BY SEAN ROBINSON
srobinson@thenewstribune.com

Editor’s note: Compiled from reports to Tacoma police. Taken from the Tacoma News Tribune police beat article.

Nov. 9: Spatters of blood covered the principal’s shirt and shoes.

The school resource officer at Oakland Alternative School, answering a panicked radio call, asked what was going on. The principal said he’d just broken up a fight between two students. One had a bloody nose.

The principal said he noticed the two students confronting each other outside and ordered them into the main office. As they walked in, the fight started. One boy, 17, took another boy, 16, to the ground and started throwing punches.

The principal pulled the attacking boy away and stowed the boys in separate rooms.

The officer spoke to the younger, bloody-nosed boy first. The boy didn’t want to say anything at first.

He said he wasn’t a gangster, but his friends were, and so was the older boy. He said the older boy came at him, started talking trash, tried to pick a fight and sucker-punched him.

HE SAID HE WASN’T A GANGSTER, BUT HIS FRIENDS WERE, AND SO WAS THE OLDER BOY. HE SAID THE OLDER BOY CAME AT HIM, STARTED TALKING TRASH, TRIED TO PICK A FIGHT AND SUCKER-PUNCHED HIM.

The boy wouldn’t say anything else. He wouldn’t say what the trash talk was about.

The officer spoke to the other boy, who said even less.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” the boy said.

The officer relayed the story he’d heard. Was that true?

“I don’t know,” the boy said.

Did he throw the first punch?

“Yep.”

The officer told the boy he was under arrest for misdemeanor assault. The boy stayed calm.

The officer spoke to the boy’s mother. She said her son had said a rival gang was after him, believing he was the gunman in a recent shooting in Tacoma’s Salishan area. The mother believed that was the basis for the fight at the school.

The officer booked the boy into Remann Hall, adding a charge of marijuana possession after staffers found a packet of pot in the boy’s shoe.

Read more here: http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/crime/article44918637.html#storylink=cpy

A perusal of the same newspaper has other articles about schools. In one, we are told that police are looking for a Foss High School student who apparently pointed a gun at another student on Monday. It’s not clear exactly where the incident happened, but the school went into lockdown.

Eduhonesty: I taught in an alternative high school some years ago. I remember the police dogs coming in. I remember students discussing eating their marijuana. In a pinch, humans can eat dried grass, no problem. This article has so much content that needs exploring but I think I’ll stick with one aspect of the academic crisis referred to in this article, the crisis of gangs and violence in our schools in a time when teacher evaluations are heavily based on student behavior. In particular, I fear a brain-drain that I am watching from the sidelines.

(Click to enlarge pictures.)

Teacher evaluations based on a common rubric like the sample above are inherently unfair. That sample is only a small part of a large rubric that can result in a more than twenty-page evaluation. I have one somewhere. The standard evaluation in Illinois has become huge, so huge that at times its accuracy must be suspect. In an hour, no administrator can observe all 20-some pages worth of behaviors. Admin can put “not observed” but I know that some administrators are “inferring” as they decide to score categories they have not specifically observed.

How does the rubric work? In a system commonly used by districts, a teacher would receive 1 – 4 points in each category in an evaluation, so my snippet above would be worth from 3 – 12 points depending on an observers view of behaviors in the classroom.

Administrators in alternative schools understand an alternative high school is a different animal, so I am not concerned about that alternative school as much as I am concerned about teachers in “feeder” schools. Some schools supply a higher percentage of students expelled for weapons, drugs and other offenses. Some schools contain many more gang members than others, gang members regularly attending classes where they are setting up the marijuana etc. sales that supply the gang with revenue. When expectations for teachers in those schools are the same as they are for teachers in middle class schools with limited or no gang activity, teachers in gang-infested schools end up being trapped and potentially set up to fail.

I’d like to ask readers to pause to consider how heavily the category of student participation might be affected by numbers of gang members in a classroom. Then think about how much better participation might be (on average) in a classroom filled with college-bound students.

