THE STORY OF SALLY, STANDARDIZED TESTS, AND READING

The test data didn't tell me the full story. Sally was a 1st grade girl with whom I was working last year during covid. I was doing online tutoring with kids. Before working with her, her parents sent me her test data. I read through them. There were fancy charts and colorful graphs that showed Sally’s scores on a whole array of meaningless reading subskill – They measured her distance from average. All this data really showed me was that Sally had trouble reading --- but we already knew this. Her parents knew this. Her teacher knew this. And Sally knew this. The numbers simply quantified what everybody already knew. And the testing made Sally feel more insecure about herself as a literate human being.