Improvements

Directly after school on Friday, we had a brief faculty meeting to discuss the materials we need in our portfolios (easier for K/1 because we don't have state testing) and our test results. The results, of course, had been announced previously in a meeting held by our state superintendant, but our principal wanted to clarify things.

Evidently, schools are rated on a scale of 100-600 points. Schools whose scores fall between 100-199 are level 1 priority schools, as we were last year. Schools whose scores fall from 200-299 are level 2 schools, and so on. Our school got a score of 355, which puts us right in the middle of the level 3 schools. However, our official rating is a level 4. Why the disparity? The state awards an extra point for extreme improvement. That means that even if we improve, say, by 40 points this year, our rating would still fall to a level 3.

The district's goal is to have every school a level 5. That means that we will have to have an increase in test scores equvalent to the jump we had last year. This seems like a very, very lofty goal to me, but maybe it can be done.

I don't know if it is simply my increased confidence in my teaching abilities, but I perceive the whole school as actually having improved this past year. Behavior is more controlled, people are more on the same page. One example of our improvement as an elementary school is our library and computer classes. They are the only special classes our students get (no art, music, or pe outside of the classroom), and last year only computer lab was valuable because they watched TV in library. This year, my students came back from library thrilled because the teacher had read them two books. Excellent! That is a 100% improvement right there, from 1 useful special to 2 useful specials. Also, my class size has gone down, our copy allowance has gone up (it was prohibitively low last year, and I am not a worksheet-giving teacher) and, to put the cherry on the sundae, we are officially allowed a 15 minute recess after lunch -- for the whole first grade together!

I'm also more pleased with the school this year because we will be allowed (even encouraged) to go on field trips, which I think are really valuable for building prior knowledge from which students can build, and we will have some plays by the students and some assemblies. It just seems more elementary.

My students also came in at a higher level than my students last year. As I wrote before, I don't have any Special Ed students, but beyond that, their reading diagnostic scores are higher across the board. We use DIBELS, and my students are starting our approximately 2 months ahead of my students last year. In fact, they are almost on grade level this year, only a couple points off!