Ewing Young principal Kevin Milner figures his teachers spend up to two weeks before, after and during class assessing students at the beginning of the school year.

The drive to better understand each student’s strengths and weaknesses in order to develop an education plan targeted to individual needs is the reason behind an increase in classroom assessments.

The traditional school calendar doesn’t provide much flexibility to accommodate the need to work with each student individually at the beginning of the school year without taking away classroom instruction time.

This year, Newberg elementary schools will dedicate a single school day, Monday, September 22nd, to conduct assessments in reading, language arts, writing and mathematics.

These are local school assessments teachers will conduct one-on-one and in small groups. The intent is twofold:

• provide quality information about each student’s strengths and weaknesses for teachers to plan appropriate instruction
• stop the erosion of time for classroom  instruction to conduct assessments

“All available adults on staff will work with classroom teachers to get the assessments done on the 22nd,” said Don Staples, Director of Assessment and Data. “It’s an opportunity to interact with the student to really see what he or she knows so that teachers can use the data to inform instruction.”

Staples explains that not every student may be given the same assessment on that 22nd. He says that he classroom teacher will determine what best serves the needs of the students.

Assessment day impacts K-5 students only. Because the assessments are expected to take approximately two hours for each student, the 22nd will not be a full day for students.

Each school will conduct Assessment Day to best meet the needs of its education community, meaning each school plan will look a bit different. Principals will release specifics to parents and staff next week.

Middle and high school students are not affected and have a full day of school.

Teachers will use the assessment results to analyze and plan student instruction on the September 29th curriculum planning day.

Milner says parents can expect to learn their students assessment results at parent-teacher conferences. “We want parents to understand how to read the data and what it means in terms of their student’s education plan.”