What Counts in Catholic Education?

One of my favorite quotes:

Not everything that counts can be counted,and not everything that can be counted counts.

Why is this quote appropriate today? We're getting ready to start taking the Iowa Assessments, which we do every year the first two weeks in October. The data we glean from these tests is valuable, providing administration, teachers, and parents with a glimpse into the minds of our students. What have they achieved? What are their innate learning styles? What directions do we take in the future, knowing what we know as a result of these tests?

Clearly, standardized tests are an integral part of education today, public or private. And yet they are only one small portion of the tools we use to evaluate a child's progress toward all of the goals we have: spiritual, academic, social, emotional, physical, etc.

We don't have a standardized test to measure kindness, compassion, and empathy - and yet most of us would agree that these qualities are crucial to a healthy, mature person. We don't have a test for perseverance and persistence (well, the tests exist, but we don't have them in school). And yet recent research shows that these traits are vital for success in life. The ability to bounce back from failure is far more predictive of success in life than a string of unchallenged "successes" - or A's on the report cards.

This year we'll be taking the new form of the Iowa Assessments, aligned to the new Common Core standards. The diocese has advised us that we can expect lower test scores in this first year of the new tests, since it will take time to align curriculum with this new metric.

We'll continue to provide information to parents about the educational progress of our children, and we'll continuously work to improve our educational environment. Just remember that the scores on standardized tests are not the only "scores" that count!