Test Scores and Community Success

What do test scores mean to you? How do you judge the success of your community's schools?

We have new dashboard in California. It still reports math and language scores and has added new data such as challenging coursework. It's better, but what is still missing?

Does it report what parents ask me about in a school tour?
-student creativity and ability to find and design and test a solution?
-club participation and service to community?
-ability to balance work, activity, school?
-resiliency?
-parents who work an 80 hour work week and leave the child to be raised by a care provider?
-students' ability to work with students from a variety of backgrounds, language and cultural profiles?
-ability to bring out the best in others?

(no)
-but we do ask for information about parents who didn't finish college

Those soft skills are important too. The Dashboard, and many systems of accountability, can collect and report just a few measures of the students in our schools

But what does industry want?
At a recent meeting of marine and water-related industry leaders in San Diego, they asked a group of interested educators to focus on skills that include the ability and commitment to:
-work together
-work quickly
-tell a compelling story rather than simply deliver a report of information
-understand and communicate openly with people from a variety of backgrounds and locations
-use and design electronic and human systems to transfer knowledge and skills across disciplines
-work across platforms and think beyond barriers
-identify problems and take risks in attempting solutions
-demonstrate resilience and persistence after failure

How does a culture that has been taught to focus on test score and providing children with ready-made maker kits create students who give up when they don't get the correct answer affect our future?

To what extent does asking our students, and our own children, to commit early-on only to the sports, programs, clubs, hobbies, and academic pathways in which they are "good at" or "interested in help them become balanced and open-minded?" Are we asking them to limit their options instead of explore personal and academic opportunities, areas in which they will fail, and exposure to a variety of student and teacher personalities, backgrounds, and profiles; all of which they haven't learned about or been exposed to YET?

As a parent and educator these questions have always been on my mind.

Recently, I had the privilege of observing in a Montessori classroom in a sierras of Chihuahua Mexico. I experienced a multi-age classroom of 6-14 year olds who had access to a building full of materials, tools, curriculum, and tasks. The students that was leading me through her day started off by putting her tag on her duty for the morning. We went out and picked up paper and plastic that had blown across their mountainside campus. One of the three teachers met us and asked her to describe and categorize the recycling that she found and then left us to finish the job. Inside the group met and one student chose a reading for the day that all of the students passed around and attempted at their level. Some read fluently, others asked for help with the complex text chosen by an older student, and others asked to be able to struggle through to show they could do it. After that students quietly went about choosing activities for the rest of the day when the three teachers met individually with each student for about 10 minutes, at the activity or desk where the student was located. The class was all on task, the teachers were caring and 100% attentive to each child and their personal goals for the week and school year. At one point, the child asked if I'd like to go bird watching, so we grabbed binoculars and bird watching books for the Sierra and headed outside where we watched until we found a small pajaro called a gorrión. We returned, moved her clip to indicate our location back inside, and carried on. A child asked me if I'd like a tortilla and I said "yes" expecting something made of Legos or Playdoh. Nope! She was making blue corn tortillas and using the comal on her own. They were delicious! I could smell something delicious baking and I asked and they pointed to a student who was measuring and using the small stove to cook blueberry muffins.

After a snack that the students set-up, students invited each other to sit down or sat or on their own if they wanted and then cleaned up. My young host moved on to another task. She took out counting cubes and a huge wooden square. She had to negotiate place value, spacial relationships, and began to identify patterns as she searched for the numbers and placed them on the grid. Her teacher then rotated over to her and asked her to describe what she saw bird watching in English or Spanish and then explain using words what she discovered on the number grid. She also did a bead project with Perler beads that the teacher was proud to iron on the spot and then she had something to take home and display for the day. The slow pace was calm and inviting. At the end of the day everyone welcomed my daughter into the class where she explained about the sand dollars that we brought from Imperial Beach in San Diego. Students sat patiently and passed the sand dollar then they put it in the observation table for later investigation. then we said our goodbyes, took a group photo and headed out way to see the chicken and other farm animals that were being cared for by the students.

Never once did the teachers or students raise their voice and there were no bells, long lines, or numbers to sit on. There were no discipline charts either, or chaotic transition times so common in traditional American schools. Students knew what to do because they were modeled to by, and followed, the older students. Students who were off task were gently redirected or allowed to just "be" while they worked through their emotions and decided to rejoin or get started with the next task.

With a 3:18 teacher/student ratio everyone was given attention and negotiated goals, then went about testing their ideas or practicing their task. It was an atmosphere that was caring and very safe. It invited risk and students were confident in their choices and how they moved about and took responsibility for the freedoms in the class and outside the building. I will definitely visit a Montessori classroom here to see if it's similar.

I learned a lot and want to learn more about alternative settings to the large, subject, and age-specific classes we see in our traditional schools in the U.S. The teachers were also encouraged to base curriculum goals on indigenous teaching and could earn a supplemental certificate to their regional teaching credential so they could lead and teach using indigenous focused knowledge, perspectives, and culturally-competent curriculum.

So...how can we balance assessment and accountability, summative test data, and standardized testing with a growth mindset model and a safe environment to develop more independent, responsible, caring, and resilient, risk-takers? How can we assess and demonstrate that we value personal and academic growth, physical health and strength, resiliency, and non-traditional knowledge, skills, understandings, and attitudes that ignite lifelong learning? What we value we assess and what we asses is what we communicate that we value above all else.

Questions I'm challenging myself to explore: How can we improve our service to students and our community? At the very least how can we work to design master schedules that allow students to "go for it" and attempt any class that they desire. How can we design schedules with multiple entry and exit points to allow for academic opportunities, clubs, curriculum pathways, programs, and academic and applied course sequences? How can students make more connections with interdisciplinary courses? How can we develop more opportunities to work on projects across disciplines with experts specializing in a range of disciplines or student interests? How can we allow students more freedom to choose, to fail, to explore while developing and applying knowledge, skills and concepts in academia and the real-world? How do we reconcile the experience I saw, heard, and felt, in Chihuahua compared to a traditional American school with more standards than there is time, and 36 students and one teacher per class? Do our neighborhood schools' test scores tell the whole story? Chime in...