Friday we will test, a test to measure teacher effectiveness that will be used to demonstrate student growth. Sounds good, right? Except for the fact that there goes Friday. Thursday will be gone as well, since we will be doing test prep only indirectly related to what we are teaching. PARCC starts next week. That will suck up most of next week. MAP testing is coming up, as well as AIMSWEB testing. We also have some semi-random tests from the company assisting the state in efforts to improve our school. After a few of “normal” weeks, the testing dragon has come roaring out of its cave again. I’ll be recording more numbers in the near future.

Eduhonesty: I enjoyed having a few of calm, normal weeks in which to indulge in a little actual teaching.

My colleague in the last post is in better shape than we first thought. Apparently, Human Resources screwed up the math on her evaluation and her average is conspicuously higher than first reported. She’s still not in awesome shape, but she may survive any upcoming purge.

Ummm. these are people’s lives out here. A teacher just went from the bottom of our barrel back up into the middle BECAUSE of a MATH CORRECTION. Readers will know that I generally disdain foul language, but holy fuck, what kind of a mistake is that? They plunged that woman into an abyss of deep despair for weeks. Fortunately, the Union checked the district’s math.

Hooray for the Union. Apparently, other mistakes have been found as well, although I can’t confirm this. Regardless, I rather suspect we all ought to recheck the math from our evaluations.

Eduhonesty: If the district is looking to reduce employee costs, I know where they should start. Whoever tallied up my colleague’s point values ought to be fired. Yesterday.

My colleague has seventeen years in the district. Her 22 page evaluation yielded a frightening number, a number that would have forced any newer teacher out of the district at year’s end. She will be allowed to remediate herself until October, she told me. I talked to the union rep about the situation. (Sort of.) He’s a good man and no gossip, a consummate professional. We phrased the conversation hypothetically, my question being a simple one: Does my colleague have any possible union remedies? His answer was no. Charlotte’s* scores are not grievable, unless discrimination is involved. My colleague can write a rebuttal for her file, but that’s about her only option. She’s screwed, blued and tattooed.

The union rep and I discussed the fact that these 22 page documents are highly subjective, with luck of the evaluator a major factor in results. How well you connect with your evaluator matters. Whether or not you have the same views on best educational practices can skew scores significantly. Does the evaluator like loud and busy classrooms? Does the evaluator prefer a quieter, more traditional atmosphere? Will the evaluator factor student behavioral history into observed misbehaviors? Is the evaluator so scared for his or her own job that test-score paranoia has kicked in, leading the evaluator to tense up in fear at any signs of student obtuseness? A mere snippet of a school year has determined my colleague’s numbers and she is in serious trouble.

The pension system has been set up so that the best times to quit are multiples of 10. I am hitting one of these breakpoints this year. My colleague still has three years to travel before she reaches a good stopping point. She’s an expensive hire and no district is likely to pay for all her experience. She’s also in an area of teaching where jobs are scarce. America has no shortage of P.E., English, or history teachers. Any attempt to move after seventeen years has to be explained, too. I see no good way to spin this mess. The odds that she can find another position don’t seem high, given the number of lower-cost, new graduates who are looking for a first opportunity.

Eduhonesty: I’ve never sat in my colleague’s classroom. I don’t know the fine points of this story. I do know that an injustice appears to be underway. If my colleague has so little to recommend her, why did the district need seventeen years to uncover that fact? Charlotte’s axe seems poised to lop off a good woman’s head. I have no way to judge those rubric scores, but my colleague strongly wishes to continue teaching. With the pension system operating the way it does, and a possible mid-year job loss in the works, though, I’m not sure she can afford to be remediated, not with so little likely help and encouragement from her remediators. The administration appears to want this woman gone.

My colleague’s best move appears to be surrender, but she seems unlikely to go quietly. I admire her ongoing pedagogical diligence, her efforts to teach as this craziness swirls around her. I’m not sure I would continue to work that hard with an axe hanging above me.

