Scantron Fail

Well, CAVA insisted that all their 3-8 grade students take this K12 scantron test in the first two weeks of the school year. Matthew hemmed and hawed and did so only reluctantly and under great protest (ok, that goes pretty much for all schoolwork with that boy so it's not a big surprise). I finally got his test results today and discussed them with his teacher.

Here's the biggest suprise....his reading scores were out of sight. Seriously, lowest score (and this is testing for where he should be at the end of 5th grade which is what he's just started) was an 88. The computer could not come up with any objectives for him to work on. So the teacher asked the computer to throw out his grade level and it still couldn't come up with anything based on how far they had tested him. What's so amazing by this is that this is my child that HATES to read. Seriously. The fights to get him to read anything that isn't school related or a comic book are just amazing. He's finally reading the Animal Ark series a little more seriously but still, we both know it's well below what he's capable of reading. But wow, I think I may need to crack down a little harder on him on getting him to read at least slightly more challenging material. The biggest thing that drives me nuts is that he starts books and never finishes them. Ugh!!

His math scores were good but not as high as I would have expected tho that is also the test that I know he was wondering all around for and totally goofing around so I suspect that had a lot to do with it so I won't give him too much grief over it. Even there the only thing the scantron could come up with to work on was his figuring out what to do with the fractions in a word problem and this is a known problem for him and one we are always working on. The teacher is going to give us some additional worksheets to help address that one area but still, even that wasn't awful or anything.

Of course, I wasn't expecting all that much from it considering this is the same test they insisted I give Christopher last school year after he finished their 8th grade Literature and Composition class and they couldn't move him up to the next level so they needed to test him to find busywork for him. I gave them a whole write-up on what I thought he needed to work on but nope, they needed to have this test so they could tell me what he needed to work on. It came back with "needs work on identifying misplaced dangling modifiers". Um..yeah... ok, whatever. We worked on my objectives for him with the teacher's blessing after that.

But still, I do like having the reassurance that the boys are doing well so I guess it serves some minor purpose...so long as I'm not hoping for any great insight or revelations into what I should be working on with my kids.