You can't compare performance without a metric. Once you tie funding and job security to a metric, you create an incentive to focus solely on that metric. Testing is the easiest way to get a simple number that everyone can understand. It's a shitty solution, but I don't have a better alternative either.
Just in this past two weeks my school has seen the schedule change for ISTEP testing (Indiana's big standardized test). Two weeks from now kids have PSATS, Accuplacer, and later the End of Course Assessments (ECAs). Passing ISTEP is a requirement to graduate for sophomores and freshmen going forward, passing ECAs are required for juniors and seniors, but everyone will still take ECAs. All sophomores and most juniors take PSATs at school, and most kids take Accuplacer, although for the life of me I don't know what the fuck that test is for or why we do it. None of this even takes into account AP testing. For World and US history we have to give INCAA tests, which (As I found out) don't mean anything and aren't even looked at by by the state or admins, but they want us to give it anyway. We give it, no one grades it or even gives it a second thought, but we are literally testing for the sake of testing. That's how bad it gets. When I say no one grades it I mean that literally. Last year, they didn't give me a key, I just gave the tests to our administrators and they shredded them. One of the other teachers never even turned his kids' tests in. Just left them on his desk all summer, figured someone would come by to get them. Nope. When he asked about it in September, the Admin just said to throw it in recycling. Holy shit. It is a god damned circus from March forward, with the bell schedule changing every fucking week for new tests. The kids hate it and feel nothing but stress. Teachers at the elementary school level turn into counsellors around this time trying to keep 3rd graders from having nervous breakdowns over tests. The schools and state drill it into these kids that if they don't do well on these tests, they're letting everyone in their town and school down, and that kind of stress will fuck a kid up real quick. Here is what really bugs me, though. I teach juniors. My students are 16-17 years old. 80% of them don't read above a 6th grade level. That includes my AP US history class. I have kids in AP who cannot read the book, because it is at a college level and they can't read beyond 8th grade. I had a student last semester (he dropped AP thank god) who literally could not write a coherent sentence. I have another that's still in the class and failing. Our counsellors are fucking terrible. Oh, but my school is also still graded as an "A" school. What really bothers me is these kids are on their phones and computers constantly. 90% of their communication is writing, but they still can't fucking read and don't see the point of getting better beyond "you have to pass this test." This is why I won't be teaching much longer.
We've seen a lot of teachers leaving the public schools precisely because of the testing and coming to us because we're private, have our own curriculum which they're more than welcome to expand upon, and we allow them the freedom to use their education and experience to actually, you know, educate. I'm coming up on 11 years working here. We have people who have been with us 30+ years. In the same room for 25+ years. The public school system has become a joke. While there are certainly some good public schools out there (as there are certainly some absolutely shitty private schools), the best teachers are leaving public ed. in waves for the private sector. They're getting burnt out of being, for lack of a better comparison, an assembly line worker. True teachers (and not merely "babysitters") are an asset, what they do is an art, and the great ones are hard to find. It's a really sad state of affairs right now. Standardized testing as a whole needs to be gone, and sooner rather than later. The next generation is dependent upon it.
God bless the teachers. I couldn't put up with any of that shit...the administration, the bureaucracy, the kids, the kids' parents...I'd last about two days.
My wife had a 3rd grader sell a 2nd grader an 1/8 of weed and then threaten to cut him if he snitched.
I get asked that question on almost a daily basis. Some variation of "how the hell do you do this?" By parents. As I'm touring them around. With their child. It's one of those things where you love it or you can't stand it and you find out very quickly. Fortunately, at least in my area, there is hope on the horizon. A lot of young people are viewing teaching as a legitimate career and they're starting early, like when they get out of high school early. A lot of very passionate young kids coming into the profession, with a lot of enthusiasm, big hearts and a lot of talent (which they didn't always learn in the classroom). Also, when I started, the stigma against male teachers was heavy, and it kept a lot of great people from pursuing it as a career. Now it's common for parents to specifically request a male teacher. And as a plus, I now rarely get called "ma'am" on the phone.
So the hormone treatments have been working, then? D26, about the literally pointless tests you mentioned: Texas does that too! It's called the "Benchmark Test," and it's pure, uncut bullshit. My ex-wife's sister used to work for the local school district, and she told us that they just pack the finished tests away in boxes, where they get sent to a storage facility, probably to be shredded later. No grading whatsoever. Someone's gotta be making money off of that; I can't think of any other reason for it.
