Stepping it up in the NAEP data era

This is just a thinking piece or I guess it could be termed a philosophical commentary.

Based on what is predicted, the WKCE conversion to NAEP standards may end up at around the current levels of WKCE Advanced.

If that holds true, we will most likely have to make a number of adjustments. To state the obvious, we have to push up our thinking on expectation levels, even more than we have already. Our whole concept of what is an intervention level may have to drastically change. RtI and other interventions are based on having 10% to 20% of students below proficiency levels. Is every kid testing under the NAEP proficiency bar now to be in that intervention mode? Under the new benchmarks, schools could invariably have 40% to 70%, or more, students per grade level below the bar. We may be entering a time where most/all children have an individual learning plan as we may have an intervention mode for a majority of our children.

The old WKCE was a nice neat package. We were climbing close, or had goals in sight, to being at 90% proficient and advanced at all grade levels and that left 10% or so of students that were in need of intense interventions. Now with the NAEP bar, that concept is blown away. I called the DPI RtI Center on this and they are aware of this issue and plan to release something soon on the subject.

However, whatever the state comes up with for guidance; in this district it will be difficult to accept that a number like only 50%, or below, of our kids will be at the benchmark, as it looks like we are failing to get a majority of students to the benchmark. If that is indeed the levels we are at, then what the data seems to indicate is that we are being told, or put to the challenge, that our curriculum is being taught at a whole grade level behind where the assessment will be assessing. For, example, if we have only 49% of grade 5 students at grade level proficiency, do we need to somehow accelerate half of those kids to cover 125% of material (RtI concept of a more than a normal year gain in a year) in a year to get the majority that is now under the bar caught up in 4 years? This would be, to loosely paraphrase a past comment by Kathy Pettit, RtI on steroids. It is somewhat mind boggling if we think about it. We know we need to step it up a notch and everyone already is, but the concept of stepping it up may have just taken on a whole new meaning.

The positive is that we have been stepping it up and we are coming into this at a point of strength.