EFFin’ A! (From F to A)

Alternate title: Beard Be Gone

Last week I lamented the fact that my students underperformed on the state test covering Language Skills. At the same time I praised my students for doing so well on the Reading Skills section of the test. At the time, I think about 92% of my students tested “Proficient,” which means they’re testing at grade level — they’re performing exactly as we would expect a student to perform given the set of information we’re required to teach them.

Students can also score “Advanced,” meaning they’re more than capable of understanding the content of the class; they can score “Basic,” meaning their performances are just below expectations; and they can score “Below Basic,” which happens from time to time, and were these scores only used as a measure of student performance and teacher performance at the district and state levels (meaning: leaving out NCLB) so that we could monitor student progress and align curriculum and focus on bettering ourselves without the worry of losing funding (because you would think that a failing school would get more funding to help better the environment for the students), but that’s all another story.

Maybe I’m complaining about NCLB because this is our fourth year as a failing school. We “fail” because we’re seemingly not capable of reaching “all students” and making “all students” proficient in those three areas (four, if you count the Science Skills test given in the 7th grade). And this means making the general population proficient as well as the Special Education students and the English as a second Language students and the Minority students proficient. This all in an overpopulated school with students largely from a lower socioeconomic background — I believe our student body hovers at 75% for free/reduced lunch.

Maybe I shouldn’t make generalizations, but I’m not trying to blame any teacher or any administrator for this failure. We’ve spent the last three years thoroughly examining the standards and our practice. We’ve created Data Teams to scour students’ testing histories, we’ve organized learning lunches for the teachers and for the students, we’ve found ways to fund test preparation specialists, study groups, tutoring sessions, and more often than not our teachers and students come to school early for extra instruction. The teachers are working together on lessons and evaluating our assignments against the standards. The kids are focused on taking apart the test, and we have several class sessions based on analyzing a question for content and scope.

In a word, or three: We’ve worked our asses off.

And today we got some very promising, second-round preliminary news: That language test we bombed? We scored higher than last year. That’s good news. According to NCLB if we can’t meet proficiency, we must prove that this year’s kids perform better than last year’s kids. We’ve done that, and to finally hear it feels great.

On top of that, the Reading Skills scores are off the chart. Something around 73% for the entire school, and for the 8th grade — my classes and my team — we’re up in the 90th percentile, and well above last year’s scores.

Seriously, 90% of our students are Proficient (and better) in Reading Skills. That’s phenomenal! That’s unheard of! That’s so fantastic I might just need a change of pants.

Add to that the fact that I promised my students that I’d shave off my beard and reveal the true horror behind it if 90% of them scored Proficient on the test. Their final score: 88%, which is a damn good amount of students Proficient, and they should be damn proud of themselves for doing such good work and for understanding so much of the content of my course, that I think I’ll just go ahead and do it anyway. It’s a little thing for me, but it’ll be just embarrassing enough to make them happy.

I hope they’re proud of themselves, because they should be.