The challenge today over at my favorite blog is writing about a student. Well there is only one that came to mind for this challenge! When J.M. came to me he was a non-writer, non-reader. All year I wondered how he had gotten so far and not been tested, because it was obvious there was a problem. I wanted those who had let him slip through the cracks of the educational system horse-whipped on the square. Anyway, JM wanted to learn, he was eager to try anything I asked of him. His writing was very fragmented and didn't have a lot of coherence to it, but he wrote. Before the 5th grade writing assessment we had worked on leads and conclusions. One of the examples I used to teach leads involved explaining how to eat an Oreo cookie. We had been practicing using descriptive words and exclamation points to get our readers attention.

On the day of the test, JM got one of the prompts asking him to tell about playing a sport. I watched as he thought (but didn't make any pre-writing movements). Then he wrote it Strike 1! Strike 2! Strike 3! This was a very bad day.... I wanted to jump for joy. I think the Hallelujah chorus was playing in the background. He had actual written a lead. But I knew the scores for the state assessment would not see the growth, the progress, the effort a non-reader was putting into this assignment. He wrote for the whole two hours. Nothing else made a whole lot of sense, but he wrote. Oh how I wanted him to pass the writing. He had tried and done the best he was capable of doing.

JM didn't pass the state assessment. He doesn't have 5th grade literary skills, but he had written a lead that made sense! JM scored a 175, you need a 200 to meet basic proficiency. Sadly, state assessments will never show the true growth our students make. I hate them, but that is a whole new post! (Of course without it my dissertation would be a bit shallow.)