Tag Archives: Standardized Testing

SEVEN SIGNS OF THE APOCALYPSE FOR NYC PUBLIC SCHOOLS

Posted on April 2, 2013 | 6 Comments

New York City teachers come back to work tomorrow after an early Spring Break. Just in time too because rumblings of change are everywhere here in the city. The nation should have its eye on what happens in the New York City school system over the next year or two.

Together, the 7 Seals of the Apocalypse are on the horizon for our education system. This doesn’t mean that I think NYC public schools will disappear. It means that, if they were to disappear, these would be the things that will do us in.

First Seal – False Prophets

“I looked, and there before me was a white horse! Its rider held a bow, and he was given a crown, and he rode out as a conqueror bent on conquest.”

Elections for new leadership in the union will take place shortly after we return to work tomorrow. The Unity Caucus, who has had a stranglehold on power from its inception, is facing a challenge from MORE this year. Don’t be surprised if MORE has some measure of success in this election.

The Unity Caucus has been running a non-campaign: not engaging with or acknowledging MORE in any way and not taking any public actions or stances recently so they don’t risk alienating more teachers. If we hear anything, it will be about how Unity brings us “experienced” and “competent” leadership.

Michael Mulgrew and the rest of Unity are the false prophets upon our land. They will speak about how they did not cave to Pharaoh Bloomberg’s impossible teacher evaluations, then they will cave soon after the elections are over. Unity will play nice with teachers over the next month, then will do a whole bunch of selling out once elections are over. Seeing as how they have three years before they face another election, they will try to get all of their selling out done over the next two years in order to give us a chance to forget before the 2016 elections.

Second Seal – War

“Then another horse came out, a fiery red one. Its rider was given power to take peace from the earth and to make men slay each other. To him was given a large sword.”

New Yorkers will be voting for a new mayor this year after 12 years of the Reign of Pharaoh Mike I. The Democratic Party in NYC is locked in a battle over who will win the nomination and, thereby, the Mayoralty. Presumably, the favorite is City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, the woman responsible for allowing Bloomberg’s illegal third term to sail through the City Council. She is the person who many New Yorkers just assume to be a BloomClone.

The Red Horse of the apocalypse is supposed to be a good guy, but the red warrior in this election is most definitely fighting for the dark side. Quinn is the quintessential political operator who believes in nothing and stands for nothing. Her plan for the schools is Bloomberg Lite. She went out of her way to block the paid sick leave bill and then reversed herself when some of her biggest endorsers threatened to retract.

If Quinn ends up winning the war, our schools will not have proper leadership for the foreseeable future. This is the woman for whom the UFT wants us to wait because she would give us a “fair” contract, unlike Bloomberg. Unity’s entire “wait for the next mayor” approach to contract negotiations under the guise that the next mayor is going to be our Great White Hope is laughable.

Third Seal – Famine

“Then I heard what sounded like a voice among the four living creatures, saying, ‘A quart of wheat for a day’s wages, and three quarts of barley for a day’s wages, and do not damage the oil and the wine!’”

The “economic crisis” is a term that hangs over us with a sense of permanence. Despite the fact that the federal government and private industry are throwing more money into the education world than ever, the poor state of the economy will continually be used as an excuse as to why less and less money finds its way into our classrooms.

We have seen the deterioration of most after school programs outside of bare sports funded by the Public Schools Athletic League. Art and music have been nixed, foreign languages are starting to feel the pinch and the handwriting is on the wall for Global History. Our curriculum will be streamlined based upon what is tested and the only subjects tested are the subjects that will keep us “competitive” in the 21st century. Everything will be cut away except testing and STEM subjects. The specter of “budget cuts” will be the handmaiden facilitating this bare-bones education.

Fourth Seal – Pestilence

“I looked, and there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death, and Hades was following close behind him. They were given power over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine and plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth.”

The plague of standardized testing promises to grow and deepen over the next few years. A vast amount of resources have already been spent on reorienting the entire education system coast-to-coast around standardized exams. The richies who have plunged billions of dollars into the emerging testing economy will not abandon their precious investment without a protracted fight.

For high school teachers here in NYC, the new scoring policy for the Regents Exams will ensure chaos. Most importantly, it will lead to an across-the-board dip in all test scores. In his final year as the “Education Mayor”, Pharaoh Bloomberg will once again be embarrassed when the test scores by which he used to measure his own “progress” end up showing exactly the opposite. It will be a fitting kick in the pants for Bloomberg on his way out of the door.

On the other hand, it will be a sad development for the teachers who remain in the system because the Fifth Seal of the Apocalypse is:

Fifth Seal – Martyrdom

“When He opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of The Word of God and the testimony they had maintained. They called out in a loud voice, ‘How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until You judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?’”

Once UFT elections are over, you can be assured that a deal for a new evaluation system for teachers will be squared away. Although we can’t know the details, we do know for sure that it will cause an unspeakable amount of suffering everywhere in the city.

Teachers will be judged by their students’ test scores or, more accurately, by how much “value” they “add” to the learning of their students. We will also be forced to conform to the “Danielson” rubric, named for its inventor who has a questionable education background and questionable motives for pushing her rubric. Combined with the dictate that two “ineffective” ratings in a row is grounds for termination, many good and dedicated teachers in New York City will lose their jobs.

These are not even the things that concern me the most about the evaluation system to which our union leaders agreed. The most disturbing part is how it weakens an already anemic system of due process for teachers. Restoring the integrity of due process (making it harder for principals to trump up charges against teachers, making teacher investigations open and fair and having a rational standard for handing out penalties as decided by fair labor arbitrators) should be among the highest priorities of our union leadership. Instead, they have proven willing to allow due process to rot away until we are as protected as teachers in “right to work” states.

Sixth Seal – Signs from Heaven

“There was a great Earthquake. The sun turned black like sackcloth made of goat hair, the whole moon turned blood red, and the stars in the sky fell to earth, as late figs drop from a fig tree when shaken by a strong wind. The sky receded like a scroll, rolling up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place. Then the kings of the earth, the princes, the generals, the rich, the mighty, and every slave and every free man hid in caves and among the rocks of the mountains.”

It looms on the horizon like a conquering army. Every teacher in New York City knows that “Common Core” is coming in 2014. Everyone inside of every school building in the vast majority of the country will have felt Common Core’s presence by then, if they have not done so already. We did not ask for it. Parents were not necessarily clamoring for it. But, like every seal of the apocalypse, it came despite our wishes.

Some people like the Common Core and others believe it is a tolerable system. No matter what you think of the content of the Common Core, the intention is obvious: to institutionalize the standardized testing regime on a nationwide basis. Imagine a uniform standardized exam that every child in the country has to take every year? Can you imagine the windfall for companies like Pearson and Wireless Generation (whatever it is called now)?

The idea of national standards for public schools has traditionally been a goal of progressives. It was a policy originally devised to motivate states to uplift their worst schools to the level of their best schools. Despite the long-time progressive pressure for national standards, it only became a reality when businessmen realized there was money to be made and a working and consuming population to be dumbed down as a result.

Seventh Seal – Trumpets of the Apocalypse

First Woe – “And out of the smoke locusts came down upon the earth and were given power like that of scorpions of the earth.”

Michelle Rhee recently invaded New York with her lobbying firm, “Students First”. Their machinations can be found behind the law empowering the State Education Commissioner to impose a new teacher evaluation system on NYC. They will continue to ravage our land no matter who the mayor or governor happen to be.

Second Woe – “It said to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, ‘Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates.’ And the four angels who had been kept ready for this very hour and day and month and year were released to kill a third of mankind. The number of the mounted troops was two hundred million. I heard their number. The horses and riders I saw in my vision looked like this: Their breast plates were fiery red, dark blue, and yellow as sulfur. The heads of the horses resembled the heads of lions, and out of their mouths came fire, smoke and sulfur.”

