Grumpy Old Teacher

As a teacher, testing is one of my least favorite activities. It is necessary, but I can’t say I like it.

I recognize the advantages of testing students. First, it forces them to learn and prepare to the extent that they have to know what they are learning. They can’t rely on anyone to supply them with the knowledge they need when they have to do perform on their own.

Second, it does give me the opportunity to check whether my subjective impressions of how well the students are doing matches with actual student achievement.

Third, testing also gives me an opportunity to probe every student for misunderstandings that are tripping them up in a minimal amount of time.

As a teacher, I want to test in ways that give students credit for what they know and do correctly even if they fail to arrive at the correct solution.

I also want to remove barriers that prevent students from showing what they know. For example, unfamiliar test formats often trip students up. It isn’t that they don’t know how to solve the problems or that they can’t come up with an acceptable answer, but the format confuses them and they don’t make the right response. These are the types of barriers that make standardized testing mostly useless in providing any meaningful results.

These days, I use an online platform for testing that my district’s curriculum provides. There are limitations to the platform, but it does give a means for giving a fair test that aligns with historical classroom practices. The format provides the needed challenge for performance, but it enables me to prepare the students by utilizing the same platform for providing a study assignment. I have found that high school freshmen do not know how to study for tests. I can tell them, but it is frustrating because they often do not understand what they should do. Having them do an actual preparation assignment takes them through the practices they should employ to study for the test. Since I began doing this, test scores have been much better.

If I was a lazy teacher, I would rejoice that the online platform scores the responses for me. I could use the percent that’s correct as the grade. But then I am not really testing for student understanding. All I’m doing is yielding my professional judgment to a dumb computer. All the grade records is how well the student provided answers that matched exactly what the computer is looking for.

That is why I require my students to work their problems on paper before entering their responses into their computers. I then review every incorrect answer on every test, consulting the students’ work papers to see what they were trying to do and awarding credit for everything they knew and did right.

For example, if a student makes an incorrect response because of an arithmetic error, I give them most of the points for the problem because the test was checking to see if that student knew that alternate interior angles formed by parallel lines are congruent. The student knew that, set up the correct equation, but made a mistake in solving the equation.

Also, in working on a proof, I can avoid students being penalized because they misspelled a word in providing a justification for the test problem.

In terms of teacher time, it requires more than any other means of testing. But I do it because how else will I have an authentic assessment?

When it comes to annual state tests, though, this is exactly what they don’t do. The result is that state tests do not measure performance, not the performance of students, nor teachers, nor schools, nor districts. They are worthless.

All a state test tells us is how well the students navigated the test platform; that is, how good of a test-taker the students are.

Isn’t it time to stop the charade?

Flush with a court victory in June’s Janus decision, the groups behind the plaintiff began campaigns in the states covered by the decision, such as California, to counter organizing activities and recruitment drives by teachers’ unions.

That was expected. Teachers’ unions are among the most demonized targets in the savage politics of our era. Keeping unions from signing up new members to offset the loss of agency fees from non-members would be a goal of the now status-quo reform crowd who view unions as the greatest obstacle to their privatization agenda.

But the Janus decision has no effect in Florida, which has had right-to-work laws for a long time. Florida unions have adjusted to those who benefit from union-negotiated contracts, but don’t have to pay the union for that service.

There is no reason for Florida teachers to receive email messages such as this:

Districts can’t withstand union demands.

Unions make promises of raises, better benefits, and working conditions, but are often unable to deliver on those promises. Union demands have become so great, many school districts are now suffering under this pressure. Too often, promises made by unions are unsustainable.

You do not have to pay for a union that is not delivering on its promises. To learn more about the topic click here.”

But that is the message I received this weekend from a group calling itself MyPayMySay.

I visited their website to “learn more.” If you can stomach it, this is all they offer (1 minute 20 seconds):

The video is misleading and features the usual tired rhetoric about teachers’ unions opposing improvement in education and forcing members to support their political positions.

The site really is not to “learn more,” but to present a way for anyone to “opt out” of their union. Notice how they attempt to co-opt the language of those who oppose the privatization agenda, in this case, those who oppose annual standardized testing by states.

GOT has to ask: Why is this necessary for Florida? No teacher is forced to join a union and no non-member pays anything to the union.

This is union-busting, plain and simple.

My Pay, My Say: Yes, yes it is. It is MY PAY and MY SAY and Grumpy Old Teacher has this to say: My union delivers. I have better pay, better benefits, and better working conditions because my union represents its members. In particular, my union was able to preserve health insurance for the employee without a payroll deduction to help pay for it.

