This Is a Boring Post About Student Growth Scores on Standardized Tests.

I am only writing it to set the record straight.

Faye Hanson, one of LRSD’s national board certified teachers, shared a particularly detailed analysis of NWEA tests and how their scoring is meant to be used.

Ms. Hanson, who spent five years administering NWEA tests in New Hampshire prior to her participation in NWEA testing in LRSD this year, explained:

A few teachers (and I) also pointed out that Principal Yaa Appiah-McNulty hadn’t taught those kids herself. Rather, it was the hard-working HMS teachers and good curriculum guidance that made the difference.

One of Henderson’s own teachers, Ruth Hooper, shared her strategy for improving literacy at HMS this year. She posted, “I put my curriculum aside for a week or two to focus on literacy. I hope it helped.”

I am sure it did help! But at a school-wide level, I think Jeff Grimmett’s explanation makes the most sense. Mr. Grimmett was Henderson’s literacy facilitator this past year, and helped coordinate NWEA testing for the entire school.

Jeff Grimmett explained the students’ “growth” quite simply. Apparently, when LRSD teachers were trained on how to administer NWEA tests, they were told students only needed 45 minutes to complete each section. In the fall of 2018, HMS teachers gave students a 45-minute window for each section of the test. Almost none of the students finished the test, and many needed to return to testing several days later, in order to complete the test. Some kids never finished it at all.

After that fiasco, HMS developed a special schedule that gave students longer testing times for the rest of the year. Not all schools did so. Therefore, HMS students had a test-taking advantage as the year went by — showing “growth” in their scores by the end of the year.

But what did we really measure? Not, as Gary Newton suggested in his post, the quality of education received by HMS students. Rather, we measured the willingness of HMS teachers’ to trust their own experience and make independent scheduling decisions, instead of blindly obeying the inadequate “training” they had initially received.

Listen to the teachers. Standardized tests measure test-taking ability — or growth in test-taking ability, if they’re really sophisticated. They don’t teach kids anything, but they do waste a lot of valuable instructional time.

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