Helping Your Child Perform Well on Tests
By Ronald Dietel
Teachers, parents, and schools have a common goal and
shared responsibility to have children perform well on tests. Tests are,
after all, the primary means on which students and schools are measured.
There's been plenty of advice on preparing for tests:
Eat a good breakfast, sleep well the night before, avoid careless mistakes,
and answer easy questions first. Rather than focusing on these physical and
strategic aspects of test-taking, parents and students are better off
knowing that success in test-taking depends on good instruction, parent
support, and hard work by students.
How parents can help
Here are some suggestions on what parents can do to help
their children perform well on tests, especially in a high-stakes
environment.
Instill the value of
learning in your child at an early age.
- Make sure your children are good readers.
- Communicate frequently with your child's teacher
or teachers.
- Know your child's learning progress and needs by
monitoring assignments, homework, and test performance.
- Establish a regular time for homework and
studying.
- Don't make your child nervous about tests, even
big ones.
- Encourage your child to develop a positive
attitude toward school and testing.
- Review tests with your child after they are
returned home for what your child did and didn't understand.
- Remember, tests and grading systems are not
perfect.
Some test experts say that when their children were
growing up, they emphasized the learning process. "I focused on
helping my children find methods of studying and reviewing that worked for
them," said Dan Koretz, a Harvard professor and testing researcher.
"I pushed them [my children] to discern what level of studying
generally produced a given grade, which was often more than they initially
thought."
"Doing well on tests ultimately means knowing the
test content," says Joan Herman, co-director of the National Center
for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing at UCLA and
author of several books on evaluation and assessment. "Getting good at
format and knowing the tricks of test taking only take you so far if you
don't know the relevant content and skills."
Ronald Dietel, Ed.D., is assistant director for
research use and communications at the National Center for Research on
Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing at the University of California,
Los Angeles.
Reprinted with permission from "Our Children
Magazine: Helping Your Child Perform Well on Tests" National PTA
website,
