By Michelle Toma-Harrold
Director of Resource Services and Interim Coordinator, 3rd-6th grade
It’s the fall and the holiday season is here. As I have some time to reflect, I find myself thinking about the ebb and flow of the year and about family and school traditions. Perhaps because this is also the time of year when we have finished the ERB Comprehensive Testing Program, 4th Edition (CTP-IV) assessments, I also find myself thinking about standardized testing. What does it really mean in the context of all of the things that are important for our children’s education?
Since our founding and in our current strategic planning process, we’ve been clear about our commitment to educating the whole child. Our TCS graduates embody the 21st Century skills that we believe are essential for success in school and in life, including developing a love of learning, having strong character, being empathic, working collaboratively, communicating effectively, and demonstrating creativity and resilience. None of these critical skills are captured in standardized testing results.
Test results might tell us that a student can pick out a spelling error in a sentence, but not that that same student makes quick, abstract connections during classes taken while on TCS camping trips. They tell us that a student knows the definition of a specific vocabulary word, but not that he has a way with words and writes moving poetry. We see that a student is strong at math computation, but not how she rallies fellow students during math class to use a creative solution to finish a group project. We are all so much more than a set of seven test scores on paper.
So then, knowing their limitations, how do test scores fit in a school like ours?
Even though standardized test results don’t capture everything we know is important for students to learn, they are one indicator of the effectiveness of our curriculum and they do offer a point of comparison with other schools nationally.
This summer I spent considerable time analyzing our CTP-IV scores and am pleased to share that our outcomes are strong. The graph in the first picture shows our 6th grade students’ median scores on each of the seven CTP-IV subtests (in green) in comparison to suburban public schools (blue) and other independent schools (red). The second graph illustrates the trends in our 6th grade scores over the past three school years. Together, they suggest that our results are similar year-to-year, and show that our graduates are equal to or outperform students at similar schools. Our brand of academic rigor might be packaged differently, but it is highly successful. Above all else, our students’ competitive performances confirm our progressive, student-centered, whole-child approach and allow us to move forward doing what we do best – celebrate childhood while simultaneously offering a strong academic program.
Michelle and her daughter Emily, a TCS graduate now at Atlanta Girls School
