Students with learning disabilities, especially in reading, usually do not score well on achievement tests. Over the years, many teachers have asked about grade placement for such students and whether it is even worthwhile testing them.
Here are several points to consider:
1. Students with reading difficulties are often not mentally handicapped. They may not even have an overall academic learning disability. Many students who have struggled with reading in school have gone on to excel in business and other environments.
2. There are children who simply struggle with decoding words. These students tend to have a much better comprehension of what is read to them than what they read themselves. Often for students like that, a traditionally administered achievement test yields little information of value.
3. Some achievement test sections, such as math and language, do not directly measure reading skills. Even some reading sections test mental understanding of a reading passage more than the actual decoding of words. Since the purpose of an achievement test is to accurately assess a student’s skills, it is consistent with good testing practice to eliminate any factors that hinder such a valid assessment. In fact, the Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing, 1999 Edition, devotes an entire chapter to the rationales and guidelines for testing individuals with disabilities. The guiding principle is that extraneous factors and disabilities should not affect the assessment of the actual learning objective to be measured (Standard 10.1).
4. We recommend some experimentation with struggling students. One possibility is having an assistant read test items to the student but avoid any help with actual answer selection. Another is to extend time limits for the slow reader. Yet another is to test an easily distracted student in isolation. Because of the nonstandard method of test administration, test results obtained by these methods should probably not be included in class summaries (Flag code 2).
5. If you are really determined to find out how much of a student's academic difficulties are due to reading problems, administer the test (or parts of the test) twice, using both Form A and Form B of the same level. The same person should administer the test both times. All other factors, such as time, day(s) of the week, and testing environment should be duplicated as much as possible from the first testing session to the second.
- The first time through, use verbal assistance extensively, including reading test items to the student.
- The second time, use the other form of the test and again supervise closely, but do not read actual test items to the student.
The difference in scores on the two tests should give some indication as to how much a reading disability affects the student's performance in other subject areas.
Questions often arise about grade placement for reading- or learning-disabled students. There is no point in testing a 6th grader who is working at a 3rd grade level by giving him a 6th grade test. Test a student at the grade level in which he can reasonably be expected to perform.
Please avoid the following errors in assigning grade levels for testing purposes:
1. Do not try to mark a grade level for a student that is incompatible with the test he is taking. A student who takes a Level 2 CAT70 test (or the APT, Level 2•4) must be marked as grade 2, 3, or 4, even if he is actually in 6th grade.
2. Do not simply leave the grade level blank when testing a student with learning disabilities. A grade level must be assigned in order to score the test, even if it does not actually represent the years the student has been in school.
An achievement test is a carefully developed tool to help schools, teachers, and parents to make informed decisions about the education of their children. Like any other tool we use, we are responsible to learn about its use and misuse, what it is intended to do, and what it cannot do. Like many tools, it can sometimes be used in more original ways than we first thought, if we understand its purposes and limitations.