During the spring of 2014, I sat in on a committee of math teachers to select our district’s new math books. Publishers all pointed to their text’s alignment to the Common Core, touting changes made to adapt to the Core. One book had supposedly been designed from scratch around the Core. We went over each text carefully, discussing pros and cons. We were down to two books at the end, containing virtually identical content, and chose the book that was significantly easier to read. The easier read text even contained a few mathematical concepts the other book did not – all aligned to Common Core standards. The then-assistant superintendent ignored our recommendations and chose the “more demanding” book, announcing, “This book has the rigor we need.”

That “rigor” translated to page after page of unreadable story problems set four years above the average reading/math level of many of my students, according to their MAP benchmark test results. The time I lost explaining what story problems meant was not exactly wasted, but I’d call that time a poor use of a math class. I ended up keeping the books mostly on the shelf. While I was told to use the materials provided me, an unreadable text does not work nearly as well as a PowerPoint that students can understand. In my opinion, we could have used our book money more effectively by buying cheese sticks and granola bars to help hungry students stay awake and concentrate in class. We might not have done worse by buying a box of shiny fidget spinners instead.

The problem of READABILITY too often falls off the table lately. This problem worsened dramatically when the Common Core moved onto center stage across America, and has not abated as the Core weakens. Ironically, desperate districts that most need readable books have ended up purchasing texts set years above their average students’ reading levels because those texts were written to match the Common Core standards for pupils’ official grade levels. Using the official-grade strategy, stronger students receive books or software that suit their interests and abilities, or even books that are excessively easy, while weaker students get materials only slightly easier to read than ancient Greek epic poems or Klingon technical manuals.

How does this happen? The cost of texts and software contributes to the silence. If administrators believed readable, affordable materials with the potential to boost test scores were out there, more districts might focus on the issue, but readable books have become background noise as school leaders try to find a cheap, magic formula to rescue schools’ test numbers. Fixed on score results, these leaders purchase test-aligned books or software with little or no consideration of readability. The choice that matches the test ends up being the choice used, whether the test forcing the choice is appropriate or not.

Teachers then begin doing damage control. Even now, many thousands of teachers across the United States are trying to make or find alternative materials to bridge the gap between their low-readers and an intimidating textbook or software package. Unfortunately, making and finding these materials takes time, and too many meetings, and required data spreadsheets can eat this time, until nothing is left except a quick trip to TeachersPayTeachers and maybe a Hail Mary and a prayer.

Why did I retire? I was used to unreadable books in my bilingual classes. I was used to daily meetings sucking up all my tutoring time. I was used to test, test, testing. I was always preparing spreadsheets that showed AGAIN the same thing the last few spreadsheets had shown. What made me call the state of Illinois to begin my retirement process then?

Finally I lost so much control of my time and process that I could not correct the craziness. During my last year, I had to be on the common daily lesson plan or the administration — seriously — threatened to fire me. If everybody was teaching a certain standard, I was expected to be teaching that standard — even if some of my math students were documented to be four or more years behind that standard. I was not allowed to prepare or buy the independent PowerPoint that might fill in the linguistic and conceptual gaps I had uncovered. I had to be teaching “X,” not “Y,” and while theoretically I was allowed 20 minutes of time for remediation during my extended math block, I always had to justify myself if caught actually remediating.

Maybe “justify” is too gentle of a verb. In truth, if I strayed from the common lesson plan, I got grilled and then sometimes chastised. “No excuses,” my Assistant Principal would say. A student’s being five years behind the curriculum was no excuse for not trying to force that incomprehensible curriculum down the poor kid’s throat.

Eduhonesty: I loved my kids. I loved teaching. And I could not teach without living in fear of somehow being “caught” doing just that. I hated being treated like my student’s struggles were somehow my fault. And, damn, was I sick of making useless spreadsheets to provide fodder for useless discussions that stole what little tutoring time I might have used to rescue a few of those kids. So I contacted the state to begin my retirement paperwork. In the last few years, many colleagues have quit sooner than they had intended as well.

I loved my kids, so I had to go.

In the end, educational policies are not dusty words on paper or complicated Power-Point presentations – they are the forces that shape children’s everyday lives. In this post-NCLB time of Common Core standards, various state boards of education are now discussing new standards to replace the Core Standards. But costs and fatigue (so much work was required to jettison the LAST set of standards) favor current acceptance or only the lightest rewrites of many Core standards.

