Jackie Nelson- Memo #3

Friday September 18, 2015

                Like many schools, my school is very data driven. We are encouraged to have “data chats” with our students and go over things like test scores and how many credits are completed, etc. Since we did STAR yesterday, I had many students asking to see their scores. For the STAR test there are four colors that identify the level of intervention that is required for each student. Red is ‘urgent intervention’, yellow is ‘intervention’ blue is ‘on watch’ and green is ‘at or above grade level’. Now, since all of my students are ELLs, most of them score in the ‘urgent intervention’ category. Red means that the student is reading at least 2 grades below grade level. For my students, this means they have to be at least an 8^th grade reading level in order to be in the yellow category. This is nearly impossible for students who are learning a new language to achieve this in a few years.  I expect my students to be in red, but the students always feel horrible when they see the red bar under their name on the report.

                This year, I vow to keep the four terrible colors out of the conversation in my ‘data chats’ with my students. I only want to show the students that they are improving in some way. I think that for teachers, STAR is a useful tool in visually showing ELLs their progress. It is easy for the kids to see their improvement on the charts that STAR compiles in their reports. I think these charts are valuable areas to have data chats about. However, telling a student that he/she started in the red zone and is still in the red zone at the end of the year, is not productive and discouraging.  So this year, we are focusing on the positive. The progress, the improvement, the growth and the hard work. We don’t see color in my classroom.