Testing Out

Today is the day I handed back the bad news to my Writing Lab students. Writing Lab is a class I created with some colleagues for students who are below proficient in writing as indicated by both the Explore/PLAN test and our state testing, now called T-CAP. Students are placed into the class based on their test scores, nothing else.

Many students on their first day do not understand why they are in the class. They believe they are doing just fine. They believe they are making it in high school. They believe their writing is good enough. Needless to say, we spend the first week of the class simply looking at test scores, thinking about goals, and finally writing the pretest. The pretest is the indicator we use to determine if students will "test out" of the course.

We decided three years ago we would have students write an writing autobiography which allows us not only to assess their writing, but also allows us to figure out where their breakdown occurred. It is actually a powerful assessment tool which cuts to the chase with most of my students.

I handed these back today scored on the MWIP, the awesome rubric that breaks down writing into its most basic gradable components our district created for interventions in writing. I am sad to say that none of my students tested out. But...they did have the highest scores they have ever had on the assessment.

Each time I hand back this reassessment, I must remember how my students are much more fragile than any of them let on. Disappointment...anger...frustration are all emotions which run through the room on this day. Today though something different happened, my students did not turn this on to me. One of my students instead said, "It's okay miss; it's not about you. I'm disappointed in  myself."

...and so our work began.