Testing

There are times when I can't believe my kids. In this case, it was in a good way. The district provides core content assessments (CCAs) for every content area, and I gave my first one a week ago on Wednesday. I graded the open response questions, bubbled in their scores, and then ran the sheets through the new scantron (which is an amazing piece of machinery for any teacher). I could not believe the results. I had gone in with the math teacher to promise the kids who scored proficient and distinguished a dress-down day.

I have 101 students that I tested, and 50 of them (50!) scored distinguished. For those of you not in the know, distinguished is the highest kids can score, meaning they are above and beyond what we expect. The push for better testing scores only requires the students to score proficient. And I had 36 students score proficient. I had 13 score apprentice and only 2 score novice (little/no understanding of the concepts). This is a huge, huge difference from my students last year - I was ecstatic on the last CCA last year to get about 15 distinguished. To jump to 50 distinguished students and 36 proficient is just absolutely amazing. I can hardly believe it.

I am just so amazed and proud of my kids. Talk about feeling triumphant.

(The question again is: is it being out of the first year? Is it being better at preparing us to study in class? Is it the modules making them better prepared from last year? Whatever the case, I am just a happy, happy teacher.)