I ended the school year completely deflated with my school’s double digit AIMS score losses in two out of four grade levels. Confident my school would fall from an A to a C or D, I was shocked to learn that we were a B. A solid B, three points from an A. How could that be?
Of course, once you are an A school there is no pride in being a B school. You’ve still fallen. Data is still analyzed to reach the conclusion that you simply didn’t do enough. Teaching occurred, learning occurred, but not the right teaching, or the right learning, correct?
Of course, then it makes perfect sense to set new targets, new goals, new hopes for a quest to return to the coveted status of being an A school. Yet, we aren’t teaching what we once taught, or more importantly the way we once taught. Students are demonstrating their learning in multiple ways. Why would we set our hopes on improving our results on an assessment that is not aligned to the teaching and learning occurring in our classrooms?
What’s the goal? Is the goal to improve test scores to earn more points to earn a certain school grade? Is the goal to reset teaching and learning to prepare students to be College and Career Ready? What’s the goal?
