Two competing titles..

Two competing titles for this post.

#1 - Making Sense of the Non-Sense
#2 - Why are we shooting for "Proficient"

So - you know it - report card season!

Any assessment for Allison you have to take with a grain of salt.  Good doesn't always mean good and bad sometimes just means she didn't feel like taking a test.  Even so, I think the system is screwy.  Heaven help the teacher whose evals or pay might depend on Allison's mood on testing day.

So - in perfect contradictory form - this is what Allison's report cards plus IEP teacher feedback plus standardized test scores indicate:

Reading:

IEP Feedback - She's made tons of progress in reading!  She advanced something like 5 levels (into the 5th grade reading range) and was integrated into the classroom book clubs.

Report card feedback - she became "partially proficient" in 12 of 15 areas.  The goal is proficient in all 15 areas.  The other 3 - "minimally proficient"

Standardized testing - she scored 3 points lower at the end of the year than she scored at the beginning.  three actual points, not three percentage points - she lost 18 percentage points relative to her peers.  Whoops.

Math:

IEP Feedback - She has made more progress working with the autism teacher and focusing on one or two ways to solve the problems rather than many ways to solve the problems.  She's making steady but not spectacular progress

Report card feedback - "Proficient" in 2/19 areas; "partially proficient" in 13/19 areas; "minimally proficient" in 4/19 areas (though all the minimals were in the math practices area - so things like communicating answers and being efficient).

Standardized testing - she scored 19 points higher at the end of the year - putting her at the 81st percentile.  (top 20%).

Summary:

She's "minimally proficient" in most areas of math but in the top 20th percentile for all 5th graders in the district.  Note - she hates math with a passion.

She gained more than 5 levels in her classroom reading index, and simultaneously became a significantly poorer reader of standardized tests.  But, she loves reading and does it endlessly.

So crazy.

The other things I learned from Allison's report card.... she does not like phys-ed, but all the other specialty areas were fine.