Ciera Rinck 15.1

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? 

When teachers, parents, and students receive test scores it is very important that they can interpret and understand the scores and what they mean.  Standardized testing is very common in the educational arena today and if the numbers are not understood, then they are useless.  When explaining the test scores to Ingrid's grandmother I would start by telling her a little about the standardized test that Ingrid had taken--I would tell her that standardized tests are developed by test construction experts and published for use in many different schools and classrooms to help teachers measure students progress in certain subjects.  Then I would explain that this particular test measures Ingrid compared to her peers--I would explain that not all students are comfortable with taking tests, and that this is just one way to measure scores.  Then I would go on to tell her what each column meant, starting with the stanine column.  I would explain that this is a standard score with a mean of five and a standard deviation of 2 (and it is always reported as a two) and further explain that each number reflects a range of test performance.  I would then further explain the scores telling her that Ingrid scored above average in reading comprehension (with a percentile of 92), science (with a percentile of 90), and social studies (with a percentile of 84), average in math concepts (with a percentile of 57), and below average in spelling (with a percentile of 39) and math computation (with a percentile of 37).  I would explain to Ingrid's grandmother that Ingrid needs to continue to study hard on the subjects she scored well on and try to focus more attention on subjects she is struggling on such as spelling and math computation.  I would ensure Ingrid's grandmother that I would work with Ingrid during the school day and would offer to send practice work home.  For Ingrid's below average spelling score I would pull up past writings and spelling tests completed by Ingrid and try to figure out exactly what it was she has been struggling with--then from there I would know how to more specifically help her.  I would also suggest that Ingrid and her grandmother work on spelling together at home--it could be a simple thing to do.  For instance, she could spell what they were having for dinner or places they would like to visit or things they like to do.  Another helpful tool may be the dictionary--if kept close this is a powerful tool and by looking up words it could help Ingrid remember and learn to be a better speller.  I would take a similar approach to figuring out why Ingrid scored low in math computation by looking at past tests and work turned in that dealt with math computation.  I would suggest to Ingrid's grandmother that they practice computing math (after all, practice makes perfect!).  They could calculate change at the store together or practice subtracting, adding, dividing, and multiplying their favorite television channels or the addresses of neighbors and friends.  I would tell Ingrid's grandmother that getting extra help at home can be very useful to improving Ingrid's test scores, and ultimately she could become a much stronger student with the extra practice.