In earlier times, when teachers were assessed based on their own efforts and performance, with an understanding of urban challenges, the system worked. Now, student behavior and class performance have become a heavy component of many evaluations and teachers are at a disadvantage when they choose to work in urban or disadvantaged areas. Teachers lose points for student misbehavior or off-task behavior, reducing evaluation scores. How might a teacher manage that problem of detached students? The problem of students who have gone to school mostly to sell drugs?

Here’s my take: If I had started working in these times, I’d have moved out of disadvantaged schools almost immediately and never gone back. When student behavior determines a large percentage of an overall evaluation, the best tactical move is to seek a school with students who intend to go on for further education, a school usually found higher up the socioeconomic ladder. Those schools pay better and now they frequently result in higher evaluations, since college-bound students are more likely to demonstrate the behaviors that give high points on the teacher evaluations.

The category “student participation” only forms part of the picture. Student interest and participation will also affect questions formed and asked. “Discussion techniques” and “quality of questions” will also be affected by class composition. If I have a class that is academically very low, I have to ask simpler questions more often. If nothing else, I will be asking these questions to prime the questioning pump, to get students to begin to answer questions so that I can go on to harder questions once the discussion develops momentum. In a stronger class, I might be able to leap straight into the deep, critical thinking questions, but I know from experience that providing academically-lower classes with a few “wins” before I move into the tougher questions works better than a nonstop stream of complex demands. I risk losing evaluation points now if I start with those simpler questions, though.

I understand the rationale for including student responses in evaluation rubrics. Still, when student responses become a heavy determinant in evaluations, the smart move has to be leaving our academically-weakest schools. The high schools where I live send more than 90% of their students to college. Those classes will contain higher levels of academic motivation overall than classes in gang-heavy neighborhoods where student preoccupations with safety and survival, not to mention drug revenues, may sometimes trump academics.

What’s the effect of student-based performance evaluations on staffing? I talked to a former colleague a few weeks ago.

“Oh, (my still withheld name!),” she said, “they are all new. All of the old teachers are gone. It is lonely.”

My colleague is putting in one more year before she retires. Many colleagues shifted to other teaching jobs last year. They moved socioeconomically up when they could and, if not, to higher paying districts. A number retired earlier than they had intended.

The young, smiling faces in my old school seem quite likable. I went to visit a few weeks ago. But I talked to a younger colleague who mentioned the existence of a problem they keep running into now at the school. An enormous amount of specific knowledge has walked out the door. The people who know the details of giving certain tests and managing certain procedures? In some cases, most or even all of them have left.

When my colleague above finishes her last, lonely year and retires, she will take with her an in-depth understanding of the science standards, equipment, and procedures that no one else possesses. She has also run a horticulture project almost entirely on her own, finding the materials — often paying for them herself — and teaching students how to raise vegetables and household plants. During holiday seasons, students sold what they grew, subsidizing new materials purchases. That project is only peripherally in the curriculum. Many students loved growing flowers and vegetables, but when my friend leaves, those florae are likely to become part of the past. Who will step up for all the unpaid, time-consuming work that project requires? My colleague’s extra work might be worth a couple of “professional responsibility” points on the twenty-page evaluation, but it’s basically a labor of love by a woman who loves to teach and never expected to be rewarded.

My colleague might have stayed longer in a more-supportive environment, an environment that did not include an evaluation system that many older teachers regard as a “gotcha” of sorts. They remember when the feedback they received felt mostly appreciative and positive. Now, they receive page after page of well-meaning suggestions for improvement. Even when a teacher gets a “3,” meaning he or she is proficient, suggestions for improvement may be included in final paperwork.

The rubric referred to above is not national, but affects millions of teachers. Other states have other rubrics. The larger problem lies in the fact that evaluations are now being used primarily as teacher-improvement tools. I suggest that we decouple evaluations and improvement – creating two separate systems, one to be used to improve pedagogy and one to evaluate teachers. Otherwise, smart teachers will head to districts that will provide them with more positive feedback — districts with stronger student participation and more motivated student behavior.