The troops with the multicolored breast plates are obviously a metaphor for computers. 200 million is the amount of computers that stand to be manufactured if the idea of “e-learning” gains any more currency. The horses who blow fire and sulfur are the online classes that purport to “educate” students.

Learning is at risk of being perceived as something that can be done on the fly, at a distance and on the cheap just like “e-shopping” and “e-mailing”. Education is being commodified like cosmetics and fast food. First it was the boutique charter school with the hyperbolic name. Now, it is the online learning program marketed as a replacement for flesh-and-blood teachers.

In NYC, e-learning is the serpent that lays close to the heart. Programs like I-Learn are increasingly being used by schools as a cheap way to give quick credits to students who need to graduate on time. Very soon people will start to say, “if computers can help make up credits, maybe they can do everything else.” The destruction of public schools as a physical place will not be far behind.

Third Woe – “The sixth angel poured out his bowl on the great river Euphrates, and its water was dried up to prepare the way for the kings from the East. Then I saw three evil spirits that looked like frogs; they came out of the mouth of the dragon, out of the mouth of the beast and out of the mouth of the false prophet (see articles in our Prophecy section). They are spirits of demons performing miraculous signs, and they go out to the kings of the whole world, to gather them for the battle on the great day.”

By the time all of the seals of the Apocalypse have set in, New York City schools will be ripe for the taking. The culprits will be “the Kings from the east… performing miraculous signs…” They will be the richmen who will reduce education to a series of prompts from the internet, a model which stands to make them a lot of money.

Online learning will be said to “perform miracles” with graduation rates and test scores. We will be told that the best way to get bang for our tax bucks is to shut down all brick and mortar schools in favor of online academies. We will also be assured that private firms will run these academies for less cost than the government can run them.

And then the destruction of New York City’s public education system will be complete.

While it is unlikely that all of these things will happen as I say it will, what is not arguable is that all of these forces will greatly reshape our schools over the next two years.

By the end of 2014, our children and our teachers will be operating under a whole new different set of rules than the ones in place today. It is up to us to make these rules as unobjectionable as possible.

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Posted in An Embattled Career, education reform, Politics, School, teaching

Tagged Corporate Education Reform, education, Education Reform, Education Reform in NYC, NYS Teacher Evaluations, Online Learning, Schools, Standardized Testing, Teaching

HOW MANY INEFFECTIVE TEACHERS ARE THERE?

Posted on February 20, 2013 | 9 Comments

This is a question we hear being asked with greater frequency. The structure of the question is telling about the climate of teacher bashing in which we currently live. It assumes that there is some sort of numerical answer, either in a percentage or an absolute value. It assumes that we can reliably arrive at this answer. Most importantly, the existence of the question itself assumes that the “ineffective teacher” is a problem, one that presumably has a solution.

Let us say that we can arrive at a numerical answer. What do you do with that information? Do you identify the “ineffective” ones so they can be better trained? Do you merely fire them? A bit of both perhaps?

Assuming there is a core of intractably awful teachers who should be fired, what do you do next? From whence is the next generation of superstar teachers coming? This is the problem. The question of how many ineffective teachers exist is part of a wider discourse that has been inhospitable to teachers. Teacher unions are breaking, if not totally broken. We have a proliferation of new standards, uniform exams and other measures designed to hold teachers “accountable”. And make no mistake about that word “accountable”. It is not being used as a promise to better inform our practice or the quality of service we deliver to our communities. Instead, it is being brandished like a noose by a lynch mob, a mob that has been stirred into an anti-teacher frenzy by a well-funded media campaign orchestrated by so-called “reformers”. We will be held “accountable” right up until the moment our necks snap.

In an environment like this, who in their right mind would want to be a teacher? What kind of person with a 4.0 GPA would want to dedicate their life to a profession accorded so little respect? Where are these great teachers for whom the way will be cleared once we fire all the ineffective ones?

Those today who ask the question “how many ineffective teachers are there” automatically disqualify any plausible solution. It is born out of a teacher-hating environment that discourages the potentially “effective” teachers of tomorrow from entering the profession. Add to this the rising cost of college and the raising of the bar of entry into the teaching profession (including a teacher “bar exam” here in New York State, an idea that has been supported by Randi Weingarten) and you have an environment perfectly suited towards driving anyone in their right minds away from the profession.

The foregoing assumes that there is a way to identify ineffective teachers to begin with. Reformers like Secretary of Education Arne Duncan assume they have found a way: teacher evaluation schemes that rely on student growth on test scores. Despite the fact that this has been tried in major cities like Washington, D.C. with disastrous consequences, Duncan has been scaling up the standardized testing regime with his Race to the Top program. States like New York will now judge their teachers’ effectiveness with “value added” data that have such wide margins of error as to make them useless.

The consequences of this are predictable. Teachers will merely “teach to the test”. Those who dare teach students with learning disabilities will be at greater risk of being rated “ineffective”. Teachers in Long Island will be held to the same standard as teachers in the South Bronx, despite the fact that they receive generally less funding and have more “externalities” to overcome. There will be an exodus of teachers to school districts with lower rates of poverty, crime and learning disabilities.

So why the narrative of the ineffective teacher? If we don’t even have reliable ways of identifying ineffective teachers, how do we know there are any in the system, let alone an amount that warrants wholesale reform of teacher evaluations?

It has currency with the general public because most people have been to school at some point. This fact alone seems to cause people to believe that they are some sort of authority on matters of education. Moreover, everybody is a taxpayer and, therefore, the boss of every public school teacher out there, or at least the teachers in their district.

Sadly, most of these people in the general public seem not to remember their teachers with fondness. They probably did not learn a whole heck of a lot in school, or only did so despite their teachers. I can say that, throughout my public school career, I did not learn much myself. In these instances it is easy to blame the teachers. People brandish the accountability noose in revenge for all of the crappy teachers they had when they were in school.

However, just because we did not learn much in school does not mean our teachers were ineffective. First off, I have been a student in many schools and I do not really recall any teachers who did not try to teach. There are people who seem to think that teachers drink coffee and sleep at their desks all day, even though this clearly runs counter to even their own experiences. Therefore, our not learning anything certainly was not due to our teachers not trying. So if they tried to teach us, why did we not learn? Sure, it is easy to say that they were boring. Their methods did not capture our attentions. They did not seem to care about us as people. Maybe this is true to an extent but it leaves out one thing: our own complicity in not learning.

I did not learn in school because I did not pay attention most of the time. I did not pay attention most of the time because there were other, more exciting things in the world to think about other than grammar and algebra. My mind was swirling with so many disorganized thoughts and so many fleeting desires. After all, I was a kid. Furthermore, I was a kid growing up at the end of the 20th century. There were all types of toys, commercials, television shows, popular music songs and technology out there geared specifically towards me. These were usually the images and the sounds that were dancing in my head while the teacher was talking about stuff like the Declaration of Independence. It is no wonder I did not learn anything.

Yet, here I am typing away using vocabulary, sentence structure and organized paragraphs. If I did not learn anything, how did I learn how to communicate in the English language at all? I know that it was at some point in kindergarten that I was introduced to the alphabet and how to use it. I will be damned if I remember how it was taught to me. But something stuck. Many things apparently stuck because I somehow ended up knowing stuff by the time I graduated high school. Sure, maybe I did not learn the type of detail that some of the gifted students learned but there was and still is stuff in my head. I learned and I did so despite myself.

It would be easy to chalk up my ignorance to my teachers. They did not “get” me. They were “lame”. Maybe there is some truth to that. Maybe there is also truth in the idea that I was a spoiled brat who took for granted an education that children in other nations would die to have. Alas, it is uncomfortable for people to actually believe that they once were, or still are, a bunch of brats. Politicians and education reformers certainly are not going to tell them that. So blaming teachers is easier. It lets us off the hook for our own shortcomings.

