Standardized test resutls this year for the Española School District were bittersweet.
On one hand, four out of every five District schools failed to meet state benchmarks under the federal No Child Left Behind Act. On the other, the same scores showed an overall improvement by roughly 10 percentage points in the number of elementary and middle school students who tested at grade level.
In a ceremony Aug. 11, one week after the state Education Department released this year’s test scores, the District celebrated that improvement.
“We received our test date from the (state Education Department), and that data shows we’re making gains,” Regional Quality Center Director Christiana Sisneros said. “We’re here to recognize the teachers behind those gains.”
The District awarded diplomas to 24 teachers whose classes met or exceeded state performance requirements this year. New Mexico students grades three through nine and 11 take standardized tests every spring. Each year, the Department expects a larger percentage of students in each school to test “proficient,” or at grade level, with the expectation that 100 percent of students will be proficient in reading and math by the 2013-14 school year.
Asked to account for their success, teachers each gave different answers: supportive parents, motivated students, professional development, the District’s new math curriculum. Their comments made one thing clear: in the classroom, there is no single formula for success.
By and large, most teachers praised training they received through Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Math and Science Academy, and with good reason — almost all teachers who received awards are Academy students or graduates.
Take Mountain View Elementary teacher Vera Booth, for example, who learned at the Academy how to take control of her classroom. A few years into her teaching career, Booth was having trouble relating to students and felt frustrated by their reluctance to follow rules.
A classroom management lesson through the Academy changed that. This year, Booth plans to give students only one rule to follow. The fewer rules there are, the fewer they can break, she pointed out.
“It’s ‘Be Kind,’” Booth said. “Of course, I’ll have them break it down to ‘Be kind to others,” and so on, but they’ll explain it, so it becomes their own rule.”
It has worked so far. Test scores show 60 percent of her students this year read at grade level, 15 points above the District average.
Dixon Elementary teacher Jeannie Cornelius had her school’s small size and teachers’ avid grant-writing to thank for her students’ success. Both go hand in hand, she said. It means a small grant that would serve one or two classes in a larger school can serve all of Dixon’s 78 students.
“So it’s a lot of factors (that helped this year). There’s (the Academy), there’s grants,” Cornelius said. “And don’t forget parent involvement.”
Velarde teacher Jimmy Lara agreed. He also credited parental involvement for the fact that more than half his fourth-grade class tested at grade level in math and a full 80 percent did so in reading.
“That was one thing we really had going for us this year,” Lara said. “When I sent homework assignments home, the parents made sure the kids worked on them overnight.”
Lara sent home assignments not only for his students, but for parents as well. One exercise he assigned throughout the year, based on techniques brought to the District by the federal Reading First program, requires children and parents to read aloud to each other. The result: out of 15 students in his class, 12 tested at grade level or above.
At the same school, sixth grade teacher Beth Sanchez gave her students all the credit.
“They were 98 percent of it,” Sanchez said. “They were an amazing class, really enthusiastic to achieve. The kids need to understand that you believe in them, that you have high expectations. Not in the sense of pressuring them, but that they understand you expect them all to achieve.”