I’d love to end this post with a ringing call to action. I can’t because we are buried in politics out here, obscuring any clear view of what is occurring in our classrooms. Perhaps my colleague actually lacks teaching skills. As I say, I’ve never watched her in action. Perhaps, though, she is merely older, experienced and therefore expensive. Perhaps her views are politically incorrect and she is unwilling to spout the party-line of small groups and extreme diversification. We are a profession of buzzwords, driven by fashion and test scores. Politically savvy teachers adopt the latest fashions and try to make them work. Some older teachers stick with the outdated fashions that have always produced results for them. Perhaps my colleague is one of the victims of test-score panic. All across America, teachers are being blamed for lower test scores that may or may not be in their control. The societal forces that hold urban students down can’t always be addressed by the best of teachers.

Who knows what’s going on? I don’t. Layers upon layers of quiet politics seem to underlay many recent administrative decisions and I am not talking to my administration, never about matters of substance anyway.

*The woman who wrote the rubric that created the 22 page evaluation.

Lyrics to a song by Nicki Minaj, requested more than once in my classes:

“Anaconda”

My Anaconda don’t…
My Anaconda don’t…
My Anaconda don’t want none unless you got buns hun

Boy toy named Troy used to live in Detroit
Big dope dealer money, he was getting some coins
Was in shootouts with the law, but he live in a palace
Bought me Alexander McQueen, he was keeping me stylish
Now that’s real, real, real,
Gun in my purse, bitch I came dressed to kill
Who wanna go first? I had them pushing daffodils
I’m high as hell, I only took a half of pill
I’m on some dumb shit

By the way, what he say?
He can tell I ain’t missing no meals
Come through and fuck ’em in my automobile
Let him eat it with his grills,
He keep telling me to chill
He keep telling me it’s real, that he love my sex appeal
Because he don’t like ’em boney, he want something he can grab
So I pulled up in the Jag, and i hit ’em with the jab like…
Dun-d-d-dun-dun-d-d-dun-dun

My Anaconda don’t…
My Anaconda don’t…
My Anaconda don’t want none unless you got buns hun

Oh my gosh, look at her butt
Oh my gosh, look at her butt
Oh my gosh, look at her butt
Look at her butt (look at her butt)

This dude named Michael used to ride motorcycles
Dick bigger than a tower, I ain’t talking about Eiffel’s
Real country ass nigga, let me play with his rifle
Pussy put his ass to sleep, now he calling me NyQuil
Now that bang bang bang,
I let him hit it ’cause he slang Cocaine
He toss my salad like his name Romaine
And when we done, I make him buy me Balmain
I’m on some dumb shit

Etc.

Eduhonesty: These are middle school kids and this song is popular. Music reflects culture. Music sometimes reflects character and aspirations. We have a cultural crisis out here. Trust me.

The crumpled page contains a description of Type I, II, and III assessments. It’s from some professional development meeting related to our evaluations. All I can say is that any evaluation system that requires 20 or more appendices desperately needs to be rewritten. The state law that resulted in this appendix needs to be repealed.

Our government’s claws may eviscerate education at the rate we are going. Twenty-two page evaluations are ridiculous, especially when they are based on about half a day’s observation at most. I’m not against data. I’m against made-up data. Any twenty-two page document based on a half-day’s observation has a large element of fiction in its pages.

At some point, I’ll bother to read that chunk of dead trees and find out how much fiction. Or not. I’m at a natural retirement break point and I announced to the break room that I was going. Will I continue teaching elsewhere? Life would be easier if I moved up the socioeconomic ladder to a place where test scores are higher and administrators don’t have the state breathing down their necks. Still, I may quit to follow my North Star toward writing instead.

Eduhonesty: I’m sure some of these evaluation documents are larger and some are smaller. Regardless, I believe three to five pages at most ought to cover a teacher’s evaluation, just as I think one week of standardized testing each year ought to cover student data needs. The data dragon needs to be slain.

