Testing Failure

Suppose a parent of one of your students called you today to complain about his/her child's poor performance on your classroom tests. The parent concludes by asking you, "Just how sure are you the fault is in my child and not in your tests?" How would you respond to this parent? What would you think about? Justify your response. There are several things I would take in consideration here. The first thing I would do would be to look at the students performance on classwork assignments to see if the student was performing at a rate much higher that that of the testing. The second thing I would do would be to see how the grades of other students at the same level are performing on the same tests. I would also schedule a conference a meeting with the student, parent, and myself to get to the bottom of the problem. Kids may go home and tell their parents anything to cover themselves but face to face with both parties you are more likely to get the truth. The student could be struggling with test anxiety, I know as a teenager I hated testing more than anything else. It literally made me sick to my stomach. If the classwork grades are high and show understanding of the unit, and the other students in the class are struggling on test grades, I would definitely take a second look at my testing. I would have coworkers and maybe my supervisor take a look at the test as well to see if I was missing something. I would also ask the students what they are having trouble and see if I can correct the issue. After what I've recently learned, I do realize I may need to look over my tests and make many changes to better them.