We're not in FCPS, but also take i-Ready. My second grader is TERRIBLE at it, always has been. She's been in the highest math group since K, but scores a solid grade level below on i-Ready (which is mid 50's nationally percentile wise). I had a long talk with her teacher this year because I couldn't figure out if she had knowledge gaps or was just a bad test taker, and she confirmed what PP's said. Some kids are good test takers, but for others it's confusing and encourages guessing and leads to frustration. It also tests specific strategies, so if your child hasn't learned THOSE strategies before those strategies are taught in class, you can't answer those questions correctly unless you happen to be good at the test. It's still alarming, but I trust that her teachers know her abilities better than the test based on her class work and paper tests. I would push more if ability group placements were based on i-Ready, but luckily they don't seem to be at our school.

Anonymous wrote:What is the point of the math iready test - my daughter got a bad score in the beginning of the fall (which is fine) but she told me that it was on multiplication and geometry that she had never seen before. She is in 3rd grade.

Why do the do the test on content they haven’t leaned yet?

Do you know what baseline assessment means? It's meant to give teachers an idea of what the children in the class do and do not know and how they progress over the course of the year. She will get the same test at the end of the year and it will show that she learned these things. If you did a quick google, you would have learned this.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How do they work as adaptive tests? Where do they start? How does scoring work? Is the second grade test different than the fourth?

My understanding is that the test basically asks increasingly difficult questions, until your kid starts getting things wrong. Then they ask similar questions, to make sure they don't in fact know the material. This is how sometimes kids end up with grossly inappropriate (for their age) questions. They'll sometimes guess something correctly even if they have no clue what is being asked, but the luck runs out eventually, and by then, they would have seen a whole bunch of questions that are well beyond their level.

Per DD, the math tests every year were different, but the English ones were the same. That made no sense to me.

My DC told me he had a friend who got to calculus by good guessing. This was 6th grade - and no, the kid had no idea what the questions or answers were but was skilled at test taking strategies.

Ha, I teach 5th AAP and one of my guys was telling all of his friends this too. The test tops at out 3 years over grade level. The highest math question a 6th grade kid gets on iReady is 9th grade math. Certainly not calculus. These kids see a bunch of letters in a math problem and go "looks hard! must be calculus!"

Schools use iready scores as benchmark data. If students perform below a certain score/percentile, they are identified for more intervention from the teacher in a smaller group.

Anonymous wrote:My 2nd grader is always strong in math (90-99%) but barely passing reading. (65%) She struggled in reading last year.

She had reading tutoring all summer long and it seemed to be working. She was reading above reading level books by herself. And yet she still bombed the Fall reading iready. I don't get it.

Was she reading on grade level according to the test? What is her lexile level? I don't think 65% on this test is bombing it. I think it just means she's about average for her grade.

Anonymous wrote:My 2nd grader is always strong in math (90-99%) but barely passing reading. (65%) She struggled in reading last year.

She had reading tutoring all summer long and it seemed to be working. She was reading above reading level books by herself. And yet she still bombed the Fall reading iready. I don't get it.

Is that the 65th percentile? I don't think that's "barely passing".

A student doesn't "pass" or "fail" the iReady screener, right?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s a pretty meaningless test. As far as I could tell, DD’s teachers never looked at them.

I only knew that some of the questions were grossly inappropriate when she told me that there were words on the test, not numbers or variables for doing operations. You know, words like sin and tan.

Those are functions, sine, cosine and tangent. It's trigonometry, not inappropriate words.

I know that, and you know that, but my 5th grader did not. I found it funny. She found it confusing.

Now you know where to start content-wise when teaching her at home.

She was most definitely not ready for Trig in 5th grade! She's currently doing Geometry in 8th, so a little advanced in math, but not *that* much.

Anonymous wrote:I think it's stressful for many kids to encounter a testing situation where they are deliberately being asked questions about stuff they haven't been taught yet. I get the premise but for the kids it is confusing and they don't like it. Especially kids who are used to doing well on tests and pay attention and prepare just so they will do well.

Hopefully parents can somehow explain the concept to their kids in such a way that the kids don't feel stressed when they get to the questions they have no way of knowing the answers to.

It sounds stressful to me and I wouldn't like it - but my kids don't care. It doesn't bother them.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What is the point of the math iready test - my daughter got a bad score in the beginning of the fall (which is fine) but she told me that it was on multiplication and geometry that she had never seen before. She is in 3rd grade.

Why do the do the test on content they haven’t leaned yet?

It's to test growth. It isn't graded.