The pay isn’t great. After 14 years, my base salary is only $44,000 a year. Still, I manage.

If my pay and benefits are unsustainable, it is not because my desires are out-of-line. Many teachers struggle to sustain a minimum standard-of-living on their teacher salary. Did you see the Time cover and read the lead story, MyPayMySay?

The unsustainability of teacher compensation is due to state legislatures defunding their schools through millage reductions, transfer of tax dollars to voucher programs and charter schools, and establishing numerous categoricals that limit what school systems can spend funding increases on.

What is unsustainable is the destruction of public education, the profiteering by politicians (oh yes, it seems every Florida legislator who champions charter schools works for a charter chain or has a relative (spouse, sibling, in-law) who owns and operates charter schools.

What is unsustainable is the corruption. I often wonder if the only reason the politicians and legislators get away with it is because they are so blatant about what they are doing.

I support my union because it delivers. My district enjoys labor peace because it works with the union for the benefit of all. My union will agree to set aside contract rules if a situation demands it. We have given up negotiated step raises when the U.S. economy goes into recession. We are not the enemy; we are the partners that make our school system work for all.

Recently a friend posted this article on her Facebook news feed:

Charter School buys self-driving bus

My comment wondered how a bus would handle a fight on the bus or other emergency, say if the bus caught on fire.

A response demanded to know if I had read the article.

I did not, but I stand by my remarks. I don’t always need to read an article to know a stupid idea when I run across it.

First, this is a charter school planning to transport children on self-driving buses. They are the sector of education that keeps its eye on the bottom line. They already are saving by not having to pay actual drivers who must come with qualifications. A safety assistant will ride on the bus with the children, but how long before the charter school decides even that minimum-wage paying job can be eliminated. I don’t have the confidence that a charter school, focused on its bottom line, will resist seeing an extra $20 to 30,000 dollars for the investors by going with no adult on the bus.

Maybe it will be parent volunteers. Many charters require parents to work a minimum amount of volunteer hours if their child is to attend the school. But even volunteers, as representatives of the school, represent a liability if they make bad decisions and children are hurt.

If the bus is self-driving, will the safety assistant have any control over the vehicle? Can they make it stop? Open the doors to evacuate the children?

Second, we have reports that the technology is not perfected. One ride-sharing service, experimenting with self-driving vehicles, experienced a pedestrian fatality as the car failed to stop. This article I did read and it reported that the human attendant could not react in time when the technology failed to make the car stop.

In another incident, a distracted driver of a Tesla failed to take control of his vehicle when the autopilot system failed to recognize a semi-truck’s side and went under it. This is not an isolated incident.

Still ready to entrust children to a bus that drives itself even if an adult is onboard?

Third, Amazon, UPS, USPS, and FedEx are experimenting with self-driving vehicles to deliver packages. The technology is not ready. Their trucks still arrive with a human driver who puts our packages on our porches.

If delivery services are not willing to entrust packages that have products inside them to self-driving technology, why would anyone think it’s a good idea to do so with children?

Don’t get me wrong. Teachers are grateful for all the donations and help they can get. But sometimes, teachers get a head-scratcher:

Massachusetts schools receive blue buckets filled with items to use if an active shooter is on the campus.

Here is what teachers received and the interpretations teachers have been sharing on what they think they should do with the items:

ROPE: The rope may be used to secure the door. After piling furniture in the way, the rope may be tied to the doorknob and to something else in the classroom to prevent the shooter from getting the door opened.

GOT response: It is difficult to get the necessary tightness into a nylon rope to maintain tension to prevent slack. Also, what knot should be used? This may work in a Hollywood movie, but in real life, the rope is useless as it will be impossible in a panic situation to pull the rope tight and secure with the proper knots. Bad knots mean the rope will not hold the door shut.

DUCT TAPE: Duct tape may be used to seal the door cracks to prevent smoke from entering. Also, may be used to seal wounds so victims do not bleed out.

GOT response: Knowledgeable people, such as those with military experience from dealing with wounds on a battlefield, have said that duct tape will cause terrible damage to the body when it is removed. It is not a good option. As for that smoke, these are active shooters. They are not releasing poisonous gasses into hallways. They are not setting fires. They do use smoke bombs to cause confusion, but these do not present a threat to people secure in a locked-down classroom.

HAMMER AND WEDGE: Use the hammer to pound the wedge under the door to prevent it from opening. If the shooter does get in, throw the hammer at him.