The other part to the teacher -bashing has to do with unions. Apparently, most Americans are miserable at their jobs and have the fear of being fired dangling precariously over their heads. They believe that teachers, these lazy and ineffective bums that did not “get” them when they were in school, are not miserable or insecure enough. Coming from a school of thought that holds the specter of poverty and homelessness makes workers better, people have had an obsession with eliminating “tenure” under the false impression that it means a job for life. Somehow, if teachers do not have the protections that allow them to advocate for their children and are held to accountability standards that measure how many bubbles their students fill in “correctly” over the course of 3 hours, schools will “improve”.

It is a sign of a selfish, petty and downright fearful society when one group of workers does not feel that another group of workers is suffering sufficiently. Apparently, they see no connection between stripping one group of workers of its due process rights and the deterioration of their own working conditions. It used to be that teachers were pitied because they pulled in long hours without making much money. Now they are envied because they make too much money and have some tepid job protections. Rather than attempting to get “tenure” for their own lines of work, they would rather engage in a race to the bottom where nobody has any job protections anywhere.

And this is supposed to keep the “effective” teachers while attracting more “effective” teachers in the future? I hope that people eventually think about the implications of what they are saying and realize the reformers are prescribing educational poison. You think schools sucked when you were a kid? Just wait until every teacher in America has to turn their classroom into a 180-day test-prep session.

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Posted in An Embattled Career, education reform, Politics, School, teaching

Tagged education, Education Reform, Schools, Standardized Testing, teacher bashing, Teacher Evaluations, Teacher Unions, Teaching

THE MARCH OF THE DATA

Posted on February 11, 2013 | 1 Comment

What is there to be afraid of?

They are there every year. They have been there for the past few years, starting their high school careers with faces anxiously upturned. I give them the run-down: the historical eras we will cover, the class routines, the homework policy and what will be expected of both them and myself.

In many ways they are just like the freshmen I taught when I started my career 13 years ago. They are introverted, extroverted, pleasant, cruel, motivated, sedated. They embody all of the contradictions of humanity, all in one room. And why not? After all, they are human beings.

Yet, on another level, they are very different from the freshmen I taught 13 years ago. Or maybe it is me who is different. Or maybe it is both.

I sort of remember the first high schoolers I ever taught. I would ask them a question, they would go beyond it. They would ask a question and bring to the class a new level of understanding. Sometimes, they would bring me to a new level of understanding as well. Their essays easily regurgitated the facts necessary to pass, but there was more. They saw connections. They synthesized. They reasoned inductively and deductively to give their writing a coherent feel. Above all, they were curious. Their minds were reaching for ever-higher regions of understanding.

Perhaps these are just the ramblings of an old man who remembers some halcyon days that never quite existed. Perhaps my first students had such an impression on me because I was more impressionable. Yes, one can still be impressionable at 21 years of age in a way similar to a child.

And I still see these same qualities in the students I teach today. They are still precocious because that is the mind of a human child, of children of most any species.

Those qualities are there but they are muted. They still ask questions. They still go beyond what is asked of them. They still help me develop new levels of understanding. They still do these things, but do them less frequently than the teenagers of old. Instead, they do certain other things more frequently. These things, I don’t know, they just don’t seem healthy.

We have students that pay attention to everything. By the look on their faces, you can tell they are following along with the lesson. They may not say anything but you just know they are absorbing history like a sponge. Then they approach you after class. Are they going to ask a question about history? Is there something they need clarified?

Then they open their mouth and ask: “what grade do I have for this class?”

It’s the middle of the semester. They received a progress report a month ago. They have received a grade on every homework assignment and exam. They know how classwork is graded. In their possession is a trail of numbers they can use to get an idea of how they are “doing” in the numbers sense of things.

But they want to know how they are doing now, right at this very second. They want to know how the last number they received has gone up or down.

It used to be that when a student asked me a question after being in rapt attention during class, they would ask something about the lesson. They wanted to know something that wasn’t necessarily covered in class, something that had been burning a hole in their brain for the past half-hour.

Today that look of rapt attention doesn’t necessarily mean they are paying rapt attention. It means they are looking for their opportunity to pounce to ask that one question that has been burning a hole in their brain: what is my grade? Sometimes they ask it in the middle of the lesson, the suspense being too much to hold in.

There are the students who complete one handout in class, then turn to me and ask “am I passing now?” For many of them, it is like they wish to know the exact moment their grade reaches an acceptable level, however they define “acceptable”.

This never used to happen. Grades were something that usually came later. They were something to be discussed during parent-teacher conferences or during moments you had set aside for students one-on-one. It was a conversation that took place once or twice a year for each student, if even that much.

Now, it is something that happens all of the time. Is this the result of the online gaming generation where achievement is measured in an ever-rolling number at the top of the screen? Every level passed or enemy killed, as it were, causes the number to go higher and higher.

Nah, I don’t think so. If anything, video games have become less beholden to scores and more about completing a digital story.

The students who have been entering high school lately are part of the Reform Generation. They have come up through the ranks of a school system that has been thoroughly “reformed” by our saviors in government and business. They are the No Child Left Behind generation, the Mayoral Control Generation, the Standardized Testing Generation, the Race to the Top Generation. They have been reared on a steady stream of data. Their learning measured in a number from 0-100.

Education for this generation is not a matter of learning stuff. It is a matter of doing stuff. It is a matter of doing enough stuff to get their desired grade. For them, school is a series of mechanical processes: filling in the right bubble, filling in the blank with the right words or doing enough assignments to keep their head above water. Sure, there is internal growth, spiritual growth. But the growth they are most concerned with is the growth of their number.

For the student of old, it seemed that learning was an intrinsic thing. A new idea sunk into their brain. It either deepened, contradicted or displaced some other idea they already knew. This would cause them to ask a question or to find a new synthesis or do something else to adapt the new idea into their existing (sorry for using this educationist term) “schema”.

For the student of the Reform Generation, an idea sinks into their head. They stick the idea somewhere in their brain because they were told it was going to be on a test. There are many ideas already in their brain that contradict the new idea, but that is of no bother to the Reform Generation. It is not about how an idea affects you and helps you evolve. It is about how an idea can be stored and retrieved like a data file. What the new idea does to them, how it might deepen or undermine their entire world, is lost. Either the idea does not affect them in any way or the effect the idea has is secondary to its use as a knowledge widget for future regurgitation.

This is the data-driven Reform Generation. People are trained to act like computers. The technocrats and bean-counters who run our school system are succeeding in fashioning the next generation in their own image. They are training the next generation to think, feel and measure everything in numbers. They are training the next generation to think that intelligence is a binary code.

Are these human children? Sure. Like I said earlier, they are still curious like all human children. But as a teacher of teenagers, which is a stage of life where the indoctrination of their past schooling competes with their natural, child-like precocity, I see where these teenagers are tending. I see the sheen of a computerized, technocrized, numberized adult starting to cover the wonderfully chaotic soul a child. I see the silverish shell of a robot starting to grow over the flesh-and-blood human child.

No, I will not tell you your grade now. You will have to wait until report card time. I will not give you a number for every little thing you do and don’t do. I will not put every little assignment, every little breath, every last piece of work you do into an online grading spreadsheet so you can learn the lesson that education means nothing unless there is a number attached. Your education is not a number. Your education is your growth as a human being. Not only is it your growth between September and June, it is your growth forever and ever. Not everything in life has a number. In fact, the most important things in life don’t have numbers.

When you get married, why don’t you ask your spouse for a number to describe how you’re doing?

When you go to holiday dinner with your family, why don’t you ask them for a number to describe what type of relative you have been?

When you go to your place of worship, why don’t you ask your deity to give you a number describing how good a life you have led?

