BRUNSWICK SCHOOL
APRIL 2013
MONTHLY MAILING When, Exactly, Do You Measure Success? So much about the educational experience at a rigorous and competitive level is tied to assessment. From as early as Pre K (or earlier still, during the Admissions process for admittance to Pre K), our students are measured against age-appropriate norms. They are assessed on their various stages of development, their social interactions, their intelligence, and later on, their accumulated knowledge and achievement. Soon, beyond teacher assessments and report cards, they are also measured through standardized tests such as ERBs and, in highschool, by SATs and APs. At some level, all of this assessment is important and valuable. Parents (and students) need to know where they are relative to their peers and their own expectations, and as students in schools such as Brunswick compete for ever-more-competitive places in college and beyond, the simple experience of regular assessment and measurement is a fact of life with which all our boys need to grow comfortable. Specifically, our boys need to understand that their work is being assessed at certain points. They also need to appreciate that with those assessments will come the opportunity to improve upon what they have done and where they are thus far. All-in-all, being tested/assessed/measured/evaluated, when looked at in the right light, can be a good and encouraging thing. Looked at in the wrong way, however, especially at the elementary and secondary school level, assessment can be a risky thing indeed. The key, as with so many things in life, is in the timing. What I mean by this is that boys at the elementary and secondary school level have so much growing and developing yet to do, any conclusions based upon assessments need to be kept in that context. Measuring boys at this stage (girls, too, far that matter) offers only a snap-shot . . . a picture of where he/she is at this moment in time. History is literally full of major figures who, despite unrivaled success as adults, were poor to middling achievers as school children. So the important message here is that it is all in the timing. No boy at Brunswick is a finished product yet. Our hope and goal as we measure our boys and their work is not to determine an ultimate level of achievement for them (they have too much time ahead of them for anyone to make that determination just yet). Rather, our desire is to give them (and their parents) a sense of where they are at this particular moment in time and, far more importantly, what they might do to improve still further going forward. As Brunswick’s goal is to “prepare young men for life,” we accept that life will most certainly involve assessments and measurement along the way, and it will also involve many wonderful opportunities for improvement and growth. Being successful in 5th grade or 12th grade is a great deal less significant than being successful as a husband, parent or in a calling or career. Just as no one should conclude that good report cards at this level assure a bright future ahead, no one should conclude that an occasional weak report card is a guarantee of more disappointing reports to come. It isn’t the results we get on life’s “tests” that matter, but what we learn from those results as we face the future, that will define our lives ahead. Time is on our boys’ side.