data, now what...

So the scores of my student's test arrived.  overall, they did very well.  They grew substantially from last year to this year.  Which is hard to correlate, since they had a different teacher and school environment from this year to last year.

I have spent the last week plugging in numbers to look at the data and recognize how well they did this year as a whole and individually.  I've also been plugging in scores to review true growth.  The school was really happy because Reading went up 7 points from last year's 6th grade to this year's 6th grade.  That is great, but all that tells me is that this crop of kids is 7 points smarter than last year's kids.

So now the whole school is running around talking about scores.....but half of them (that is being generous) don't even know how to read data.   I am sad that I won't be at this school next year to implement new teaching strategies to tackle the two areas that fell behind the other areas.  I meet with the other two LA teachers to give them my thoughts and insight and suggest what should be worked on next year.  Who knows.

I do know, however, what strengths  I have (comprehension) and what I need to work on (writing).

Wheee....numbers.