivalencies on the Gates test between end of K and end of first.

DC will take the ERB next year, and I'm not sure how it is administered (ceilings). We did the WJ III achievement for Davidson, and may have another achievement test administered privately in a few years if we're concerned about academic growth.

I check the lexile/DRA levels of the books DC enjoys most to see if he's choosing books of gradually increasing difficulty.

I work with DC on math specifically in the summer so that I can ensure that DC is challenged and accumulating skills. IXL is a great program for checking math skills-- it's basically like Kumon (tedious, repetitive), but it does track hard math skill by grade level.

Your situation sounds frustrating-- we dealt with that....a teacher who wouldn't increase the challenge based on the high results of a test that was school administered! We ultimately moved schools because DC was unhappy.

Thanks frannieandejsmom - no, the test should have been the MAP 2-5, for each administration. Someone on another thread suggested asking for the 6+ version (her scores were high, possibly at the point where they become less accurate), but I think I would have to really push for the school to do that, since DC appears to have at least 2 full years of the 2-5 version ahead. Up until this year I thought MAP testing might be a nice way to get some idea of progress, since the RIT score can provide some indication of where they might perform compared to various grade levels, but this recent experience has been frustrating - I find myself wondering: what does DC have to do to show the school she might need something different? If DC does well, apparently, they can just simply chalk it up to "inflation," so the results apparently become meaningless to the school anyway. She made a great deal of progress in one subject area according to her RIT growth...or did she? Perhaps the school believes THAT is inflation, too???

DD IS a good test taker - the many, many tests she has taken show that. The ability tests also suggest, though, that one would EXPECT her to be achieving at a high level...so then how do I tell if she is actually UNDERACHIEVING, KWIM? To me, the lack of RIT growth seems as though it could potentially show just that, or perhaps a lack of sufficient/adequate challenge.

DD's lexile level isn't really very helpful anymore - it is high enough that it is a pretty useless way to track progress at this point.

I am just scratching my head at this point. The school seems determined to "group" her (and yes, she is in a high group), instead of looking at her as an individual - but I suspect this past year's "grouping" did not provide her with the exposure to material that would help her demonstrate any growth on MAP. I guess since all of the other growth measures that the school uses seem rather subjective, I am just trying to figure out how to determine what/how well she is learning/progressing at school.

I think part of the answer to your question depends on the age of your child. the older they get the increases from year to year are less especially for 99 percentile kids.

Thanks nicoledad. DD is 8. I agree - higher RIT scores usually mean expectations of smaller growth - and I did not expect a great deal. Some would have been nice, though.

I am just realizing that going forward, I need to have a better handle on how DD's school is (or perhaps, isn't) working for her.

If paying for biannual achievement testing is not in your budget (as it is not for most people), one thing you could try is using your state's curriculum frameworks as a checklist of grade-expectations for mastering skills. Or if you are in one of the states that has adopted Common Core, you could use that the same way. You would have to survey your child's skills yourself, of course, but it would give you a better sense of how they line up against various grade levels. And how they are progressing through the curricular expectations.

I have not obtained any useful information from group standardized testing for several years, and will be switching to out of level testing with the ACT or SAT (most likely the former), with at least one of mine.

cammom - that sounds AMAZING that your school tests out of level! I am not familiar with those tests, but what nice progress!

aeh - perhaps having DD taking the EXPLORE again at some point in the future might be helpful? When taken out-of-level, though, I had read that it is more of a measure of aptitude than achievement (trying to remember where I read this...)? So my question becomes: how well does it measure achievement growth - especially when given to "good" test takers? Won't we face the same "good guessing" possibility/phenomenon?

Has anyone tried repeated EXPLORE/ACT/SAT testing and found it to be helpful for achievement tracking? I would love to hear the experiences of those who have tried it. Did you think any of these tests was a good measure of academic progress?

Measuring on my own sounds interesting, but I am not in the field of education by trade. I am not sure my "assessment" would be valid.

I am also trying to simply understand the "inflation" theory - I assume here they are implying that DD was simply too good of a guesser?

