Downeast Schoolhouse » testing

Dance for Your Data! Complete School Achievement and Progress List

admin — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 16:00:55 +0000

Informational Letter

[How to Read the Chart]

The List Itself

From the letter: “Whether 20 percent or 80 percent of students are meeting the standards, if it’s less than 100 percent then we have a lot of work to do…”

Form your own judgments, of course!

“Oh, stop that cursed jury,” Cried the [...]

Driving into the Ditch?

admin — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 10:00:02 +0000

Yesterday’s post pointed toward a complete change in how Maine goes about testing.

Around the same time as we came upon that news, we also came upon an exceedingly useful bit of advice that we’d like to share:

(via Criggo)

Back now to our regularly-scheduled post!

One question that comes [...]

These are the Times that Test Us!

admin — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 10:00:58 +0000

Provided we’re not in the 8th grade!

Due to budgetary considerations, several changes to the Maine Educational Assessment (MEA) will occur in March 2009:

Writing will not be assessed at grades 5 and 8 in either the standard MEA or the Personalized Alternate Assessment Portfolio (PAAP). Computer-based assessment, the MEA online, will not occur at [...]

Maine Gambles… and Loses?

admin — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 10:00:00 +0000

A recent New York Times article, Under ‘No Child’ Law, Even Solid Schools Falter (10/12), brought to our attention the different standards the various states have adopted to gauge compliance.

The focus of the article is California, which has chosen a small steps first, bigger steps later approach to meeting the goals [...]

File under…

admin — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 10:00:46 +0000

“We’re from the government and we’re here to help!”

The Adequate Yearly Progress provisions of “No Child Left Behind” have made some folks unhappy:

Many schools in Maine came up short in one of those ways, a fact that has caused some superintendents to question the federal education requirements. Mountain Valley High School has been [...]

Results are In…

admin — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 11:50:57 +0000

on last year’s round of testing. It doesn’t look good for the old home team.

Here’s the piece in yesterday’s Portland Press Herald. (Have you noticed they always seem to get the news one day earlier than the Bangor paper? Rather the same way that Portland gets our weather earlier!)

Take a look at the [...]

Test Implodes, Educators Stranded!

admin — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 10:00:10 +0000

They’re doing good work on the education beat at the Portland Press Herald1. Now they’re onto the case of the 8th grade writing exam:

More than three-quarters of Maine’s eighth-graders performed below standard on the state writing test for 2007-08, prompting education officials to toss the results and try to figure out why so many [...]