I genuinely do believe in accountability.

I think this message of mine gets lost when I rip on the bubble tests as being the end-all, be-all of assessment in public education.

Yes, I do want elevated academic performance.
Yes, I do want high student achievement.
Yep, I am a big fan of improved classroom work.

However, I think the measures we use to gage accountability in education are flawed… and when flawed measures are used to evaluate my job performance, it makes me want to cry foul.

Of course, it’s inarguable that accountability is not good for the kids. (Poor of a sentence as that may be.) We really do need to know that teachers are doing their jobs. And unfortunately/tragically we all know that there is a segment of our teaching population that takes incredible advantage of “the system”. They are not doing their jobs and it hurts us all.

I loathe those teachers. Truly.

So how do my bosses know if I am teaching my kids if my kids can’t “achieve” on their assessments?
Take my word for it?
Trust me?

They aren’t buying that. And really, I am not so sure that they should… at least not hook, line and sinker.

Yet from my perspective as a teacher, if you are using a flawed means of assessment (i.e. narrowly constricted bubble tests) to evaluate me, you are not really being fair to me.

A classic Catch 22 thus confronts us. Use knowingly deficient accountability measures to enforce higher educational standards which result in collateral damage being done to the classrooms of teachers who are very much doing a solid job in their careers (as I feel is being done to me by literally mandating I “raise my scores or lose my job”) or allow the lemons to hide behind false fronts and continue to dodge professional bullets.

The screws of accountability are being turned right now and it hurts. As I said, I have no problem with people measuring my performance, assessing my professionalism, or holding me to a high — or higher — standard. Actually, I’d be honored if you did. Come on down to room 6213 at Lynwood High any time.

Yet, by having reduced the essence of the work I do to solely that of standardized test scores, I just don’t feel it paints an accurate picture.

All in all, I am now a teacher focused on test prep. This is what the “accountability monster” has created… irrationalism. You can’t push one thing without pulling something else.

As I have been talking about all week, we are faced with the very real threat of having our school district taken over by the state with lots of people terminated in the process. Test scores are the first box on the check sheet they will look at. You either have good ones or you don’t.

And so I must raise them or “go gently into that goodnight”. (BTW, that’s an allusion to a philosophical reference which will not be tested on the bubbles so whether or not my students ever grasp this “ideal of living” is, I guess, superfluous. English Language Arts is about properly identifying the gerund phrase in a sentence these days… or nothing at all.)

Yesterday I wrote about how first and foremost I must raise my standardized test scores. I also expressed how I was disheartened by such a cold, black and white reality.

However, these are the cards I’ve been dealt. The federal government is literally strong-arming the states through a lording of the purse strings over their heads (i.e. no comply, no money — no comply, no money — no comply, no money) to either raise bubble test scores in our schools — particularly in our low-performing schools such as the one where I teach — or incur draconian consequences.

We are now in the draconian consequences mode here at Lynwood High School.

Though I believe I have spent years bashing the bubble tests as being insufficient assessment tools, ( I truly do not believe they measure my own ability as a teacher, the work I have done, nor do they precisely measure the full capacity of my kids in a manner that paints an accurate, holistic portrait of the individual child — and I do feel that growth model assessments would be much more fair and much more accurate indications of the work being done in our classrooms… blah, blah, blah, this case has been made ad nauseum) the powers that be have remain unmoved for whatever reason. And so, like every other teacher in my school, I have to play they way they want me to play or else they will remove me from my position and bring in other teachers to do as they wish.

Raise your test scores. That’s all they want.

And the thing is, I don’t really think it’s going to be all the immense of a challenge for me.

Now, I don’t want to be arrogant. I don’t want to sound like a teacher filled with hubris but, look… let’s be honest. I can do this.

Why? Because I am now going to “crack” the test.

And I am going to teach all of my students how to “crack” the tests.

And their scores will rise.

Let’s be clear, I am not going to do anything illegal. It’s all perfectly legit. Just like the SAT prep classes and the graduate school entrance exams (the LSAT, the MCAT, the GMAT) all have expensive “test prep” classes that teach their students how to “crack” the test, so too will I do the same for my kids.

