Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Wide variation in standardized test scores

I'm not sure if this is the best place to post since it is about standardized testing not gifted testing, but I didn't know where else to post.

I recently got my son's AIMS (Arizona's end of year standardized test) scores for 3rd grade. While he scored in the 95th percentile for reading, he score in the 40th percentile for Language. I checked his records and her performed very similarly on the SAT 10 in second grade. I am concerned about the huge variation in test scores. My problem is that nowhere on the results does it explain what the "language" score represents.

Does anyone know what fits under Language and what fits under reading? I'm pretty sure I should be worried with these scores, unfortunately I'm not sure just what I need to be worried about. I've tried to contact his teacher about this but it's been a week with still no response from her. Any help would be appreciated.

Looks like that's the writing portion of the exam (the website states the test covers Reading, Writing, Maths and Science.

Does your son have difficulty with writing in class?

Have you tried looking for information about the test on either your school district website or the state education website? I'm not familiar with Arizona or the AIMS test, but fwiw there is a lot of detailed information about our state's standardized testing available online (including practice sample tests).

You might also call your school district's testing department rather than trying to go through your teacher, or ask a SPED staff member at your school.

One thing I'd also suggest doing - request a copy of your ds' full test report from your school district - in our district parents get a "report format" copy but there is more info available on some tests in student's big "file" that parents only get by requesting it. We had an issue with one of our ds' standardized school tests where he had a significantly lower score than expected, and it appears that what happened was he got off track using the test bubble sheet.

If you have other classwork and testing that shows a higher level of scores and work, I wouldn't worry too much about one test - any number of things can happen with any child on any given day. If, otoh, you've seen a pattern of lower than expected test scores or difficulty with classroom work in the area that's being tested and the low score came in, I'd be sure to follow up and get as much information about the test (were the questions read by the student, how did he have to respond, what specific skills were tested etc).

Best wishes,

polarbear

Without going back and double checking, I sort of remember the same thing happening with us. I remember researching it a bit and finding that in the case of our standardized testing -- Language was the phonics category. My child still isn't great at phonics.

But she reads well and scores high on comprehension -- 90% - 99% depending on the day. Spelling, however, was never (and still isn't) a strong skill. This is probably a result of that low language score. I worked a little with her, but decided to not really fret over it. As I recall, they quit testing phonics after 4th grade. And if her reading comprehension is fine and the spelling is mostly okay... I decided not to worry about it.

On the ITBS, Language is about usage (she didn't vs she don't, etc), expression (like where the best place is for a particular sentence to be in a paragraph), writing mechanics (capitalization and punctuation), and spelling.

I've found that the capitalization and punctuation part can be pretty sensitive to whether or not a kid has been explicitly taught those things, the usage and expression is pretty intuitive for a good reader and someone who comes from a home where standard English is spoken, and the spelling is, well, spelling (for us, my natural speller always scored off the charts and it was always my dyslexic son's worst score by about 50 percentile points).