I used to obsess over my students' test scores. I used to pore over the performance of every individual student on the STAR Exam and the A.P. Test, scrutinizing and dissecting the numbers, sifting through the data in search of some grand significance and enlightenment. No more. My statistical monomania as an educator was blasted to smithereens by Sandy Hook. Sandy Hook made the preoccupation with a narrow numerical definition of student achievement seem fully obscene and futile. There is so much more to education than our bingeing on multiple choice data, and we must disenthrall ourselves if we are to ever achieve any true measure of "student achievement."
