The break is over: the kids go back tomorrow, with E starting his second semester in middle school and L beginning her last semester as a junior. Two facts that are hard to comprehend: the Boy is 11; the Girl just turned 17. One more hard-to-believe fact: the school year is half over now.

I went back to school today for a teacher’s workday. Walking down the halls this morning I had the realization that we only have a matter of months before the end-of-year testing kicks in, and few of my on-level kids are ready for it. Granted, they’ve made progress this first semester, but there’s still so much more to do. One of the frustrations I have with all this testing is that it’s heartlessly uniform in its expectations: growth doesn’t matter; improvement doesn’t register — everyone has to reach the same place at the same time. The kids who go from struggling to write a paragraph with more than three sentences to writing fully-formed Schaffer paragraphs that make a claim, provide evidence, and explain that evidence will still get a “Not Met” score at the end of the year even though they’ve grown more than the English Honors kids who will score “Exceeds Expectations.” The kids who had so many emotional issues that sitting in a class and focusing for more than a few moments who grow to the point that they can remain focused for ten minutes at a time and work collaboratively with their peers without getting off-topic for a full five minutes — they’ll still “fail” despite all the evidence I could provide to the contrary.