Even as we add new standards, then new tests and possible new testing consortiums, and then revamped tests to correct the problems from the previous new consortium tests, government officials demand accountability. We keep changing the landing coordinates, but our astronauts are expected to touchdown where expected. Except “expected” changes. That first year of the PARCC test? Results took about half the year to get back in some locales. Then Part Two was eliminated, regrettably leaving Part One behind. Teachers do not know what to expect from year to year. Neither do the kids in their classes. 

The extraordinary waste of time and money from our latest educational experiments only began with the ideas behind PARCC and the Common Core. That demand led to days and nights calculating, charting and sharing data. Data, data, data. More tests. Yet more tests. More talk of old/new/revamped/Core/other standards. More numbers. 

I am pretty sure data has begun to leak out the ears of some educators, men and women who are spending their evenings preparing spreadsheets while trying NOT to nostalgically remember a distant time when they had time to prepare lessons instead. Teachers who are not obliged to teach exactly what is on the common lesson plan then go out to buy the next day’s activity from TeachersPayTeachers.*

We must understand the not-exactly-defunct Common Core is only one of a stream of experiments that have been perpetrated on our children in the recent past, all in the name of educational reform and closing the achievement gap. When did our children become lab rats? Today’s educational landscape is pocked with bizarre twists and turns that often result in children using inappropriate materials to prepare for inappropriate tests. Why?

Eduhonesty: We keep tweaking or even rewriting content requirements. Was content the problem? Who says? How do they know? And why should we believe those reformers — a group of people who so thoroughly reformed the Common Core math that many parents found it impossible to help their children with their homework.

*Don’t get me wrong, I don’t begrudge TeachersPayTeachers a dime. But those lessons have become one more expense on top of markers, pencils, paper, Kleenex and all the other supplies many teachers are paying for in order to do their jobs. One year, I purchased my own ink cartridges, as well as boxes of my own printer paper, and I remember the days of buying overhead projector bulbs. Hundreds of dollars, sometimes thousands of dollars, are spent by teachers in a single year, especially in economically disadvantaged districts.

Ummmm. Hello out there? All that whining about teacher quality? I actually think overall teacher quality is fine — much better than many outsiders seem to appreciate — but if I wanted to improve my work force, I probably would not try a strategy where I made people pay for many or most of their own work supplies.

Subbing in the land of free breakfasts and lunches, I accept a day’s work giving a benchmark test, AIMSWeb, in Spanish. Little children endlessly read at me all day, I mark mistakes and my life’s easy. For more on benchmark tests, go to my preceding post at eduhonesty.com.

An issue that ought to capture America’s attention is hidden behind that red sign on the door above. The sign tells students and others that the library is closed for MAP testing. That’s not strictly accurate because this latest round of MAP testing has finished. Now we have moved on to AIMSWEB. Next, we will do ACCESS testing. When will the library reopen? It should be open for a few days before we enter the ACCESS testing window.

But the library is closed. This district and this school does not have enough technology to keep the library going during testing. So here in a school whose subterranean test scores put it in the bottom of the nation’s schools, that classroom trip to the school library keeps not happening. Other volunteers with local reading programs are picking up some of the slack, but these kids desperately need to spend minutes looking through library shelves for the perfect book. They need to become enthusiastic about books — real books. Few if any of these kids have Kindles. They tend to play games when they can somehow get on line. Every reading experience is a win for America’s most academically-challenged kids.

But the library is closed and will mostly remain so until sometime a few weeks into February. These tests are not done for the year, either. MAP and AIMSWeb should return. We have to get our end of the year test scores. Oh, and there’s a big, hulking state test that takes days and days somewhere in the spring picture too.  With more technology, the test could go faster, but poor districts often test in groups, class after class, because students cannot all go online at once — not enough tech and not enough tech support.

Eduhonesty: No library. No laptops either. Week after week, this will go on and kids will suffer. One fact that gets missed in this mess: This financially-impoverished district may have to shut down a variety of services, but the wealthy district where I live does not have to do the same. Where I live, they have an abundance of technology. Kids have been getting IPads to take home for years. Testing will still be disruptive in wealthier districts, but because these districts have more staff and more computers, testing causes much less disruption to learning.

Here we go again: Kicking the kids hardest who are already down.