GOT response: The wedge idea is not a bad one, but in a panic situation, no one wants to stay at the door for a long time whacking away at a wedge on the floor. Again, it is easy to do it during a calm drill, but when everything is running on adrenaline and fear, simple tasks get much harder to do.

As for throwing the hammer at the shooter if he gets into the room, you are most likely dead before you draw your arm back. Why do people always fall back on the dumb idea that the way to stop the killing is for teachers to throw things?

BUCKET: During lengthy lockdowns, the bucket may be used for emergency bathroom needs.

GOT response: Go ahead, teachers, give permission to a child to expose themselves and use the bucket in front of the other children. See how long you keep your job. And if it’s only a drill, don’t expect your friendly custodian to empty the bucket, sanitize it, and return it to your room.

Finally, we learn that the duct tape or rope can be used to secure the shooter after the hero-teacher has knocked him out with the hammer.

I don’t want to reproach those whose hearts are in the right place, but lacking good counsel, they are making ineffective responses to a very serious problem.

Blue buckets are not the answer.

Sensible gun registration laws, combined with a ban on civilian possession of lethal firepower above a certain level, better mental health services, removal of the CDC ban on a study of gun violence, and more attention to the root causes that push young people to make a fatal decision is a better way to go.

P.S.: As the Doctor* would say, you have lost the right to talk to me if you think the blue bucket is a good idea but it lacks one thing–the gun Betsy Devos wants to put into it.

*Doctor Who, BBC science fiction television series.

This one has already made the rounds, but you probably haven’t seen the whole thing.

Yes, the Florida Commissioner of Education, Pam Stewart, got huffy when a reporter came up to her and asked a question.

The Commissioner demanded to know why the reporter was interrupting her lunch because she had only 15 minutes … leading us to assume she wanted to eat and was being kept from it.

Funny thing, though, when you watch the full clip, the Grumpy Old Commissioner (GOC) wasn’t eating. She was loitering in the meeting room talking to people.

If her purpose was to talk to people, why would she object to answering a few questions for a reporter?

If she wanted bodily sustenance, why hadn’t she left the room to find food?

My guess is the staffer who tried to head off the reporter caught hell when GOC et al. got back to DOE offices and out of the public eye.

WARNING: Sarcasm Alert

Breaking News: In a tersely worded announcement this morning, the College Board announced it would discontinue its Advanced Placement test for probability/statistics after students protested the scoring of the June 2018 SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test).

“These damn kids have gotten too smart,” said David Coleman, President and Chief Executive Officer of the College Board. “They’re onto our game. We need to stop encouraging schools to teach them about statistics so they will not have excellent arguments to challenge us.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=284&v=xVOQQqLNwlc

Postscript (not sarcasm): If you want to support these teens, sign their petition here: June 2018 petition drive

The start of a new school year is filled with rituals: supply lists, schedules, finding classrooms, meeting teachers, making new friends.

In these days of the data-driven education, we have established a new ritual: the baseline test.

In the first few days of school, children will undergo a slew of baseline tests, one for every subject or course they take. For a secondary student, that is eight tests because even such esoteric subjects such as art or gym must have a baseline test.

Before I go into the internet problems my school district experienced this week trying to accomplish baseline testing, let us examine the very idea itself.

A baseline test checks for pre-existing knowledge in students, that is, what do they already know about the subject and content they will encounter during the school year. The theory is that if the students already know something, there is no point in teaching it.

For efficiency’s sake, these tests are administered via standardized mediums, computer or paper-based. (Think bubble sheets.)

Numerous problems arise from this process.

First, how do we know whether the students actually know the material or are merely good test-takers?

Every year, I dutifully look up my student data for their performance on the last state test in mathematics. Every year, almost all of them ‘passed.’ (I put the word in quotes because a pass involves answering about 30% of the questions correctly.) Every year, I find out through classroom experience that although they ‘passed,’ they really do not have the skills mastered and need remediation.

Even if students have something of a means of solving a problem correctly, I find it beneficial for them to teach the lesson so they can gain a deep understanding of the content.

Baseline tests do not help teachers make instructional decisions.

Students hate the tests. Let’s listen to the typical student’s thoughts about the test: This is so stupid. Why do they expect me to know this stuff? Duh, they put me in this class to learn it. Why are they testing me now? Can I Christmas-Tree the test? I want to put my head down and close my eyes. Why do they always try to make me feel stupid?