Standardized tests by their very nature are “crackable” and if you put me in front of the guillotine, well… I have a job I’d like to keep.

And so, I will buckle to the pressure.

Is it best for the kids? Well, it seems like the powers-that-be don’t really care for my opinion on that matter.

Of course, it’s all fine and dandy when there’s no bread to tell others, “Let them eat cake” but this is going to save my job so please… unless you have a way for me to protest my approach to the second half of this school year without it costing me my employment, recognize that this is the world in which we all now live.

And if this pressure has not yet come to your door, be thankful.

Just FYI, more posts to come (for the curious) will speak to:
– How to crack the tests.
– Why I actually do believe in accountability.
– What will get put on the back-burner while test-prep gets “red-alert” priority.
– The inner conflict I feel about “going along to get along” as opposed to being willing to “die for a cause”.

The Ugly Truth is that my number one goal for my students right now has to be to raise their 2010 standardized test scores.

I find it disturbing, off-base, heart-wrenching, and almost something shameful to admit. However, NCLB has my entire school’s back up against the wall right now. The state is on the doorstep of taking over the district. The district has already informed us that if we sink to the next level of NCLB probation status, tenure for everyone on campus will be voided and jobs will be eviscerated. (Keep in mind that more budget cuts are going to hammer us from the other side, too.)

Essentially, we will be measured by one stat and one stat only in the most high stakes of manners this year. Our standardized test scores will determine our future (individually and collectively, I assume) and people will lose jobs based on the results.

Actually, lots of people will already be losing their jobs. That’s a given. The question is not “if” but “how many” and “who”. (The “when” question is easy to answer: NOW!)

Obviously, much more will be written about this by me over the next few months so I won’t bother to write a 900 page post about all the aspects at this juncture. However, these are the cards we are being dealt: Earn higher standardized test scores and you will be judged favorably. Do not earn sufficiently high enough test scores and you will be chopped.

It’s now that black and white for my English department at Lynwood High School.

More to come…

So how did your kids spend their holiday break. Mine, let’s see.

–They slept.
–They ate.
–They watched tv.
–They played video games.
–They were bored.
–They “chilled”.
–They did “too much” homework.
–They did no homework.
–They went to the mall.
–They partied. (This is where my “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy comes into play).

A few of them travelled, some of them caught the flu and some of them went to the movies.

All in all, they got to be real people. Fine. Cool. Glad you enjoyed it. But after reading their papers (so sloppily written, I might add) and hearing their words, I am more determined than ever to “bring the heat”.

January is a time when there is so much good work that can be done but I also know that if I spend the first week back allowing a honeymoon mentality to sink in — as so many people often do — I am just wasting valuable class time.

Class time I desperately need.

Yep, we are up and running!

But what scares me is the knowledge that across this great country not every educator in the U.S. thinks this way.

Mentality matters… and it starts with the person at the front of the room.

As I mentioned the other day, I am a big believer in goals. So much so that I always write them down.

Yet often, when I think of goals, I think in terms of career and professional aspirations. In a way it seems as if this is the way I am wired. (As is the rest of America. We are all about “productivity”. Buncha A-type personalities in the new land, that’s for sure.)

So today I am going to begin with “personal” goals, the non-professional elements that make for a life and not simply a career.

“Be a GREAT father, husband, friend, teacher and business associate.” That’s HUGE to me. And being a writer, I choose my words carefully. It’s not an accident that I use the word “great”. Why? Cause I want to be better than merely good. Now of course, I don’t always rise to the occasion (not hardly!) but I do find that having set my intention to aspire to this level helps me a great deal over the course of a year — especially as opposed to the way I used to live, simply meandering from experience to experience, never having a core set of inner principles to guide me. (BTW, can you hear the Covey influence on my life? That stuff works I tell ya!)

Also on my personal goal list is, “Take care of my physical health.” It’s why I am working to make a greater commitment to yoga. Truth be told, yoga has changed my life (and I am so the “level 1″ student that I am not sure if I’ll ever see level 2 — and yet still, yoga treats my body, mind and spirit exceptionally well. I am just a better human being when I do it with regularity.)

