Hi teachers,
As a parent I have two questions about standardized testing that I cannot get a straight answer from my own school district, I am getting spin and the run around. Any advice appreciated.
1. At a recent IEP annual review, we brought in test scores for the past three years to show that we believe our son is regressing. This was confirmed by our son’s private pyschologist prior to bringing it to the meeting. My son is given accomodations for the testing: small group pull out, extended time, non-reading portions read to him. The IEP team said that his scores are not an accurate picture of him. I contacted the Learning Disabilities Association for a comment on the school’s comment. They said that as long as his accomodations were met for testing, it is an accurate picture of him. Now finally the question: Why are the scores valid when the school wants to boast how wonderful they are doing, but they are not valid in helping to address an individual’s areas where they may be struggling or even regressing with LD remediation? As parents we receive these as objective measures of our child’s individual performance to be used along with grades and teachers’ progress reports which are subjective. Why can’t we use the objective data?
2. We have ISATs beginning next week. My son will be pulled out again. When we did Stanfords in October (again with small group pull out) my son told me that the LD teacher suggested to him that he might want to change a couple of his answers, but none specifically. I talked to the teacher about it (thinking maybe my son misunderstood what she meant) and she refused to discuss it because she thought I was accusing her of cheating. That was not my intention, I was just trying to understand, if my son perceived her correctly, how that helps paint an accurate picture of him if it’s suggested that his answer is wrong on a test. Is it appropriate for a teacher to suggest that a child change “some answers” when in the small group with accomodations setting?