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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....