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

You've already gotten lots of great advice - fwiw, I"ll throw another out there that happened to our ds (without us realizing it). Once ds started reading, he was always light-years ahead of grade level so I never paid much attention to testing at school in K-1 because I didn't think it really mattered (his school let the students pick the books they wanted to read once they'd finished going through the prescribed step-groups of beginning readers, and ds had breezed through those with no issues). Anyway, I was picking him up from Kindergarten one afternoon on a day that he'd stayed up until past midnight the night before completely wired. The teacher was so excited to tell me that ds had scored a 23 or something like that on the DRA. I didn't know what the DRA was and didn't really care... but I could tell it must be a good score from what she said and without thinking anything about it, the first thing that slipped out of my mouth was "Really? You mean he was awake enough to take a test the day after he stayed up past midnight?" I wasn't worried about the test, just laughing at the thought that he'd still had enough energy to think clearly. The teacher, otoh, without saying anything else to me, decided to retest since perhaps ds hadn't been up to par... and sure enough, she retested him and his score went way up.

So - just another thing to consider - not everyone has a good test day every time they take a test. Sometimes kids are tired (or not feeling well, or thinking about lunch or whatever). When I get a test result back for one of my kids that doesn't seem to make sense, I try to remember if there was anything else going on that day (no breakfast, no sleep the night before etc) that might have impacted the score.

Best wishes,

polarbear

At our school, the different grades only have access to certain levels of DRA for testing. For the gt classess, the teachers are limited to two grades above grade level. I think that the regular ed classes are the same.

DRA 28 and Diary of a Wimpy Kid are on par, of course Harry Potter would be more in sync with DRA of 40, that is from experience with my boys.

My youngest DD's teacher kept starting her testing well below where she was capable of reading. What this meant for her was that the small mistakes kept her reading level lower than where she was capable of reading and comprehending. i.e. She couldn't move from level 15 to 16 because of small mistakes. After I talked to the school's literacy teacher 3 weeks later and explained she was reading words like "marvelous marshmallow world" and "whipped cream winter wonderland", they retested her as reading at level 21. Ironically, it was the same small mistakes kept her from moving to level 22.

Revmom's experience is exactly how DRA was explained to me. They are strict about the number of mistakes - even small ones - and cannot move to the next level of the testing if they trigger a certain number. DD was stuck at the same level through most of first grade for that reason.

When she was first identified as 2E she couldn't pass a level 4 DRA. The school psych testing her had me sit in and watch. She made more than 20 mistakes (including reading the main character's name wrong each time i.e. saying "Tad" for "Ted".) After completing the book when asked what happened in the story she recounted it, exactly. I mean just about word for word. They explained to me that because of the way the DRA system is structured it would never be something DD would be successful in. Neuropsych eval over the summer between first and second grade showed her reading at mid grade 2 level. Her DRA testing has her solidly a year behind at a level 14. And that 14 was cause for celebration at a recent IEP meeting. YMMV but DRA is just not something we can accept as accurate for our DD.

By the way she is testing DRA 14 at school (first grade) but we are currently on the last few discs of the 7th Harry Potter book (8th grade+) for audio books. So DRA may measure her dyslexic difficulty with decoding but has nothing to do with what her comprehension level would be. Maybe it's because she is so very 2E that the weakness of the system is so apparent for her.

I had a feeling this is what is going on with my son as well. I am not sure yet if he has dyslexia or not but he has the convergence issues and he often sees 'e' as 'a', skips small words, etc. So when we read at home he might read a word like "Ted" as "Tad" and I'll say "no" and he'll quickly correct himself. I am thinking at school that just counts as a mistake. I have had the experience of having him read a book fine at home then the the next day he reads it for the teacher and she'll tell me he "struggled with several words." I think what happens is he sometimes he makes small mistakes due to his vision issues and they count as mistakes whereas at home I just say "look again" and give him a chance to correct himself. I don't know - I just know that DS and I both hate the system ... Ds' teacher tries to make it more palatable - she made a deal with him that on Fridays he can books from any basket and so he loves to bring him the one or two leveled-up books - that is the ONLY time he gets excited about the books and he is super motivated (that and when he manages to "steal" a higher level book).

The thing that is a even more frustrating is that the school staff in general seem to get all adamant about "the system" - the level, the books. I mean I have to point out that it is asinine to force a kid to read these insipid books that he finds, and actually are, mind-numbingly boring! My son LOVED to read, he loves books and he HATES 100 book challenge with a passion. It's weird to me that when you see a kid like that so unhappy why you think that is a good idea to force this. It doesn't matter how much you tell my DS "This is your just right reading level! You should be happy here!" If he hates the books and find s them boring then he isn't going to magically like them and want to do it because you say that the system says he should. YKIM? I just find it ridiculous - this is reading - it should be fun and interesting. Even adults hate and have trouble reading books far below them and/or that they find boring. I mean, seriously - it's not rocket science. The only one who took me seriously was the principal at the iep meeting when it came up. He was the only one he seemed geneuinely concerned that DS finds the books insipid and when I expressed surprised that he was so concerned he said they are having numerous problems and complaints about the system. I swear the other staff at the table glared at him - I am sure someone would have kicked him under the table if they could have. LOL.

Whatever... we are muddling through - I just have books at home that we log ... They can yell at me about it I don't care if I get called to the principal's office LOL.

Sorry to go a little off topic, but I have been following this thread and it made me wonder ... I grew up in Europe, with what seems like a totally different system and aside from about 10 mandatory books we had to read every year and write reports on, we were free to read anything we wanted to. Just had to read a certain number of books / pages if I remember correctly, but nobody every cared about any reading levels and such. There was no numbering system, no testing, you either could read and moved up in classes or couldn't read at the end of 1st grade and stayed in 1st grade for another year.

So, reading this thread, I now wonder what kind of mess am I going to be with my kids once they go to school? Does all this mean they HAVE to read only books at certain level? I mean ... who is actually going to tell them "NO, you can't read this?" DS4 doesn't read yet other than some sight words, though I'm pretty sure he could read if he wanted to. He just has ZERO interest in it. DS2.5 on the other hand is actually starting to follow the lines in the books with his finger and reading all the words he knows or can phonetically decode. He started with simple words 3 months ago and just two days ago I noticed him trying to really read the books. A friend of mine who's a K teacher saw a video of him and told me he's doing what most of her K kids still can't do at the end of K! If he keeps being interested in reading like he is now, does this mean he'll too have to read the books that the other kids in the class will be reading? That's just not making any sense to me?

It depends on the school and teacher. Here the district sends home a single book every summer which is very easy, but with DS they haven't seemed to enforce reading it. (They do insist that parents compile a list of their children's home reading material every month, but we haven't done that either.)

A couple of different types of reading-material restrictions I've personally seen:

1. Restrictions in the classroom, to books available on the shelf. These sorts of restrictions seem easy to get teachers to agree to modify, by sending books from home.

2. Restrictions on what a child can read in, or check out from, the library. For example, at our school the librarian would physically restrict the K-1 students to a certain part of the library with very easy readers. It took a slight bit of advocacy to get that relaxed for DS.

It definitely depends on your district, your school, your teacher. Our district actually does a good job with reading - aside from in-class alphabet review, the kids' reading is honestly assessed. I know kids who were allowed to read their Harry Potter in kindergarten. Their 'just-right' rule is for the kid to read a page, and hold up a finger for every word they struggle with reading or understanding. 2-3 fingers is just-right, 5 fingers is too hard.