My Joe asks for a ride to school roughly once a week, and last night's reason was pretty good: testing begins today.
Technically, it started yesterday, but within our state "testing window," districts set their own schedules. Knowing that Mondays often have lower attendance, Danville really starts today. Many other districts will do the same. Reading will be first on the schedule.
Do you remember hearing "It will take twenty years to know if reform worked?" It's twenty years, my friends.
Likewise, do you remember hearing "We're aiming for proficiency by 2012?" Joe Weston, along with Dowell Harmon and Diamond Pace and their classmates across the commonwealth, are that class of 2012, and we measure their reading skills today.
And, of course, we measure our two decades of work on their behalf, knowing we have made a difference, and knowing there is so much more still to do.
Update: Joe in shorts, backpack over his shoulder, has made his way into school, and the Boss has shown up to carry me through the emotional tide.
The highway's jammed with broken heroes on a last chance power drive
Everybody's out on the run tonight
but there's no place left to hide
Together Wendy we'll live with the sadness
I'll love you with all the madness in my soul
Someday girl I don't know when
we're gonna get to that place
Where we really want to go
and we'll walk in the sun
But till then tramps like us
baby we were born to run
This was an especially poignant post, Susan. Measuring institutional progress as it pertains to a real child--your Joe, no less--puts the stakes in high relief. It also reminds me not to get too complacent that one of my own children is class of 2020, despite the Prichard Committee's laudable Top 20 by 2020 initiative.
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