On Monday, students in Barrington schools sat down, pencils in hand, and rolled through another round of NECAP (New England Common Assessment Program) testing. And in a few months, officials from the Rhode Island Department of Education will prepare a heaping packet of information heralding the scores from those tests.
For Barrington, the results will likely be impressive.
History has shown that local students perform admirably from year to year on the NECAPs. Sometimes their marks are the best in the state. Other times their marks are second best. But always, always, the test results are comfortably above the state average and comparable to results from some of the best school districts around the region.
Why share this news?
Because last week state educational officials released the latest round of results from the NECAP science tests and some — especially the scores from last year’s fourth-graders — were not as strong as expected. That, in turn, sent Barrington education officials scrambling for answers and sounding the alarm bell.
It’s great that Barrington school leaders feel compelled to gather information about a round of slightly abnormal test results and analyze it thoroughly, but we feel it’s important to remind people that there’s more to education than NECAP results. Much more.
In fact, it’s probably sound advice not to get too excited (when scores are strong) or too upset (when they’re not) with the results from these standardized tests. The NECAP results are an easy way to digest public school performance, but there’s a lot more involved to building successful students than chalking up impressive test scores.
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