State test scores released...

This is the time of year when Kentucky releases their state test scores.  My sweet little school, Shearer Elementary, (hence the name of my blog) had a drop in scores this year.  It was hard for all of us who work at Shearer.  Looking at our RAW data, we looked good.  Really good.  Our fourth grade teachers had a group of students last year who gave us fits, but they got it, they got what those state tests mean to our school and that group rocked it out!  I was never more proud to be the teacher of a group of students.  They were a challenge, the kind of challenge that make a teacher pray summer will NEVER END!  We had girl drama to the 100th power, behavior issues, learning issues.  You name it, we had it last year...But despite all those things, the children had a desire to learn and they showed it on our K-PREP assessment.  Unfortunately, their growth was not enough to get our school to where we needed to be this year.

 Is it disheartening?  Yes.  Does it make me upset?  No.  I can only take the test data to look at my new fourth graders, analyze it and make sound instructional decisions to get my students this year moving in an upward direction.  This year, I have new challenges.  I like a challenge, but I don't LOVE THEM!!  We have talent in fourth grade, that's a solid fact!  Our students have some maturing to do. Another very solid fact!   Plus with the amount of reading and writing that is required by K-PREP, we have to increase our stamina.  I have started a reading stamina board in my room.  I took this idea from some Daily 5/Café classrooms from different blogs I have read.  I am not really familiar with Daily 5, tried a rudimentary version in my room last year.  I like the concept, but I would need to be trained like a dolphin to use it with fidelity :)  Any hoo, I digress...Stamina board...sorry the pic is so little :)

 

We have gotten to as much as 13 minutes without getting restless and off task.  It's a step.  We have got a bunch of steps to go before we get where we need to be..  

 

This drop in scores has been hard for my principal.  Last year was her first year as our principal and let me just say, she was dealing with a whole lot of healing.  Our school had been down, in so many ways.  We had an administrator which no one trusted, we were against one another (turned that way by the same untrusted administrator) we felt like we were fighting a losing battle to be professionals who make decisions to educate children.  All decisions (instructionally, behaviorally etc) were being made for us.  Shearer Elementary was a difficult place to work.  That administrator left and we had an interim, who was one of our own and she triaged us in the field and we did well the first year we took on Common Core.  When Ms. Dawson took over last year, we knew we had hired an excellent educator; skilled in curriculum and instructional practices.  But, she became Abraham Lincoln and our school was the Civil War.  She had to see us, staff and students, through a transitional period.  It was a wartime she never has been able to quite wrap her head around.  The war had ended and we were and in some ways, still are, in the Reconstruction Phase of our school life.  For the for the first time in a very long time we have been allowed to make professional instructional decisions about how to best educate our students AND we have a leader who knows how to guide us.  She is fair, honest, trustworthy and most of all, she loves us all, staff and students.  She has a genuine place in her heart for our school.

 It hurt my heart that our test scores affected her the way they did.  She took the drop in scores personally and wears the ten point drop like a Scarlet Letter on her chest.  She has cried and then cried when she said she wasn't going to.  She is owning this, weathering the storm with us and for us.  She isn't blaming us (our last administrator did this every time), she takes this as her own defeat.

 But there is no defeat in this, only a place built from which to move forward.  I tell my students to try everything I put in front of them and make as many mistakes as you can because from your mistakes you will learn. Shearer Elementary, with Ms. Dawson's guidance, will take all our data and use it to make a difference; to make instructional changes to get to the heart of the what is going on, address it and make it better.  We have great students, great educators and excellent support staff and overwhelmingly wonderful leadership at my school.  While I don't love challenges, I welcome this one and look forward to what the 2013-2014 class of Shearer Elementary Students can accomplish!!

Thank you for allowing me this time and space to share my thoughts, rants and raves.  That is what I love about blogging!!!