Or they will just quit.

(Please pass this on. This feels like one of the truest posts I’ve written in months.)

Alas, this student did not benefit from divine intervention. He failed. The test did not get him down, though. You can classify this kid as “resilient.” Or you can classify him as “oblivious.” Pass or fail, he always has a great attitude. I don’t know if that’s good or bad, frankly.

I did not write the test. It was written by an East Coast consulting firm. I tried furiously to teach the underlying math, but that math was about three years above that boys academic operating level. It was years above the operating level of every student in that class.

Eduhonesty: I remain genuinely flummoxed. Should this boy feel bad? No! That test was an unfair test. Frankly, any test not specifically taken from appropriate instruction should be considered unfair. No one should ever see unfamiliar material on a classroom test. No teacher should be forced to regularly give tests with unfamiliar material, as I was throughout last year. We did not have the time to cover all that material. You can’t cram three or more years of instruction into weeks or even months. If you could, all of America’s academic problems would have been solved decades ago.

Still, I find that boy’ cheerful lack of concern disquieting. He ought to care. I think. Or should he? If someone kept giving me graduate physics tests that I could not understand, my healthiest response might be to hand my problems to a higher power while psychologically exiting the testing scene.

What, I failed again? Oh. Did you know that (I forget who) actually likes vegetable pizza? Can you believe that?

That was my boy, a master of non sequiturs and subject changes. He always had a smile. In truth, I think discussing pizza preferences after an epic testing fail makes perfect sense. If you ever read this, Skater Boy, I know you will recognize that test. For what it’s worth, I loved having you in class every single day. I am sorry about all those tests. I was not sure if I was ready to quit so I wanted to try to hold on to my job.

I really had no clue what to do. No one was giving me any options. No one was listening to my protests or objections. I tried my hardest anyway. I am sure you know that.

My student’s interpretation of the PARCC test. Fortunately, he is a pretty upbeat kid. Incomprehensible tests don’t bother him much.

(For all U.S. teachers)

I’ve gone over testing in this blog. And over testing. And over testing. If readers are not becoming bored, I certainly am. I am sometimes tempted to drop the blog and start writing zombie romances.

“Urgggg”…. He moaned, unable to tell her that he loved her. His gray arms reached for her in the night.
“Warrrhhhggg,” she groaned, her one eye fixed on his shambling frame. She knew what he meant. They had never needed words.

But I can’t let go of testing yet.

So I will simply lay out exactly what I think we need to do about the Testing Monster. We need to cap total testing days. I can see no reason why a school should need more than a few afternoons at the start of the year and a few afternoons toward the end of the year for testing.

We should use a robust, computerized adaptive test at the start of the school year to get a baseline measurement of student learning. We can repeat that same test near the end of the year to measure academic progress. One short, additional benchmark test might be conducted a few times throughout the year to measure math and reading progress more informally.  Or we could use only the one adaptive test three times a year, at the beginning, middle and end, making that single test both our annual assessment and our benchmark, progress test. Ideally, we will then test for less than a week of the total school year.

Those annual state standardized tests that are not adaptive in character should be eliminated. A significant portion of America’s students are getting annihilated by those tests, as state interactive report cards clearly document. Regularly being demolished by tests cannot be good for those students, especially when worried principals and teachers are practically begging students to do their best. Adults can easily push students too hard, ignoring the stress and confusion they are creating, when merit bonuses, evaluations or even job retention depend on test results.

All state standardized tests used should be adaptive in character. Students should be competing with their own past scores, not other students. If a student received a 210 on the math portion of the MAP^® test in the fall, that student should be trying to push that number up to 220+ in the spring, for example. Goals can be selected based on individual student situations.

A few questions to ponder:

1) What is the purpose of our tests anyway? If the purpose is to know how our students are doing, we do not need to spend multiple weeks of the school year testing them to find that out. We should not need more than one week total, with a possible additional benchmark test midyear.

2) To what extent is current testing driven by financial forces? Just as the tobacco industry has a vested interest in protecting cigarettes, a number of very large publishing companies and educational consortium members have a vested interest in protecting America’s deeply-entrenched testing industry.