Numbers are for computers, technocrats and bean-counters. You’re a human being. Education is your growth as a human being. I’m sorry but, as your teacher, I have an interest in keeping you human. When I see that silver shell growing over you, it is my job to give you the tools to crack out of it. How can you even breathe in that thing?

Let the computers compute and the bean-counters count beans. You are a human being. The best lesson you can learn as a human is that you can’t be boiled down to a number. Once you allow yourself to become a number you become another bean to be counted, thrown in the pile with millions of other beans.

Our job is to ensure that the reformers’ reforms never amount to a hill of beans.

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Posted in An Embattled Career, education reform, School, teaching

Tagged Computerized Youth, Corporate Education Reform, education, Learning, School, Standardized Testing, Technocratic Education, Value Added Formulas in Education

A THINK PIECE IN THE NY POST (SAY WHAT?)

Posted on February 8, 2013 | 2 Comments

It’s not everyday that the New York Post gets philosoraptor thinking.

Proving the old adage that even a blind squirrel finds a nut from time to time, the NY Post ran an editorial last week that wasn’t complete trash.

The article is titled Race, the UFT & NYC’s Top Schools and the author, Mark Schulte, is a retired NYC public school teacher. Schulte criticizes the UFT for voting to support the NAACP’s lawsuit, which aims to scrap the specialized high school exam, against the NYC Department of Education.

New York City has three specialized high schools (what other districts might deem “magnet schools”) with a long tradition of serving some of NYC’s brightest teenagers. Over the past 10 years, 5 more specialized high schools have been added to the group. The sole basis of admission to any one of these schools is an exam.

The NAACP contends that the exam discriminates against minority students. Black and Hispanic enrollment in the original “big three” specialized high schools has fallen off since the 1990s. However, according to Schulte, the problem is not the exam itself but rather the lack of preparation many bright minority students receive. Instead of scrapping the exam, the city should provide extra tutoring for students to help them prepare.

Schulte’s article got me thinking, but not because I agree with what he says. While he might have a point about providing extra support to bright students who just need that extra little nudge, certain areas of his thesis border on the reformy “no excuses” mantra.

As a graduate of one of the “big three” high schools, I really do not know what the solution is to the problem of declining minority enrollment. Should acceptance to these schools be based on one exam? Probably not. Should minority students receive extra support to help prepare them to apply to these schools? Probably so.

The thing about this that got me thinking is the UFT’s position on the matter. They are adamantly opposed to standardized testing as the sole ticket into one of NYC’s prestigious schools. On the other hand, they are perfectly fine with allowing testing be the measure of teacher effectiveness.

If the standardized high school exams are so discriminatory against minority students that they must be scrapped, what makes the UFT think that standardized exams as a way to judge teachers is perfectly fair? This is compounded by the fact that most of the students of most the teachers who stand to be judged by these exams are Black and Hispanic.

I don’t know. It seems, how should I say, inconsistent of the UFT to take a stand against testing in one instance and totally embrace it in another.

If the NAACP files another lawsuit claiming the these “value added” exams students around the city promise to take in 2013 are discriminatory, will the UFT support that lawsuit as well? That would mean the UFT would oppose something to which it helped birth.

This is the problem with Unity’s defenders who claim that the current environment of education reform makes it difficult for the union to defend teacher rights and public education. That might be so, but that still doesn’t mean the UFT has to rush to embrace so many pieces of the ed reform movement.

At the end of the day, this is my biggest problem with Unity. While their support for the NAACP’s lawsuit might be the correct decision, it is completely out of step with their past support for reformy things like standardized testing.

Why is testing an acceptable measure of teacher effectiveness but not an effective measure of admission to one of NYC’s “big three”?

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Posted in An Embattled Career, education reform, School, teaching

Tagged education, NAACP, News, NYC Specialized High Schools, School, Standardized Testing, value added

STUPID QUESTIONS ON THE JANUARY 2013 GLOBAL HISTORY REGENTS (PART I)

Posted on February 8, 2013 | 3 Comments

The history of all humankind in 50 questions. What could possibly go wrong?

It’s time for another round of stupid questions from the brain trust that is the New York State Board of Regents. Last time, we examined multiple choice questions from the most recent U.S. History Regents. This time we will do the same for the Global History Regents. The only difference is that the sheer volume of stupid questions on this exam defies logic so, out of mercy for the reader, the dissection of these questions will have to be divided into two or three smaller postings.

The Global History Regents is one of the killer exams that all NY State public school students have to pass in order to graduate. It almost always has much lower pass rates than the U.S. History exam. This is probably due to many factors: the fact that it tests a two-year curriculum, unlike the one-year curriculum of U.S. History; the fact that it hopscotches time periods and continents with the abandon of a drunken time traveler; and the fact that more students overall tend to take the exam in the first place.

The State of New York has been giving these Regents Exams for the better part of a century. One would think they would have gotten it right by now. Unfortunately, as we will see below, this is not the case.

They really waste little time in getting to the stupid questions, as the second one is pretty sub-par:

Which body of water is located between Southwest Asia and Southeast Asia?

(1) Pacific Ocean (3) Indian Ocean
(2) Caribbean Sea (4) Black Sea

The answer they want is (3). Why they want answer (3) is sort of a mystery. Here is a map of the Indian Ocean. Maybe you can see what the problem is with saying the Indian Ocean is between Southwest and Southeast Asia:

As you can see, the Indian Ocean borders no other continent outside of Asia.

Let’s take Saudi Arabia on the left side of the map as Southwest Asia and Indonesia on the right side of the map as Southeast Asia. The Indian Ocean might be described as being in between these two points. But describing it in this way leaves out that very westward sliver of the Indian Ocean, the sliver that borders Africa. Why the Regents decided to circumscribe the Indian Ocean between two opposite points of Asia is a little bizarre. They could have easily asked what body of water is between Africa and Southeast Asia and been a sliver more accurate.

The other problem with this question has to do with what one means by “Asia”. Asia has always been a problematic term. Taking a long view of the map, Europe is merely a peninsula of the Asian land mass. The border between Asia and Europe is a cultural one more than a geographic one. Just ask historians specializing in Russia who still debate the question of exactly what continent the country is on. Just ask Turkey who has been lobbying hard to be part of the European Union. Part of the reason they have yet to be accepted has to do with Europeans’ age-old view of Turks as outsiders, Orientals or, in other words, Asians. In that case, the answer to the question could also be (4), which is the Black Sea.

Is Turkey not Southwest Asia too? Why do they get shunned by both Europeans and the Board of Regents?

Now granted, even if we accept the premise that Turkey is part of Southwest Asia the Black Sea is still nowhere near Southeast Asia. This comes down to what one means by the word between. The Black Sea borders Southwest Asia and somewhere far, far to the east, well beyond the borders of the Black Sea, is Southeast Asia. In that case, the Black Sea can be loosely described as being “between” those two points.

It may not be the greatest example of “between”, but neither is the answer for which the Regents is looking.

Speaking of not the best answer, question 7 fits that description to a tee:

Base your answer to question 7 on the photograph below and on your knowledge of social studies.

Cathedral of St. Sophia (1017-1037) Which civilization most influenced the style of Russian architecture shown in this photograph?

(1) Umayyad (3) French

(2) Byzantine (4) Persian

The first thing I thought when I read this question was “Hello, maybe Russia, duh”. But assuming that a civilization cannot influence itself, which might be an interesting historical question in its own right, the answer they want is (2) Byzantine.

This is a common Global Regents question. Every year they are sure to ask about how the Byzantine Empire influenced Russia. Those types of questions are usually straightforward enough, usually relegated to references to the Orthodox Church. But, this year, the Board of Regents took a bold step when asking this question, especially considering what pops up on a Google image search of Umayyad architecture:

There is absolutely no resemblance between this Umayyad mosque in Damascus and St. Sophia.

