I read about these on an email list and found them helpful. There's a K-12 reading assessment (DORA) and math assessments at various levels (DOMA). It's $20/per test. Price was right for me. We're homeschooling and I've taken over the teaching and wanted a snapshot of where DS is now and again where he'll be at the end of the school year. www.letsgolearn.com And for all you data heads - your child can stop and resume the test at any time, and the scores are instantaneous. I have no idea how accurate the results are as to the grade level, but I found it helpful, particularly for pointing out relative weaknesses. I don't actually believe the high scores, but overall I think it was pretty good. At least good enough for me and my purposes.

Thanks, questions! I am a lot less assessment-obsessed this year than I was last year, but I always appreciate a good opoortunity to see where we stand.

We did the reading test over last few days and DS6 liked it. It's nice that you can break it into small pieces and don't have to finish it all in one sitting.

I think I have pretty good idea where D6 is in math but reading/vocabulary/phonics are a different story so the test came pretty handy. It has 7 different subtests everything from phonics to vocabulary to reading comprehension.

I am not sure about the value of the word recognition score (DS6 almost maxed it out) but the rest of the results are what I would expect or/and inline with WJ-III done more than a year ago (I accounted for the 1+ difference) with the exception of spelling.

I want to see how far DS4 is. Wish me a luck. He will be a "joy" to test.

Wow Questions!
Great Reference. As a teacher of your children, have you found that they are helpful at working on the relative weaknesses? Have you sent an email to HoagiesPage about this organization?

Good luck LMmom with DS4.
What are you going to use as 'motivatiors?'

Hi, Grinity,

Hadn't looked at Hoagies for it. If it's not there, I can email it in. Thanks for the suggestion.

I, too, found the results inline with DS's WIAT-II scores almost two years ago, except for his significant improvement in the areas I already knew about. The assessment confirmed that spelling is a weak point, and reinforces my commitment to follow the All About Spelling program we recently started. It was also nice to see confirmation of the significant improvement in reading. As you might recall, I posted last winter asking for advice on how to get DS to read - even though he could (since about age 3), he refused to and would say it's too hard. Recommendations of Geronimo Stilton seemed to have helped him over the hump. And perhaps the vision therapy is helping, too. In any event, whether true or not (as to exactly how high), this assessment put him multiple years ahead of grade level on reading - and I've seen it for myself. Ease of and willingness to read will help him in many areas. Spelling/writing are still a work in process.

But my reason for testing wasn't for information as to what to work on. I was concerned about his little progress in the fall with his teacher. I wanted a baseline now so that I can see where he is at the end of the school year with me as the teacher. This is the new homeschooler thing Kriston alluded to in her post.

I bribed, meant to say motivated DS4 with chocolate. He is is mother's son Surprisingly he finished the whole thing in one sitting. The interface is very friendly so that helped.

I doubt the Word Recognition section even more now, it's just too high for both of them. It's interesting that DS4 is within 1 to 1.5 years from DS6 in vocabulary and reading comprehension. The boys are 22 months apart and we all know they usually gain more than one year of knowledge in 12 months. Of course vocabulary is DS6 weak point.

LMom -Glad to hear that dS4 had a good experience - yum!
Questions - glad your found something reasonable to use to track your son. Also glad to hear that his reading has blossomed. Yippee!

OK, any thoughts on the accuracy and/or reliabilty of the DORA?

I bribed my son, who just turned 4 three weeks ago, into completing it in three segments. Here's what I got:

high-frequency word subtest (range K to high 3rd): maximum
word recocognition (range K to high 12th): low 12th
phonics (range K to high 4th): maximum
spelling (range K to high 12th): high 1st
oral vocab (range K to high 12th): mid 5th
reading comprehension (range K to high 12th): mid 5th

The estimated Lexile score was 600.

I have noticed that many of the books that interest him are recommended for ages 8-12 (I'm sometimes tempted to lie to librarians that I'm getting books for his "older brother"), but still, this seems crazy.

Any word from Hoagies about the tests? I am curious about Carolyn K's thoughts....

I wouldn't worry about. DS6 goes to the librarian and asks for guidance now. The first time he did, he asked the kid's librarian for help finding a history book. She marched him over to the kid's history section, and she asked him what kind of history he wanted to read. Surprising everyone, he said Japanese history; without batting an eye, she took DS6 (DS5 then) to the normal library section and showed him where they were - explained a little dewey decimal, etc. I was embarrassed at first, sure she would think I prompted that, but she said, "you never know what they will find interesting...just let him be." A lovely experience, really.

We homeschool, just started "officially" and were considering signing Boo up for a charter/umbrella school for assessment purposes. So this thread is very timely for us!

