Data, A Love Story

I admit this is a strange way to spend a Friday night, but I've been noodling around with our end of the year reading assessment data, and I just can't stop. I know, I'm nuts. But bear with me. We have worked so hard this year to support teachers in creating and implementing plans that will move our students towards mastery of essential skills. At last, we're seeing the results in the data. 

Some highlights: 

Our kindergarten students outperformed students for the last two years on almost every subtest. They will be the most prepared class entering first grade ever at this site. This is despite the fact that all the teachers are new, the least experienced K team we have ever had: one is a brand new teacher, one is an experienced preschool teacher new to elementary education, and one is an experienced kindergarten teacher who is new to the United States and the curriculum we use.

Our third grade team, also the least experienced we've ever had, got one-third of their students reading fluently. This is a long way from where we need to be, but it is a gain of 15% over last year and 7% over the year before. And for the first time maybe ever, not a single student entering fourth grade is a non-reader. They made gains in comprehension, too: they more than doubled the number of students scoring 80% correct and reduced by half the number of students scoring below 40% as compared to previous years. All of this was accomplished under less than ideal circumstances: one class is a combination second/third grade class, and the other class has 27 students. 

How'd they do it? Well, each grade level met with me and the administrators after each testing administration. We planned what we would do for each target area for each target group of students. My role was to prepare the data and the planning forms so that all of our attention could be devoted to identifying teaching strategies. We all offered our ideas on what would work best, and the teachers then implemented their agreements. The administrators and I followed through on any requests for support the teachers had, and we also visited frequently to see how things were going. I think the reason that kids made so much progress in these classrooms was that these were our two grade levels most dedicated to fully implementing the plans that they made. 

Well, so what, though? Does scoring well on these tests mean that a kid is really a better reader or thinker? Of course it is entirely possible to develop good test-takers rather than good learners, but I don't think that is happening here. Each time I visit these classrooms, I see these teachers engaging students in discussion, in thought, in mastery of skills for real purposes. These are excited, proud students who can't wait to show me the newest thing they now can do. 

This is the first year our new small school is open, and there is so much that is so far from where I want it to be. But with increasing regularity, I am getting glimpses of the school we are becoming, the school our students need and deserve. More and more teachers stop me in the halls to tell me about their students' progress. We are beginning to establish rituals to recognize our students' achievement and progress. We spend less time complaining about how obnoxious our kids can be (and they really can be, but that is a whole other subject), and more time looking for the ways that they are improving, achieving, and growing. We are becoming educators who actually put our plans into action, professionals who are deeply passionate about being better every day than we were before.