To be sure, there are some key differences between this mosque and St. Sophia. The columns and archways adorning this Umayyad mosque speak to a Grecco-Roman influence. The lack thereof in St. Sophia gives it a much more Medieval feel. However, you can’t tell me there is no resemblance between the domes in both of these houses of worship.

In this case, where there is resemblance there is also influence. The Umayyads were among the earliest of the Muslim caliphates. They helped lay the foundation for what would become the Golden Age of Islam. One of the most recognizable features of the Muslim Golden Age is the dome, both an aesthetic and acoustic innovation. Islamic innovations like the dome in the centuries after Muhammad’s death would have a great influence over the Byzantines. During this time period, the Byzantines became increasingly isolated from their Christian brethren in Europe. Their fate would become much more entwined with that of the Muslims. The Muslims were the envy of the world throughout much of the Middle Ages so it was only natural for civilizations like the Byzantines to adopt from them, especially in matters of architecture.

In short, the Umayyads influenced the Byzantines who in turn influenced the Russians. The answer to the question could easily be (1) Umayyad. The question really turns on what “most influenced” means. If it means direct influence, then the answer must surely be the Byzantines. But if the originators of an idea can be said to hold the most influence, then an argument could be made for the Umayyads to be the answer.

The Board of Regents could have made this question just a wee bit stronger by inserting the word “directly” in between “most” and “influenced”.

But then I suppose that brings us back to the Regents’ vague notion of what the word “between” means. Why does this feel like Bill Clinton’s deposition in the Monica Lewinsky case?

The next stupid question also has to do with the Muslims, and question 10 truly is a bad question:

Which statement accurately describes the actions of Muslims during the Crusades

(1) Most Muslims converted to Christianity.

(2) Muslims attacked and conquered Constantinople.

(3) Muslims defended Jerusalem because it was sacred to them.

(4) Many Muslims visited Europe for the first time to obtain luxury goods.

They want answer (3). The Regents is resting their answer on the premise that the phenomenon known as “the Crusades” was strictly a war between Christians and Muslims over the Holy Land.

However, that very limited notion of the Crusades is continually being challenged by historians. There is an entire school of thought that contends the Crusades were basically a series of clashes between Christians and Muslims that took place over the course of hundreds of years. At stake in these clashes was not merely the Holy Land but control of the Levant, access to the Dardanelles and defense of Eastern Europe. Indeed, in all of these battles, Christians tended to bring a Crusading spirit to the fight. It can be argued that the Battle of Lepanto (1571), which crippled Ottoman control of the Mediterranean and helped inspire Cervantes to pen the classic novel Don Quixote, was the final chapter of the Crusades. After this point, Europeans began to focus their Crusading efforts on “civilizing” the “savage” Americas.

Therefore, the Crusades can be interpreted well beyond the very limited bounds implied by the Regents. Their interpretation of what the Crusades were is a medieval conflict over the Holy Land. However, with the more expansive view favored by some historians, the answer could also be (2) the Muslims attacked and conquered Constantinople. Conquering Constantinople was a long-time goal of the Ottoman Turks that they finally accomplished in 1453. Indeed, the Byzantine Empire (which is where Constantinople was located) had always played a prominent role in the Crusades. It was the Byzantine Emperor Alexis Comnenus’ letter asking Pope Urban II to help him fight off the Muslims that initiated the call for a Crusade in the first place. How is the conquest of Constantinople by the Ottomans in 1453 not part of the saga known as the Crusades?

The fall of Constantinople (1453). The Crusading spirit obviously played no role in the conflict.

God forbid a teacher passes along the long view of what the Crusades were to their students. They might bubble in choice (2) and end up failing the exam.

Bear in mind that we are just a 5th of the way through the multiple choice portion of the exam. If they butcher ancient history and geography this badly, I can’t wait to see what they do to more modern subjects.

Yes history teachers, these are the exams by which our students and ourselves will be judged. Are you angry yet?

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Posted in An Embattled Career, education reform, Politics, School, teaching

Tagged education, Global History Regents 2013, Historical Accuracy in Testing, History, Revisionism, Standardized Testing, Standardized Testing Narrowing Curriculum, Teaching

ONE STUPID HISTORY TEACHER

Posted on January 28, 2013 | 5 Comments

About one minute ago this comment was left on my most recent post about this past week’s U.S. History Regents:

denton | January 28, 2013 at 8:31 pm | Reply | Edit

The answer for 14 is 3 slaveholders.

Denton is absolutely correct. The question has to do with the Dred Scott decision:

Which group benefited most directly from the Supreme Court decision in Dred Scott v. Sanford?

(1) abolitionists (3) slave owners

(2) immigrants (4) enslaved persons

To which I began my response:

They want answer (4) because Chief Justice Roger Taney ruled that slavery was legally permitted in all of the territories. He also ruled that “a black man has no rights that a white man is bound to respect.” How can it not be choice (4)?

If you read the rest of my response to the question you can see that I clearly meant to say choice (3), not (4). This was a simple matter of me getting the numbers mixed up.

I will admit, Denton’s simple comment mildly devastated me. Despite the fact that I know the answer to the question and have a strong opinion about why this question is stupid, I myself felt very stupid once Denton made me realize my folly. I am sure that many, if not most, people who read the post picked up on my mistake but did not say anything out of politeness.

The fact that, according to my stats, this is the most-read of my recent posts makes me feel even dumber. Hundreds of people have already read my mistake.

If someone like me who is confident in his understanding of U.S. History to the point of insufferable arrogance can be made to feel stupid for a simple mistake, imagine how a teenager must feel when something similar happens?

How many times have students simply transposed numbers and ended up bubbling in the wrong choice because of it? How many times has a student bubbled in an answer in which they had confidence only to have a machine spit it back at them as “wrong”?

My mistake and Denton’s comment I believe strengthens my point about the folly of standardized testing. As the post clearly demonstrates, even students with a strong understanding of a subject can be screwed over by simple errors, putting their graduation and the careers of their teachers in jeopardy.

For now at least, I am one dumb history teacher.

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Posted in An Embattled Career, education reform, School, teaching

Tagged America, American History, education, History, Lies in History, NY State US History Regents January 2013, Standardized Testing, Testing and Narrowed Curriculum, value added

STUPID QUESTIONS ON LAST WEEK’S U.S. HISTORY REGENTS EXAM

Posted on January 27, 2013 | 16 Comments

Better fill in the right bubbles or your teacher gets the axe.

EDIT 1/28/13: SEE IF YOU CAN FIND THE STUPID MISTAKE I MADE ON ONE OF THE QUESTIONS DISCUSSED BELOW. TRY NOT TO READ THE COMMENTS UNTIL YOU CATCH MY MISTAKE. CLICK HERE TO SEE WHAT THE MISTAKE WAS.

Students across New York State sat down to take Regents exams all last week. The January Regents, for most schools, are make-ups for students who did not pass an exam the first time. For many students, last week’s U.S. History Regents could have been the difference between graduating or not.

Which is why it is upsetting to open up a Regents exam for the first time and come across patently ridiculous questions. Last week’s Global History exam was actually worse in this regard but I don’t have a copy of it on hand. The U.S. History exam was bad enough.

There are many types of bad questions on these history exams. In total they make a great case for why the testing craze sweeping this country is destructive, not to mention why judging students and teachers by the results of these exams are just plain lunacy.

Take Question # 11 from the U.S. History exam:

One result of the purchase of the Louisiana Territory (1803) was that the United States

(1) acquired California from Spain

(2) gained control of the port of New Orleans

(3) ended border conflicts with British Canada

(4) annexed Florida

The answer they are looking for is (2). Of course, as I mentioned in my recent Thomas Jefferson post, the United States had been focused on getting New Orleans for a long time. Merchants and farmers out west were constantly frustrated at not having access to New Orleans which is at the mouth of the Mississippi River and, therefore, a major port of trade. Jefferson was fulfilling a long-time American dream by purchasing it and the rest of the Louisiana Territory from Napoleon.

