Analysing Standardised Test Results

sheehyskeff

Given the complete lack of any kind of central database or resource bank on what we, as primary teachers, actually do with our testing - I'm looking to get the input of as many teachers as possible!


A little background (please forgive rushed format - am completely swimming in paperwork!)

• DEIS Band 1 School.
• Micra and Sigma completed both in Autumn and Summer.
• Results showing fair increases across all percentile bands. Still skewed a little to the left of the Bell Curve but given our disadvantaged status and the fact we're improving - I'm ok with that.
• Third year in Learning Support, specific focus on literacy.

What I'd like to do is get an idea how other schools (disadvantaged or not) use their test results to inform planning for the next year. I'd appreciate any input you have to offer, am in the process of doing the same kind of questioning offline to other LS teachers in our area in order to get as varied a range of approaches as possible. These questions relate specifically to the Micra.

1) Does your school find that most children stay in the same percentile band from 1st to 6th Class?
2) Do you notice fluctuations in the children's percentiles from year to year or do they normally hold steady enough?
3) What percentile drop would your school flag i.e. decrease of 10, 20 percentile points?
4) Which standardised score does your school find is a more accurate reflection of the children's attainment/ability - Class Based Scores or Age Based Scores?
5) Which standardised scores does your school use to determine future planning - Class Based, Age Based or is a combination of both more the norm?
6) Does anyone else share the reservations I have about the Micra T as a measure of literacy attainment? (I'm not much more impressed with the Drumcondra) At any rate, the decision is out of my hands but I'd like to know what others, particularily teachers in non-DEIS schools think.

I'm enormously grateful for any input you may have and apologise again for this being rushed.

dambarude

Have you tried your questions on the forum @ www.educationposts.ie ? It's chock full of primary teachers, so you should get an answer there.

byhookorbycrook

1) Does your school find that most children stay in the same percentile band from 1st to 6th Class? No, can move up or down year to year.

2) Do you notice fluctuations in the children's percentiles from year to year or do they normally hold steady enough? Yes,but anything less that 5 point is not considered significant.


3) What percentile drop would your school flag i.e. decrease of 10, 20 percentile points?
It depends on the child, dropping ten from 99 to 89 may not be significant for some children but from 24 to 14 is!


4) Which standardised score does your school find is a more accurate reflection of the children's attainment/ability - Class Based Scores or Age Based Scores? Classbased.


5) Which standardised scores does your school use to determine future planning - Class Based, Age Based or is a combination of both more the norm?Class based


6) Does anyone else share the reservations I have about the Micra T as a measure of literacy attainment? (I'm not much more impressed with the Drumcondra) At any rate, the decision is out of my hands but I'd like to know what others, particularily teachers in non-DEIS schools think.

Any test is how a child does on the day, if they are tired ,unwell etc. scores will skew. We would never take scores in isolation, we also rely on teacher judgement.Micra is quite limited in the cloze parts as to what words it deems acceptable. Drumcondra English profiles (a big blue book)were sent to schools a good while back ,the checklists there are a better overall summation, but involve huge amounts of work.

There is a thread on educationposts presently about teachers teaching to the test, madness.

sheehyskeff

Thanks a million byhookorbycrook. I agree completely with your assessment of the Micra T - pure cloze from Level 3 on doesn't give me an accurate reflection of our children's progress. There's an assumption that children from 4th Class on have fully developed their ability to decode words - and this is certainly not the case in our school!

As for teaching to the test - I'd be careful if I were them! The kind of analysis we're doing at the moment is the direct result of an unannounced incidental which looked purely at our standardised test results. And true to form, those conducting the incidental told us "There's a problem, we can't help - not our job - now go fix it." Soul destroying.