When we were teenagers, my sister and I were on a swim team.  I wasn't good, but I wasn't terrible either.  I was fine.  My father, who hated all kinds of competition in a super competitive way, used to tell us that he knew a way we could win every race we were in.  His secret?  Swim faster. 

The AYP/API results were released today.  Our school scored an 806.  Although the school scored over 800, which is the statewide target, we did not make the grade.  We had an overall downward movement of our score  (we had over 830 in 2008) and we 'failed' to show growth in two of our subgroups - Latino students and socioeconomically disadvantaged students.  

And what does all of this mean?  It means that there is more pressure, more pressure with fewer resources.  It means that we are now one of the lower scoring elementary schools in our district - a district where many schools score well over 900.  It means that we will be looked at and scrutinized, and every move we make will be second-guessed.  It means that people will assume we are not doing our job or not doing our job well.  This number will be pasted on our foreheads - like a college roommate of mine used to say about her weight "I am a number!"

 I have lots of issues about how this score is calculated, the context of this one number culturally and politically for our little school, and how these scores are used for everything from teacher rating to real estate values.  That is a post for another day (or year).  My main concern is the impact of this score on the school community for this school year.  I can only deal one year at a time. 

The district, which does much better at other schools, is not happy with our 806.  This is a problem for them.  We need to be higher or above 900, like everyone else.  I feel like the little brother that is constantly being held up to his older siblings with statements like, "Why can't you be more like Johnny?"  We are not Johnny, we are never going to be Johnny and it is time for somebody to get over it. 

How does the district, which is dissatisfied with our score, intend to help us?  Well, the reality is that there is no help.  There is no support.  We have to attend meetings, give assessments, tell our administrator what we are doing to meet the needs of our 'bubble kids' (the students who are close to meeting standards, but fall just under the line - these are the students we are to target to improve scores), and in which areas our students have the greatest needs.  We need to let everyone know what we are doing to meet these needs for all students.  We need to teach with accountability and transparency.  

Yes, we have an 'achievement gap'.  The two subgroups scored lower than the rest of the school.   This is a real issue for us, and needs to be addressed.  Our percentage of socioeconomically disadvantaged students keeps rising, and we need to ensure we are addressing the needs of these students.  Math is clearly our weaker area, and I hope our new curriculum adoption will help develop better mathematical thinking in all of the grades.  We are also not serving Latino students as well as whites and Asians and this is something that we need to keep in mind at all times (if we had statistics on our African American population, it would probably show this was lower than white and Asian students as well, but we don't have a statistically significant number of African American's in our school population).   All of this is important data, and using the data this way is useful and helpful in guiding instruction and ensuring all students have equal access to a high level of curriculum and instruction.  We need to know about the students whose needs are not being met.

 So, what can we do.  Me? I am going to swim faster.