Bragging Rights

I've been a little concerned about the kids new elementary school they are attending. Many people have asked about the scores of the over all school? On the same note I've also been told that the scores aren't very good and the school is one of the worst in the state of Utah.

OUCH!

Besides choosing to home school we don't have any other choice than the school they are already going to. My kids don't need to attend the best school possible but at the same time I don't want them attending a "not so good" school and not being taught the things they should be learning.

I've been doing a little research online to come to my own conclusions. Valley Elementary is NOT as bad as I was being led to believe it was. On several UT websites I found there are a total of 496 elementary schools. Ranking #1 as the best and #496 as the worst our current school's ranked at #121. The school they attended last year was ranked #222. The schools are ranked by the states test scores. So each year a school can go up or down on the ranking level.A little while ago I had parent/teacher conferences other wise known as SEP's.

Both SEP'S went extremely well. I'm going to excersise my bragging rights and brag about Madelyn for a minute....

At the begninning of the year the kids are given a reading test to decide their reading level. Madelyn is in 2nd grade and scored a 3rd grade reading level. She was also tested on vocab. She once again scored a 3.2 which is 3rd grade 2nd month. There is another test coming up next month and her teacher thought she'd probably score at least a 4 which would be 4th grade.

At the end of our appointment her teacher said she'd love to clone Madeyln about 22 times. It would make her job as a teacher much easier. What an awsome compliment for this mama.

Good Job Madelyn.

It's Hunter's turn for a little bragging now....

At the beginning of the year Hunter was given a reading/vocab/comprehension test. He to will be tested again at the beginning of the new year. His teacher told me his scores were off the charts! What does that mean???? The average score for the reading test that was given was a 17. She asked me to guess what Hunter's score was. Ummmmmm? Maybe a 50 (you know off the charts right?) She replied, yeah NO! He scored 147! Good grief. She told me she thought maybe he was just a good guesser until she looked at the rest of his scores. For vocab. he scored, drum roll please.......

7.2 what's that????

Seventh grade 2nd month!

His comprehension was a 6.8, sixth grade 8th month.

Apparently it's pretty common for the comprehension score to be a little lower then the reading level. She too mentioned what a great kid Hunter is. He's always quiet, never speaks out of turn, is quick to raise his hand, and is just an overall joy to have in class. She wishes others would act more like him.

What can I say? I left the school pretty proud of my kids.

These scores are what prompted my research into there school. It's a little unsettling to know that there scores where as high as they were and no one else in there class was that high.

It made me wonder if we were now attending a "dumb" school. The school's scores aren't terrible. Kory and I have decided neither one of us is ready to home school so we'll just keep pushing the kids to do the best they can and try to challenge them a little more from home.