Virtues Day

Day 6--#MTBoS30

Everybody knows that the last thing we need in May is another interruption.  This year, our district is putting on something they are calling Virtues Day.
I know... can I get a collective groan here?
This came about as the result of strategic planning.  It seems like every time we go through this process, the committee says we should be teaching character development to our children.  So we come up with ideas or programs and Virtues Day is the result this time.
So far, the pattern goes like this: We have strategic planning. We decide to teach character and create all sorts of other cool programs. We get our test scores. We cease and desist all character and cool programs to "focus on testing."  Lather, rinse, repeat...
And we have tried everything that anybody has ever recommended to raise those scores. The problem is that we have a paltry 60 students at our high school. There are fewer than 30 at the other high school in the district. I think that the sum total of students in our district is less than 400 currently. We are statistically insignificant. The confidence interval on our API score is something like 50 points. That means that API gains of less than 50 points mean nothing (essentially). It also means that one or two students who test well moving here or moving away, can have an impact on scores.
Even knowing this, we have all learned to play an elaborate game of API marketing.
Year 1: "Our API went up by 40 points! Yay! Aren't we great!"
Year 2: (Hanging our heads) "Yes, I'm afraid our API went down by 40 points and we are working very hard to remedy that."
To their undying credit, the district has never inflicted a "test score day" on us. I'm pretty sure they understand that the irony might kill all of the teachers outright.
The true irony is that programs like Virtues Day and character education are probably the best thing they can do to raise test scores.  Supporting your students and teachers and pumping them up to want to be at school will probably go ten times farther than cramming 8 million released test questions down their throats.  Teaching students to value hard work and achievement because they are character traits is probably more likely to give them a reason to try harder on the test than making released test questions and benchmark exams a part of their grade.
So in spite of all of the teacher groaning that is going on, I have high hopes that this will create some lasting good will or at least happy memories for our students and staff.
Now, about those test scores...