Testing Season

It's that time of year when teachers, even those who don't "believe" in standardized tests, talk standardized test results. In this world of miraculous modern technology, kids take all of their tests on the computer, and in theory, they could get immediate results. In practice, it takes a couple of days, at least in our state, and then the news goes to the teachers. At sixth grade in our district, students take reading, math, and U.S. history through 1877. We're done with the first two, and the last is on Monday, so the conversation has turned to percentage passing, and the students who failed.

Who are they, these kids who don't meet the minimum standards of our state? For reading, on my team of 99 kids, with the exception of two, they were all special education or second language, and all were minority students. As a language arts teacher, I know these kids as students in my discipline, and so I have an idea of their strengths and weaknesses, and therefore, I sort of understand what went wrong. That's not true for math.

In our state, once past 5th grade, students don't take a grade-level test for math, they take the test for the class they are in. So students who are in the advanced class in 6th grade take the 7th grade test, because that's their curriculum, and students who are in the next level up take the 8th grade test, again, because that's where they are. That leaves only the kids who are at or below grade level to take the 6th grade test, and as a consequence, those results are awful. It's less than a 60% passing rate.

I asked the math teacher today, because I really want to know, what's going on that these kids can't do math? I'll tell you what she said tomorrow.