Out of 60 students, 11 did not take the exam for various reasons - including one unfortunate soul who left in the middle of the exam very sick - she woke up the morning of the exam with fever & headache. During the exam it progressed to nausea, and she just could not make it through the exam. A real heartbreak, because she was certain to do well and just a great kid all around. Several students did not bother to finish labs or get their binders in order, so they weren't allowed to take the exam. Others were relatively recent additions to the regents classes who missed over half the year, so I exempted them from the exam. So that leaves 49 students and here's how they did (all scores are scaled scores - the one that counts):
Number who passed 38
Number who failed 11
High Score 91
Low Score 46
Average 68.7
So that's about a 77% passing rate for those taking the exam. For my own personal tally, I would calculate in a portion of those students who didn't take the exam - 8 students who failed to finish the lab requirement and I take responsibility for not making sure that the labs were done. So factoring in those students brings it down to about 67% passing rate - which is abysmal.
Let the Hand-Wringing Begin
So what went wrong? There are so many variables, I don't know where to begin. I'll start with myself, since that's the one variable I have some control over. And I'll put this in the format of "what to do better next time" to avoid wallowing in self-recriminations.
Work on sequence. A question I struggled with all year, which topics to cover in which order. The city is working on scope & sequence for the regents curriculum for next year (I've seen the draft version), which I will probably follow it to a large extent next year. All my creative tinkering with traditional sequence was for nothing, at least as far as the test goes. I do know that as much as possible the curriculum should be front loaded - cover a lot of material early on, consolidate & review at the end. I definitely had too much material to cover at the end of the year when kids were spent. I didn't plan it that way, which brings up the next point...
Pacing. I frequently dragged my feet because of the sheer amount of work involved in moving from one topic to another - i.e., putting lessons together, or developing a project, or getting everything set up for a lab. Fact is, I know that this is a personal weakness, partly attributable to burn out from teaching a different subject almost every year I've taught and constantly repeating this nonsense of re-inventing the wheel every year. But partly just because I'm really a little slow and disorganized, which is why I need a some simplicity and continuity in my life. Next year I will have so much already in place that I can move at a faster pace and hopefully, in the process...
Work on student motivation. I think the pacing definitely affected student interest, which clearly waned as the year went on. I probably did more labs, hands-on activities, & projects than I've ever done in the past, but somehow I wasn't able to find a way to connect it all to the students' interests - biology, of all things, which you might think would require a minimal effort to connect directly to students. Somehow I just didn't pull it off. And when I did find individual topics that seemed to connect (reproduction, human bio in general), it didn't seem to carry over to other topics or the big picture.
Just plain staying on the kids in an effective way, about keeping up with work and staying focused. Obviously this will be more or less necessary depending on how well the previous issues are worked out, but there will always be times when some students need a little extrinsic motivation in the form of rewards or calling parents or whatever.
There. I feel better already. In a separate post I will talk about some issue I have with the curriculum, the test, regents in grade 8.
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