Fives!

The College Board said they were releasing scores on July 7. They were wrong. They came out on Wednesday, July 5. Their release led to a really fun burst of activity. 

The two kids I worked with most directly on these efforts (aside from my students) both shared their fives with me. Sam earned a five in AP Euro! I'm thrilled, though I would've been thrilled with a four. Oh, and Amber, the daughter of a friend, shared her news of a five early on also. I had coached her through some tricky material while making dinner a couple of times (it was funny . . . she twice realized she was stuck on something in AP Macro around 5 pm or so, so she called, and I would walk through the intricacies of deficit financing and the nature of the Long Run Phillips Curve while stirring something). Sam, by the way, mostly did this on his own. I nudged him occasionally, and once or twice I affirmed and clarified the feedback he was getting from his teacher. Ironically, I won't hear from the majority of students I actually taught this year. 

Those two are teenagers, though, and slept in a little bit. The first person I heard from was my friend and partner in crime at work who shared the news that a student we were rooting for earned a three. She passed! We were quite pleased. Then my friend and I proceeded to evaluate the status of our annual bet (Who scored better in AP Macro? that person deserves a beer!) I was convinced I would be buying this year. Lo and behold, we tied! Tied with a 4.06 average. 

It's remarkable about how this publication of test scores got teachers talking in the midst of the summer. There were three other colleagues in my department I was connecting with about AP Economics scores. One colleague just joined us in teaching it this year, and his kids did pretty well on it. Another colleague had been tutoring one of my students, more on executive functioning stuff than economics material per se. She was happy to hear the student earned a four. By the way, when students share news of a four with me, my response is largely similar to how I respond to a five. Sometimes the difference between earning a four and five is luck. (The understanding evinced by a four is quite different than that evinced by a three). Oh, and usually fours are good for credit at colleges. 

Though I tend to be skeptical of standardized tests I have put a lot of stock in these results. It's a chief gauge by which I calibrate my teaching practices. I keep close track of my results with a spreadsheet, looking to see what my long-term trend is but also seeing if there is fidelity between what a student earns in my class and how they perform on the exam. In many ways, this data represents my chance to reset and focus on the year ahead. This year, the reports indicate that my students and I met with more success than it felt like we were meeting in real time. I should be reluctant to do too much differently in the year ahead.