Walking through the airport to go do some PD for a school in Texas this week (BTW, I’ve been on the road WAY too much this summer) I found myself, as all of us inevitably do when we travel, in a security line.

A security line that was going absolutely nowhere.

Goodness, I said to myself, don’t we all just love how efficient airports are these days? And with nothing to do other than to contemplate the inner machinations of brilliance on display and try to take a replicable lesson from the underpinnings of unparalleled competence and unrivalled excellence so clearly set before me, I started pondering “ways to improve the system”.

That’s right, I decided to take on TSA (Travel Security Administration) at LAX (Los Angeles International Airport and Cattle Car Corporation).

The first thing they needed, I realized, was an API and AYP score. I mean how could I truly begin to gage their effectiveness if I did not have a basis of comparison? So I recognized, right then, in order for me to truly assess TSA at LAX I’d be needin’ me some bubble tests.

Bubble tests to make the employees jump through a whole host of hoops to measure the qualifications of the aspiring employee before they were hired. (And if they didn’t get enough correct bubbles the first time, I’d send them back to choose more bubbles.) Bubble tests to measure the job these employees were doing as they performed their duties. Bubble tests, bubble tests, bubble tests. Trust me, I saw about a zillion places I could use them.

That lady frisking the mom with the 3 month old questioning the contents of the breast milk – had she been given enough bubble tests to administer such a rousting, I wondered.

(Note to self: invest in a company that makes bubble tests… it’s a growth industry.)

That’s when I realized that if I really want to improve TSA at LAX I’d be needin’ me some really good bubble test graders and bubble test makers, too. Yep, some psychometricians with fancy degrees in order to create fair, accurate and equitable bubble tests so that my bubble tests did not discriminate against any airport employees based on cultural, racial, gender-based, or sexual preference differences.

After all, bubble tests that aren’t fair might taint the reputation of bubble tests everywhere and being a public school teacher in the day and age of NCLB, I could never dare to take such a risk.

Of course, I’d go further! Does anyone realize that security folks in airports nowadays don’t get paid by the customer; they get paid by the hour. This means that whether or not they process 30 people in sixty minutes or 60 people in sixty minutes, they get paid the same either way.

Merit pay… that’s what this system needed (once the bubble tests were in place of course).

I was on a roll!

I cooked up all kinds of great ways to improve the system such as instituting a hierarchical system whereby the people who run TSA at LAX would never have had to actually work as a boots-on-the-ground TSA employee at LAX. (i.e. Real experience might muddle their thinking.) And then I’d make all passengers take off their shoes, belts, watches, cell phone and shimmery low-cut underwear. (What, you didn’t think I’d abandon their best ideas, did you?) I would come in and revolutionize TSA at LAX!

Then the line started to move and I realized, “Yo, Doof-o… you don’t have any idea what you are talking about… a system like that would never work.”

So I grabbed my low-cut shimmery underwear off security’s conveyor belt and jumped a plane to Texas.

Turns out the mindless bubble tests I blogged about being mandated a few days ago is the first stage in the NCLB process of being taken over by the state. “Teams come in” don’t seek any input from anyone currently in the school and mandate bubble tests so that they can “evaluate” where to place next year’s kids.

And when I look at the silliness of this test, I realize they are about to come up with numbers whereby they are going to be able to prove that over 90% of our kids are deficient… and then, they can just give an easy bubble test in 3 years and viola! look how many more kids are doing well thanks to the brilliance of the “intervening state team”.

And all of us have our hands tied. Either do what they say “or else”. Not sure what “or else” means but the current administration on campus has absolutely no voice in this. Matter of fact, to their credit, they don’t even want us to give these bubble tests anyway. They know they are weak. They know that huge money is being made by corporate folks who are complicit to the madness. They know that we are very small fish in a very big pond and when the shark swims by, the guppies have to do what they are told

Sheesh, my school is being set up like tourists in a New York City game of 3 Card Monty.

And how long before this happens to you?

Just when you think the bubble tests are over I get slammed with a bubble test that all my 9th grade students must take in order to “place them” in an appropriate 10th grade class.

70 questions. Passage upon passage of reading that is almost purposefully dry and needs a sense of prior knowledge of its historical context to appreciate… and what’s it going to show?

Zilch, if you ask me. I mean to give this kind of test to my kids right now is to beg them to simply Christmas tree the thing. Didn’t we just undergo a HUGE series of bubbles tests, the kind that shut down the entire school? And aren’t we but weeks away from the end of the year? And aren’t I about ragged about fighting with the higher-ups about the ridiculousness of these tests?

Are we over-testing? Geesh, we just got done with state tests, we we required to give district worksheet pre-tests as practice for the tests and now they want us to simply give these tests?

