Standardized Tests.

The California Department of Education this morning released the results from its annual round of standardized tests. You can see the press release here. This is a big deal for the public schools, not only for bragging rights, but if the schools fail to improve or meet certain standards, they may lose funding pursuant to provisions of the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

It's also a big deal because many parents and others look at test scores to determine how well their school is doing. This is highly controversial, since educators will tell you-and tell you again--that test scores are only one measure of how well a school is educating its students. It is also the easiest measure for most of us to understand. It doesn't take an educational psychologist to look at test scores and see that one school did better than another school. It is far more difficult--and may in fact, take an educational psychologist--to discern whether a school is adequately educating students without using objective metrics like test scores.

At Kadima, we don't do CST testing, but we do conduct standardized testing provided by the Educational Research Bureau, and the tests are customarily known as ERBs. The ERBs are given by independent schools nationwide, and this allows for Kadima to compare itself to a variety of other similar and dissimilar schools. It also allows the administration and staff to review our program every year. Still, the ERBs, as our principal, Yuri Hronsky says, form but one measurement of how the students are doing and more importantly, how Kadima is doing in its core mission of educating our children. It is not, however, the only measurement.

Our Middle School families recently received ERB results from this past year; our elementary school parents can receive them by contacting the school. Either way, I strongly encourage all parents to meet with the school administration to examine their students' test results. It is important that you look beyond the score--regardless of whether the score is stellar or whether it is something else--and fully understand it. And at Kadima, the administration is there for to help you through this process.

We'll be talking more about test scores, ERBs and other metrics in the weeks ahead.