Then there’s “take care of my intellectual well-being.” For me this means I must make sure I carve out time to read and write.

Uhm, hello — don’t forget my emotional sanity. I need to make sure I laugh and participate in things that I find to be joyful while recognizing the potholes — the people and things — that make me feel tense, angry, frustrated, hopeless and so on… so that I can swerve away from them at every possible juncture. Look, I ain’t no effin saint and there’s a part of me that is more than willing to lay down with dogs so that I can mix it up and good — but I always wake up with fleas when I do so.

Goal setting helps me to remember this before I ever even encounter these people. (And you know who you are!)

And finally there’s the spiritual side of matters. The key this year for me — I mean it’s a really big goal — is to be more grateful. Gratitude often feels like the antidote for much of the stuff that gets to me and it makes me feel much more deeply connected to God.

That’s right, I said it. I believe (deeply) in God and gratitude really make me feel like I have a connection to this universal spirit more so than so many other things that purport to provide that for me.

No, it’s not the biggest list in the world. (Plus, I do have some specifics to which I will not speak in such a public forum.) Yet I feel that if I aspire to these goals and earn the grade of an A for effort in seeking to reach them this year, the actual results will all take care of themselves.

Focus on the process, know your larger personal aims and put in the hard work — these are my personal goals for 2010… and I think that it’s pretty clear to see that when I attain them (it’s always good to speak in the affirmative when goal setting; nothing wrong with assuming the accomplishment of any of these aims) the tackling of my “professional” goals will not only be much easier but more rewarding as well… because they will not come at the expense of what ought to be the most meaningful to me in my actual life.

Goals: The Personal Before the Professional

it’s been shown that people who actually write down their goals — the more specific the better — have a significantly higher likelihood of attaining their goals.

People who don’t write down their goals often come up short.

And people with no stated goals… they often drift.

Check this out — it’s from the book What they don’t teach you at Harvard Business School by Mark McCormack:

“McCormack tells of a study conducted on students in the 1979 Harvard MBA program. In that year, the students were asked, “Have you set clear, written goals for your future and made plans to accomplish them?” Only three percent of the graduates had written goals and plans; 13 percent had goals, but they were not in writing; and a whopping 84 percent had no specific goals at all.

Ten years later, the members of the class were interviewed again, and the findings, while somewhat predictable, were nonetheless astonishing. The 13 percent of the class who had goals were earning, on average, twice as much as the 84 percent who had no goals at all. And what about the three percent who had clear, written goals? They were earning, on average, ten times as much as the other 97 percent put together.”

(Note: the source of the above is from this site.)

Obviously, the new year is a time when people talk and talk and talk of goals. So lesson number one on this Monday, January 4, 2010 for my students is Goal Setting.

I always set them for myself as a writer. (And I write them down — though I do this at the start of every school year cause my life operates in harmony with academic calendars more so than with traditional calendars — as per last week’s blog post.)

I always set goals for myself as a teacher.

I always introduce the techniques of Goal Setting to my kids. I truly believe there is almost a science like quality to this aspect of life.

1) dream it up (being practical yet far-reaching)
2) reflect deeply on what you want (not whims or wishes — but personally meaningful stuff)
3) write it down (be specific, the more specific the better. Not “I will lose weight” but rather “I will lose 10 pounds by May 15.)
4) refer back to your written goals now and then in order to self-assess, remind yourself of the forrest for the trees and make adjustments in case you have either gotten off-track or already surpassed a written goal and need to enhance and enlarge your objectives.

I will be speaking more to the idea of “goals” in the next few weeks. Goals for my students, goals for my classes, goals for my own writing and for my school at large.

And by declaring them so publicly, there’s a fear, I must admit. I mean, what if I don’t attain them? Well, maybe that’s the power of having written them down in the first place, it’s reflective of real commitment.

Goals — writing ‘em down is the key to attaining them. I do… and I will.

Happy 2010!!