3) We keep adding tests. Why? The answer to this question may be directly related to the answer to question number two above.

We are certainly working harder as we try to get ready for all these tests, but until we reclaim at least a few testing weeks for teaching, we cannot be said to be working smarter.

(Tip for new teachers and anyone interested.)

Time for a practical post. According to Erin Brodwin of Business Insider, “research suggests that both the cold air from outdoors as well as the dry air from indoors may play a role in protecting the aerosol droplets we sneeze and cough into the air, allowing them to more easily spread from one sick person to another.

Plus, stuffy, unventilated indoor air could make it easier for colds to spread; a 2011 study of crowded college dorms in China found that in rooms with poorer ventilation, colds were more likely to thrive.”

The wind brought November to Illinois last night, after an afternoon in the sixties. I walked the Chicago Botanic Gardens with a girlfriend yesterday. Today I will be looking for matching gloves.

I strongly recommend a big bottle of hand sanitizer for the classroom. I suggest specifically laying out rules for its use. From past experience, I’d suggest you keep your sanitizer by your desk or toward the front of the room and in sight. Mischievous kids have been known to drop handfuls on seats when I put it in the back of the room. If students are getting up, you want them coming toward you, rather than away from you.

Be sure to smell the sanitizer before you purchase it. Boys will mostly decline to use strong floral or sweet scents. You want a pleasant, clean smell that appeals to the group. If you are feeling generous, you might also lay in some of those little bottles from Bath and Body Works. They tend to be fragrant, often fruity or floral. I share them with girls who ask and they seem to consider those scents a treat.

P.S. I recomment Tdap shots. Pertussis can make an adult or child sick for weeks or even months. If you work in a school, you might ask your doctor about this.

In this time of computer technology, reading instruction can and should be to some extent an individualized program – and NOT one that terminates in elementary school. I have frankly received too many seventh and eighth grade students who were reading at a first to third-grade level despite having been born here or having arrived as a toddler. If these students were in special education, that reading deficit might be more understandable, but any student who began school in the United States should learn to read, absent special education issues.

What is going wrong here?

I’d like to know. Because opening up comments always leads to spam, I am going to offer an alternative option. If you would like to answer this question, try jocelyntheplaid@gmail.com — I hope this works.

Here are the Grade 1 Common Core standards for math:
Operations and algebraic thinking
• represent and solve problems involving addition and subtraction.
• understand and apply properties of operations and the relationship between addition and subtraction.
• add and subtract within 20.
• Work with addition and subtraction equations.
Number and operations in Base ten
• extend the counting sequence.
• Understand place value.
• Use place value understanding and properties of operations to add and subtract.
Measurement and data
• measure lengths indirectly and by iterating length units.
• tell and write time.
• represent and interpret data.
Geometry
• reason with shapes and their attributes.
Mathematical Practices
1. Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them.
2. Reason abstractly and quantitatively.
3. Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others.
4. Model with mathematics.
5. Use appropriate tools strategically.
6. Attend to precision.
7. Look for and make use of structure.
8. Look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning.

Operations and algebraic thinking 1.oa
Represent and solve problems involving addition and subtraction.
1. Use addition and subtraction within 20 to solve word problems involving situations of adding to, taking from, putting together, taking apart, and comparing, with unknowns in all positions, e.g., by using objects, drawings, and equations with a symbol for the unknown number to represent the problem.2
2. Solve word problems that call for addition of three whole numbers whose sum is less than or equal to 20, e.g., by using objects, drawings, and equations with a symbol for the unknown number to represent the problem.

Understand and apply properties of operations and the relationship between addition and subtraction.
3. Apply properties of operations as strategies to add and subtract.3 Examples: If 8 + 3 = 11 is known, then 3 + 8 = 11 is also known. (Commutative property of addition.) To add 2 + 6 + 4, the second two numbers can be added to make a ten, so 2 + 6 + 4 = 2 + 10 = 12. (Associative property of addition.)
4. Understand subtraction as an unknown-addend problem. For example, subtract 10 – 8 by finding the number that makes 10 when added to 8.

