[LIT] Reading Levels

[amanda patrick]

Hi,
  I'm a member of middle web and i noticed that you said you lived in Florida.  I am close to moving to the Pensacola/Panama city area when i'm done with grad school in a year.  I currently live in illinois and have heard *a lot* about the Florida school systems.  However, it certainly looks like at least you have some good programs in place???
  Any advice would be lovely!
   
  Amanda Patrick

ReadersnRacers at aol.com wrote:
  Tena writes: The idea of the testing is to provide a tool to help teachers 
determine areas of academic needs both within a class or individually. My 
concern is the test may well become more of a teacher evaluation piece...Anyone 
out there have info on NWEA and it's use?

Pam writes: I can't speak for the NWEA or it's use, but I can speak to 
testing being used to evaluate school's performance & it looks like teachers 
evaluations (tied to "performance pay" loom on my immediate horizon). For at more 
than 5 years, our state has been "grading" schools based on their performance 
on our state test (FCAT). The legislature (with our evil governor) has 
passed performance pay for teachers - at least how it's figured will be up to 
individual districts. We analyze (at length) at my school what we need to focus 
on to raise our school grade (i.e. FCAT scores). We don't dwell too much on 
individual analysis for our students (although a positive was that we did some 
serious analyzation of our bottom 25% and matched them with an adult mentor). 
When I mentioned that I assess reading & writing for each of my students 
everyone (my own department even) looked at me like I was insane. Yep, I give 
Botel & do running records on all my students and have for several years. I 
found that when I combined that info from Lexile and with scoring of writing 
using the 6 Traits, I had a much better handle on which students needed more 
help and *where* they needed help.


Pamela Tempest
Team Neon - ELA Teacher

Feelings of worth can flourish only in an atmosphere where individual dif
ferences are appreciated, mistakes are tolerated, communication is open, and rules 
are flexible - the kind of atmosphere that is found in a nurturing classroom. 
-- loosely based on quote from Virginia Satir
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