Somber Numbers

I spent this weekend grading the DCA that my students took prior to my leaving for Georgia. It took me a week to come to the realization that the answer Scan-trons that I had to turn in were never actually coming back to me, bound instead for district headquaters. Sometimes you just wonder about people who come up with these rules that make absolutely no sense.

Regardless, I was a bit disappointed to see where the numbers fell. Out of 72 students taking the test, I only had 17 pass it. The class means were 66%, 46% and 41% - none of which are passing. Overall, the all-student mean was 55%... somber numbers to say the least.

My Science Curriculum Specialist at my school assured me that my numbers were right on par with the rest of the 6th grade, as well as the school average. I'm not depressed at these numbers - they're actually pretty good considering where my students started. One class' beginning-of-the-year diagnostic score was a measly 19%, so these numbers are significant improvements.

I am realizing, however, just how hard it is going to be to push them over the 80% bar. I thought that I had really laid everything out for my students, in a way that they were sure to make at least an 80%. But now I realize just how layered the instruction is going to need to be.

Now if I can just get a chance to make some changes! If there's one thing that I've learned at Miller that I didn't learn at Wainwright (summer school) it's how much time you really have to spend each night tweaking the next day's lesson based on the information you received that day from your students. These DCA numbers show me that I'm going to really have to tweak some things, in a major way.

It frustrates me though that it will be next week at the earliest before I'll be able to change anything in my classroom. I found out Friday at 4pm that I was required to participate in two Professional Development courses Monday (tonight) and Tuesday from 4-7:30pm. Since I also have my graduate class on Wednesday from 5:30-8:15pm, my nights this week will all be spent in class - ridiculous.