Jimmy drives me nuts. He drives all his teachers nuts. Jimmy is what we call a frequent flier. Referral in hand, he visits the Dean regularly, takes his detentions on the chin and keeps on committing the same infractions that lead to his next trip down the hall.

This boy makes odd noises or whistles at random times. He distracts his group from doing group activities. He often refuses to work. Jimmy hardly ever gets with the program and he tries to keep others from joining in the program as well.

He breaks pencils. He angers easily, tossing fragments of pencils under nearby desks. He often thinks punishments are unjust. “I wasn’t doin’ nothin’,” he will say, if I stop him from whistling and wandering around the room when he is supposed to be taking notes.

For any aspiring teachers out there, Jimmies are a fact of teaching life. Teachers write referrals to the Dean. They call home. They take these students into the hall to encourage them to improve their behavior. They talk to social workers, counselors and deans. They may ask advice from special education teachers. In worst-case scenarios, one Jimmy can derail a class regularly, eating teacher and student minutes like the Flamin Hot Cheetohs that fall in crumbles under his desk. (Yes, there’s a rule against eating in class. No, Jimmy doesn’t care.)

That said, I’m sad for my Jimmy. I know something. I know that when I give this boy something he can actually do, he does his best. He tries hard. He’s so proud of his successes.

We are drowning Jimmy.* He can’t do any of the math I’m presenting. I’m pretty sure this is true, although since he has done almost none of this math, I might be wrong. If he can do any of the math, though, I can’t present a single piece of evidence to that effect and it’s March today.

Jimmy needs to be in special education. Today I will call his parents to ask them to demand that the district test him for special education. Special ed teachers have told me that parental pushing is Jimmy’s only chance, and I know from experience that they are likely to be right. My district has “too many” students in special education, too many African-American and Hispanic boys in particular, and the state has commented unfavorably on our numbers. Given that the district is almost all African-American or Hispanic, and that boys are always more heavily represented in special education, I almost want to laugh at this “appearance of discrimination” argument. Given our demographic, who else are we going to put in special education?

The following chart helps document the larger problem:

SOURCE: Ohio Department of Education, Data Warehouse Reports

Eduhonesty: The number of hurdles a teacher has to jump over to get a child placed in special education seems absurd. I am sure placement mistakes have been made. But we are moving into the last quarter, this boy gets in trouble constantly, and I have zero evidence that he can do his work. If he never did any work, that might be some form of oppositional-defiance, but even then special education would seem to be the appropriate choice for this fundamentally nice kid who, in my opinion, simply can’t handle being embarrassed by his lack of knowledge.

Let’s hope mom or dad will carry my torch for me.

* Readers, please understand that I was never allowed to pick my own material or deviate from the common 7th-grade lesson plan. I would not have drowned Jimmy, except I had zero say in what the administration demanded that I be teaching.

Forty minutes in the morning and an hour and forty-five minutes in the afternoon and pretty soon you’re talking about real work time here. Suicide prevention took about half an hour. Charlotte Danielson and our new evaluation system took a little over half an hour. I love endless Danielson, as readers know. Soon I should qualify for three college credits in Danielson’s Rubric 101. We even sat around reading Danielson’s book, the world according to Charlotte.

I shouldn’t be too snippy. It’s not Charlotte’s fault we are doing a CAT scan’s worth of in-depth investigation into how we will be evaluated. If most of our professional development time in the last year has gone to learning about the new system of teacher evaluations, that’s the district’s choice. Many districts have been dedicating time to Danielson, of course, and with good reason. I had to laugh at a Facebook cartoon recently; On top, the cartoon listed the old system of teacher evaluation with the words, “You are a dedicated teacher!” On the bottom, the new system of evaluations said, “You suck. Prove me wrong.” The cartoon was funny because it’s getting closer and closer to true. I handed my Assistant Principal about four pounds worth of data and ancillary supportive materials before my evaluation, proof essentially that I did not suck. My final evaluation ran about 22 pages, I think. I’m not sure. I haven’t read it. I signed off on it anyway. One of the charms of deciding to leave your place of employment has to be stuffing your evaluation in a cubby and losing it immediately. Frankly, I’m too busy to read the damn thing.

