April Assessments

As you are aware, April is assessment month in New York State. Our students at WGMS, along with all students in grades 3-8 across New York State, will take the Common Core Assessments in English-Language Arts from April 16th -18th and Mathematics from April 24th – 26th.  Our students and faculty have been working very hard all year; focusing on making sure that every child is becoming a better reader, writer, and mathematician. The state test gives us an opportunity to demonstrate the students’ learning and growth. 

The NYS Education Department has explained that this year’s assessments will differ greatly from assessments that our students have taken in previous years. The following link provides a terrific explanation for parents on the overall changes with the state assessments: http://www.ocmboces.org/tfiles/folder874/ParentExplanationAssessmentChanges.pdf

The best way for you to help your children is to simply encourage them to do their best, ensure that they get a good night’s sleep, and a nutritious breakfast each morning.  Testing will take place each day at 8:00 and run until approximately 10:00 on each of the six days of testing.  It is important that your child is present and on time. Students tend to do much better on these tests when they take them as scheduled, in the order they are given as opposed to taking them on a make-up day when their classmates are involved in other activities.  We are also encouraging parents to have their child leave all electronics (cell phones, DS's, ipods, mp3 players, etc.) at home during testing days.  Test administration rules require that any such device must be turned over to school staff and cannot remain in a student’s pocket or desk during the exams. If brought, students must keep these devices in their lockers.

As I have talked about in previous posts, in order to truly evaluate instruction you need to be in classrooms with students and teachers. As building administrators we are in classrooms every day and are confident that all of the hard work by our students, faculty and families will come shining through on these assessments. Regardless of what we think of them, let’s look at the next two weeks as an opportunity to showcase the tremendous amount of learning and growth that we have all been a part of.

Please email me or call with any questions, comments or concerns. Your feedback is always appreciated. Thank you for your continued support of our students and staff.

Steve Dunham
email: sdunham@westgenesee.org
Twitter: @Sdunhamwgms