But there were other “results” of the Louisiana Purchase. The acquisition of so much western land focused Americans on westward settlement. It continued an entire western momentum that started with the French and Indian War (1754-1761), which is when American colonists started to penetrate beyond the Appalachians into the Ohio River Valley. With the Louisiana Territory in their possession Americans began to believe that it was their “destiny”, their God-given “Manifest Destiny”, to take control of the entire continent to the Pacific Ocean. 44 years after the Purchase, President James Polk instigated a war with Mexico to fulfill this destiny, gaining California in the process. Therefore, it could be argued that one of the “results” of the Louisiana Purchase was that the U.S. “(1) acquired California from Spain”. While the U.S. never acquired California directly from Spain (as we’ve seen, they got it from Mexico), both California and Mexico were colonies of Spain during the time of the Louisiana Purchase.

As you can see in this map, getting the port of New Orleans was the only result of the Louisiana Purchase.

What if a teacher had taught this to their students to give them a more complete picture of the Louisiana Purchase in the context of American History? A student could have filled in choice (1), been at least partially correct and received no credit for it. What if a teacher explained to their students that the Louisiana Purchase put the United States on a collision course with Florida (which was owned by Spain ), necessitating a series of arguments between the two countries over the borders of East and West Florida (which included the Gulf Coast regions of modern-day Mississippi and Alabama)? What if a teacher taught their students that, after the Purchase, several American generals (including Andrew Jackson) raided Florida in attempts to conquer it? Spain was a decaying empire who did not have the stomach for a trans-Atlantic fight with an aggressive and young United States. This led to the Adams-Onis Treaty (1819 – and negotiated by my favorite American ever, John Quincy Adams) where the United States annexed Florida, which is choice (4).

It is best for a teacher not to teach these things to their students so they will not be confused and fill in the “wrong” bubble on the exam. Of course, the only cost of this is a limited, stunted, incomplete curriculum of United States history, leading to a limited, stunted and incomplete understanding of U.S. history by our students.

But that’s alright. We need to show that we “add value” as teachers which, in this case, means debasing the value of the curriculum.

Three questions later, at question 14, we have another such question:

Which group benefited most directly from the Supreme Court decision in Dred Scott v. Sanford?

(1) abolitionists (3) slave owners

(2) immigrants (4) enslaved persons

They want answer (4) because Chief Justice Roger Taney ruled that slavery was legally permitted in all of the territories. He also ruled that “a black man has no rights that a white man is bound to respect.” How can it not be choice (4)?

Well, it could be any of these choices. It can also be none of these choices. It is hard to say that anyone directly benefited from Taney’s decision. Even though he ruled that slave owners could bring their human chattel anywhere in the American territories, there is little evidence to suggest they did so. The country was so divided over the slavery issue in 1857 that it would be unlikely that slave owners would dare to bring slaves to any territory whose population was against slavery, lest the slave owners get a visit from John Brown and his family or similar types of crusaders. Essentially, slave owners could only bring slaves to those territories whose people and climates were conducive to slavery, which is to say the territories in which slavery was already legal. The net direct benefit to slave owners in reality was negligible.

Remember the mass exodus of slave owners into the Oregon Territory?

On the other hand, Taney’s decision strengthened the perception in the north that the “Slave Power”, as many abolitionists called it, dominated the federal government. It steeled their resolve to oppose slavery which became one of the big factors that pushed the nation into the Civil War. It would be the war that ended up abolishing slavery, in which case choice (1) makes sense. By extension, it also means choice (4) makes sense.

Or if you accept the premise that the Dred Scott case strengthened the institution of slavery, then choice (2) makes sense. Northern immigrants were some of the biggest supporters of slavery and the Democratic Party that defended it (indeed, immigrant support is one of the few things that have remained constant about the Democrats since the Age of Jackson). In their minds, slavery kept potential competition for their jobs chained in bondage far away in the south. One of the worst nightmares of many immigrants was an influx of freed slaves to the north undercutting their wages.

Again, heaven forbid a student has a wide-ranging mind that can take in all of these possibilities or had a teacher that taught this to them. They might fill in the wrong bubble and “prove” that their teacher did not “add value” to their understanding of Dred Scott.

Then, a mere eight questions later, we find this question:

In the early 1900s, the United States proposed the Open Door Policy to

(1) gain new colonies in the Pacific

(2) win support for building the Panama Canal

(3) improve relations with Europe

(4) secure access to markets in China

They obviously want choice (4) here. The United States’ economy exploded after the Civil War, ushering in an era of rapid expansion. The 1890 census showed that the “frontier” out on the western part of the continent was “full”, so Americans cast a covetous glance beyond towards the Pacific. Unfortunately, most of Europe had beaten them to the punch when it came to imperialism. The United States was oftentimes treated as a junior partner by the great powers in the game of geopolitical expansion. In Hawaii, Samoa and many other Pacific Islands, the U.S. asserted its growing influence in an attempt to both gain new markets and gain the respect of the great powers. Therefore, if the U.S. wanted to gain markets in China as choice (4) says, could that not also mean that they wished to “improve relations with Europe”, which is choice (3)?

C’mon Europe, let us get a piece of China. In return, you won’t have to respect us or treat us well at all.

This, of course, all depends on what you mean by “improve”. As the U.S. expanded its influence the great powers took the growing nation more seriously, causing them to seek alliances, trade agreements and peace with the U.S. Would this not be an “improvement” by most definitions of the word? If the U.S. did not aggressively push its interests like it it did in China and other places, it would have remained a non-entity to the great powers and a country whose shipping was ripe for plunder on the high seas. In the world of geopolitics, might makes right.

An open-minded student could make a good case for choosing (3). Unfortunately, scantron machines do not care about making good cases and critical thought. No value added here Mr./Ms. Open-Minded Student. It is obvious that your teacher did not add any value to you.

A similar thing happens a mere six questions later in question 28:

After World War I, one way in which the Red Scare, the passing of the Quota Acts, and the growth of the Ku Klux Klan were similar is that they all

(1) exploited fears about people who were considered un-American

(2) encourages the assimilation of new immigrants into American society

(3) supported goals of the suffrage movement

(4) exhibited prejudice against African Americans

Granted, the answer that makes the most sense is (1). The question refers to the climate of “nativism” that swept the country after World War I. However, if the country was turning against everything foreign then would it not cause many immigrants to want to assimilate? No immigrant wanted to a visit from the KKK or to be raided by A. Mitchell Palmer in his quest to find communists. One of the best ways to avoid this was to act American, which would be choice (2). Indeed, one of the byproducts of the nativist climate was the drive to assimilate. It was in the 1920s when most children in the United States had been enrolled in public school for the first time. One of the original reasons to have public schools in the first place was to Americanize the children of immigrants. All of the things mentioned in this question certainly helped make up the minds of immigrant parents as to whether or not they wanted to send their children to public schools. Assimilate or suffer could have been a mantra of the Roaring 20s.

What better time to act all “immigranty” than when the Klan is marching on D.C.? To hell with assimilation, bring out the rosary beads and dreidels.

Too bad for the student who might see things in this way and for the teacher who taught this. There is just no value to be had in an idea that leads to the wrong bubble-in answer.

A mere two questions later it happens again with a very strange question:

As part of the New Deal, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) were created to

(1) allow for a quick recovery of stock prices

(2) provide direct loans to businesses

(3) protect individual investors from stock fraud and bank failure

(4) allow banks and companies to invest in the stock market

Choice (3) makes sense. The SEC attempted to make the stock market transparent so investors would not get fleeced. The FDIC allowed the government to insure bank deposits so that bank runs would not wipe out people’s savings. This is the answer they want.

