Among all the metrics we use to measure kids’ performance, the most useful in many ways is the MAP test. We give it at the beginning of the year and again at the end, and in past years, we’ve set personal performance goals using it as a standard. Average yearly growth for an eighth grader reading at grade level is about three points. Great growth is around seven or eight points. For those a little below eighth grade level, good growth is around six or eight points.

This year, I’ve conducted an experiment, pairing daily during silent sustained reading students who excel at reading with those who excel at other academic ventures. The idea was simple: the strong readers would help the weaker readers by explaining what and how they inferred things in the article, working together to figure out word meanings in the article strictly from context clues, discussing the contents of the article, and a number of other tricks and practices. We’ve been doing that most of the semester. Recently, the students took a shortened version of the MAP test and the results merited a Klondike ice cream party: average growth for one semester was 7.4 points, with two students increasing by an astonishing 15 points and one student by 14 points.

It was a good day to be a teacher.