According to “Century Dictionary,” [the Latin word] educere is “usually with reference to bodily nurture or support, while educare refers more frequently to the mind”… and, “There is no authority for the common statement that the primary sense of education is to ‘draw out or unfold the powers of the mind’…”
— from Etymonline.com
Once again, this past spring, the Colorado Department of Education measured the minds of our youth, using a tool called the Colorado Measures of Academic Success” — the CMAS standardized test. . Specifically, CDE measured the ability to answer computer-driven test questions in ‘English Language Arts’ (ELA) and ‘Mathematics’ among students in grades 3 through 8.
I have an interest in this process, for a number of reasons.
Over the past four years, I was part of a group of community members — mostly, mothers of young children — who successfully opened the first District-authorized charter school in Archuleta County: Pagosa Peak Open School. As a tuition-free public school receiving public funding, Pagosa Peak — or PPOS, as it’s often called — must participate in the CMAS testing ritual each spring, and then receives a ‘accreditation rating’ based mainly on student performance on those tests.
I currently serve on the Pagosa Peak Board of Directors, a group of volunteers responsible for hiring the School Director — the professional staff person labeled in most schools as the ‘School Principal’. Our Board also oversees the school budget, curriculum, staffing plan, fundraising efforts, building maintenance, and other operational details such as School Security.
We’ll be talking more about School Security, later.
Although Colorado schools are expected to provide a comprehensive education — according to a complex collection of Colorado Academic Standards (CAS) that include science, social studies, drama, music, physical education, world languages, visual arts, health, and computer science — the only subjects regularly included in CMAS testing are English Language Arts (reading, writing) and Mathematics.
Many Colorado schools attempt to address “Social Emotional Learning” (SEL) as well, as part of a ‘whole child’ approach. That phrase — SEL — typically refers to a range of abilities including self-confidence, self-control, willingness to cooperate, creativity, awareness, acceptance of others, resistance to peer pressure, ethics, honesty.
Among other abilities.
None of these SEL abilities are tested by the Colorado Department of Education. Schools are ranked almost entirely on the students’ abilities in ELA and Math.
There are literally dozens of important skills and areas of human knowledge and understanding that are not tested by CDE, and not used in their ‘rating’ of school performance. Do we understand why this might be? I certainly don’t.
The raw scores from last spring’s testing were released last week, along with the “Growth Scores.” In Colorado, a student’s raw score on an ELA or Math test is not the final value of that student’s learning. A more valuable calculation, in the opinion of CDE, is the student’s ‘growth.’ How much did the test score improve from the previous year? Did the student progress significantly over the 12 months since the previous CMAS test? Especially, did the student progress, in comparison to other students who achieved roughly the same score 12 months ago?
In order to rank a school against other Colorado schools, CDE places special importance on “Growth Scores” for the entire student body. Although an individual teacher might make use of a particular student’s results, in designing classroom instruction, CDE is basically interested in the performance of the entire school, or the entire school district.
To hold the school or district accountable, you might say. Accountable in two particular skill areas, out of the dozens of skills we humans hope to cultivate in our children.
CDE sorts the data in various ways. By gender. By racial background. By family income. By learning disabilities, or gifted and talented. The statewide achievement scores show an average of about 48% of 4th and 5th graders “meeting or exceeding expectations” on the test. You can view statewide CMAS results here.
According to Pagosa Peak Open School’s newly-hired School Director, Angela Reali, the growth of reading and writing skills among the 4th and 5th graders at the charter school — the only grades with ‘growth’ scores this year — were roughly comparable to the ‘growth’ scores at Pagosa Elementary School and Pagosa Middle School. (3rd graders do not have ‘growth scores’ because they take the CMAS test for the first time in 3rd grade, so no ‘growth’ comparison is possible.)
She noted that a school needs 20 or more students in a grade level before CDE is allowed to release ‘grade level’ data. Pagosa Peak has intentionally small class sizes, so only their school-wide data has been released for 2019.
“We didn’t have a growth score last year, because it was our first year of operation. What the test scores say [this year] is that our students made ‘growth’ that is similar to, or slightly above, their peers who started where our students started… For ELA, we were at the 54th percentile, so right smack dab in the center, for the average ‘growth’ in the state. So our ELA program is delivering what a typical student in Colorado is getting.” The 4th and 5th graders at the conventional Archuleta School District schools showed a very similar growth score in ELA, she said.
The Math growth scores, however, were less impressive at Pagosa Peak.
“The [school-wide] Math growth score is lower than we’d like it to be. With the goal being a score of 50 or higher, our score was, on average, 41.5. That will be an area that we look at and continue to improve, over the next year. The data helps point out where we need to focus in terms of improvements, and in strengthening our math instruction in 4th and 5th grades. We are working with two professors from Fort Lewis College, in both reading and math, to get additional training…”
Ms. Reali noted that the staff at Pagosa Peak are still in the process of becoming familiar with the somewhat innovative ‘Singapore Math’ curriculum, and some of this year’s Professional Development will be focused on additional training in Singapore Math.
“We have a lot of students who are at different levels, in the same classroom… and how do we really challenge the advanced students, while also supporting the students who… well, maybe math isn’t their best subject?”
In my opinion, public school teachers are working within an instructional system that, in some ways, hasn’t changed much in the past 50 years, while ‘expectations’ are constantly changing.
It’s also a system struggling to be ‘safe’.