Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment What math achievement would you use for advocacy

If you could select any math achievement type test to use for advocacy (i.e. to show that a child should subject skip x number of grades only in math) which test would you select. I could obviously go for WJ or something like that, but thought there might be a math specific test that would give us more specific information - but I am also looking for something that would be pretty solid on the evidence for where a kid should be placed.

Any ideas? We are back to pushing the district (basically to have a placement figured out for next year by the end of this year) and our SCAT and IQ tests didn't quite do the trick (easy for them to say, well, he doesn't really know long division, even though he is bright).

Thanks, Cat

Thanks Dottie. That may be the right sort of test for us, since the norming starts a year ahead of where he is (second grade), if he did well we could say "look he performed at the x level compared to those a year (or y years) ahead."

Do you know if this is a test that is only available to school districts, or would a private tester be able to test him?

As for no perfect test, I am just starting to come to the realization that there is likely no magic bullet that will finally get the school to pay attention - but I am willing to focus on the achievement testing at this point . . . still hoping.

Thanks again for sharing your knowledge! Cat

If you sign up for a free trial at ALEKS.com, you can go through any of the grade-level assessments that your child would take at the beginning of each level.

Once you target a given grade level, then have your soon take the assessment @ ALEKS (to confirm your guess) and then have him take the school's end-of-grade assessment from their curriculum.

Good point Dottie!
Catalana - are you looking for support for placing him one year higher than his base grade with the thought of doing like Dottie's son and keep going until if fits, or are you looking for your child to be placed 'exactly' at the correct grade level in one shot?

Pros and cons to both approaches.
Best Wishes,
Grinity

Well, we do Aleks, and I just had him do an assessment and he is currently about 90% done with 4th grade (he got stuck a bit on long division and multiplication and some decimal stuff).

My preference would be for them to let him do self paced math (like Aleks or CTY), but I think that is highly unlikely ("but it wouldn't be fair to the other kids to let him use the computer when they don't. . ."). My fear with either a one or two year skip is that the pacing will still be an issue, and that is where he gets most frustrated and comes home just so angry (and this is a happy guy). I'd be happy with a one year skip, to see how it goes, but honestly I think by September he will def. be ready for 5th grade math (2 years) and then they will start raising the "but he really isn't very mature" issue.

I never thought about showing them an Aleks assessment - maybe I could have him take the 5th grade assessment to see how he does there as well - it seems to me that if he knows 90% of the 4th grade material and some healthy amount of 5th grade, that would be convincing. . . of course, I am assuming they are rational actors. . .

Thanks for your suggestions. Cat

Even if you are already using ALEKS, be sure to sign up for a separate free trial so that the Assessment does not factor in anything he's mastered while using it for 4th.

Unless the school is familiar with ALEKS, I doubt they'll give the assessments much weight, especially as they can't see the contents or results of the assessments. BUT... (hopefully!) they should allow your son to take whatever end-of-year test you think he's ready to tackle.

You should also build into your conversations *now* the idea that depending on the outcome of their testing, he should only have to repeat the specific sections for which he demonstrates a weakness, if at all.

When our son scored >90% on the 4th grade "final" the school uses as a pre-test at the start of the year, his teacher locked onto the couple areas of weakness and tried to say that the whole course should be repeated. (Never mind that kids were allowed to progress naturally from 4th to 5th with far less proficiency...)

We finally agreed on having our son review the specific sections when the class reached them in the book, but that he'd be allowed to proceed on his own in ALEKS for 5th.

To our son's credit, he never had to review those sections because he finished 5th grade on ALEKS in 4 or 5 weeks -- and then scored >95% on the school's expanded final for 5th grade math.

Thanks for the ideas Dandy, knowing ahead of time some of the things that might come up is very helpful! Helps me plan some responses ahead of time.