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”.

This article in Education Week calls attention to potential “conflict of interests” between educational publishers and those that are behind the scenes of the national standards push.

Essentially, here’s the thrust of the article…

The Literacy Research Association sent a letter Oct. 21 to the groups overseeing the development of common standards that, among other points, expresses concern that many of the authors are “representatives of multiple commercial entities that stand to profit enormously from selling curricula, instructional materials, assessments, and consultancies as the standards are rolled out.”

On one hand, can you really be surprised? When billion of dollars of government money is on the line, there are going to be commercial wolves salivating for the cash. (It happens in defense, construction, telecommunications and so on.)

On the other hand, the people who are authoring the national standards are some of America’s foremost thinkers and experts on students, achievement and blah, blah, blah. I mean where else would the Dept. of Ed turn for this authorship? And the educational publishers need these type of people to author their materials as well… so where do you think they are going to turn?

To the same people.

The conflict of interest was inevitable.

The solution seems kind of obvious to me. Make the contract read, if you write the standards you can’t author/consult/and so on for commercial educational publishing/testing materials for say, 5 years. (Or, if you have accepted money for authoring/consulting educational publishing materials, you are automatically excluded from national writing standards.)

Either way, should we be shocked that some people want to set it up so that “the folks in Congress get to vote on their own pay raise” (cause it’s kind of analogous)?

In parts of school and educational policy these days, all you have to do is follow the money.National standards means national standardized testing… and who will profit off of the implementation and administration of that I wonder?

The chumminess is troubling — even more so when it gets obfuscated behind closed doors, through back channels and what-not. But, hey, Joe and Jane parent… whadda they know. After all, they are entrusting both their kids and their tax dollars to us so that we can, as professionals, make these “best decisions” for them..

Hard to make a best decision for somebody else’s kids when you are staring at 10 figure contracts on the line.

That’s right BILLIONS are hanging in the balance.

But the internet makes for an amazing watchdog, does it not? People with hands in cookie jars… they gotta be more careful than ever, don’t they?

I just scored a new car this past weekend — had to do it. (Hey, I live in L.A., the land of cars and when it’s time, it’s time). But what is so remarkable, is that the salesperson lied to me and I still bought the car from him.

And not just one salesperson lied to me — at every dealership I visited, I was lied to. No matter make, type, design or whatever, I’ve just experienced firsthand how it’s an industry filled with people who believe that they are allowed to tell their customers half-truths and self-serving semi-falsehoods — they say what they feel they need to say in order to make the deal — and then when you call them on it, they tell you it’s nothing personal, you shouldn’t take their words literally, that’s not what they meant, it’s just the way that business is done, blah, blah, blah…

For example, the salesperson uses a lot of words like “best” and “most”. I was given the “best” possible price. But then, after 25 minutes of silly haggling, I was given the real “best” price. And then another 20 minutes after than, I was given yet another “best” price.

Their best keep getting best-er… and then, when I offer them a number I am willing to pay for the car, they acted insulted. As if I were taking food out of the mouths of their children. They had the nerve to quote me a “best” price that was thousands of dollars over the “best” price that they offered me 50 minutes earlier and then when I counter-offered with a reasonable price, well… at the end of the day, it all felt oily to me.

And the truth is, even if I got a good deal, I still feel as if I were taken to the cleaners. It’s as if getting them to say yes to a purchase price means I screwed up somehow because they somehow got me in a way I still do not know and I overpaid for my vehicle.

And of course, car buying is an industry that has felt this way for decades. So what is going to cause this industry to change? I mean some have tried it but obviously, it hasn’t yet caught on. At least that’s the question that I asked myself as I signed all the final papers. (You know, the ones where the literal definitions of words actually matter for the first time in the car buying process since they are on binding legal documents).

But ironically, just as I was thinking this, the finance guy, in order to fill the space of the room with some small talk as he typed, told me, “So you’re a teacher huh? Boy, talk about a system that needs to change. What is up with our schools?”

Goodness, how low have we sunk when people who spend their lives trying to deceive others to fleece them of as much cash as they can get look down upon us for the work we do in our classrooms as if all educators are a bunch of charlatans trying to pull one over on the parents, community, government and kids the way that car salespeople are trying to pull one over on legit customers who only want a fair shake?

I mean when the New Car Used Car Salespeople think they can take the high ground over teachers, geesh… what in the world is going on?

So the school year is a few weeks in now and we just had one of those big, long English department meetings. You know the kind, where people gripe, complain, moan, go off topic and stray into conversations about how they are the best educational practitioners ever and back in 1981 I was doing this and blah, blah, blah.

Put it this way, if you do not know what type of meeting I am talking about, consider yourself blessed. We have good peeps on our staff and we are all working hard… but put 27 people in a room when there are still a buncha pockets of sheer chaos in different areas of campus and you are gonna hear some stuff.

Essentially, if there was a theme (and I am big on themes — I make my kids find them, analyze them, write about them and so on), it would be, “We don’t have enough.”

We don’t have enough desks. Due to the budget cuts we lost educators and now there are a bunch of teachers with 43 per class with only 34 desks in the room.

We don’t have enough teachers. Some people are carrying more than 200 students on their total roster this year. (And that’s a hell of a lot! Too many in fact… no doubt!)

We don’t have enough books. Being that about 30% of our kids didn’t return the books they checked out last year, and we have no money to order new books, we’re short materials.

We don’t have enough administrators. Yep, you heard me say it. There just aren’t enough hands on deck right now and being that we switched from SASE to ARIES and it’s giving major problems to everyone — and the guy who did the master schedule for the past decade just retired — my admins just spent last Saturday and Sunday on campus still working out schedules and the such. Admins aren’t the enemy… they have it just as tough… but they unfortunately can devolve into number crunching bureaucrats… and there is nothing more problem than number crunching bureaucrats who do not have enough number crunching bureaucrats around them to properly crunch the numbers like good number crunching bureaucrats are often called upon to do.

Essentially, We don’t have enough, we don’t have enough, we don’t have enough!

And so we must make up for it in spirit.