Chapter 15: Test Assessment

Chapter 15

Turn to p. 559 in Ormrod’s text.  Now, imagine that you are meeting with Ingrid’s grandmother today to explain her scores on the recent standardized achievement test pictured at the bottom of p. 559.  What will you tell her about Ingrid’s performance? her strengths? her weaknesses?

If grandmother asks you what she could be doing at home to help strengthen Ingrid’s skills, what will you suggest?

If Ingrid’s grandmother was needing to meet with me concerning her granddaughter’s scores from the standardized achievement tests, I would first have to break down and explain a few definitions. I would first explain that a stanine score was simply a way test scores could be placed on a scale of nine points. The first stanine would be in the lowest of scoring groups while the ninth would be found in the ninth scoring group. Depending what group her granddaughter fell in would be an indicator of her performance on that test. For example, Ingrid’s stanine score of an 8 in reading comprehension shows she excelled in that content area, and thus is performing “well above the average.” This would be easy to explain with the excel chart of scores. I would next explain a bit about percentiles. Percentiles are based on a value system.  It is a value on a scale of one hundred that indicates the percent of a distribution that is equal to or below it. For example, a score equal to or greater than 97 percent of those attained on an examination is said to be in the 97th percentile.  From there I would show her Ingrid’s scores and emphasize that she did really well in Science and Reading Comprehension, where her percentile and stanine scores are high. Her strengths as shown by the chart are Science, Social Studies and Reading Comprehension, while she struggles slightly with Spelling and Math Computation. She fares well at Math Concepts, achieving just about average.

I would suggest working on weekly site words with Ingrid and checking her writing assignments to evaluate how her spelling is doing, and is she needs any additional help. I can also send home additional worksheets with a key for you (the grandmother) to check.  As for math computation, I would  create links on my teacher website for interactive games and additional problems to practice since doing homework outside of class is key to improvement much of the time. I would give the grandmother multiple worksheets of the same exact problems so that she can measure progress herself over time, and feel directly involved.