Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion How do you track your DC's academic progress?

If your DC attends school, how do you track your high achiever's academic progress?

I am feeling at a loss over the recent experience of realizing that the school is utterly uninterested in the fact that my DC's MAP test scores have not grown at all in one subject for an entire year (score over the 99 percentile for grade, but this will slowly slip over time if no growth takes place).

As I sit back and try to regroup, I find myself asking the question - how does a parent know whether their high achiever is actually making progress at their school? How do you track your DC's progress when they might be (repeatedly) hitting ceilings on grade-level assessments?

DS had a 1 point growth in math MAP from last spring to this spring. I was told the difference is in primary MAP vs MAP 2-5. Could you be seeing the shift as well? I know the 6 plus is what dd wil be taking for math next year as she will be in 5th grade taking pre- algebra

My DC's school tests "out of grade level" on DRA and the Gates reading test. We see a lot of growth- DC jumped four grade equivalencies on the Gates test between end of K and end of first.

DC will take the ERB next year, and I'm not sure how it is administered (ceilings). We did the WJ III achievement for Davidson, and may have another achievement test administered privately in a few years if we're concerned about academic growth.

I check the lexile/DRA levels of the books DC enjoys most to see if he's choosing books of gradually increasing difficulty.

I work with DC on math specifically in the summer so that I can ensure that DC is challenged and accumulating skills. IXL is a great program for checking math skills-- it's basically like Kumon (tedious, repetitive), but it does track hard math skill by grade level.

Your situation sounds frustrating-- we dealt with that....a teacher who wouldn't increase the challenge based on the high results of a test that was school administered! We ultimately moved schools because DC was unhappy.

Thanks frannieandejsmom - no, the test should have been the MAP 2-5, for each administration. Someone on another thread suggested asking for the 6+ version (her scores were high, possibly at the point where they become less accurate), but I think I would have to really push for the school to do that, since DC appears to have at least 2 full years of the 2-5 version ahead. Up until this year I thought MAP testing might be a nice way to get some idea of progress, since the RIT score can provide some indication of where they might perform compared to various grade levels, but this recent experience has been frustrating - I find myself wondering: what does DC have to do to show the school she might need something different? If DC does well, apparently, they can just simply chalk it up to "inflation," so the results apparently become meaningless to the school anyway. She made a great deal of progress in one subject area according to her RIT growth...or did she? Perhaps the school believes THAT is inflation, too???

DD IS a good test taker - the many, many tests she has taken show that. The ability tests also suggest, though, that one would EXPECT her to be achieving at a high level...so then how do I tell if she is actually UNDERACHIEVING, KWIM? To me, the lack of RIT growth seems as though it could potentially show just that, or perhaps a lack of sufficient/adequate challenge.

DD's lexile level isn't really very helpful anymore - it is high enough that it is a pretty useless way to track progress at this point.

I am just scratching my head at this point. The school seems determined to "group" her (and yes, she is in a high group), instead of looking at her as an individual - but I suspect this past year's "grouping" did not provide her with the exposure to material that would help her demonstrate any growth on MAP. I guess since all of the other growth measures that the school uses seem rather subjective, I am just trying to figure out how to determine what/how well she is learning/progressing at school.

I think part of the answer to your question depends on the age of your child. the older they get the increases from year to year are less especially for 99 percentile kids.

Thanks nicoledad. DD is 8. I agree - higher RIT scores usually mean expectations of smaller growth - and I did not expect a great deal. Some would have been nice, though.

I am just realizing that going forward, I need to have a better handle on how DD's school is (or perhaps, isn't) working for her.

If paying for biannual achievement testing is not in your budget (as it is not for most people), one thing you could try is using your state's curriculum frameworks as a checklist of grade-expectations for mastering skills. Or if you are in one of the states that has adopted Common Core, you could use that the same way. You would have to survey your child's skills yourself, of course, but it would give you a better sense of how they line up against various grade levels. And how they are progressing through the curricular expectations.

I have not obtained any useful information from group standardized testing for several years, and will be switching to out of level testing with the ACT or SAT (most likely the former), with at least one of mine.

cammom - that sounds AMAZING that your school tests out of level! I am not familiar with those tests, but what nice progress!

aeh - perhaps having DD taking the EXPLORE again at some point in the future might be helpful? When taken out-of-level, though, I had read that it is more of a measure of aptitude than achievement (trying to remember where I read this...)? So my question becomes: how well does it measure achievement growth - especially when given to "good" test takers? Won't we face the same "good guessing" possibility/phenomenon?

Has anyone tried repeated EXPLORE/ACT/SAT testing and found it to be helpful for achievement tracking? I would love to hear the experiences of those who have tried it. Did you think any of these tests was a good measure of academic progress?

Measuring on my own sounds interesting, but I am not in the field of education by trade. I am not sure my "assessment" would be valid.

I am also trying to simply understand the "inflation" theory - I assume here they are implying that DD was simply too good of a guesser?

You can order various achievement tests like the IOWA from BJU testing and administer them yourself. I gave a set last Thanksgiving over the break so it's doable over an extended weekend. You can pick whatever grade you like. I think it was around sixty bucks per kid. You have to have a bachelors degree in something (as in, any bachelors). I kinda doubt they verified it but whatever. It was useful for me in terms of planning. Not as useful as the WJIII testing but much cheaper and actually more useful than EXPLORE scores were.

Thanks, SouthLake - the school actually gave the grade-level Iowa test also this year...another 99 percentile. So how do you decide what grade-level to give?

That's the thing: the school isn't shy about testing, and DD has a 99 percentile average on her grade-level tests. This is why we finally had her take the EXPLORE test this year.