The Data Proves I'm Right

The first week of school we had to give our students this math test. It was a math test on the concepts we'd be teaching this year. That's right. Sort of like my quote, actually, from Willy Wonka: This year we'll take a math test on the concepts we're going to learn before we learn them!

The next week I got an email from our Curriculum Specialist. "Be sure to send me all of your math test scores," she wrote.

I replied, "In what form are we to send the information? Do you want the percentage correct? How was each question weighted? Is each question worth one point? Do we have a rubric to go by that shows how to correlate each score to a number, like our progress reports?"

I didn't get an adequate answer, so I chose to do nothing. The next day I was leaving school around 5 pm or 5:30 pm. I cut through the library, and passed our Curriculum Specialist's office. "Julie," she cried excitedly. "I have something for you!"

I put my head into her office. "What is it? Chocolate?" I ask hopefully.

"No," she said. "Better. Here's a chart you can use to input the kids' math scores from that test!"

I looked at the intricate boxes from her excell sheet. "Oh," I said. "And how do I use it?"

She looked at it. "Well, I don't know," she replied, "but we need to have those scores so that we know who to help!"

"Oh, I can tell you who needs math help. You need to help Kasey, Pashton, Josh, Issabelle, and Cheyenne."

"But we need the data. We are a data-driven school."

I took those tests home and corrected them. The highest score was a 69%. The boy in my class who scored the highest on the state math test in 4th grade received a score that was just right in the middle of the group. The lowest score was a 19%. I inputted all of my test percent scores onto the excell spread sheet. Guess who the bottom five scores belonged to? That's right: Kasey, Pashton, Josh, Issabelle, and Cheyenne. Just as I said.

But thank god we now have the data to prove it.