Teachers hate the tests. Let’s listen to their thoughts: This is so stupid. I haven’t taught any of this yet. I would rather begin instruction. OMG, the kids are freaking out. I need to tell them this is not a grade and I do not expect them to know any of it. Yet I can’t let them blow it off or someone will accuse me of deliberately trying to lower the scores to improve my student growth score at the end of the year. Baseline tests tell me nothing. They are worthless, but I can’t say that. How am I going to pull this off? Oh, s**t, the internet is down. All the kids have been kicked out of the test. What am I going to do now?

Yes, given the internet problems that Duval County Public Schools has experienced this week, the only thing baseline testing has accomplished is to allow administrators to see how nimble their teachers are in adjusting to adversity and maintaining student learning rather than letting the time go to waste.

Our internet service went out, came back, and went down again.

For me, one class tested. One class tried, stared at their screens for 25 minutes waiting for the test to appear, then I aborted. Next time, that class tested and got half done before everyone was kicked out. The Internet has gone out again. By the way, the kids laughed. As they didn’t want to do it, they found it really funny that the infrastructure got in the way.

One more class tested. What will Monday bring? Got three more classes to do before dealing with that half-done class.

My nice, neat plan of instruction is in tatters.

But that’s not the worst of it.

These baseline scores will be compared to the scores students post at the end-of-the-year to determine how good of a teacher I am. Given the disruptions, given that some instruction leaves some kids able to answer questions that they couldn’t before, given that there is no consistency in the testing from school to school and classroom to classroom, given that I as a teacher will be compared to other teachers to determine if I should stay at my school or even remain employed, how can anyone think this mess has caused the entire system of measuring teacher performance by test score to be anything but unfair, distorted, arbitrary, and capricious?

Yeah, this guy. He hates civilization; bring on the chaos.

Your internet is going down. I don’t care about fairness to teachers or what testing does to students.

You think we want to know how well you teach?

oago348929&(81,. Sorry, that noise is laughter, my breathing apparatus doesn’t do laughter.

You think this is bad, wait until the Spring when you have to do state tests. Bwa ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Not that I consider myself Lord Voldemort in any way, but borrowing the sentiment from the fourth book in the Harry Potter series, at least the quote, “I confess myself disappointed.”

Our new superintendent has been on the job for a month now. Today she appeared on our local NPR radio station and their local program that runs from 9 AM to 10 AM each morning.

She continued her theme of Team Duval, how she needs everyone to be on the team as everyone in town has gotten behind the NFL franchise, and continued to appeal for community support even as she asserted that everyone should remember there is only one head coach.

Once again she has failed to recognize the people who make schools work: the teachers, support staff, and administrators who daily make learning happen.

Oh, she mentioned that she had seen some great things happening, but it’s summer. Exactly where did she go? No mention. Most schools are in hiatus. It’s as if she views schools as running machines, but cannot see the individual parts and how important each part is. Even Vitti saw the individual when he confessed that he had viewed teachers as replaceable cogs.

Coach, what’s going on? You’re standing on an empty field appealing to the crowd to suit up and get in the game. Meanwhile, your professional players sit in the locker room wondering when you will call them forth and acknowledge their efforts, their importance, their essentialness to produce a winning season.

If you want to win the Super Bowl, it is the players, not the crowd, not the community support that brings the Lombardi Trophy to town. The crowd and community are important to the success of the team, but the players are the ones who actually play the game, grind out the hard plays, and put the scores on the board.

I confess myself disappointed.

During my July visit to my parents, they introduced me to the show ‘Undercover Boss,’ in which a company’s CEO disguises him/herself and spends a week pretending to be a new hire in various workplaces to learn what’s really going on and have candid conversations with the line employees and first rank of management.

The week is a surprise to the CEOs, who had no idea what was really taking place in their companies. In one show, a fast-food boss found out that one of his restaurants had many problems, including potholes in the parking lot, and that ‘corporate’ wasn’t listening when the employees reported that they needed repairs. He was shocked to find that one of his joints was opening steel cans of peppers with knives because the can openers were broken and corporate wouldn’t approve a replacement purchase.

I wonder what would happen if superintendents disguised themselves and went undercover in their schools for a week. They would find out a boatload of disturbing information, that is true. Would they care?

With the Undercover Bosses, they took immediate action to correct the problems before meeting with the employees they met to reward them for the valuable help they gave the company by being frank and also showing how much they cared about the success of the business.

I wonder if Undercover Superintendents would do the same. Do they want to know the people who work in the schools, the people who make the system work every day despite the challenges and lack of resources, and do they want to find ways to reward them?

