This week I have looked at so much school data. I've looked at my school, my district, and the state, as well as taking a little stroll down to visit the the national scores. I am disheartened to see that the achievement gap between Hispanics, African Americans, and whites still prevails. I see it in my district's test scores.
The reading scores of 17 years old's nationally show the startling gap that has prevailed over the years.
The question is, what do we do to close this gap? I know in my district we have interventions in place at all grade levels, but with class sizes increasing, it is hard to make certain that you are meeting the needs of all children. I know that most teachers "catch" the lower scoring student quickly, but it can be hard to get services for the most severe cases ie. special ed referral. There are those "bad" teachers who do nothing and notice nothing, but they are not the norm, at least not in my school.
I enjoyed the chapters that I read in the book this week. They were interesting so they were an easy read and very informative. I don't know if I'll ever be a formal teacher leader, but all of these skills will help me to be a better informal one.
All of this data talk got me thinking about the data we keep in the Technology department of our elementary schools. It's minimal. We formally assess the fourth and fifth graders on their typing skills and technology enrichment projects. I feel as though we should be assessing each grade level based on the national and/or state standards. The issue with this is getting everyone on board and that would be hard because we each have 14-25 different classrooms that we teach. That is a lot of individual assessing. I think it would be worth it, though, to be able to make sure that each student was getting the opportunity to learn the technology that we teach. I also think we need to be doing common formative assessments at fourth and fifth grade so that we can be sure all students are leaving us for the middle schools with a similar skill set. This would be immensely helpful for the middle school computer teachers.
Hi Sarah,
ReplyDeleteWe did look at a big share of data this week! I noticed gaps between our white and native populations. A startling gap, and we too are struggling to figure out how to solve this, reducing the gap. It turns out to not just be an academic problem, but a cultural one as well.
It seems that you are doing the right thing, trying to assess and ensure that your 4th and 5th grade students have access and opportunity to learn the technology lessons. I know that our local district has a disconnect between intermediate and middle school too. We have been really targeting 6th grade in hope to get all students up to speed. I think there needs to be more done in the lower grades with respect to technology training. I'm still waiting for my 4th grader to learn how to type! That's not cool!
Good comments and good work for Group 1 this week! See you Monday.
Mary
Sarah,
ReplyDeleteI agree that we need to do more when it comes to achievement for African Americans and Hispanic populations. So far the only responses I have seen are that textbooks use more cultural names and they try to use examples that may pertain to their culture. I asked a couple of students that fit that category and they found it mildly offensive!
Anyways, there was a lot of data and it almost made my head spin. It is scary to think that our schools in this country do not have students achieving higher than what they currently do. We need to find better ways to teach them. I have found that students are successful in my classes because I try to make many things creative and relevant. Hopefully we can move more towards that!