End of the semester means that all North Carolina high school students are taking end-of-course tests in any of the eight exit standard classes (along with finals in the other classes they are taking). There are two different exit standard classes in social studies, and this semester everyone took Civics and Economics.
The testing schedule in my district was split, giving us three days of testing last week and one day this week. I was the lucky short straw that had three extra days during which to sit and wonder and fuss about how my boys would do on their exam. I watched as teacher after teacher saw their test scores came back, virtually helpless to have any greater impact on my kids before they tested today. Each successive day of testing we joked how it was increasingly on my shoulders to ensure we made our share of annual yearly progress. And I let myself hope that almost good English scores would harbinger good or almost good Civics scores.
To no avail.
Social studies tests in North Carolina are particularly difficult to pass. The tests are longer than other subjects (by at least 20 questions), and the percentage correct required to receive a passing score is higher than in other subjects. I'm not certain if this signifies the subject's importance or exactly the opposite. Either way, knowing this and knowing my students and district, I was foolish to get my hopes up.
I wish it wasn't so, but after all my worrying, we did abysmally. So much for meeting AYP, I had the lowest scores of all the classes. One student placed at or above the 10th percentile. (Yikes.) I know some of the problem is that while we covered civics thoroughly and I see excellent progress in that subject, we ran out of time for economics - barely made it through supply and demand.
The new challenge moving forward will be balancing remediating C&E while also moving on to US (which has even more content than C&E) and World history for the next month. One would think, with nine and a half hours of school each day, that I wouldn't feel crunched for time, but I absolutely wish there were just one more hour in the day. Maybe I'll steal writing for a month.
One positive: I asked the boys to estimate how many questions they felt they could answer correctly, in response to them telling me they would fail this morning before the test. While they didn't perhaps do well, I can go back to them tomorrow and tell most of them they did better than expected. I mean 45 is greater than 15. And that has to count for something.
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