Grades and test scores...
My student earned A's in high school, but is now failing in college... why???
There may be many reasons: Harder material, a more uniformly capable group of fellow students, the faster pace of instruction, less than optimal class choices, and the demands of adjusting to college in general are all potential difficulties. A young adult on their own for the first time, living on a college campus, has to self-structure, and decide when to study, when to relax, when to socialize, and importantly, when to sleep! All of this takes practice. A very common challenge, however, is inadequately developed executive skills, in areas such as organization, time management, planning, etc. Sometimes parents and teachers provide far more structure and support in these areas than students realize, and when that support is suddenly lacking, and their own skills are not well developed, such students can falter. For some, this is a "wake up call," and they are able to successfully adjust their processes, and again begin to perform well. For others, this is more of a challenge, and can be the beginning of a very difficult period of adjustment.
One reason WHY executive skills can lag in otherwise capable students has to do with changes in grading practices in high schools. Up to just a few years ago, high school grades were a fairly reliable indicator of overall achievement, as well as potential for future educational success. Students who enrolled in challenging high school classes often learned to manage more assignments, more effectively, and to prepare more optimally for exams. Now, in many districts, students in all classes are allowed to hand work in late with no penalty, or to repeatedly retake exams or rewrite papers, until they earn the "A" they had hoped for. Students can earn passing or even excellent grades, despite never finishing work on time, and despite repeatedly retaking exams, because they didn't prepare optimally the first time around. These grading practices, while often implemented with the best of intentions in the interest of equity in learning, may not help students fully develop their study skills while still in high school. This can lead to a need for rapid, significant adjustments, when a student moves on to college or the workplace.
How can I get accommodations for an important test?
Under the American's with Disabilities Act (ADA), adults with documented disabilities (including learning disabilities, ADHD, medical conditions affecting cognitive performance, certain emotional disorders, as well as physical disabilities) are entitled to appropriate accommodations on standardized tests, such as the ACT, SAT, GRE, MCAT, LSAT, and others. First, appropriate documentation of the disability that is recent, thorough, and prepared by a qualified professional is key. For some pre-college tests, having received accommodations in high school can suffice as proof, but that will not work with tests typically taken by college students or aspiring professionals. Next, each testing organization has specific procedures (typically found on their websites) for registration for an accommodated test. Registration for a test with accommodations must often be requested earlier than standard test registration. Also, to maintain fairness for all, testing organizations typically review all accommodation requests and accompanying documentation, and may or may not grant requested accommodations, according to the parameters they have established. Therefore, a diagnosis by a qualified health or mental health professional does not automatically qualify an individual for accommodations on a particular test, though having such a diagnosis is an important part of the qualification process.
Some thoughts about "IQ": It's not a magic number, and it may change!
There are not many numbers based on test results that have been more over-interpreted or mis-applied than the so-called "Full-scale IQ" score provided by such tests as the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales, and other similar instruments. The original purpose of the earliest versions of these tests was to help identify children at risk for academic difficulty, so that intervention could be provided in a timely manner. Now, these scores get used as measures of overall learning potential, and are sometimes terribly misinterpreted -- to the detriment of many.
Many "myths" about IQ have emerged over time, myths that are inaccurate and often, potentially damaging. First, IQ is NOT a permanent characteristic of an individual, like eye color... in fact, IQ can and often does change over time, in response to educational opportunity, skill practice, sensory issues, maturation, environmental factors, emotional status, health, and many, many other factors. Next, IQ may or may not accurately reflect a person's inherent potential for learning. How a child or adult may score on a given day at a particular time may vary notably with such factors as quality/quantity of sleep, health status, and the presence or absence of problems with attention and concentration. IQ can seriously underestimate ability in persons who have learning disabilities, ADHD, Autism Spectrum Disorders, a history of concussion injuries, or a host of other difficulties. Also, people of all ages can also have good or even excellent IQ scores, yet have significant challenges with social skills, emotional stability, or adaptive functioning, any of which can seriously limit functioning: So IQ may or may not accurately predict an individual's potential for future success, even within the domain of higher education. Finally, IQ tests are limited in their scope, and there are many important forms of "giftedness" they do not measure. Specifically, IQ tests focus on those abilities most relevant to traditional education, such as verbal skills, logical reasoning, and to a lesser extent, visuospatial awareness. While those are certainly all useful and relevant skills, the fact remains that an individual can be truly "gifted" as a dancer, an artist, an athlete, or a musician, can have fabulous social skills, a remarkable capacity for empathy, or be inherently in touch with nature and able to effortlessly relate to animals, but none of these highly prized talents and gifts will be evident in an IQ score. Just saying... Don't put too much stock in one very limited number!!
What do all these different types of test scores mean??
If you or your child has received testing at school or by a qualified professional in the community, you may see many types of numbers in the written report, and this can be quite confusing. Essentially, standardized tests use one or more different scoring systems, and some are more useful and easy to understand than others. Also, knowing which scoring system is being used can make all the difference to what any particular number in a test report actually means.
One type of test score many people have some familiarity with, but which nonetheless often causes confusion, is percentile scores. Because the numbers range from 1-99, many people misinterpret percentile scores, thinking they mean "percent correct": NOT SO! For example, 50% correct would not be a very good performance on a regular classroom test, but a score at the 50th percentile (%-ile) on a standardized test would actually mean a normal, average performance -- in other words, a score that is perfectly okay!
