Harry Nilsson – One

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

This Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, life as we know it at Cochran Middle School shuts down for three days of California State testing. All we’ve taught our students is fair game for a series of 3-hour, multiple choice exams that spit out a single number by which we, the school, are judged. There’s a lot of pressure.

The interesting thing is that I still haven’t figured out who is exactly judging us. Our test scores have slowly increased over the last several years, and even plateaued at times. Yet, we still never reach our goal for improvement and as a result we are still labeled a "Program Improvement”, or “PI” school. I think that used to mean something, but the reality is that much of the district is labeled PI 5+ at this point, which means supposedly we are failing our students.

In August, we heavily anticipate receiving the results from this test, and with bated breath, hope for a higher number (API) than last year. If anyone is a harsh critic, it is we ourselves, who will basically give ourselves immense validation for an improvement, yet in the event of a decline, quickly find factors which “explain it away”.

The reality is that we need to find new metrics to measure whether we, as a school, are helping our students. Such measures could be that of, number of kids passing the CAHSEE, number of kids enrolling in 2-year college, number of kids enrolling in 4-year college. While difficult to track, this is the kind of data that would be affirming/critiquing and would hopefully lead to better goal setting. Maybe a single test score can be a part of it, but certainly not the whole picture.