Leadership and Test Scores

I do believe test scores can help us improve our instruction and also help guide us in making sound instructional decisions about our students. However, I do not believe that we should base any educational decisions or make any assumptions on just one low test score. I think using a variety of data is helpful in truly understanding the needs of our students. For example, are there alternative ways students can demonstrate their learning if they score low on a multiple choice test? Can we look at multiple years of test scores to see if a student scores consistently over an extended period of time? Or did the student have extenuating circumstances one particular year and that could attribute to the low test scores. I think there are so many variables that need to be considered when addressing low test scores. The easiest would be to blame it on the students that lack the skills or the teacher that might be struggling in their first year. However, I think it is an unfair practice to fire teachers if the majority of their students score low on SBAC testing. Firing a teacher or blaming it on the students’ lack of skills are just short term solutions when looking at low test scores. I think it is an Administrator’s responsibility to dig deeper into the root cause and to develop long term solutions to solve this problem.