How do schools measure reading age?

[sophy]

DS has just come home from school with assessment of his reading age from school -- which is now lower than it was the last time it was measured, i.e. it has gone down in absolute terms, not just in relationship to his chronological age.

So how do they measure this stuff and should I care anyway?

I bet it's not an exact science, probably several different protocals, have to separate maturity of concepts from complexity of text, which isn't always easy, so can different results based on the exact text passage used.

I don't think (IMHO) you should worry unless he's quite a bit below average on both tests.

Thanks lljkk.

Was previously a bit higher than his chronological age, is now a bit lower.

Will see what the teacher has to say after 1/2 term.

There are various tests - the ones I have seen are based on the child reading set words that usually get harder & harder.

The tests usually finds their reading age calculated from the point at which they make a certain number of errors.

should have added that it can be very hit & miss & doesn't take into account that the child may be having a good or a bad day concentration wise

there are specific commercial 'reading age tests' that schools administer. It's not an exact science at all. Sometimes when kids guess at words their score goes up a great deal for example

I don't really see the point in these tests unless special needs are suspected or exist - for the vast majority of kids does it really help to know what their reading age is? (I'm a teacher)

Ours don't do a age thing, they like them to have reached a certain ORT stage (ort 5 by the end of yr1 IIRC) but as they say each child is unique.

There are various systems but most often you have a list of words (out of context) in ascending difficulty which the child reads down. After so many mistakes within a few lines the test stops and the score taken at that point. May depend on the strictness of assessor, the words, how the child feels generally that day and their confidence as the test progresses. So not an exact science. Some reading schemes ascribe a rough reading age to the level of book ie ORT

link to a readign test

Thanks all -- very helpful.

So as far as I can see, it is just a test of whether the child can read individual words.

Nothing to do with whether they can read and understand a sentence.

Seems bonkers IMHO.

Ask the school which test is used. Salford sentence reading test is fairly common and quick to administer....as it says, sentences are read rather than individual words. No comprehension.
Another, which tests comprehension as well is the Neale Analysis of reading. This one takes much longer to do and reading ages come out lower than Salford IME.
Far from an exact science...I use them as work with SEN children....have never used one which is just individual words though....but can remember being tested on the Schonell test myself many years ago.... "tree, little, milk, egg"!!!

Ds's teacher told us that they tested his class at the begining of term using a test consisting of 50 sentances with a 'blank' in them, and a choice of 5 words per sentance to fill in the blank. This was meant to measure reading comprehension... but she said a lot of the children got fed up before the end and circled random words ie. it tested how long they could concentrate for rather than their comprehension! (She was explaining this because we asked her why ds's school reading books were so 'easy' compared to the things he likes to read at home)