One of the academic coaches has come up with a list of words I am supposed to read with all of my classes every day. Another coach has come up with a list of math problems I am supposed to do with my classes a couple of day a week. We were supposed to be doing choral reading a few days a week during all our classes. I rather think that choral reading may have lapsed. I’m afraid to ask for fear I will find out I am wrong. We were supposed to be doing multiplication chanting a couple of days a week. I still sometimes do this. They like chanting. They also like shouting out their new sight words. In the meantime, I have lesson plans and actual instruction to fit into these classes as well, with quizzes in math that I am giving weekly. I am supposed to analyze the data from those quizzes to share with my team during one of the daily meetings once each week. The Dean has a new 100% form I am supposed to fill out, some form of self-analysis. Mine got all wet. I have to borrow another one. I am helping a math teacher by making keys for some quizzes. I have to find my protractors. I have to call parents and fill out various papers for any disciplinary issues I encounter. The coaches want an analysis of the new software for the new software company. I think I may be caught up on the various required surveys in my in-box except for the one from the four-hour training last night after school. I am supposed to read another chapter and a half of Danielson’s book for an upcoming professional development day focused on “utilizing the Danielson Framework to dig deeply into student intellectual engagement.” Somewhere in this mess I have to find time to tutor some students. I am also going to continue this post later since I have more details to stick in this litany but I also have grading to do.

Eduhonesty: My mail is such an adventure. What will it be today? A message telling me we are having a science fair in two weeks? A new software program to create openers to supplant the openers that supplanted the last set of openers? Perhaps a poetry contest? A spreadsheet to record students who can multiply all numbers up to 12? A new PARCC practice program? A list of the teachers who were more than five minutes late putting in yesterday’s attendance? The possible surprises are endless.

First, I need to go look for those protractors, though.

“Ms. Q, I don’t want to be distracted, but have you tasted this food called menudo?”

Sigh. Clearly, my student was not mesmerized by my explanation of the day’s geometry lesson. I headed off the menudo discussion, forcing us back toward angles and circles.

I keep hearing a new mantra about how we need to strive to get 100% of our students’ attention 100% of the time. I’m sorry, but this 100% chant sounds like crazy talk to me. I never sat through a single class in my life where I paid attention 100% of the time. The people advocating this idea just don’t understand the power of menudo.

I’m testing all day today. I need to burn a new CD. My CDs cost me money, but these shiny discs improve the class atmosphere greatly. The pre-test whining should all but vanish if I add enough of the right music.

Eduhonesty: My ITunes libray has to be one of the weirdest collections on the planet. This middle-aged woman who favors indie rock and even folk keeps downloading rap, hip-hop and whatever they call these Mexican ranch songs. Whatever works, I say. Sometimes I dance a little to the music. The kids like to see my lame dancing attempts. When the test is over, at the end, they will be welcome to dance, too.

This nugget of wisdom was brought to us by Anya Kamenetz at NPREd (http://www.npr.org/blogs/ed/2015/02/22/387481854/if-your-teacher-likes-you-you-might-get-a-better-grade?sc=tw), the result of a study at the Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg in Germany. While this study seems to be another case of spending research dollars to prove the obvious, and the results are hardly shocking, I did stop to read the article and some of the comments. The comments are much more interesting than the article, as a number of commenters assert that teacher-negativity contributed to or even caused their academic failures.

True? Not true? Any kernels of truth are likely to be found between the lines here. Lack of adult support for student efforts affects future efforts without doubt. Student misbehavior can lead to a lack of adult support, as can numerous other factors. If I were a parent, I’d teach my child to treat teachers respectfully. I’d communicate with the teacher, showing that teacher how much I valued my child’s education. If my child was struggling, I’d sit down with my child to help with homework. Navigating the educational system can be tricky. I don’t want to downplay the issues cited in this article. They matter. They need to be addressed.

