We started the winter administration of the NWEA today. I’ve talked about this test a couple of times before, but the super-short version is that we give it three times a year and it is designed to mostly measure growth, which means that it gets around many of my normal gripes against standardized testing. I know that usually the first post of the month is the Monthly Reads for the previous month, but this is on my mind and I don’t feel like gathering up all the books I read, so we’ll do this today and that tomorrow.

Anyway, I have some reason to maybe, possibly be a little bit optimistic about my teaching this year? As of right now 47 of my 70 kids are done with the test; the rest were either absent today and haven’t started or didn’t get finished. They’ll have tomorrow (at least) to get that done, and I’ll probably be at 80% or so completion after two days.

As of right now, of those 47, only ten haven’t shown growth this year or at least held onto what they had, and of those ten, half only lost a single point. That’s not final numbers, of course, because I still have 23 kids to finish the test, and who knows how they’ll go, but right now this is on track to be my best winter administration of this test ever. Typically the way these things go for me is losses during the winter administration, then they make them back and end up with overall gains (as in, compared to the first administration) on the final one. I’ve never had a group look this good in the middle of the year.

So far. We’ll see if it holds up.