On the other hand, the transparency that the SEC was designed to bring to the market was also designed to bring back investor confidence, in which case choice (4) makes sense. Now, yes, the FDIC did not affect the stock market but the Glass-Stegall Act, which was the law that created the FDIC, did. Not only did Glass-Stegall create the FDIC, it erected a “firewall” between consumer and investor banks. The former type of bank would only deal with savings and small loans. The latter type of bank would deal with venture capital and stocks. While choice (4) is not technically “correct” it is sort of a gotcha question. A student could read FDIC and think Glass-Stegall and bubble in the wrong choice.

So I suppose it is better for a teacher to avoid mentioning Glass-Stegall altogether. Instead, they should merely focus on the FDIC part of the law and teach it as an isolated event. Clouding a student’s mind with an unnecessarily full view of history will only lead to the wrong bubble getting filled in and a negative “value added” score. I guess the banks should be happy about this. Students would never learn that Glass-Steagall reined in some of the worst abuses of big banks, including using the money of their customers to gamble in the stock market and other risky ventures. Thanks to the Gramm-Leach-Blily Act (1999), the part of Glass-Stegall that prevented banks from doing these things was repealed. Now students will never learn that banks were once regulated in this way and instead assume that the giant casinos the banks have become is the banks’ natural, default way of doing things.

The banks themselves could not have designed a question better suited to preempt the future generations from understanding how they continue to abuse the economy and put all of us at risk, again.

These are not all of the stupid, vague, incomplete or just plain inane questions that can be found on the January 2013 U.S. History regents. However, this post is already longer than common internet decency will allow.

What these questions show us is that teachers are encouraged to teach a narrow American History curriculum. Any teacher who attempts otherwise runs the risk of “confusing” their students, leading to wrong answers, negative value added and, eventually, a pink slip.

This is the New York State’s version of newspeak. A small curriculum leads to large “value added” for the teacher. A vast curriculum leads to negative “value added”. The freedom students and teachers receive, freedom from being left back or freedom from being fired, is actually slavery in the form of a shallow, ignorant understanding of history.

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Posted in An Embattled Career, education reform, Politics, School, teaching

Tagged America, American History, education, History, Lies in History, NY State US History Regents January 2013, Standardized Testing, Testing and Narrowed Curriculum, value added

WHAT RISING GRADUATION RATES TELL US

Posted on January 22, 2013 | 7 Comments

Which world is closer to the one the new graduates are inheriting?

So the news has been flooded with headlines about how national graduation rates from public schools are up to a level not seen in nearly 40 years:

More than 3.1 million high school students received their diplomas in spring 2010, with 78.2 percent finishing in four years, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) reported Tuesday. The rate is a 2.7-percentage-point increase over the previous year, and those two rates are the highest since the 75 percent rate in 1975 and 1976.

This is not the cause for celebration that the media is making it out to be. If we look at the cheating scandals in D.C. and Atlanta we see the greasy underbelly of the motor driving these graduation rates.

Public schools have been bludgeoned into accepting so-called “accountability” programs that have held teachers responsible for tests scores and pass rates. We drill and kill for exams that seem to get just a tad easier every year. We overlook behavior issues and shoddy scholarship as a shortcut to getting kids to pass. Our jobs as teachers have increasingly involved getting students to fill in the correct bubbles in a certain 3-hour span, the rest of the education process be damned.

This isn’t due to anything we have done as teachers. Our educational leaders, from the Secretary of Education on down, have done everything in their power to put this system into place. With their myopic interpretation of what counts for “achievement”, they have reduced the learning process to a series of numbers and the teaching profession to a series of steps to color within these numbers. So now we focus on the “data” instead of the child; the “value” we “add” instead of what our communities teach our children to value.

Of course we would have high graduation rates in this type of environment. We have become adept at manipulating numbers because our jobs depend on it. The Secretary of Education, the governors, mayors, chancellors, superintendents and principals all need the numbers to go up. The testing companies and data-collection companies need to show that the numbers are going up. All of these entities require the numbers to go up in order to justify their influence. They have been in control of America’s education systems for so long that the numbers better have gone up by now.

The fix was in ever since the appearance of this thing called “education reform”. They came to us and said schools were not doing our jobs. They said they were taking over the schools and running them like businesses. They expected results and they were going to get them. It was foreordained that graduation rates would reach such high levels. They made all of us conspirators in their game of reform. The teachers were taken into a shotgun marriage that tied the survival of the educational leaders to the survival of teachers.

“If these test scores don’t rise, we won’t be around long. But we will make sure that you also will not be around long.” This was the Faustian bargain with which reformers presented teachers. Stand up against the system by not teaching to the test or by exercising your union rights and you go down. Play the game and get the numbers up and we will feature you as one of our success stories, as one of the “good ones”. Everyone wins. Teachers get to keep their jobs. Reformers get to say that their policies work.

And what type of graduates do we have? We have graduates who have been trained to bubble in answers. We have graduates that need an increasing amount of remedial classes once they get to college. This is exactly the type of graduate one would expect from a school system run on the business model: one-dimensional, unskilled and mass produced. They are light plastic cogs to be used in a giant machine, easily tossed aside and replaced when they get used up.

And what type of world are our graduates entering? One with proliferating low-wage jobs touted as “job recovery”. One where food stamp rolls, college debt and poverty are rising. This isn’t the bright open future baby-boomers saw on the horizon. Today’s graduates are inheriting a world of diminishing limits. The future is dark and small.

What more can we expect? We have concentrated on getting “achievement” as measured in “data” so much higher because the schools weren’t preparing children for “the future”. In the process, we have neglected to prepare a future for our children to inherit. The ones who would create the future for our children took over the school system and prepared them for exactly the type of future they had in store.

Blank graduates for a blank future.

Education reform is not about improving schools. It is about hollowing out the schools because the future will be hollow. These new graduation statistics are just the results of that.

So no need to be happy. It is the low tide of education reform leaving behind the effluvia they created.

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Posted in An Embattled Career, education reform, School, teaching

Tagged economics, education, Education Reform, News, Rising Graduation Rates, Schools, Standardized Testing, Youth

Elements of Successful Teaching: I Got Nothin’

Posted on September 5, 2012 | 2 Comments

Ben Bernanke finally being honest.

Welcome back to school New York City teachers. I hope everyone had a good first day yesterday. It also marked the start of a new season of blogging for me here. I needed the time to myself over the past few months after my mother’s passing. Now I aim to update this place once daily at least. My prior clip of twice-a-day rants probably will not be reached until much later, for I might need to find a place to live in the coming weeks. Once I get my feet under me again, blogging will be much easier.

So yesterday was filled with the same first-day-of-school rituals we are used to at my humble Manhattan high school. The staff milled in between 8:00 and 8:30 and did some catching up, then we had a morning full of meetings and then we had the afternoon to prepare our rooms. Preparing my room gave me time to think about the morning meetings. I finally learned, after it was taught to me a million times throughout my life, that I know absolutely nothing about teaching.

Last year was not my best teaching year. I think most veteran teachers can look at individual school years and say “I was really on my game” or “boy, I stunk up the joint”. For example, the 2009-2010 school year was really good for me overall. I was ahead of my workload, tried many new and successful strategies, read a ton of books and developed a great rapport with my students. That was the year 100% of my 11th graders passed the U.S. History Regents, with around 65% getting a grade of 85 or higher.

I thought it made sense that all of my students would do well on the Regents since that was really the first year I brought my decade-plus experience to bear in the classroom.

Well, fast forward to yesterday morning and it all goes out the window.