Hello out here from Retired and Subbing Land!

Nonteacher readers may benefit from a little clarification here. Benchmark tests are evaluation tests given multiple times throughout the school year; used to determine whether or not students are managing to meet previously defined academic standards, these tests can provide information to help individualize instruction. MAP® and AIMSWEB® are benchmark tests. ACCESS® is a test of English-language proficiency given once a year. ACCESS testing determines whether or not a student will stay in bilingual programs* and provides information about that student’s rate of English-language learning.

Now on with my latest testing-related post!

I got a text message this morning from a reading teacher telling me that I am on the calendar for next week to give AIMSWEB benchmark tests for her district. They needed a Spanish speaker to give the Spanish-language version. This should be an easy day for me, as I read tests to little kids from kindergarten up through third grade.

I know the students. I have been filling in for their ELL resource teacher, who has been out of the country dealing with family issues. Perhaps I should say I have been “sort of filling in.” I taught furiously, don’t get me wrong. But much of her program is located on computers that were unavailable for about half my stay — because the whole school was taking MAP benchmark tests. MAP sucked up the available computers. I rummaged in that back storage place where unused books go to hide — I think all schools have one — and found some fun print material to work with. (The kids especially enjoyed The Great Gracie Chase.) This school should finish its MAP testing sometime next week.

Once MAP is done, the school will hurtle into AIMSWEB it seems. Every child will take AIMSWEB just as every child took the MAP test. A few kids in special education may be exempt, but that’s it. We will have barely finished AIMSWEB before we enter the ACCESS testing window. In this district, the ACCESS test is given on computers. I expect technology use will freeze to another halt for a week or two as the district jockeys to get all its ACCESS testing done. The district has already asked if I will help with high school testing. ACCESS takes a long time. For one thing, the kindergarten tests are given on an individual basis.

Eduhonesty: We have only 36 weeks in a school year. Nobody needs this much data, not when you consider the insane amount of instructional time being lost.

Please share this post. I consider this time loss unconscionable — no matter how good the intentions of the district. Those AIMSWEB and MAP Tests are frequently given three times during one school year. I have not even touched on the days used for the annual state test, and have only sideswiped the issue of lost access to technology in a financially- and technologically-disadvantaged district.

Help!

*Placement in bilingual programs is actually a bit more complicated than that — parents can always withdraw students, and not all states follow the same programs.

I don’t know how I feel about this exactly. I have been subbing in the district from which I retired, as well as a few other districts. I travel between schools in the top 2% of state test score results in Illinois, schools with very low poverty rates, and schools in the bottom 2%. This week, I covered for a high school English teacher in a school with a 98% poverty rate.

All assignments were supposed to be done on Chromebooks. Except some students did not have Chromebooks. One had never received one because she needed a parent’s signature and her dad — the only parent in the picture — was unable to get into the school during the workday. No dad, no Chromebook. Another student had mostly given hers up because she’d lost her charger and a new one cost $40. No one had a spare $40. I listened to the excuses. Most were in the category of “left it home because I forgot,” but others were money or “It’s broken and I gave it to them a few weeks ago but it’s still not fixed.”

I am clear that a poor school cannot simply hand out free, replacement chargers. Kids lose things all the time. If there’s no cost to replacing those chargers, they will disappear more often. I understand that less financially advantaged districts may not have extra, loaner Chromebooks (though the teacher had a few of the old, thin, metal ones) or enough people to handle the volume of repairs.

But this issue escapes the radar too often. That poor district would proudly tell the world that it’s students are using Chromebooks and they, too, have the technology of the times. But the wealthy districts where I work have more technology, more technology younger, more technology that can go home with students — my poor district only offers this to high school students — and when students in wealthy districts find their technology has broken, those districts quickly replace that technology. Usually the replacement process just requires a trip to the library.

Eduhonesty: The problem I see is that my wealthy districts and the less financially fortunate district where I subbed this week would both claim they are up-to-date with current technology and the educational practices using that technology. But then there’s “Marina” who has no Chromebook yet in October because of her dad’s work hours and other students who are waiting for weeks for the Chromebook with the cracked screen to come back, not to mention the kids who could probably have borrowed a charger to use to replace the one they can’t afford, but who decided they’d rather skip the work instead.

Yes, all the players in my daily life have technology available to students. But the students with money don’t suffer from technological downtime. That downtime adds up.

