This past week was another solid week at HDHS with a solid culmination to the week. Friday Dr. Joe Hoedel visited our high school. Dr. Hoedel is the creator of the Character Development & Leadership curriculum. This is the character education curriculum that we use during advisory time Tuesday and Wednesdays each week. In my opinion, this is the best high school character education curriculum available. During his visit to our high school, Joe addressed the high school staff at a Friday morning staff meeting and later addressed the students during an assembly. To see Dr. Hoedel's curriculum and more about him you can visit his website at http://www.characterandleadership.com.
This week I received an anonymous letter in the mail from someone pointing out supposed errors in the 2008-09 yearbooks that were recently distributed to students. I would like to take this opportunity to give my perspective about the yearbook and other student publications. The yearbook, Bulldog Bark, and other articles are just that, student publications. They are not professional documents. They are designed to help students learn. They have not been and will never be perfect even though they have an adviser who teaches the students better writing, layout, and design of various publications. I will publicly apologize for any errors in last years yearbook, future yearbooks, and other student publications but promise that both students and staff do their very best in these publications.
This week MAP testing starts at the high school. M.A.P. stands for Measure of Academic Progress. Students take these online tests twice each school year. The MAP tests are not timed, which separates them from many standardized tests. Students will test in the areas of Reading, Math, language, and Science. These tests serve multiple purposes. First, they are a prescriptive test to how students will perform both individually and collectively (as a grade) on the ITED's (Iowa Test of Educational Development). Next, the MAP test give stakeholders another test to monitor student learning and hopefully growth. Teachers refer to the MAP tests as formative in nature. THis means that they are used by educators to improve their own practice. We also use the MAP test to more accurately put students in the right classes, monitor special education student proficiency, and show growth for students who are scheduled in classes such as Second Chance Math and Second Chance Reading. In a nutshell, these tests are very meaningful for high school staff and important that we get accurate results. MAP testing will take roughly two weeks. As the title of this weeks blog refers to, educators use the MAP test for "direction" for each student. Direction as to what classes they need to be in, what they are ready to learn, what they are prepared to read, and how they should achieve on other standardized tests. I look forward to getting testing started and being able to share your son or daughters results with you at parent/teacher conferences coming up this Fall.
For more general information about the MAP tests visit the following site:
http://www.nwea.org/about-nwea/faq/Measures%20of%20Academic%20Progress%20(MAP)
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