WARNING: BRAGGING PARENT STORY BELOW: If you don't want to hear me brag about my child...don't read this post. Today, Bennett's teacher sent me Bennett's CRCT scores. I don't know if I have blogged about our history on standardized tests...it goes something like this...We tell Bennett's teachers how smart he is and that we hope that he will be challenged and that we know he can handle more advanced classes and we are told that his standardized test scores don't reflect that so too bad! This year I had Bennett put in Advanced Math. I had to go to the school and sign a paper saying that he didn't qualify for the advanced class but I was putting him in anyway. So I did. Bennett has done very well in the class. He has received 2 A's and a B so far this year on his report card in math. The grades have been there BUT he has also had some struggles. He was struggling with test taking, finishing his work in class and basically staying on task. This all really came to a head a month or so before the CRCT (standardized test here in GA). We were definitely moving in the wrong direction at the wrong time! After ALOT of back and forth and this and that...we ended up making a slight medication adjustment for his ADHD and putting some serious test strategy in place. Poor kid had to do CRCT practice testing over Spring Break. While we were dealing with the medication and focus issues, Bennett was also tested for TAG (talented and gifted). He didn't get in to the program. When he didn't get in to TAG he was crushed. Bennett scored very high on all of the academic testing they did, but scored low on the creativity testing...
I blog you all this so you understand this - Bennett knows he is smart and most likely, has been more frustrated than Mark and I to be left out of the programs for the more advanced kids. So as we were working on our test taking strategy with Bennett the conversation was about the fact that we know that he is smart, but we needed to figure out the tricks to help him capture those results on the CRCT. The other panic point about CRCT is that if they don't pass Math and Language Arts in 4th grade, than that means you repeat 4th grade. The kids know this fact and Bennett knows he hasn't been the best test taker in the past...
CRCT testing was over a 2 weeks time period and during that time they spread out 5 days of testing. He would come home after a day of testing and I would try to be all cool and casual and I would say "so how did it go today, did our plan help" and he would say "I didn't want to read all of the stories in the reading section so I didn't really follow our plan, sorry" I would say "oh" (keeping with the theme of being cool and casual and not freaking him out!) The night before science he had a complete panic meltdown because he couldn't remember anything he had learned. Now one side note...in years past Bennett has come home from the CRCT and told us he got all of the answers correct he was sure of it, so Mark and I just really had no idea what to think.
So my secret email from Bennett's teacher today told us that Bennett did extremely well this year on the CRCT. With his scores it looks like he will be in ALL advanced classes for 5th grade. Now in the end, we just want Bennett to be happy. I will tell you though, he has worked very hard to accomplish this goal. Just to give you some idea of what an issue this has been, when I got the results I cried...to be told over and over again that Bennett is smart but not TAG smart (a quote from the prinicpal by the way). So I guess I cried out of relief. I know what a dork. It felt like finally Bennett got the access into the advanced classes he wants to be in and Mark and I have the affirmation that we aren't crazy, psycho, my child can-do-no-wrong-and-by-the-way-he-is-a-genius-parents...he really is a genius! HA!