You can order various achievement tests like the IOWA from BJU testing and administer them yourself. I gave a set last Thanksgiving over the break so it's doable over an extended weekend. You can pick whatever grade you like. I think it was around sixty bucks per kid. You have to have a bachelors degree in something (as in, any bachelors). I kinda doubt they verified it but whatever. It was useful for me in terms of planning. Not as useful as the WJIII testing but much cheaper and actually more useful than EXPLORE scores were.

Thanks, SouthLake - the school actually gave the grade-level Iowa test also this year...another 99 percentile. So how do you decide what grade-level to give?

That's the thing: the school isn't shy about testing, and DD has a 99 percentile average on her grade-level tests. This is why we finally had her take the EXPLORE test this year.

I was just thinking...one thing that I use to track DS7's progress in math, is word problems. I find difficult, beyond grade level word problems (Singapore is my favorite right now), and hand them to DS to solve without my intervention.

It sounds simplistic, but it really gives me a lot of information about DS's thinking. Singapore is very analytical (I'm sure there are other great math curriculums). Some of the word problems, even at the fourth grade level (what we're working through) are challenging. It shows me that DS is able to complete about 70% quickly, without any instruction or input, but some of the multi-step, challenging problems require me to suggest strategies.

This may not be what you're looking for, but (at least in math), obtaining a math work book above grade level (something hard like Singapore or the AoPS) that emphasizes solving applied (not calculation) type problems will quickly reveal some strengths and weaknesses.

My DD is in K, and they did reading assessments three times: August, January, and May. I could see clear progression in that area, she was L in Aug, N in January, and T in May (DRA levels).

I have also noticed an increase in her vocabulary, which is one thing her teacher differentiated for her this year. While other kids were learning to read, DD was learning to identify words in the course of reading that she didn't understand the meaning (she could "read" it, but not know the definition. DD has a habit to skim past words rather than try to find out what they mean).

In math, we also do word problems at home. DD loves them. We use Singapore Math, EPGY, and various other word problem worksheets to supplement at home, where I can directly see her progress.

I am hoping once she is out of K, she will have more differentiation for math as well. I didn't push very hard this year, since DD does have a visual-spatial weakness and they worked with her on that, but I am expecting them to meet her on her actual level next year in terms of concrete math skills.

How does this work?

I just gave BJU a lot of personal information to set up an account only to be told that they will only ship materials to a registered Iowa tester!

I think this makes complete sense-- it's like contest math, but the junior edition, as it were.

As for tracking progress ourselves:

we tend to look at samples of DD's work for school-- in her most appropriate classes, or with those assignments where she has worked at HER level (not necessarily at the level of the class or the assignment).

This is how I'm reasonably confident that her analytical ability using the scientific method was at college level back when she was about 9. Given an open-ended assignment, she designed something that had different treatment groups, valid controls, etc. And knew what it all meant, was able to present results graphically (though she lacked the statistics that she would have needed to discuss significance in differences with treatment groups).

In another example, when I look at her writing, there are clear signs of progress-- I estimate that she's well into college level ability there as well at this point.

Sometimes such progress comes in large jumps. Now that we've gotten used to that, and now that DD has the metacognition to 'feel' that happening, we know to look.

The ERB will give you some better indication of how they are doing depending on the type of school you are at. The school can get scores normed against nation norms - based on kids form random public schools at their grade level taking the test, then against suburban public schools - based on the schools in more well-to-do neighborhoods with a higher level of education and then finally, against Independent nation norms - which is against schools like Philips Exeter and other elite private schools that use this test. The scores will probably be in the 99% for the national norms, but as the normed groups get more defined, they will probably drop - it basically zooms in on the top scores and separates them out more. I find the most beneficial ones to look at at the scores against the independent schools because those are the most selective schools and therefore will give you a better idea of how your child compares to elite school scores.
I know there are people who will say that those schools are not all geared towards gt kids, and I agree, but in terms of a score that you have access to, this is a good one to see more in than the standard Iowa scores.