One month in, we haven’t seen that in Duval. I confess myself disappointed.

*It would be easy to depict this essay as a criticism of the new superintendent. It is not that. It is far too early to decide upon whether the Board made a good hire. Rather, I am confessing my disappointment to date as I explore my feelings as to why I feel no excitement about what will come next. I am eager, as always, to return for a new year and work with the incoming freshmen. But I feel a disconnect with district leadership. Hopefully, by the time Opening Day is over, I will be proven wrong. Rarely have I wanted to be wrong as much as I do now.

Personalized Learning

It goes by many names. Recently, this video from five years ago surfaced in my Facebook Newsfeed:

You remember the Texas teen who told off a teacher for handing out packets of worksheets, sitting at her desk, and otherwise making no effort to engage the class in learning.

After watching the video again, it struck me: this is the future of public education as envisioned by such personages as Bill Gates, Jeff Zuckerberg, the Waltons, Laurene Jobs, the Koch brothers, the list goes on and on.

Under a technology-based system of competency-based learning or personalized learning, children sit in front of computers and work on programs that have placed them on a learning path. The path is the same for each child, but the spot on the path where each child works is different.

If the computer does the teaching, then there is no need for a professional teacher. Paraprofessionals could be hired at minimum wage to supervise the room, keep behavior under control, and ensure each child clicks away on the keys.

How? Technology has a solution. The paraprofessional has no need to walk around the room; at her desk, she has a monitor to watch that shows what each child is doing to make sure they aren’t playing games or watching music/sports videos.

Human interaction is not needed.

Most monitoring systems provide features by which the monitor can interrupt off-task children with messages or even by killing the inappropriate apps they are on.

Now go back and watch Mr. Bliss again. Hear him as he demands that which competency-based education or personalized learning will eliminate: the human relationship between teacher and child that is the very heart and soul of education.

What’s the difference between packets of worksheets and computer-based programs? Only this:

PAPER.

Recent headlines around the state of Florida gave notice that 920 teachers, otherwise effective in their jobs and receiving rave reviews, have lost their jobs because they could not pass Florida’s General Knowledge test, one of three an educator must undergo to receive a professional teaching certificate from the state.

Social media lit up with condemnations of the test. Many persons lamented how tough it was and questioned why some portions of the test are necessary. After all, they reasoned, why would a P.E. teacher or an art teacher have to demonstrate knowledge of how to write an essay? Or how to solve a problem involving similar triangles?

(These two areas, writing and math, are the sections of the test that are the most challenging for teachers to pass.)

While I will not defend the current version of test, administered by everyone’s favorite whipping post, Pearson Education, Inc., there is something to be said to require teachers to have “general knowledge” in order to be certificated.

1. Students often ask a teacher questions that do not fall into the area of the teacher’s expertise.
2. Teachers of all content areas have to read student explanations and know basic rules of spelling, grammar, and writing to help students clarify what they are saying.
3. Teachers need a basic knowledge of all content areas in order to help students make cross-curricular connections and to understand why content is important and meaningful. (For example, it is important as a Geometry teacher for me to be able to connect triangles to bridges and other construction to show why studying their properties is important. Shapes and how they are used is crucial to understanding and creating art. Agility in solving algebraic equations is important in solving chemical equations to determine the result of combining two or more substances. )
4. Teachers communicate with parents and others. It is embarrassing and would lead to a loss of confidence in a school if the teachers wrote in ways that were filled with errors and failed to convey meaning.
5. If teachers are unable to answer basic questions or talk about anything that a reasonable person would expect an educational practitioner to know, again it would lead to a loss of confidence in schools.
6. To restate the above point, a well-educated person, which all teachers should be, is in possession of a basic set of knowledge that covers academic areas, the arts and humanities, etc.

Because teachers need to possess a set of general knowledge, it is important for the state to be sure teachers do possess a set of general knowledge before certificating them for the classroom.

Two questions remain: (1) What is that set of general knowledge and should it be the same for every teacher? In other words, does an elementary teacher need to possess the same set of general knowledge as a secondary teacher?

(2) What are appropriate ways for the state to confirm that a teacher possesses the necessary general knowledge for the classroom?

I am reaching the usual 500 word limit for the typical blog post. I will break here and take up these questions in the next post.

Postscript: Because I am a secondary teacher and am not a practitioner of elementary education, it may appear that my reasons for requiring a set of “general knowledge” is slanted to the secondary level. I invite elementary teachers to add or explain why they also benefit from having general knowledge in their work with the younger children.