TCAP...not the predator kind

While it is yet spring break, the daunting horizon of the TCAP is just three weeks away. Normally I do not stress about stuff like this but it is really important for me to see how well I am at getting results. Last year, I was able to lean on the crutch of not teaching my students an entire calendar year but this year....don't really have any excuses. To make matters worse, we have a widening achievement gap in the 5th grade (the largest gap in the building). My fear is that our classroom setup has made me better at teaching the kids at the top which is an exact flip of my results from last year. Our classes are ability grouped (don't ever consider that idea for an entire school building...not sure what idiot created that research but they should have been more specific about where to apply said research). I really want to see all of my students at proficient but I don't know if that is completely possible. Couple that with being unhappy with my job and it becomes that much harder to produce results. I love my kids, I love teaching 5th grade, I love my coworkers, but the structure of our school building and the culture of our school has had me in the worst slump ever. Now that I know I'm going on to new adventures, I will have the drive to push out some major moves in the next three weeks. We'll see though.