How can we know whether our children are achieving in school? What does achievement really mean?

            Traditionally, the report card has measured how well a student is doing.
Now parents and educators are coming to see the report card as a look backwards in time, telling us something about performance … when it is already too late to do anything about it.

            There is a better way to evaluate student achievement. It is an ongoing review of progress toward clearly defined goals. Starting with standards for mastering a subject, teachers spell out what success will look like: This is what the student needs to be able to do, on a particular topic, at a particular grade level. The result is a continuing assessment of performance.

It is like competing in the diving events in the Olympics. The judges and divers alike know the elements of the perfect dive. They measure achievement against that standard.

Similarly, with ongoing evaluation the teacher lays it all out. Here is where we are going. Here are the steps we shall take to get there. Here is what your children need to know; here are the skills they need to demonstrate.

For parents, continuing assessment takes the mystery out of what constitutes achievement. The written curriculum is the curriculum taught, the curriculum learned, and the curriculum tested.

This opens up the opportunity for parents to start talking with the teacher at the beginning of the course. Ask your child’s teacher, “What is going to be on the test at the end of the term? How can I help my child master that content?”

Great Oaks, with our four campuses for career and technical education, concentrates on workforce development, for teenage students and adults. We teach the skills business and industry require. (Those skill standards are, by the way, becoming ever more stringent in terms of language, communication, math, and science abilities.)

For example, when Great Oaks cosmetology students take their exams, they know precisely what skills the state licensing board requires for certification. But at the core, no real difference exists between mastering Latin, Shakespeare’s tragedies, or the U.S. Civil War and qualifying for certification as a computer programmer, electrician, or jet engine maintenance technician.

Whatever curriculum you and your children are dealing with, you have the right as a parent to know the standards, to be told exactly what is being taught, and what is expected.

As Ohio develops standards-based education, there is much informative material for parents (and students) on the Ohio Department of Education website. Go to www.ode.state.oh.us/proficiency/. Click on “Sample tests, including previous tests” or “New Diagnostic & Achievement Tests”. You will find samples of what skills children from primary school on through high school are expected to demonstrate.

Given different learning styles, students take more or less time to master required skills.  But with continuing assessment, time is a variable.  Progressive success is the constant.