Add and subtract within 20.
5. Relate counting to addition and subtraction (e.g., by counting on 2 to add 2).
6. Add and subtract within 20, demonstrating fluency for addition and subtraction within 10. Use strategies such as counting on; making ten (e.g., 8 + 6 = 8 + 2 + 4 = 10 + 4 = 14); decomposing a number leading to a ten (e.g., 13 – 4 = 13 – 3 – 1 = 10 – 1 = 9); using the relationship between addition and subtraction (e.g., knowing that 8 + 4 = 12, one knows 12 – 8 = 4); and creating equivalent but easier or known sums (e.g., adding 6 + 7 by creating the known equivalent 6 + 6 + 1 = 12 + 1 = 13).

Work with addition and subtraction equations.
7. Understand the meaning of the equal sign, and determine if equations involving addition and subtraction are true or false. For example, which of the following equations are true and which are false? 6 = 6, 7 = 8 – 1, 5 + 2 = 2 + 5, 4 + 1 = 5 + 2.
8. Determine the unknown whole number in an addition or subtraction equation relating to three whole numbers. For example, determine the unknown number that makes the equation true in each of the equations 8 + ? = 11, 5 = ???? – 3, 6 + 6 = ????.

Number and Operations in Base Ten 1.NBT
Extend the counting sequence.
1. Count to 120, starting at any number less than 120. In this range, read and write numerals and represent a number of objects with a written numeral.

Understand place value.
2. Understand that the two digits of a two-digit number represent amounts of tens and ones. Understand the following as special cases:
a. 10 can be thought of as a bundle of ten ones — called a “ten.”
b. The numbers from 11 to 19 are composed of a ten and one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, or nine ones.
c. The numbers 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90 refer to one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, or nine tens (and 0 ones).

2 See Glossary, Table 1.
3 Students need not use formal terms for these properties.
3. Compare two two-digit numbers based on meanings of the tens and ones digits, recording the results of comparisons with the symbols >, =, and <. Use place value understanding and properties of operations to add and subtract.
4. Add within 100, including adding a two-digit number and a one-digit number, and adding a two-digit number and a multiple of 10, using concrete models or drawings and strategies based on place value, properties of operations, and/or the relationship between addition and subtraction; relate the strategy to a written method and explain the reasoning used. Understand that in adding two-digit numbers, one adds tens and tens, ones and ones; and sometimes it is necessary to compose a ten.
5. Given a two-digit number, mentally find 10 more or 10 less than the number, without having to count; explain the reasoning used.
6. Subtract multiples of 10 in the range 10-90 from multiples of 10 in the range 10-90 (positive or zero differences), using concrete models or drawings and strategies based on place value, properties of operations, and/or the relationship between addition and subtraction; relate the strategy to a written method and explain the reasoning used.

Measurement and Data 1.MD
Measure lengths indirectly and by iterating length units.
1. Order three objects by length; compare the lengths of two objects indirectly by using a third object.
2. Express the length of an object as a whole number of length units, by laying multiple copies of a shorter object (the length unit) end to end; understand that the length measurement of an object is the number of same-size length units that span it with no gaps or overlaps. Limit to contexts where the object being measured is spanned by a whole number of length units with no gaps or overlaps.

Tell and write time.
3. Tell and write time in hours and half-hours using analog and digital clocks.

Represent and interpret data.
4. Organize, represent, and interpret data with up to three categories; ask and answer questions about the total number of data points, how many in each category, and how many more or less are in one category than in another.

