Good Test Scores and Tragedy

In my state public schools are required to improve their state test scores each year or face major repercussions. While my school has made the necessary score increases in recent years, we’re facing some score patterns that put us on track to fall short in the coming years.

This is a bad situation precisely because we’re good. After all, a “bad” school with low scores really doesn’t have to get “good” scores in order to be touted as making strides and doing a great job. Schools with already high schools, however, have to make even higher scores–or else the news headlines that may have once read “School Scores Improve As Hoped” will turn to “Once Successful School Fails”–even though the now-“failing” school is still achieving scores well above another school that is improving (but still has lower scores).

It’s the definition of tragedy: One’s assets become one’s downfall. Just like Hamlet’s prudence and caution so as not to avenge his father’s murder rashly or unjustly allows time for additional and his own terminal misfortune, my school’s hitherto success at achieving high test scores will henceforth make it impossible for us to make the necessary score gains.

Central in our fail destiny is the same subject test that has middle schools all over the state pulling their nipple hairs and slamming their fingers in doors: Math 7. From what I’ve heard, seventh grade math is a huge cognitive processes jump for students requiring abstract, conceptual thinking and whatnot–and the test reveals that the children we teach simply are not ready for the leap.

The kicker here? In the new standards coming into effect over the next years, an attempt is being made to alleviate the suffering of the seventh grade math realm–by moving some of that new content into the sixth grade curriculum, where the students are even less ready for such thinking.