We were looking at the passing rates for the previous school year’s Regents exams. Since the end of that school year passed by in such a depressing haze for me, I never had time to marvel at the fact that 93% of my students passed the U.S. History Regents. Now, of course, if we were going by the ludicrous idea of “value-added”, that means I lost 7 percentage points over the previous two years and suck as a teacher. We all know though that value-added is a joke, a voodoo social theory backed up by nonsensical equations, much like Reaganomics was voodoo economics.

I sucked last year. The entire school year from September to June was nothing but personal turmoil. Colleagues were under investigation, a long-term relationship I was in failed around New Year’s Day and, most painfully, my mother was very sick in the days after that.

As a professional, it should be my line that “those things did not affect my work”. However, one would have to be near robotic to not have personal tragedy impact daily personal performance in some way. I did not have time to write great lessons, I fell way behind on grading and I was, at times, very uncomfortable with being in front of a room full of teenaged people. One day, I even wrote the wrong aim on the board and was around 5 minutes into the lesson before I realized it, causing me to erase and start everything over again. I felt I was stumbling towards the finish line, and the finish line was still 4 months away.

My students, for the most part, seemed understanding of my shortcomings. As every year I have ever taught, the vast majority of my students were nice people with whom I found common ground. I could make a million mistakes and laugh it off and they would not hold it against me. Last year that group of students was really tested, because I probably did literally make a million mistakes.

And, throughout it all, I was thinking to myself “darn, these kids are going to absolutely BOMB the Regents in June.” It was not their fault. It was the fault of the distracted teacher who not only wrote the wrong aim on the board, but who was also absent for the last month of the school year.

I reflected back to my 2009-2010 slam dunk year. That year, I had a group of very well-motivated students whom I considered very bright. On top of that, I was “on” most of the time. It was a perfect storm of teaching and learning. I compared that with this past school year, where my classes needed a little more guidance and I felt that I was not there to provide it. If I broke a 70% pass rate, I would be floored.

When we started grading the Regents in June, I was confirmed in my fears. When I came across an essay a student of mine wrote, I said “I should have taught them (fill in factoid or complete idea here).” It seemed that all my crummy teaching was coming home to roost.

Then, after we scanned everything and the results came back, 93% of my students passed. It was not an easy Regents, and there was no way to scrub the results even if we wanted to, but they still ended up passing at a 93% clip. Granted, this is not the 100% of two years ago, but it beat my previous year’s results when I was certainly more “on” as a teacher. Why did 93% of them pass? I have not a clue. I am glad that they did. I do not say the word “proud” since that means I would be taking some sort of credit for their success, which I certainly do not.

So, I can safely say that I have no idea of the dynamic between what I present as a teacher and what filters into my students’ brains. Furthermore, I have no idea how standardized exams measure that dynamic and highly doubt they can measure that dynamic at all. I remember when I was a student at Brooklyn Tech, there was an Advanced Placement math teacher who taught nothing all year. Instead, he regaled the class with tales of his personal life. Practically everyone in his class got 4s and 5s on the AP exam anyway.

There is a reason why no civilized nation on earth uses standardized exams to penalize or judge their students and teachers. It is because they mean nothing. They measure a narrow set of concepts in a narrow space of time. It is a snapshot of a few hours. It is the height of madness to use them to judge the quality of the students who take it and it is downright Lewis Carol trippy to use them to judge the teachers who teach those students. Yet, the president of this supposedly most civilized of nations pushes testing on us like a grand elixir, and he supposedly represents the most civilized and humane political party in this civilized nation.

Teaching is a great unknown. When it works, something happens in that classroom that cannot be expressed in numbers and can barely be expressed in words. That is why it takes professionals to teach, not automated robots or cookie-cutter fast-food workers. They cannot be trained at so-called colleges funded by charters who claim that the key to teaching is having students wave fingers of good energy at each other, or for the teacher to humiliate students by putting them on the spot for a question that requires a one-word answer.

Unfortunately, this is what testing and all of the other programs of “education reform” aim at. It is imperative for the “reformers” first to demean and then deskill the teaching force so that we will be powerless to speak out in criticism against them. They do not want professionals. Anybody arrogant enough to think they can lecture the nation on what good teaching or good learning looks like is a demagogue. Me and many other “good” teachers are good because it is in their hearts. After a decade or so, it becomes something like muscle memory. Within that category of good teachers there are all types of different people with all types of different styles and beliefs.

Why are they good? I cannot tell you that. I got nothin’. Anybody who is honest about what makes a quality teacher should make that their stock answer.

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Posted in An Embattled Career, education reform, School, teaching

Tagged Deskilling of Teaching Profession, education, Education Reform, School, Standardized Testing, Teaching, U.S. History Regents Exams

More Testing, Please

Posted on April 23, 2012 | 6 Comments

The New York State Board of Regents will decide next week what to do with the Global History Regents Exam. Judging from the data, this is the toughest of all Regents. Only 69% of the students in the state passed the test last year.

I have taught Global History every year since the start of my teaching career. The Global exam is difficult for a few reasons. First, it tests two years of content. Usually, students take Global History I and II in freshmen year and then take the Regents in sophomore year after taking Global III and IV. Second, students are required to know a little bit about every civilization. It is a very scattered curriculum no matter how a school presents it (chronologically or regionally). Third, the grading scale for the exam is usually unforgiving. Students usually have to write two decent essays because they cannot skate by on the multiple choice part. Last year, the state required us to score the exams in such a way that reduces the chance of scrubbing. All of these things explain why 2011’s pass rates were so low.

My students know my views on the Global Regents. I think the exams are stupid and should not be used to judge their knowledge of history or their high school diploma. If it was up to me, they would not have to take the Global Regents at all.

So, why am I not happy about the fact that New York State is considering reforming the exam?

There seem to be two possibilities on the table. The first involves making the exam voluntary. The second involves splitting it up into two exams: one for Global I and II and another for Global III and IV.

So, why does a person like me, who opposes standardized exams, want the Board of Regents to go with the latter option? Why do I want them to mandate more testing for my students?

Because I know what the implications are of making the exam voluntary. State Education Commissioner John King has already hinted at it:

“There’s certainly going to be a lot of jobs in the future in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics, and this new pathway will encourage districts and schools to create additional opportunities for their students to pursue those areas.”

Essentially, doing away with the Global Regents means doing away with Global History. See, the future economy is going to revolve around STEM careers, so that is where we need to focus our education resources. History is not STEM, therefore we do not need it.

The handwriting is on the wall. History in New York State is on the road to extinction.

It seems unlikely that the Board of Regents will chop the Global exam in two. That would require investing more resources in history. John King has already given the signal that this is not where the future lies.

First, the exam will become voluntary. Schools will still provide Global History for a few years. Then the standardized testing regime will kick in. The Board of Regents will decide that 4 semesters dedicated to a course that ends with a voluntary Regents exam is a waste of resources. It will collapse into a one-year course. Everything from the dawn of man until the end of the Cold War will have to be studied in two semesters. The second year of Global will be given over to perhaps another year of science, or maybe an engineering class.

After a few more years, people will look at this strange Global History course and ask themselves “what’s the point?” It is not a STEM subject and its Regents is voluntary. Just axe it. Fill the void with some more math or maybe extend the engineering course into a two-year curriculum. In the not too distant future, Global History will be a memory. History teachers will be laid off by the thousands.

It will not be too long after this that American History will also be gone. We can look back on the day that art and music were done away with in NYC as the beginning of the end of all humanities-related subjects in our schools.

English and Foreign Language will also probably go the same way. School systems across the country will be nothing more than training grounds for the low-wage workers and low-end consumers of tomorrow’s economy. Thanks to the elimination of the humanities, the next generation will have no idea how we got this economy of the future (which will then be the present) and no way to imagine a better alternative.

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Posted in An Embattled Career, education reform, School

Tagged education, Education Reform, NYS Teacher Evaluations, Regents Exams, Standardized Testing, STEM Education, The End of the Humanities

Tag Archives: Standardized Testing

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