It's an adaptive screener--she might have by luck got a question correct and then got harder problems that she got wrong and then it adapted back down. Some kids can do more advanced mathematics beyond what has been taught so it's also important for the screener to catch that too--otherwise they will never show growth and won't be taught an appropriate level for them. The SOLs are the test that looks at content taught. But the iready is a screener and helps the teacher see what they know and don't know.

DS is strong in math but weak in language art. His iReady reading is 94 percentile, math is 71 percentile. The scores are not consistent with DS's skill level. This seems not making sense to me. I am confused.

It's giving you new information--but it's just one source of information. Neither of these are low scores---they are both scores above average. But 94%ile may communicate that he may have strengths in reading that you have missed. His weaknesses in language arts may be more about interest or homework or may be more writing-based. Or he could have gotten lucky on his responses. The math score might suggest that he does well with grade level math but when you compare him to the larger population there are about 30% of kids who are more advanced than him.

I think it's stressful for many kids to encounter a testing situation where they are deliberately being asked questions about stuff they haven't been taught yet. I get the premise but for the kids it is confusing and they don't like it. Especially kids who are used to doing well on tests and pay attention and prepare just so they will do well.

Hopefully parents can somehow explain the concept to their kids in such a way that the kids don't feel stressed when they get to the questions they have no way of knowing the answers to.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What is the point of the math iready test - my daughter got a bad score in the beginning of the fall (which is fine) but she told me that it was on multiplication and geometry that she had never seen before. She is in 3rd grade.

Why do the do the test on content they haven’t leaned yet?

It's to test growth. It isn't graded.

It's an adaptive screener--she might have by luck got a question correct and then got harder problems that she got wrong and then it adapted back down. Some kids can do more advanced mathematics beyond what has been taught so it's also important for the screener to catch that too--otherwise they will never show growth and won't be taught an appropriate level for them. The SOLs are the test that looks at content taught. But the iready is a screener and helps the teacher see what they know and don't know.

DS is strong in math but weak in language art. His iReady reading is 94 percentile, math is 71 percentile. The scores are not consistent with DS's skill level. This seems not making sense to me. I am confused.

A lot of parents think their kids are strong in math, when in fact, they are not.

Numbers in math are lower than reading (unless the student is literally enrolled in the next level math class at outside enrichment). That doesn't mean they aren't strong in math. It means they are normal and aren't being taught math early by a different teacher.

My 2nd grader is always strong in math (90-99%) but barely passing reading. (65%) She struggled in reading last year.

She had reading tutoring all summer long and it seemed to be working. She was reading above reading level books by herself. And yet she still bombed the Fall reading iready. I don't get it.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s a pretty meaningless test. As far as I could tell, DD’s teachers never looked at them.

I only knew that some of the questions were grossly inappropriate when she told me that there were words on the test, not numbers or variables for doing operations. You know, words like sin and tan.

Those are functions, sine, cosine and tangent. It's trigonometry, not inappropriate words.

I know that, and you know that, but my 5th grader did not. I found it funny. She found it confusing.

Now you know where to start content-wise when teaching her at home.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What is the point of the math iready test - my daughter got a bad score in the beginning of the fall (which is fine) but she told me that it was on multiplication and geometry that she had never seen before. She is in 3rd grade.

Why do the do the test on content they haven’t leaned yet?

It's to test growth. It isn't graded.

It's an adaptive screener--she might have by luck got a question correct and then got harder problems that she got wrong and then it adapted back down. Some kids can do more advanced mathematics beyond what has been taught so it's also important for the screener to catch that too--otherwise they will never show growth and won't be taught an appropriate level for them. The SOLs are the test that looks at content taught. But the iready is a screener and helps the teacher see what they know and don't know.

DS is strong in math but weak in language art. His iReady reading is 94 percentile, math is 71 percentile. The scores are not consistent with DS's skill level. This seems not making sense to me. I am confused.

A lot of parents think their kids are strong in math, when in fact, they are not.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How do they work as adaptive tests? Where do they start? How does scoring work? Is the second grade test different than the fourth?

My understanding is that the test basically asks increasingly difficult questions, until your kid starts getting things wrong. Then they ask similar questions, to make sure they don't in fact know the material. This is how sometimes kids end up with grossly inappropriate (for their age) questions. They'll sometimes guess something correctly even if they have no clue what is being asked, but the luck runs out eventually, and by then, they would have seen a whole bunch of questions that are well beyond their level.

Per DD, the math tests every year were different, but the English ones were the same. That made no sense to me.

My DC told me he had a friend who got to calculus by good guessing. This was 6th grade - and no, the kid had no idea what the questions or answers were but was skilled at test taking strategies.