Then there is a set of scores known as standard scores. IQ is a standard score: 90-110 is typically considered "average", while scores below 90 are problematic and scores above 110 are strong. The further a score lies from the mean of 100, the more rare and unusual it is: For example, many, many people earn scores around 100 on IQ tests, but very few earn scores as high as 130 or as low as 70. However, IQ scores are often quite misleading, as they are calculated from a variety of subtests that often measure very different skills and abilities. For many, particularly those children and adolescents who are having trouble in school, performance on those subtests may be uneven, with normal abilities or even strengths in some areas and weaknesses in others. An IQ score HIDES both strengths and challenges, and can therefore be very misleading! My recommendation? Pay little or no attention to the IQ score! Look at the subtest scores instead! That's where the useful information lies.
The subtests of IQ and other test batteries often use a type of score called scaled scores. These scores range from 1-19, and an average or normal score would be 8-12 (with scores lower than 8 suggesting difficulty and scores higher than 12 suggesting areas of strength). As with standard scores, the further a score is from the mean of 10, the more unusual that score is.
A fourth type of scores often seen on school-related tests are grade equivalency scores. These are perhaps the least helpful and most often misunderstood scores around. Grade equivalency scores range from K (for Kindergarten) to as high as 16 (meaning "college senior"), and are an attempt to estimate where in the grade-level structure of a typical school a child's test performance would best fit. So for example, if a child halfway through grade 4 earns a grade equivalency score of 4-5 (4th grade, 5th month), that would indicate very average performance for his/her grade level. However, trouble comes when these scores get over-interpreted. Suppose that same 4th grade child earned a grade equivalency score of 6-8 (6th grade, 8th month) on a math test... does this mean she should be in a 6th grade classroom for math instruction??? Probably not... though this would be an experienced teacher's call. Although a 4th grader who scored that high is probably doing well in math, there may be a number of concepts and procedures she has not studied that most 6th grade children have, and she would likely struggle mightily in a 6th grade math class. What the score actually means is that she performed like a typical 6th grader on the 4th grade test items.
Yet another type of score is the T-score. These scores range from 20-90, with a mean of 50. Scores ranging from 45-55 are considered "normal", while scores below 40 or above 60 suggest unusual performance. However, whether a high score suggests a problem or a strength may vary with the test instrument: Please ask the professional who administered the test for help with interpretation. You won't see T-scores very often on school-based tests, like achievement tests, but they are often used for personality and behavioral assessments.
There are also other types of scores that are used on standardized tests, and as the paragraphs above suggest, knowing how to understand the information they provide requires special knowledge and training. The bottom line here is "ASK": If a number makes no sense, ask the person who did the test to describe what it means, or consult a psychologist for interpretation.
My child's test scores from school keep jumping around... what's this about?
There are several reasons why this might be happening. First, most of the tests used to formally assess skills for the purposes of state-wide or district-wide assessment are administered to groups of children, who work independently at computer screens or at desks using pencil-and-paper test forms. For any of a number of reasons (e.g., immaturity, anxiety, physical discomfort, sleepiness, difficulties with attention and focus, learning problems, low motivation, etc.), children may have difficulty with persistently giving their best effort on tasks of this type, at least not without direct adult support (which, for good reasons, is generally not allowed during standardized assessments).
Furthermore, many of these group assessments are computer adaptive these days, which can add another level of potential inconsistency. More specifically, computer adaptive tests determine a child's level of ability based on responses to early test items. For example, if a child is successful with an item, he/she may receive a slightly more difficult item next. Conversely, if a child misses a first item, the next might be a bit less difficult. This process continues across several items, with the level of difficulty of the items adjusting based on the child's level of success with prior items. While this creates a more efficient and targeted assessment process that is less likely to be frustrating, it also has some built-in difficulties. For one, what if a child taking such a test is nervous, and guesses too quickly on the first few items? Or what if a child habitually tends to work too quickly to maintain accuracy (which is common in children with ADHD, for example)? In such cases, children might get tracked into items that are actually too easy for them. There are two potential problems with that. One is that the highest score a child can earn is directly related to the difficulty of the items completed. In other words, getting easier items automatically means a lower score. Also, getting tracked into easier items on a computer adaptive test also means the child will likely finish the test more quickly. For children with anxiety, learning difficulties, low self-confidence, and physical challenges, testing can be a very unpleasant process, and "getting it over with" can be very tempting...
Finally, on any standardized test, items are randomly chosen from a bank of items, meaning that children may randomly be assigned items that happen to be easier or more difficult for them during different testing sessions, and this too can affect scores -- particularly when testing occurs frequently. With children being tested two or three times per year on these assessments, it is thus not terribly unusual for scores to vary... and the reasons are many.
Looking at patterns of scores over time may provide a better measure of progress than looking at individual scores in comparison with the last set of scores earned. Are the child's scores generally going up? If so, a mild drop in scores here or there is not a problem. Only when there is no pattern of growth over time is there cause for concern. Talk with the School Psychologist at your child's school, if you have concerns about the pattern of your child's scores.