Benchmark and SOL

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Oh my god. This thread is incredibly stupid. OP, your child just isn't as smart as you think she is, dummy.

My child has a 148 verbal IQ, thank you (GMU WISC). No need to be jealous! There's something seriously wrong somewhere if a child at that IQ level is NOT scoring pass advanced, and I'm trying to figure out what's going on. Like others on this thread, my kid has high iready (97%) and is reading books aimed at middle schoolers for pleasure, so I'm leaning towards it not being some one off issue with my kid.

Even smart kids can have weaknesses.

That was perhaps an argument in past years, but this year literally all kids in each grade had the same curriculum. If the smart kids aren't doing well, I can only imagine how everyone else fared.

No, I don't think you understand what PP was saying. That your child has weaknesses compared to other children. I know that's really, really hard for you to imagine, but trust me it is true.

There's no further evidence to support my child having actual weaknesses. My child still scored very well, it's not like they barely passed. And consistently excels at every other measure of reading profiency. My concern is the rate of pass proficient vs pass advanced. Why? My particular school used to have a significant proportion of kids passing advanced in the years before covid, with another significant proportion passing proficient and only a handful failing. In more recent years, the trend has been a huge chunk pass proficient, with slightly more failing than before, and a lot less passing advanced than before. I think everyone is watching to see how the scores trend with this new curriculum.

This thread has been open for several hours and nobody has really posted how awesome their child did on *this* exam. If you parse the teacher's responses, one 6th grade teacher had good results, the other only mentions less kids failing. I get it's a very small sample but usually people on here love to post when Larlo does well (see yearly Cogat thread).

Nobody has mentioned VA expanded the language arts standards in 2024. How well does Benchmark address the expanded standards? I dont know. Maybe it covers them really well, maybe not. I went to the Benchmark website and the page I found only mentions how it aligns with 2022 standards. Was it updated since? Is it possible it only covers enough of the original standards such that we have more kids passing, but not really enough of the expanded standards to push kids into the pass advanced column? It's possible it's something unique to the third grade curriculum, if (big if) the responses here are any indication of a larger trend.

A lot of kids haven't taken the SOL yet, PP, and most of the people who have taken it have not received the scores, and yet more don't look at this forum. My third grader is taking it this week. I'll be sure to let you know how she scores.

[Anonymous]

OMG, OP, are you corn mom? The one who is constantly bashing benchmark? Do you work for another literacy company or something?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Are the scores in SIS today accurate? They're usually not released until mid June....

I believe that they will be adjusted but that the adjustments won't be large. They review the test after everyone has taken it to see if there were questions that should be removed/rescored because so many kids got it wrong. That type of thing. But the movement is going to be small.

My kid is in 7th grade and has not received his score for English yet, he took it last week. They have math today.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My 4th grader passed advanced on reading but did say it was challenging. Last year they were only proficient. I assumed the test was made easier this year. Glad to learn that does not seem to be the case.

My 4th grader also passed Advanced this year and proficient in 3rd grade.

[Anonymous]

Hm, my third grader (who is not in AAP) got a pass advanced on the reading SOL. Not sure what is wrong with your child, OP.

[Anonymous]

Wow people are unkind. There's nothing wrong with your child, OP.

My AAP kid got a 481 in LA, so pass proficient. Which seems perfectly fine to me (I did come here to see what the number meant, since I had no other context and they're in 3rd grade). The more important thing is that they love school and seem to be learning and thriving.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wow people are unkind. There's nothing wrong with your child, OP.

My AAP kid got a 481 in LA, so pass proficient. Which seems perfectly fine to me (I did come here to see what the number meant, since I had no other context and they're in 3rd grade). The more important thing is that they love school and seem to be learning and thriving.

Haha yes, I think it’s the same jealous person pretending to be different people, just to leave multiple comments in various passive-aggressive ways.I’m not the OP BYTHAWAY🤣

[Anonymous]

Has anyone received Math SOL scores?

[Anonymous]

Someone explained it really well on one of the other threads, and it actually makes a lot of sense to me.

Anonymous wrote:
IA here. I am hearing the smarter the kid the easier it is on this year’s test to kind of fumble the ball bc they are over-analyzing and many higher grade level English teachers don’t teach to the test bc they assume all the aap kids can get at least proficient so it doesn’t matter. Benchmark helped improve lower students. It was designed to bring along folks, not challenge them.

Quoted: So what you're saying is that in previous years, AAP teachers taught to the test, and now that AAP students are receiving a real reading and writing curriculum that doesn't teach to the test, we're discovering they're not actually all that advanced when it comes to reading and writing, they've just always been prepped for tests (NNAT, CoGAT, SOL, etc.).

[Anonymous]

My kids (both grade 3) got a 495 and a 505 on third grade 2025 Reading SOL. How good of a score is this? Their iReady is also high, 96%, but I know that doesn’t always correlate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Oh my god. This thread is incredibly stupid. OP, your child just isn't as smart as you think she is, dummy.

My child has a 148 verbal IQ, thank you (GMU WISC). No need to be jealous! There's something seriously wrong somewhere if a child at that IQ level is NOT scoring pass advanced, and I'm trying to figure out what's going on. Like others on this thread, my kid has high iready (97%) and is reading books aimed at middle schoolers for pleasure, so I'm leaning towards it not being some one off issue with my kid.

LOL!! DYING here, nobody is jealous of your third grader.

Your child might be at a 97%ile and still be falling right at grade level (not above). So an average school is still possible and DOESN’T indicate something is wrong. Can we stop putting pressure on kids like this!!!!!

[Anonymous]

Both of my kids pass advanced on reading SOL (4th, 7th). Interestingly, my 7th grader said their English teacher specifically said to pay close attention to the first passage and triple check answers because the test is adaptive and very difficult to pass advanced if you mess up at the start. I hadn’t heard that before and my kids have been taking SOLs for awhile now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Both of my kids pass advanced on reading SOL (4th, 7th). Interestingly, my 7th grader said their English teacher specifically said to pay close attention to the first passage and triple check answers because the test is adaptive and very difficult to pass advanced if you mess up at the start. I hadn’t heard that before and my kids have been taking SOLs for awhile now.

This is why I hate adaptive testing, you can have wide swings in scoring based on a few missed questions

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Both of my kids pass advanced on reading SOL (4th, 7th). Interestingly, my 7th grader said their English teacher specifically said to pay close attention to the first passage and triple check answers because the test is adaptive and very difficult to pass advanced if you mess up at the start. I hadn’t heard that before and my kids have been taking SOLs for awhile now.

This is why I hate adaptive testing, you can have wide swings in scoring based on a few missed questions

IIRC the adaptive testing is relatively new, so maybe your 7th grader hadn't heard it before because it's only been around for (I think?) a couple of or a few years?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Both of my kids pass advanced on reading SOL (4th, 7th). Interestingly, my 7th grader said their English teacher specifically said to pay close attention to the first passage and triple check answers because the test is adaptive and very difficult to pass advanced if you mess up at the start. I hadn’t heard that before and my kids have been taking SOLs for awhile now.

This is why I hate adaptive testing, you can have wide swings in scoring based on a few missed questions

IIRC the adaptive testing is relatively new, so maybe your 7th grader hadn't heard it before because it's only been around for (I think?) a couple of or a few years?

They actually introduced adaptive testing in 2018. All the SOLs any middle school has ever taken for reading/math have been adaptive.