What the hell do they expect these tests to prove? Let me guess:

Our English Language Learners have low literacy skills. Check.
Our Gifted and Talented Kids overwhelmingly do not score in the “Highly Proficient” realm when standardized tests are given thus calling into question whether or not our “gifted” kids are really gifted. Check. (But if you know anything about G.A.T.E. one can be identified as G.A.T.E. as a result of aptitude in any number of modalities and just because a kid is wicked with visual puzzles doesn’t mean they are going to score off the charts in the grammar section of Bubbleville, U.S.A.)
Our district is struggling with how to do something to get the state off its back because we keep sliding lower and lower down the NCLB Dante Circle of Hell Scale since it seems we are a wee bit behind when it comes to having all of our kids be at “proficient level within the next 5 years” — so they are starting to turn the screws on us now. Check.
Our kids have absolutely no breaking point and if they do, we are going to find it so we know what not to do in the future. Check.
Our teachers? Oh they are just chimps-for-hire… it’s their job to simply do what they’re told. Check.

It’s freakin’ lunacy! And I stormed out of school ready to pop a blood vessel cause, of course, there was no notice given to me. There was no feedback sought about the sanity of this system. There was no input asked for whereby my opinion — or any other teacher’s — was courted to see how this might fly. I mean, what are we, chopped liver?

But these bubble tests were simply delivered to my door today with the mandate that they get administed so that kids could be properly placed in next year’s class sections.

Huh? Excuse me. A couple of questions? Are these tests the only criteria for their placement next year?
No answer.
If not, what weight do they hold?
No answer.
Are there other mitigating factors in determining who will be “placed” where?
No answer.
Who wrote this test?
A textbook company. That’s right, they simply copied it from one of the pre-packaged, corporate monsters that have their meathooks in our school’s wallets. Here’s question number 30.

The following question is not about the reading selection. Read and answer the question.

We borrow words as well as customs from other cultures. From the names of the Norse gods Odin, Thor, and Freya we get which words?
F) Wednesday, Thursday, Friday
G) origin, thirsty, frightened
H) alpha, beta, kappa
J) January, February, March

Like I said, this is just one of 70 questions. Anybody else think that there might be something wrong with this.
1) I taught absolutely NO Norse mythology this year.
2) Why do they use an F, G, H, J system. First of all, 99% of bubble tests use A,B,C, D and if you work with real kids, you know that to throw in F, G, H, J is to throw them for an unnecessary loop. Furthermore, why did they skip the letter I? Look at it, it goes F, G, H, J — it’s ridiculously and unnecessarily disconcerting.
3) Not even the teacher knows the answer. Burn me in the pyres of Odin but I don’t really have a freakin’ clue what the correct answer choice is — and I have a master’s degree in cross-cultural language arts. My 15 year old English Language Learners though, I am sure they are gonna nail this.
4) How much money did my school pay to this textbook company for these kind of resources again? And in light of the fact that a big percentage of our staff was laid off due to budget cuts, might we not be accused of financial imbecility?

Do I need to go on? About a thousand demoralizing questions popped up… and so, I left. I left school without even raising the issue.

Way too infuriating. Way to mindless. Way too cooked up in the ivory towers of people who do not really know what’s going on down on the ground floor. And no one even explained that we’d be giving this test to me face to face.

Then again, I can kinda see why? I mean would you want to be the one to tell me this is the program, now jump onboard and close your mouth please? That’s why they simply sent a student, an office T.A. with a pile of tests and answer sheets and absolutely no information at all so that if I dared to interrogate this kid, he’d legitamately know nothing.

Of course I snapped at him, “Who gave these to you?”

“I was just told to give these to you.”

“Who told you?”

“They did?”

“Who?”

“The front office.”

“Who?

“I dunno. They just told me to give you this.”

Yep, they sent a patsy!

Makes my blood boil. But of course I know where it came from. But that person got it from a person who is having the screws turned on them. And that person is having the screws turned on them. So in the midst of all this screw turning, stuff like this happens. “I mean we gotta do something, right?”

Aaarrggh!

And then, just when I thought all is lost, I came home to this email… and I calmed down.

Dear Mr. Sitomer,
I just received my copy of your newest book, The Secret Story of Sonia Rodriguez and felt compelled to write you to tell you not only how excited I am to read your newest book, but how much of an impact your books have had on hundreds of my students.
I am a middle school math and reading teacher in an low-income, high minority, industrial area of Denver, CO, called Commerce City. (Not much unlike the Commerce City in California.) I discovered your books 2 years ago when I was attempting to instruct quite possible the most reluctant readers on the planet. Since that time, I have purchased over twenty of your books and used them to convince hundreds of teenagers, especially boys, that reading in fact does not “suck.” Your stories more closely resemble my students’ lives and they are able to see themselves in the characters. I anticipate your new book will hit even closer to home for them.
I hope you continue to write for along time so that my students will always have something amazing to read.
Thank you for what you do,
Lacey S Taschdjian
Adams City Middle School
Commerce City, CO

Is it just me or is every teacher’s life one of mood swings from depression and I hate this shit! to Man, it’s great to do what I do, trying to help kids and other teachers… like every day of our professional lives?

Aaarrggh!! And to think that some people are on summer vacation and I am going through this right now. For those of us on staff still, we approaching the point of requiring medication.