DCAS practice tests - are the math sections really this hard or am I underprepared?
My 8th grader is prepping for the DCAS and I've been sitting with her on weekends to work through practice problems. The ELA section feels manageable - she's scoring around 72% on practice and her reading comprehension has always been a strength. But the math performance tasks are a different story. She's down around 55% and some of the multi-step problems are genuinely confusing me too as a parent.
The Delaware-specific standards seem a bit ahead of what her school curriculum has covered so far this year. She's in pre-algebra and the DCAS practice materials include problems that look more like early algebra content. Is it normal for there to be that kind of gap or should I be talking to her teacher about curriculum alignment?
We've been studying about 45 minutes on Saturday and Sunday mornings for the past month. I'm wondering if that's enough or if we need to increase frequency as the test date approaches. She doesn't want to burn out but I also don't want to send her in underprepared.
If anyone in Delaware has been through this prep process recently, I'd love to know what resources actually helped. The official practice tests are good but there aren't that many of them and she's already been through them twice.
The curriculum gap you're seeing is real. DCAS math does push slightly beyond grade-level in some task types, especially the modeling problems. Khan Academy's grade 8 math pathway has free content that fills most of those gaps and it's self-paced.
45 minutes twice a week is probably fine this far out, but I'd increase to 3-4 sessions per week in the last 3 weeks before the test. Keep the sessions short and focused rather than going longer - attention quality matters more than total minutes at that age.
The math performance tasks are legitimately harder than the multiple choice sections and they catch a lot of kids off guard. Focus on making sure she can show her work clearly - partial credit is available and graders look for logical process even when the final answer is wrong.
Our school sent home a list of state-released items from previous DCAS tests. Check if her school has those - released items are more representative of the real test than third-party practice materials and there are usually more of them than on the official site.