Geometry 1.G
Reason with shapes and their attributes.
1. Distinguish between defining attributes (e.g., triangles are closed and three-sided) versus non-defining attributes (e.g., color, orientation, overall size); build and draw shapes to possess defining attributes.
2. Compose two-dimensional shapes (rectangles, squares, trapezoids, triangles, half-circles, and quarter-circles) or three-dimensional shapes (cubes, right rectangular prisms, right circular cones, and right circular cylinders) to create a composite shape, and compose new shapes from the composite shape.4
3. Partition circles and rectangles into two and four equal shares, describe the shares using the words halves, fourths, and quarters, and use the phrases half of, fourth of, and quarter of. Describe the whole as two of, or four of the shares. Understand for these examples that decomposing into more equal shares creates smaller shares.

4Students do not need to learn formal names such as “right rectangular prism.”

Eduhonesty: Ummm… these kids are six years old, guys. Some may even be five in states with December cut-off dates. They still believe in the tooth fairy. In Jean Piaget’s terms, these children are mostly all preoperational thinkers. Readers who don’t know Piaget might want to take time to look up his breakdown of childhood development stages.

I think these standards are batshit crazy.

I have to share this snippet. I was talking to an elderly French teacher last night about parents and grades. She gave a “C” to a girl some years back, a “C” that honestly reflected the girls effort and understanding in that teacher’s view.

The girl’s dad came to the private school where this teacher taught and told her, “If you don’t change that grade to an ‘A,’ I am going to sue you.”

The teacher changed the grade. I would have done the same. Some levels of crazy just aren’t worth dealing with.

Even the suggestion of implementing year-round education naturally hits a wall in many communities. Where I live, the schools are working well. Most graduates will go to college and will be ready for college coursework. We crank out National Merit Finalists and Ivy League attendees.

Summers are exciting times in many households. Kids go off to camp or on fun family vacations. So revising the traditional nine-month agrarian calendar into a year-round calendar, allowing for more-continuous education with a shorter summer vacation and more frequent breaks during the periods of instruction — well, that mostly does not go over well with my neighbors. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, they’d say.

When I advocate for a longer school year, I recognize I am going up against formidable forces. Our problem is not that American education doesn’t work, our problem is that American education works much better in some locations than others — and the people who make American policy tend to live in districts with good schools. Reforming educational funding to create longer school years for disadvantaged children will not personally help these policymakers, except in the most abstract sense. In fact, reform will most likely take resources away from the districts in which they live.

Eduhonesty: In a nutshell, the people who decide educational policy live in areas with high-quality schools, areas that tend to have money. But that results in a real disincentive to reform educational funding. I think many test-based solutions to America’s educational ills may have been spawned directly from attempts to avoid touching our property-tax based funding system. For our leaders, it ain’t broke so maybe some of them would rather not fix it.

I don’t know how to push funding reform to the front of America’s school discussions. For one thing, testing and the Common Core have provided a huge distraction. I am certain, though, that we need to get school-funding reform off the academic backburner.

Zip code should not be destiny.

In many zip codes, America’s educational system appears to be broke, broken, brokest. Kids in those zip codes can’t afford summer learning loss. Students in our weakest districts are already behind in school and the evidence suggests they fall farther behind their counterparts in academically-stronger districts over summer vacation. I have already advocated for a longer school year for our lower-functioning students to give those students a chance to catch up. If districts contend they can’t afford that longer school year, given our school funding set-up, then we can at least diminish summer learning loss.

Two types of year-round calendars exist, single track and multitrack. The latter can be used to manage school overcrowding, when student populations have expanded beyond use of local facilities. I’d like to look at the single track option, which offers a more balanced calendar year with more continuous instruction. Simply, we shorten the long summer vacation by distributing vacation days throughout the school year, creating periods called “intersessions.” Ideally, intersessions can be used for tutoring, remediation and enrichment, allowing students who need or want extra help to attend targeted instruction during an intersession. Single-track calendars vary, but common formats are 45-15, 60-20 and 90-30. Students attend school for 45 days, for example, and then have a 15 day break or intersession. The school year in this scenario still nets out to 180 days, but without that long summer period that leads to forgetfulness in many students.

Eduhonesty: In an ideal universe, we would reform funding so that schools could be kept open for tutoring and remediation during the intersession. Intersessions could be used to provide the extra instruction necessary to help students who have fallen behind, returning those students to grade level.