Thanks so much for the replies, everyone! Very helpful. I'll investigate ALEKS, Khan, Thinkwell and Singapore math as options for DD this Summer & beyond. She's actually quite interested in studying math at home, as she's acutely aware that her scores have gone down continually since the end of 1st grade. Her older brothers had a *competition* between themselves for many years re: who could raise his MAP scores the most each semester. DD remembers that - so she knew enough to track her scores.
My concern isn't her score per-se, but the fact that I think she learned very little math this year, which the score must indicate. As I understand it, MAP questions progress in difficulty and adjust to a lesser degree of difficulty if a question is answered incorrectly. The SCAT Quantitative requires students to determine which value is greater, or if both values are equal (best way I could phrase it). So the SCAT seems to indicate that DD has decent math & reasoning ability, but the MAP seems to indicate lack of advancement in actual math knowledge. Does that seem correct to others here? In general terms, my 2 older DS's MAP scores have always been high, and always gone up - even if a small percentage.
MAP is nationally normed, for the poster who asked.
We will not go the CTY route for math this Summer and instead try one (or more) of the options listed above. DD has lots of fun things going on this Summer, too, so there will definitely be balance.
@ Xiangbaobao, DD's reading score did go up 11 points from Fall to Spring. I'm quite confident that most of it had to do with the amount she reads at home. Her school reading instruction seems geared toward those still struggling to read, for the most part. My DD sounds a lot like your DD in terms of her reading, in fact. We didn't do anything other than supply her with books from our home library, the public library and the newspaper comics. (She also loves Calvin & Hobbes & Diary of a Wimpy Kid, so I suggest those books if you don't own them.) The only other thing we do is limit screen time, as in none during the school week and maybe a movie on the weekend. A little more in the Summer, but the kids are outside so much that there's hardly an interest. DH & I don't really watch TV, either, so our kids don't know anything else. (I'm not anti-TV, btw, it's just how we roll here.) DD and her older brothers have always been the top readers in their classrooms, but we haven't done more than supply the materials. If your DD's reading score has gone down more than a few points during the school year, I'd be looking for answers - unless it's possible that she was simply having a bad testing day. However, if she continues to progress in reading more challenging materials at home, then that's a good sign I think. Perhaps we'll have more experts on this board chime in to offer suggestions.
I'm always grateful for the advice received when I post here so, again, thank you everyone. I will follow up toward the end of Summer with an update...and more advice is always welcomed on this thread, pertaining to my math question or Xiangbaobao's reading question.
