Friday, September 01, 2006

So Goes CAPT, So Goes the Courant

The link will take you to The Courant's page listing the entire State's results (with a few exceptions).

In reading, Region 19 (EO Smith)was one of the State's biggest gainers. Overall the results were disappointing. But so is the Courant's coverage. The front page graph is wholly graphically misleading. This year's 46.5 percent of students reading at grade level's graph bar being shorter than 2002's 44.8 percent.

I know many of the reading specialists in Mansfield and Ashford and I'm familiar with E.O. Smith's very real commitment to reading improvement so I take great joy for everyone who works so hard at improving our kids.

However, I would've argued just as hard that our teaching staff was doing the right thing even if the CAPT scores had tallied differently. Testing is useful, vindicating when the results reflect the effort, and so on but these isolated metrics can never deny the professionalism and hard work that Board members see routinely.

Our teachers deserve a kind word of thanks all the time because they earn it and our kids showit, test or no test.

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