Last week, teachers of ninth grade and tenth grade students were given in their mail boxes a highlighted sheet of their students who are partially proficient or unsatisfactory. Out of the 24 students I have in my ninth grade class, 11 are in the above categories. SCARY! I always have these weird feelings about test scores when they come out. One, I get really worried that I am going to somehow be measured as a teacher by their ninth grade test scores. What if they don't improve? If they don't improve then I am not doing my job. Also, I want to know what has happened to these kids? How can they not have applied all the writing strategies their teachers have used up to this point to this test? What is even more scary is that it seems that these students scores compared to former students are lowering at a greater rate.
So why write about this? I guess because I am frustrated. What should I do? If I am overly committed to them succeeding on this test, I could offer for them to come in on all of their off-hours form now to CSAP working on CSAP type exercises so that they actually apply the strategies we are working on in class to the standardized test. I actually offered this the other day and only one student out of all 11 wanted to come in.
I believe in all the writing exercises and real world applications I am doing in class, but I worry that those techniques won't transfer for them.
I guess I am wondering what to do? I know I am going to spend some serious time at the beginning of second semester working on their struggling areas, and I hope this works. I just wish I felt they cared as much about improving as I feel like their teachers do.
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