3rd grade Math SOL scores

[Anonymous]

Next year there is new science SOL.

http://www.doe.virginia.gov/testing/sol/standards_docs/science/review.shtml

[Anonymous]

http://pwceducationreform.wordpress.com/2012/06/21/lions-and-tigers-and-math-sol-scores-oh-my/

[Anonymous]

This is the first year our school took the sol's on a computer and their scores dropped. The "tools" (highlighting, slashing trash, etc) weren't available for them to practice with until April!! Also, many questions were worded in a confusing/awkward manner making it hard for the kids. My child is two years up in math, makes A's, and only scored a 490! Don't stress over sol scores--they are not good indicators of a child's abilities. Yes, taking them on a computer will lower scores (although the schools will tell you differently), but the data shows that scores drop initially when testing environments change. Continue to question your school district--we can change this!

[Anonymous]

This isn't any school division's doing -- this is the Commonwealth's BOE/SPI. Federal legislation and rulemakings are pending to modify one of the features of NCLB that simply doesn't work: the majority of public schools in the US will, by the end of 2014, be declared as failing, even those that exhibit very high statistical competency results. When a school is declared as failing, under certain circumstances, the principal and at least 50% of the teaching staff must be "restructured" (including fired). This was one of the goals of NCLB at drafting and enactment - Federalization in order to permit relaxed local school personnel practices; this was actually discussed in the legislative debates.

Again, reform legislation and rulemakings are pending.

However, in order to preserve the ability of school divisions to nonetheless engage in mass "restructurings," the Commonwealth BOE/SPI intentionally adopted new SOLs that test "higher order" student performance. What this means is, intentionally confusing answers in which more than one multiple-choice answer may be correct, and the student must subjectively pick the "best-correct" answer. Then, the Commonwealth BOE/SPI intentionally did not prepare or release model questions until only four to six weeks before actual SOL testing, and the Commonwealth BOE/SPI then did not release model ANSWERS (they just released the questions) to at least half of the model questions.

Bottom line is, the school divisions were as blind-sided by this as parents and students were. Complain to your state legislators and the Governor.

[Anonymous]

So you are telling us, teachers could not answer the math questions????? What is the big deal that the answers were not released -- couldn't the teachers figure out what the correct answers were?????

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So you are telling us, teachers could not answer the math questions????? What is the big deal that the answers were not released -- couldn't the teachers figure out what the correct answers were?????

Any of the teachers could figure out the correct answers. The problem is, each question might have more than one correct answer, but only one of the correct answers counted as correct, and distinguishing between the two was highly subjective and disuniform. An answer key really was required. It wasn't supplied (at least not fully).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
This isn't any school division's doing -- this is the Commonwealth's BOE/SPI. Federal legislation and rulemakings are pending to modify one of the features of NCLB that simply doesn't work: the majority of public schools in the US will, by the end of 2014, be declared as failing, even those that exhibit very high statistical competency results. When a school is declared as failing, under certain circumstances, the principal and at least 50% of the teaching staff must be "restructured" (including fired). This was one of the goals of NCLB at drafting and enactment - Federalization in order to permit relaxed local school personnel practices; this was actually discussed in the legislative debates.

Again, reform legislation and rulemakings are pending.

However, in order to preserve the ability of school divisions to nonetheless engage in mass "restructurings," the Commonwealth BOE/SPI intentionally adopted new SOLs that test "higher order" student performance. What this means is, intentionally confusing answers in which more than one multiple-choice answer may be correct, and the student must subjectively pick the "best-correct" answer. Then, the Commonwealth BOE/SPI intentionally did not prepare or release model questions until only four to six weeks before actual SOL testing, and the Commonwealth BOE/SPI then did not release model ANSWERS (they just released the questions) to at least half of the model questions.

Bottom line is, the school divisions were as blind-sided by this as parents and students were. Complain to your state legislators and the Governor.

Thank you for this informative post!

[Anonymous]

After reading all the news about this year's math SOLs I was happy when my daughter, who gets As in math, got a 450. She's not a fabulous standardized test taker, so this is good.I do have a question--why do her scores say "preliminary" and "subject to change?"