Anonymous wrote:Apparently this replaced the Reading iReady this year. Looking for insights in how to interpret the results. There are no percentiles and no comparison with prior year so it is hard to know what to make of it. It seems like it is just designed to drop kids into three buckets (low, moderate, high risk of developing a reading difficulty). High risk are supposed to get extra attention and moderate, low risk get what?

One of many tests.....thats all kids do these days-test Let teachers teach.

Anonymous wrote:The kids are over-tested. Period.

Especially in kindergarten. It’s ridiculous. And if you’re a project momentum school, there is a lot of intervention and testing for that and multiple data spreadsheets that have to be kept.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Quick question on VALLSS and EMAS at the kindergarten level. My kindergartener received the results of the tests and, for some categories, she had a score above the "max" available score. Other categories were marked as "N/A." Before I bother our very overworked teacher, I thought I'd ask if the results make sense and if there was an easy explanation. Thanks!

I have not looked that closely at results but not all subtests were done in the winter window so maybe that’s why- not assessed?

Did the teacher give the results? The window closes 2/6.

Good catch! Yes, it was the Winter assessment. The "N/As" make sense as they may not have been administered. But, I'm still baffled how scores for some subsets can be higher than the subsets' max possible score.

Which ones? Max points for decoding sections is 10, 28 for letter sounds and 42 for encoding.

I don’t think anyone, even in central office, has figured out the VALLS scoring. There are benchmarks for each test but they can score below benchmark and still be low or moderate risk depending on overall score.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Both of my children have taken the reading iReady this year. What grades is this for and is it only for children that require intervention (one of mine does, the other does not).

Answered already:
VALLSS is a K-2 screener for reading
iReady is used at 3-6 for reading

I thought FCPS used iready for 2nd grader as part of AAP screening- is it now vallss instead?

This years 2nd graders haven't had iready reading test at all, not this year, not last year. It's only VALLSS which is designed for something completely different.

The kids are over-tested. Period.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Both of my children have taken the reading iReady this year. What grades is this for and is it only for children that require intervention (one of mine does, the other does not).

Answered already:
VALLSS is a K-2 screener for reading
iReady is used at 3-6 for reading

iReady was still used in grades 7-8 also

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Both of my children have taken the reading iReady this year. What grades is this for and is it only for children that require intervention (one of mine does, the other does not).

Answered already:
VALLSS is a K-2 screener for reading
iReady is used at 3-6 for reading

I thought FCPS used iready for 2nd grader as part of AAP screening- is it now vallss instead?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Quick question on VALLSS and EMAS at the kindergarten level. My kindergartener received the results of the tests and, for some categories, she had a score above the "max" available score. Other categories were marked as "N/A." Before I bother our very overworked teacher, I thought I'd ask if the results make sense and if there was an easy explanation. Thanks!

I have not looked that closely at results but not all subtests were done in the winter window so maybe that’s why- not assessed?

Did the teacher give the results? The window closes 2/6.

Good catch! Yes, it was the Winter assessment. The "N/As" make sense as they may not have been administered. But, I'm still baffled how scores for some subsets can be higher than the subsets' max possible score.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is this similar to DIBELS?

It was virginias attempt to make their own Dibels. It measures similar things (RAN, ORF, blending, phoneme segmentation) it is better in a few ways but worse in others. Most notably as teachers we aren’t given bands of “risk” for sub tests, only overall. We have no way of knowing which sub score is weighted in the overall score. We also don’t know if the risk levels or the sub tests will change throughout the year, or if they will stay the same. It seems like we have been given half the information and are trying to make it work.

Why not use DIBELS? It’s free, easy, and is great information to share with parents.

Exactly FCPS spent a fortune on VALLS....and it takes a time suck.

This K teacher hates it. We finished fall testing on 10/31 and had to start winter on 1/8. Only 30ish school days in between. I am dreading the spring test.

it gave a "low risk" to my high iq stealth dyslexia (?? exact contours still not known) kid. so that isn't useful but the lower score (which was still fine!) in Pseudoword Decoding helped identify that there was an issue. if the teacher hadn't really been in tune about the pseudowords being off and I hadn't pushed really hard on atrocious handwriting and writing being completely unaligned with general abilities and classroom observations they wouldn't have evaluated. so somewhat useful but I think in most cases situations like these would be overlooked as low risk, it's fine.

Anonymous wrote:Quick question on VALLSS and EMAS at the kindergarten level. My kindergartener received the results of the tests and, for some categories, she had a score above the "max" available score. Other categories were marked as "N/A." Before I bother our very overworked teacher, I thought I'd ask if the results make sense and if there was an easy explanation. Thanks!

I have not looked that closely at results but not all subtests were done in the winter window so maybe that’s why- not assessed?

Did the teacher give the results? The window closes 2/6.

Quick question on VALLSS and EMAS at the kindergarten level. My kindergartener received the results of the tests and, for some categories, she had a score above the "max" available score. Other categories were marked as "N/A." Before I bother our very overworked teacher, I thought I'd ask if the results make sense and if there was an easy explanation. Thanks!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is this similar to DIBELS?

It was virginias attempt to make their own Dibels. It measures similar things (RAN, ORF, blending, phoneme segmentation) it is better in a few ways but worse in others. Most notably as teachers we aren’t given bands of “risk” for sub tests, only overall. We have no way of knowing which sub score is weighted in the overall score. We also don’t know if the risk levels or the sub tests will change throughout the year, or if they will stay the same. It seems like we have been given half the information and are trying to make it work.

Why not use DIBELS? It’s free, easy, and is great information to share with parents.

Exactly FCPS spent a fortune on VALLS....and it takes a time suck.

The I-Ready was always meant to be a screener, to find kids that were not doing well. It is not meant to report to parents whose kids were doing well.

Of course, as a teacher, I could tell you which kids were struggling without all this testing. I also never understood why kids who were reading above grade level in class were forced to complete the I-Ready year after year, even with Pass Advanced SOL scores. Such a waste of time.

On top of that, I’ve never had a an I-Ready score report tell me anything I didn’t already know about a student.

It would save a lot of time for everyone if teachers were asked in the third week of school what kids were at risk and plans were put in place to help those kids. Principals could be given the teachers’ evidence, and we could all just get to work, but that would mean the companies that make tests would not make tons of money.

Anonymous wrote:It VALLSS actually useful? It seems to show deficits well perhaps, but it doesn’t really seem to provide much other information as far as a ceiling goes for anyone else.

We primarily use it to see who needs the (required)reading plan and daily intervention if found high risk. Depending on the school, moderate and low risk kids don’t get more attention beyond tier 1 but that can be a mistake for moderate kids because they can be easily fall into high risk in January.