The eBook platform is coming to schools. For sure.

When is another story; if is not.

Like most forms of great change, there are those who will embrace it with open arms, those that will bounce back and forth between liking what is new and missing what’s old, and those that will poo-poo the new and hold on to the old for all sorts of reasons which they believe are quite well-justified.

All I can say about that is, if you think schools are in the midst of a doo-doo storm now, just wait til the inevitable migration to digital text knocks on your classroom door.

A breath of fresh air for some. A moment of great change (and challenge) for others. A discombobulating nightmare for some really, really good teachers, too.

I guess that is why I am gearing up now to bring folks PD. Cause schools are gonna need it for, if the teacher who is expected to make the jump to digital text does not have the skill set to work with and navigate digital text, pain will ensue… and the kids will suffer.

In some cases it will even render the capable incapable. (In war, I think they call that term collateral damage.)

Me, I am excited to see America re-invent our schools. We need it. But pie-in-the-sky visions of this being easy are my Achille’s heel. Theoretically, it will all be sold to us as seamless. In reality, there are gonna be lumps.

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.)

Here’s a quote from a major new study about merit pay:

Overall, our results consistently indicate that the increased focus on individual teacher performance caused a sizable and statistically significant decline in student achievement.

Read it again. It’s a bold accusation. “…increased focus on individual teacher performance caused a sizable and statistically significant decline in student achievement.”

That’s right, a DECLINE.

Here’s the link to the entire piece.

Now, I am not going to get into a debate about the veracity of this study. There might be a ba-zillion things wrong with it which I have no means — or desire — to try and defend. But it does raise an interesting question:

Isn’t it just speculation to assume that merit pay is actually going to raise student performance in a significant and salient manner? And what if this hypothesis about the merits of merit pay are wrong? How is it going to ravage our current system? What is going to be the fallout for kids, schools and teachers? What might we expect in terms of collateral damage to our current feeble structure and are these costs that make prudent sense to pay?

Merit pay is a weird one for me. I mean on one hand, I think I’d get a salary bump. I work hard, my kids do well and I toil with diligence at my job to the point of workaholic-ism (in an inner-city school where we have severe issues top-to-bottom). Like I said, for me personally, I suspect I’d benefit. Maybe not, but I think I’d be a candidate.

On the other hand, I am not sure how good it’s gonna be for the kids? Or morale? Or communities? Am I going to want to share my best lesson plans with the teacher down the hall if only one of us is going to be financially rewarded for higher test scores? Do I really want to see my allies as my competitors? Am I really going to want to take on kids with issues of truancy knowing that their absenteeism might be taking food off of my own dinner table?

All in all, I just don’t know — but the study about makes me hope that the people in charge are looking before they leap.