My second grade daughter's reading scores seem to consist mainly of multiple choice reading quizzes. She gets two types: grade level reading quizzes and above grade level reading quizzes. She generally scores very well on the above grade level quizzes, but lately she's been bombing the grade level ones. (They usually only have 4-5 questions, so missing one question is a B/C.) The question that she's missing is always about the main idea of a numbered paragraph. In the above level quizzes, she is required to make an inference. In the grade level quizzes, the answer is there in black and white, but there is always a second answer that can make sense as an inference, and that is what she's choosing.

As much as I think picking the main idea out of a list is kind of dumb anyway, I do want her to make good grades--and as a dysgraphic, she's always very borderline with ELA grades as it is because of the writing (and yes, she has a 504). So she needs good grades on these bubble quizzes.

Those of you who are teachers...is this common? It seems like the two level quizzes are teaching different strategies. I'm not sure whether I should just shrug my shoulders and move on or sit down with her and show her how the two different levels are actually looking for different things, and that she should use a different strategy for each level. If that is, in fact, what is happening.

What are your thoughts?

Unhelpful but my thoughts are second graders shoukdn't be getting grades and testing should only be for teacher planning purposes.

Are you in a Common Core state? I've noticed a major change in materials like this when designated as CC test prep. They now appear intentionally designed to confuse, frequently including two highly reasonable answers. DD12's CC workbook (don't get me started!) has had all 3 of us stumped on multiple occasions, and the gifted kids in her class routinely score poorly. I'm waiting for the uproar on this.

Here's an example of the kind of cruddy question DD gets wrong. (The Grandma Talley one.) Who even cares, honestly? What are we even testing with a question like this? It's so micro--not important to the general themes or true comprehension. It burns me up. Seems subjective at best.

http://edexcellence.net/articles/new-york%E2%80%99s-common-core-tests-tough-questions-curious-choices

You should sit down with her and show her how the two levels are different, if you think that will help. One of my son's teachers told me recently that some children have more difficulty with the "easier" multiple choice questions because they are thinking more in depth about the topic than is being tested, if that makes sense.

Does anyone have any resources on how to teach your child about the nuances of multiple choice and strategies? We are having a similar issue and the teacher is not interested in helping with this.

I agree that it doesn't have as much to do with real comprehension, but I also do not see these types of questions going away.

Ugh, Ultramarina, that question would send me over the wall.

In these questions its much easier to see which answer is expected. I could easily teach her that when she's looking at the short reading selection do x and keep doing y when you are looking at the longer one.

But I guess that actually leads to a much larger question which is how much do we try to teach our kids to strategize like this? It just seems so cynical. Ultimately, the type of main idea information they're looking at in the lower lower level quiz will fade out because it's not relevant to real world writing or reading (unless you are reading or writing at a really low level)--same with your example, even though yours is definitely more sophisticated than what I'm talking about.

So do I even waste time going there with her? It would just be about the grade. If she wasn't dysgraphic, I wouldn't care about the grade (and she certainly doesn't care about the grade!) but because of the writing issues, her report card ELA grade ranges from 88-91. So these things matter; she's right on the border. And my fear is that as she gets older, she'll get pushed down to lower level work because I didn't teach her how to do stuff like game these bubble tests.

So my instinct says ignore...once you've developed the actual skill, these contrived paragraphs have nothing to do with real learning. But my gut says she's got to learn to play the game.

I guess that's a way bigger issue than whether or not I choose to go over a couple of comprehension quizzes with her, but that's the heart of what I'm questioning.

This is exactly what is happening. She basically needs to be told to think on one type of quiz and to look on the other.

FWIW my mom was a teacher and I distinctly remember her teaching me that it was all a game that needed to be played (for me it actually helped my attitude towards the whole thing oddly enough but of course YMMV). She flat out taught her elementary aged students strategies for multiple choice tests and this was 30 years ago. She viewed multiple choice test taking as a skill like reading and writing. Sure it isn't a really a useful skill in most of the real world but for 12+ years it is a very necessary one for most people to get to where they eventually want to be in life so you might as well learn to do it to the best of your abilities.

Unfortunately, I think they do need to be taught to answer these types of questions. This has been an issue for one of my children since K, and doesn't seem to be improving.

My twins go to a school that doesn't do a lot of standardized testing or multiple choice worksheets, but I have already been warned by one of their teachers that this year's standardized test scores likely WILL NOT reflect my child's ability or his level of achievement due to this issue.

In talking with him about the test, I understand the problem, but am really not sure how to solve it.

I don't really care about his test scores, as it really doesn't matter right now, but in a couple of years he will be applying to middle school and standardized test scores will actually matter to the school he wants to attend.

