Why Did Your Child Not Get the Scores You Expected?

When a child takes a standardized test to evaluate or assess their skill and education, you may be surprised at how they scored.

One reason a child may score poorly on a standardized test is that they just do not know the material as well as many other children in the same age group. This is the sort of information the tests are designed to measure – but sometimes the test design and process does not accurately reflect the child’s actual ability. There are a number of reasons for this that aren’t generally accounted for in standardized test design.

• The test didn’t ask the right questions.

Especially with younger children, they may not have collected enough information yet to be able to answer a broad range of questions. For instance, there might be questions on the test that require a knowledge of certain vocabulary. Maybe your third-grader has an impressive vocabulary of 6000 words, but one or more of the words in the test questions are not among those 6000. Or, a fifth-grader might have a great facility with fractions, but there are no questions on the test asking about fractions, so they don’t have an opportunity to use that skill.

• The test did not address the child’s individual talents.

Your child may have a great facility with music, or art, or science, or history, or an athletic ability, but little interest in formal mathematics or language arts. The standardized tests that are available for homeschoolers only test reading, language arts, and math (arithmetic). A child may appear to perform poorly in those areas, and still be very capable in other skills that these tests are not measuring.

• They didn’t ask enough questions.

Some tests are “survey” exams, meaning they are only checking for highlights. One third-grade survey test, for example, has a total of 20 questions covering language arts. And only four of those questions specifically test for a child’s ability to correctly identify sentence structure. If the child gets one question wrong, that’s a 25% reduction in the score for that skill.

• The child reads slowly.

Especially in sections of the test that require reading long passages, a child who reads slowly is at a disadvantage in answering questions. This is not a true measurement of understanding, since the child may very well understand the passage if given the time to read it more thoroughly.

• The child did not answer all the questions.

Standardized tests are designed to encompass a full range of ability in any given grade level, from very challenged learners to extremely gifted learners. Therefore it is quite common for a child to not finish all the questions in a test section. However, if a question is not answered, the test results will suggest that the child is not capable of answering it. In fact, it’s possible that if the child had answered that question, they would have answered correctly. So a test where a child did not finish the questions does not accurately show what specific skills the child has or does not have.

• Fatigue

While most test sessions allow for breaks between sections of the test, many children will start to tire out toward the end of the session, and their mental skills may not be at their peak.

• Your child was not interested in the test, or had personal reasons for not doing well.

It’s not common, but occasionally a child will purposely answer all questions wrong, or just answer at random with no real attempt to find the right answer. This is a situation removed from academic ability.

What’s Wrong about Standardized Testing

• It’s a spot-check, not an in-depth analysis
• It doesn’t measure a child’s ability to use information to find real-life solutions
• When a child doesn’t know the answer to a test question, it lowers self-confidence
• There is performance stress
• There is an assumption that it’s okay to not fully understand a subject
• It measures children against each other

Why Test Then?

• The state of Oregon requires that homeschooled children be tested at the end of grades 3, 5, 8, and 10, or assessed by some other means if recommended by a PDP or IEP. So testing is in compliance with Oregon homeschooling statutes.
• Testing can give you some sort of measure of where your child’s strengths are, so you can encourage those areas, or address areas where your child needs help.
• If you have any sort of custodial or legal issues where it’s important to show your child’s progress in homeschooling, the test results can help you with that.
• Some people say that standardized testing gives a child experience in the sort of testing or examination they might encounter later in life.