Grading myself

Thankfully at the school I am at we do not put a whole lot of focus on standardized testing.  In math, we go through the book about a chapter every 2 1/2 weeks, and the students take a test and maybe a couple of quizzes. But I do not really know how things are going compared to other students across the country.  I am looking forward to seeing how the students do on the Terra Nova tests that they will take but until then I have to go on what the students have done in past years  Clearly I have changed the way I teach and when the students took their semester math final focusing on the first six chapters of the book I was a little nervous on how they the students would do. Well they took their final and they significantly improved over last year.  I do not have the time right now to do a statistical analysis of the data but I am guessing that the average went up by about 10 points.  It was exciting to see the progress and that the concepts have stuck enough with the students.  We did a brief review the past three days in class but that was all and I did that the previous year as well.  I am just hoping that the gains are as dramatic on the Terra Nova tests they will take in spring.  That way maybe I can argue that other teachers might need to give this method of instruction a look.