In a way, though, this study’s silly. Of course, teacher bias exists and affects grades. My daughter once got a “D” on a very well-written, middle-school assignment in which she took the stand that women should be stay-at-home moms. Her teacher told her firmly that her essay made no sense. I’d say that essay made a good deal of sense, and was well-supported, except for the fact the teacher disagreed with my daughter’s position.

If there’s a kid out in America who doesn’t think that teacher bias affects grades, I’d like to meet that kid. Most students have internalized this fact by early elementary school if they’re observant. Another daughter had great difficulties with a third-grade teacher who diminished her efforts and abilities repeatedly. My girl survived, learned unfortunate facts about human nature, and went on to graduate summa cum laude from one of America’s best universities, aglow in a sea of ribbons and tassels. (I should have raised more hell that year, though. If you have a child making these complaints, you have a perfect right to take on the educational system with absolute ferocity.)

I found a few comments from this article rather frightening. Commenters used the article to assert the need for more standardized tests to weed out teacher bias. From the trenches, I want to shout out a resounding, “No!” Those tests would have been great for my daughters, but they are killing some of my students.

A few trenchant observations from the trenches:

If a student is struggling academically, standardized tests make that student feel stupid. In a less-standardized universe, a good teacher can help manage this academic struggle by differential grading. I’ll confess to my own bias. If I see a student who is trying hard, I will grade more mercifully to encourage those efforts. Effort deserves to be rewarded. Some kids just have a harder time learning. They need encouragement. They don’t need more bubble sheets to fail.

Blow-off efforts should not be rewarded. If a student has created a paragraph that is better than most of the paragraphs in the class, but blew through the assignment in 3 minutes while other people worked five times as long, he should get a decent grade. Decent efforts should get decent grades. I am perfectly justified in taking that student aside to talk to him/her about the need for effort, however. Standardized tests don’t allow or control for sloppy efforts, at least not well. These tests are almost always multiple-choice tests. Blow-off efforts don’t show up in multiple-choice tests the way they do in essay tests. In fact, often blow-off efforts don’t show up at all, except as the disasters created by students who don’t bother to read the questions before they fill in the bubbles. Unfortunately, a modicum of effort can disguise any lack of strenuous mental exertion.

Essay tests tell us a great deal about student understanding of topics and reveal grammatical holes in the learning process. Unfortunately, those tests have all but vanished in many places. I can always justify a multiple-choice test as standardized test preparation. It’s easier and faster for me to grade. If my school is giving that test to the whole grade, then I may not even have to write the test. Somebody will write the test for me. Somebody or something may even grade the test for me. I can grade 125 tests in a few minutes if I feed bubble sheets into a Scantron. The group of academic coaches in my school periodically grade standardized bubble tests I am required to give. An academic coach* on Friday apologized because their bubble-sheet scanner was acting up. I might have to wait awhile before I got my results back, she said. Given that the test I had to give is about three to four years above the learning level of my students — as indicated by multiple previous standardized tests — I’m not too worried about those results. I’ll be more surprised by the right answers than the wrong answers. (Don’t get me wrong. I’m teaching as fast and as hard as I can, but I also know a lot about what my students know. If you test Physics 101 students on Physics 312 material, you should not be surprised by low scores.)

Eduhonesty: Putting my kernels in a nutshell, standardized tests are not the answer to the teacher-bias problem. Teacher training to help teachers recognize and control for their biases will attack this problem much more effectively. Teachers want to teach. They want their students to succeed. The more we try to extricate teachers from the teaching process, the more inferior, second-rate, subpar, faulty, defective, shoddy, shabby, unsound, and unsatisfactory American education is going to become. And as I test, test, test and buy more Number 2 pencils to sell, I think we’re well on the road to an academic meltdown in some urban and financially impoverished districts.

Simple solutions to complex problems seldom work well.

*Academic coach: A full-time, non-teaching employee charged with making building teachers better while managing a great deal of standardized-test data. We have a number of them wandering into various classes at odd times.