VGA arrived in mail today

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Thank you for the info. I’m a teacher in the county with middle schoolers and I had no idea how to interpret what I was looking at. That explanation would have been nice to include fcps.

I'm the person who posted the info - that's from Prince William County. If our neighboring school district can have the info up already, why can't FCPS be transparent about it, too? I would like to see the full view (it sounds like the questions were adapted per child, so every child had a different test). I tried to look on SIS but it's down.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Having the test information column split into lines like it went with the reporting categories and scores was very confusing.

Also I don't understand how my 4th grader can get a 1487 with a 2 out of 7 in Computation and Estimation. 11/17 on the others for a total of 13/24 in math that tested 3rd grade skills. The child is supposedly doing well in math, but I don't really believe it.

Yeah, I’m completely confused. My 4th grade AAP kid had 19/24 with 1602 score and this chart (not provided by FCPS) gives me no understanding of where he is. He’s allegedly doing great in math and it is his natural skill set but I’m concerned he doesn’t have the basics after seeing he hasn’t mastered this 3rd grade metric.

[Anonymous]

Whoever made the decision not to provide parents with more context wasn’t thinking. All they did was create more questions for teachers who will have to field questions. Also the timing on the release is suspect too. Obviously, they want people to forget about it over Winter Break.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Whoever made the decision not to provide parents with more context wasn’t thinking. All they did was create more questions for teachers who will have to field questions. Also the timing on the release is suspect too. Obviously, they want people to forget about it over Winter Break.

Sorry - meant to say they just created more work for teachers who will have to field questions. Not fully vaccinated yet this morning….

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Whoever made the decision not to provide parents with more context wasn’t thinking. All they did was create more questions for teachers who will have to field questions. Also the timing on the release is suspect too. Obviously, they want people to forget about it over Winter Break.

Sorry - meant to say they just created more work for teachers who will have to field questions. Not fully vaccinated yet this morning….

Caffeinated not vaccinated. Geesh. I’m stopping now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Having the test information column split into lines like it went with the reporting categories and scores was very confusing.

Also I don't understand how my 4th grader can get a 1487 with a 2 out of 7 in Computation and Estimation. 11/17 on the others for a total of 13/24 in math that tested 3rd grade skills. The child is supposedly doing well in math, but I don't really believe it.

Yeah, I’m completely confused. My 4th grade AAP kid had 19/24 with 1602 score and this chart (not provided by FCPS) gives me no understanding of where he is. He’s allegedly doing great in math and it is his natural skill set but I’m concerned he doesn’t have the basics after seeing he hasn’t mastered this 3rd grade metric.

Yep, not my child's natural skill set, and we're already doing tutoring which just now got through second grade material, so 13/24 seems accurate. I just don't understand how that implies readiness for 4th grade material. The bar must be very low.

[Anonymous]

I thought both of my kids had absolutely bombed this til I read that link with the graph. They got only 2 questions right in several categories.

[Anonymous]

My 4th-grader got 22 out 24 and 1676 vertical score on Math, but only 4 out 8 on Nonfiction Texts with 1598 on Reading.

[Anonymous]

I looked at the chart posted in the link (Thank you PP!) but it is not making any sense to me. My 6th grader's (gen ed advanced math) scores are in the high 1700s for both. It only goes tp 1650 and 8th grade. My kid is not at high school level lol. What useless tests are these? Provides no useful information to parents!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I looked at the chart posted in the link (Thank you PP!) but it is not making any sense to me. My 6th grader's (gen ed advanced math) scores are in the high 1700s for both. It only goes tp 1650 and 8th grade. My kid is not at high school level lol. What useless tests are these? Provides no useful information to parents!

Keep in mind the math progression for your kid. Advanced Math in 6th grade is 7th Grade Honors math. 7th Grade Honors is 8th grade Math. So it is not unreasonable to assume that a 6th Grader doing well in Advanced Math might be at the 8th grade level on the VGA.

If you said that your son was in Gen Ed math and scored off the charts I would think there was an issue but a kid in Advanced Math understand concepts that are taught to 8th graders tracks with me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Having the test information column split into lines like it went with the reporting categories and scores was very confusing.

Also I don't understand how my 4th grader can get a 1487 with a 2 out of 7 in Computation and Estimation. 11/17 on the others for a total of 13/24 in math that tested 3rd grade skills. The child is supposedly doing well in math, but I don't really believe it.

Yeah, I’m completely confused. My 4th grade AAP kid had 19/24 with 1602 score and this chart (not provided by FCPS) gives me no understanding of where he is. He’s allegedly doing great in math and it is his natural skill set but I’m concerned he doesn’t have the basics after seeing he hasn’t mastered this 3rd grade metric.

Yep, not my child's natural skill set, and we're already doing tutoring which just now got through second grade material, so 13/24 seems accurate. I just don't understand how that implies readiness for 4th grade material. The bar must be very low.

Because it's a computer adaptive test. The 13 questions he got right were 3rd grade level, since he passed those, they moved him up to 4th grade level and he didn't pass those. The test gets harder when the child passes a question.

[Anonymous]

I'm the PP who posted the link - for those asking questions, I highly recommend reading the text in addition to looking at the graph. The text provides a lot of context.

[Anonymous]

Back in the day, they used to have a chart that showed what number of questions you had to get right in order to get a passing score of 400. This was before they changed them to computer adaptive tests. If you actually calculated the percentage that you needed to score in order to get a 400, it was around 60%. So, yes, the bar is low. These test are designed to show that you've learned the essential skills, not every, single, little thing that is taught in your math or reading class.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Back in the day, they used to have a chart that showed what number of questions you had to get right in order to get a passing score of 400. This was before they changed them to computer adaptive tests. If you actually calculated the percentage that you needed to score in order to get a 400, it was around 60%. So, yes, the bar is low. These test are designed to show that you've learned the essential skills, not every, single, little thing that is taught in your math or reading class.

Re the SOL tests, in response to viewpoints such as these, they've been making them harder and harder.

I don't know what that means wrt the new VGA test though.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I looked at the chart posted in the link (Thank you PP!) but it is not making any sense to me. My 6th grader's (gen ed advanced math) scores are in the high 1700s for both. It only goes tp 1650 and 8th grade. My kid is not at high school level lol. What useless tests are these? Provides no useful information to parents!

Keep in mind the math progression for your kid. Advanced Math in 6th grade is 7th Grade Honors math. 7th Grade Honors is 8th grade Math. So it is not unreasonable to assume that a 6th Grader doing well in Advanced Math might be at the 8th grade level on the VGA.

If you said that your son was in Gen Ed math and scored off the charts I would think there was an issue but a kid in Advanced Math understand concepts that are taught to 8th graders tracks with me.

The VGA results sheet said that the students were tested a grade below their current grade level. My kid is currently in 6th grade and advanced math. So Math was tested at 6th grade level and Reading was tested at 5th grade level. The reading score is actually higher than the Math score lol. IMO the iReady results were more accurate. It had my kid at grade level for Reading and end of grade for Nath.