Administrator and Teacher Speak on the Effectiveness of Benchmarking

Benchmarking is a way that the teachers and the state can see the progress of the students in each grade level. The purpose is to show what you know and if you need help in a subject area or not. To further speak on this, Sara Wamsley, one of the assistant principals at Elkins High School pitched in on this testing frenzy.

“I’m going take off my administrator hat and put on my teacher hat. When we do benchmarking as a teacher we are looking at what are students can do when they come to us and all of that is depending how seriously they take the test.” She said.

“If you are taking the test seriously and you come to me with a certain score, I know what you can do in my classroom. We typically do a benchmark at the beginning of the year, so that I know the level of my students.”

So, yes, benchmarks are important, but how many students really take them seriously? We have Sam Straughan, a teacher at Elkins High School, to speak on this.

“I believe there were some students that definitely did take it seriously. From observing them I know that a lot of my students tried their best to take it as seriously as they could. However, I also believe some students were really overwhelmed by the content, with it being a new benchmark app we were using. That was something that was a major change that caused them to rush through it as well as the length of it, which is something that everyone was stunted by.”

 Students prepare for the next benchmark, which is in January. The best thing we can do as students is try our best and continue learning.