One of the biggest problems with education is Texas. As a state with a massive population, all the textbook and test companies tailor everything to appeal to the Texas board of education, because they give the most lucrative contracts. Then everyone else gets a "Texas" version of books and information. Then again, I teach at a shockingly, almost alarmingly rural and white school. I work at the kind of school where teaching the civil rights movement gets nothing but eye rolls and mumbled n-words about Martin Luther King. The kind of school where some students openly brag about wanting to join the Klan. The kind of school where everyone openly talks and knows about the "Klan Bar" in the county, and a few say their parents go there. It's a fairly affluent, rural area, and teaching there is killing my soul. The kids I taught at an "urban" school honestly worked a million times harder than the kids I teach now. My old school was 1/3rd split white, Hispanic, and Black. They had to wear uniforms because of constant gang activity. We had metal detectors and armed officers in every hall. And honestly? Fuck I'd go back and teach there in a minute over the school I'm at now, because the school I'm at now is every kind of awful. The major difference? If a kid in an urban school failed, no one gave a shit, except the kid. They wanted to pass to have a chance to get the fuck out. If one of my kids now fails? Both parents will be up my and the administrations ass to pass them, because it can't be their precious flower who hasn't turned in an assignment since 2012, it must be that lazy teacher who keeps losing all his work. And the administration, either out of frustration of laziness, always takes the parents side, unless we can provide some kind of evidence that we don't have an assignment a kid claimed to have turned in but never did. YOU try and prove that shit. They don't want to "get out." It's the kind of town where the parents all grew up there, the grandparents grew up there, no one leaves. They all plan to graduate and work in town in auto shops or on farms, and few have any kind of college aspirations. Those that do want to go to college will be woefully unprepared. I had a recent grad come back and thank me for being the only teacher that treated his students like adults. I don't pressure kids for late work, I don't accept late work, and I talk to them like they're adults and hold them responsible. Coincidentally, I fail more kids than anyone else there. I just explain to the students that I won't care about their grades more than they do. If they don't care and are okay failing, so am I. If they want an A, I'll bend over backwards to help them get it. Tutoring? Extra study guides? Study sessions before and after school? I do all that shit, for kids who want it. Very few do. Other teachers give kids full credit on assignments that are 6 weeks late. They give kids 9 or 10 tries to pass a test. They'll dumb the work down to an almost absurdly low level to pad grades. Hooray! Everyone is getting an A! Only 15% of our grads finish a 4 year college degree. The 2014 valedictorian? He's on academic probation at Purdue right now and begged some of his old HS teachers to help tutor him so he doesn't fail out. Said he had no idea how to work for grades in college or how to study. My school sucks so fucking hard.
I'm from a very small town in Mississippi. There was an article about our education system in the Washington Post, or at least I think that is the publication. It was about the difference between the public school system and the private school system in this area. Being that I'm white I of course went to the private school which just happens to be on land my family donated during the desegregation days. Until college I had never been in a class or seen anyone in my school that wasn't white except for janitors/cafeteria staff/or landscapers. But the teachers at my school start out around $10,000 less per year than the public school. I love teachers; my mother taught in public schools for 40 years until she passed. It just seems that I have so many friends that majored in ED fully knowing the pay scale and then graduate and want to complain about the money. I agree that in MS it is shit. But everyone went into it with eyes wide open. I always thought that teaching was a calling somewhat akin to the priesthood or social work. I have made friends with a few TFA's (Teach For America) and while they come in with bright eyes and enthusiasm they inevitably leave for better jobs. I honestly have no idea how to fix the system here but I do wholeheartedly wish someone would at least try instead of all the public schools in the delta being taken over by the state.
So here's what I've heard so far...Politicians want a metric for subject competency so testing, and tons of testing because voters want that and I think Dixie is right, someone is making good money off this. Teachers have a perverse incentive to teach to the test because funding, also teachers are getting burned out because students have become less accountable for grades. Students are getting burned out because college has become insanely competitive and all the other responsibilities they have. Sounds like the system is more fucked than ever. Maybe the thing to do is less testing across the board, but I doubt that'll happen because I don't think anyone will want to be a first mover, and decrease the demands on the kids as weird as that will sound to some. Maybe not scheduling every hour of a kids day, and you know letting them be kids and enjoy it because they have plenty of time to be miserable as an adult, is the way to go. So for the kids, is there a better option? Is there something better that can be done than endless testing and scheduling? Testing seems so simple and ineffective, I have to think some smart people out there and conceive a better way to measure school achievement.
I was in Mississippi once. I have two vivid memories of the place. 1. It was fucking hot. It was also August. 2. I drove by a gas station that offered "all you can eat liver & gizzards! $1.99!" Liver and gizzards. All you can eat. For under $2. From a GAS STATION. That shit ain't right.
Just a random thought here. And this is pointed at the TV viewing public as much as it is History Channel and TLC: Can we stop making white trash popular? Pawn STars cretin arrested for meth and gun possession amidst sexual assault investigation. If you can't make actual history interesting, you know that shit about war, plague, weaponry, torture, intrigue, and spies, REAL LIFE GAME OF THRONES, then how the fuck. Just... how the fuck. In other news I've been living off collard greens and cabbage for 3 days now. Soon to be filming "He Got Game 2."
Do you live in the Poltergeist house? Did that tree try to eat you last night? We need to get a diminutive southern hairdresser to cleanse the spirits. "YOU ONLY MOVED THE HEADSTONES." I also like, in 2016, a time where we have UNDERWATER TRAIN TUNNELS, we still insist on running the power lines from the back of the house 100 yards to the pole.
Interesting http://www.fox5vegas.com/story/3143...weapons-drug-possession-charges#ixzz42Vp4wVZo I wonder how that came about.
It could be haunted. The house was built in 1957 so none of the homes in the neighborhood have underground lines. Happened around 330am. I still don't get how a tree just falls over while staying totally intact.
Weird, doesn't look like it was rotting but the roots could have been bad. I'm sitting at a healthcare conference and the guy in the booth next to me is explaining to his buddy what a golden shower is. Priceless.