That downtime matters.

In uneven times, we forget that the past and present are not neatly merged into this one new all-inclusive time. At the edges of the envelope, teachers begin to plan to ask students their preferred pronouns. “Do you prefer the singular they?” They want to know. These educators desire to create a welcoming space for their trans students, for the gender fluid and otherwise defined who have left the binary behind. 

But a small, dark, elfin young woman reminded me of a fact that must be considered before we tackle pronouns: Not everyone is out. That woman is not out because she is afraid her father might become physically violent if she outed herself. She might be wrong about her dad — but she might not.

In her words, “pronouns can be swords.”

Eduhonesty: Some kids prefer life in closets. At least until they are out on their own, genuine questions of physical and mental safety may be in play. I support using preferred pronouns, but our adolescents today tend to be remarkably savvy about the world they live in. Beyond asking a class in general, ” if you have any special desires where pronouns are concerned, let me know,” I think I’d leave pronouns alone.

“You can’t go wrong if you keep silent,” the woman said.

She was telling white people not to insert themselves into the discussion spaces of other, non-white groups. Save your great opinions and listen, she tried to say. She made good points about cultural sensitivity. White Americans are programmed to leap into the protest march, shouting and waving their signs while vigorously speaking up for the less-fortunate, whoever those poor people might be.

That said, I’ve heard this narrative before. The call to silence white people has gained traction in the recent past. Another part of the same discussion extended that call to silence.

“‘I meant well’ is no excuse,” the speaker said. “Yes, you meant well, but you brought it right back to you.”

Her audience was listening attentively. I expect some of those listeners will actively try to be quieter, will intrude less often into unfamiliar cultural spaces. Less whitesplainin’ will decrease awkwardness and annoyance.

But I have growing reservations about the recent calls to silence. Social anxiety besets many of us. In any staff meeting of teachers, one finds fearless talkers — teaching favors extroverts — but also silent colleagues with their eyes mostly on their notes. These note watchers and takers speak up rarely, mostly when the spotlight falls on them against their will or a huge injustice appears to be underway. I worry that the quiet people especially will simply begin to avoid nonwhite spaces and will cease to be allies in the fight to provide equal education and equal opportunity to all. A call to silence can be a relief to someone who would prefer not to speak in the first place, a justification for avoiding awkward and potentially painful conversations. At what point does that relief become permission to drop issues of social equality in favor of less frightening topics? One reason so many health teachers of the past described anatomy in excessive detail was that putting parts into a puzzle allowed a teacher to avoid the topic of how those parts might be used.

Eduhonesty: Here’s a vote for finding the most compassionate and welcoming ways to ask people NOT to participate in conversations — because sometimes when people exit the conversation, they drop the topic under discussion and never return.

My massage therapist was born in the 1980s, before the internet and school shootings. As we talked yesterday about student anxiety, the demands placed on kids today and school shootings — not exactly the most relaxing massage 🙂 — I was struck by a realization: She cannot relate to today’s students as they get off the bus and walk into their schools.

I catch echoes of today’s fear. I was young in the time of duck and cover drills, of shut-your-eyes-so-you-won’t-go-blind advice. My elementary school’s subbasement had large steel drums of water and food stored behind the black and yellow sign of the times: 

But I am far away from that shelter in time and I was never the most nervous kid on the block. Despite my echoes, I don’t know what it’s like to think you might die on any random weekday because some random kid got tired of being bullied or feeling invisible.

I should probably feel more fearful. I substitute often enough. My past is peppered with scary moments. I tried to keep my students away from windows, knowing a kid with a gun was on his way to my school. We do so many drills that students do not take us seriously sometimes. I have done a few “real” lock-downs and the toughest part of those lockdowns is convincing students that this time we are not playacting.

Eduhonesty: That woman in the temporal window between the A-Bomb and the shooters? She does not know how school “feels” to our more sensitive students. In a sense, I don’t know either. I’m older and I’m numerate. I can assess the odds, and those odds are good enough. I don’t worry about walking into new classrooms.

Many students cannot accurately assess their odds, though. Even those who can run the numbers are experiencing school as a calculated survival risk. Every day, they put themselves out there and the more fearful among them cannot be certain they will return home.

Today’s schools are not yesterday’s schools. I envied my massage therapist. I envy the lucky people who grew up after fallout shelters and before snipers.