For my family, these assessments will act as benchmarks to gage progress. Boo started the DORA. She's doing it in sections, as she only has limited access to a computer with sound. In any event, she "threw" the first section. I knew she was tired and asked her if she wanted to wait, but she insisted. And, I think she thought that part was dumb, because she perked up at the next section. I'm not too worried, as she does the items on that part of the exam consistantly already. It will skew the overall results a bit, I'm sure.

Her next lowest section is oral vocabulary. The test says a word and shows a series of pictures and the the test-taker is supposed to choose the picture that best matches the word's meaning. Pretty straight forward. Too bad the test doesn't take explainations into account. I don't want to give away any answers, but this one is too funny to pass up. The computer said, "finish" and showed several pictures. One of which was of a person lying on the ground (an athlete presumably, since there was referee and a coach-ish person nearby) another picture was of someone reading a book at a desk.

Boo chose the picture of the person at the desk. I asked her about it later. She said it was because "clearly the person reading wanted to finishreading the book, whereas, (yes she said "whereas") the runner was simply finishedand since the computer said "finish" and not "finished" the picture with book mustbe the correct one." Makes total sense! And to think I would have chosen the picture with the athlete!

Even so with an unfinished assessment (one section remaining), one section that she she "threw" and another that would have been much better if it allowed for explainations (LOL), thus far, her scores are surprising. Okay not surprising, as they are inline with where I had thought she was but...

Now, my GT deniability factor has been greatly reduced. Of course I'll still wait for the finished assessment before making a final judgement; still it's pretty clear from what I have so far that she's doing much more than an ND 4.5 year old.

That thought process alone shows GTness to me, for sure. Most 4.5yos couldn't reason things out like that.

That's the thing, I have no idea what *most* 4.5 year olds can/cannot do. I expect things like that to be typical for her age peers, given the vast range of time considered normal to acquire a variety of skills. (What I mean is that the range of time for a child to gain a particular skill can vary from months to years between children and still be in the ND range. Right? I can't think of anything specific, at the moment.) It gets me into trouble; I figure that other kids her age can do it, too. Really, I'm clueless. I've read the developmental charts. Still I find myself often clueless re: abilities of kids, in general.

I have a screwy kidometer. On the one hand I find myself perplexed when a child acts in a typically age appropriate way, e.g. a 2 year old screaming instead of using words to convey displeasure. By the same token, when some one says, "Can you believe a 9 year old is doing Calculus?!" (Shock! Horror!) I say, "Oh sure, that makes total sense."

I'm with you mizzoumommy.

I put all sorts of notes on the form the school sent home re: testing.
"Your child does X more than a normal child his/her age."
I love how they have "Often" "Sometimes" "Rarely" "Never"
Um, how much time am I spending with these magical normal children to know if they come up with wacky or unusual ideas more or less often than DS?

It is all very silly that we try to define people by how they relate to other people rather than by seeing them for who they are regardless of how other people are. Don't we tell our kids this?

Well...sure, but in terms of GTness, how else can you define it but in relation to devation from the norm?

Maybe it's just a failure of imagination on my part, but I can't think of any other way.

And until schools start being capable of individualized education (i.e, when pigs fly...), then we have to have some sort of way to define these kids with special needs so that they have at least a chance of getting those needs met.

I gave the DORA to dd 3. She did very well on most of the assessment (scores from grade 3-7) but blew it on the spelling. She couldn't spell more than a three letter word. The report has a big red arrow that says "priority" pointing to that area. I got a kick out of that. How well do they expect three year olds to spell?

Boo finished one, too. It was easy for her and she did well when she, actually, *looked* at the computer screen. For the most part, her scores were pretty in line with what I expected. Interestingly, her comprehension score was a high 3rd grade, which shocked me because she finished the entire section in under 5 minutes. I logged her in, went to the restroom, and when I came out she playing in her room. I asked her, "Did you even read it?" She said that she started to, but once she saw the first set of questions she just skimmed the rest of the stories and jumped to the questions. I wonder what would have happened if she actually *stopped* to read the passages before answering the questions.

Then again, that's something I have to work with her all the time - slooowing down. She's a perfectionist and tends not to start things unless she's sure she knows it, but once she is confident, (thinks something is too easy) she rushes through it and misses things. It's clear she "gets" the concepts and can apply them and extrapolate, etc. *BUT* she makes careless mistakes, sometimes skips over important steps, etc. I figure she has time to "spiral" back and fill in gaps, as she is only 4.5 still I do worry at times.

Nah, I don't think you need to worry at this point. She's not even school age yet. If she is still making careless errors in a couple years, then you'll have reason to be concerned.

It wasn't the most engaging test by any stretch. If you're thinking about standardized testing for school or DYS any time soon, she'll likely do MUCH better interacting with a real person and not a cartoon monkey!

Honestly, I'm not *really* worried about it. It's just something that I have catalogued in the back of my mind for *just in case*. KWIM?