Grade Level Achievement Reporting

What state?

I'm pretty sure we are all in a similar boat no matter what state. With No Child Left Behind requiring every state to prove Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), many different assessment methods are being used across the country to prove this growth. In the district I teach in, we use not only the state assessment, but also Measures of Academic Progress ( MAP) testing. We spend a full three weeks a year testing students. For those students who may not be making AYP, we throw in a few more tests, just to keep checking up on them. It's a pretty sad situation our government has put us in.......

When I was in elementary school (1953-1961), we took semi-annual (January and June) "achievement tests," which measured whether or not we were on grade level in at least reading comprehension. As long ago as this was, the tests were machine scored and the results were given to us in the form of bar charts that measured our score against a standard. Everyone who was at least a semester (the increments were in semesters) above grade level was very proud, although the tests were meant just for the student and the student's parents and the classroom teacher.