I am going to spend a little time going over answering achievement test type questions in the hope that he can learn how to do it.

I COMPLETELY hear what you're saying, Questions. Unfortunately, with things going as they are, your child's problem is not going away at all. We're looking at it almost every day in SIXTH grade in a "gifted" curriculum. My child has read ONE book this year in LA, while spending countless hours on these multiple-choice "gotcha" questions. They have also done grammar review, which is okay for what it is, except that she personally has flawless grammar (aced the pretest--most students did quite poorly) and does not need any instruction in it.

I am not some anti-CC raver, but the LA aspect is really concerning to me and has even caused me to consider private school. I'm ready to rise up in angry revolution.

Yes... although if others may recall, my DD was tearing her hair out over this sort of thing even 5-6y back, when this type of "assessment" started becoming common in the rollout to the CC language arts.

She eventually learned to just "play the game" as noted in the quote above... but it NEVER really ceased to burn her britches, for lack of a better term.

One particular gem in a high school course that I still recall, because it-- and the result-- frustrated her nearly to tears...





This is a PERFECT example of "the more you know, the harder it gets to guess what the item designer/writer actually INTENDED with the query."

DD ranted to me about the Shelleys, Byron, the year-without-a-summer, the complex relationship between Mary and Byron, Lake Geneva, and social mores of the time-- for nearly twenty minutes, as I recall... but then she still had no clue what the "right" answer was for that question.

It's been my explanation to DD that her job, with such things in this world, is to be Jane Goodall of the Neurotypicals, as it were. That is, she has to attempt to understand what was BEHIND the assessment item in order to answer them in the expected way.


I did complain to her school about this as a very subtle but extremely pervasive structural problem in educational materials which are intended for non-gifted or MG children, and which are paradoxically toxic for those who are HG+ since their lived experiences and thinking don't PERMIT them to take a fully NT perspective.

It's much like the well-documented structural problems related to standardized testing in minority and disadvantaged populations. You can't ask questions about sailing and golf of children who face daily food and housing insecurity and have spent their entire lives in poor urban settings.

One can't really take a perspective that one has no experience with, if that makes sense.

Well-- for HG+ children, their entire schooling/assessment experience is one of these challenges after another. The thing to remember is that the only way through that is to view it as a social game; my DD started to do very well once she took that approach. She was able to leverage her social savvy and understanding of NT behavior/thinking/motivation to kind of focus in on what such things probably INTENDED to be asking.


This is one of those weird things that most parents and educators interpret as being a thing that only needs to be done with children on the spectrum, or those with some kind of social dysfunction/delay. Uhhhh-- yeah, I'm thinking not. DD is and has always been able to do this with a great deal of finesse, even with people far removed from her own experiences. It's just that she hadn't considered that PEOPLE write these assessment items.

Asynchrony at work, that.

Once she got that bit of it, it got much easier. This is probably something that cannot work for non-NT children who aren't HG/HG+, but for many of the kids in this community, it's worth a shot.

ditto chay & HK.

My mother and chay's mother were apparently on the same wavelength. She told us a few decades ago that the task of successful mc standardized testing was ... figuring out how the exam-writer thinks. In fact, that was pretty much her approach to any test-taking. It was sufficiently ingrained in me that one of the first things I did on taking a GRE subject exam many years ago was to glance at the names of the test contributors. I actually recognized one of them as a past professor, and remember thinking, score! I know how he writes tests.

My K student is getting letter grades... but I do agree with you.

I live in a different country. Grades may happen at middle school or maybe not to high school. It is good mostly but it can lead to parents thinking all is fine until it obviously isn't. Multi choice isn't that common either.

If multi choice is going to be ongoing I agree with lessons in testing. With multi choice knowing how to do it is as important as knowing the subject. Sad but there it is.

Oh, I feel for her. I'm still angry about the question I had on a health test (taught by a PE teacher) in HS.

T/F -- Bacteria cause disease.

I was horribly shy but biology was my thing and getting this wrong bugged me enough that I went to the teacher to argue my case. The teacher just gave me a blank look and wouldn't give me the point.

Unfortunately this issue of trying to guess what the test writer is thinking and knowing too much never goes away. I recently took a professional recertification exam and the question with which I struggled the most was about something in my area of research expertise. I sat there and kept thinking "who wrote this? Who was the target audience? What are they trying to achieve?" Still not sure if I got it "right" but I thought it was pretty funny that was the question that made me sweat.
I hate that multiple choice is replacing time devoted to complex critical thought. But unfortunately, even beyond school, the standardized testing goes on for your whole life in many fields.