And in another case of the bubble tests being the tail that wags the entire educational dog, we see that one of the nation’s largest school districts – Los Angeles Unified – wants to start school earlier next year.

Not add more days of school, mind you. (Of course not. That would cost money and perhaps even add value to a child’s learning life.) Nope… they want to start earlier to “give students more time to prepare for the tests.”

That’s not a direct quote. Here’s the direct quote…

“The Los Angeles Unified School District hails the idea as a step forward academically, arguing that students would be better prepared for exams.”

It’s that blatant.
That direct.
That absurd.

Clearly, good widgets do well on good one-size-fits-all bubble tests and bad widgets do poorly on one-size-fits-all bubble tests so – just as clearly, we need to start concentrating on the bubble tests earlier next year as they are, after all, the entire raison d’etre for public education’s entire existence.

It also goes to show how little the time is valued by our schools after bubble test season is over. (I’ve blogged about this before, about how once testing season passes the entire school shifts into “bide-our-time til summer” mode because clearly, once the bubbles have passed, so has the need to “really teach”.)

Why don’t we just let the bubble test makers decide the school calendar and put this baby to rest once and for all? They could schedule our tests, they could schedule our pre-tests, they can schedule our practice tests, our warm-up tests, and our make-up tests.

And anything that’s left over, will just be a furlough day. After all, if we are not preparing kids for the tests, how in the world can it be said that we are really teaching.

Because if it’s not tested, why would we be teaching it anyway?

This will all save us time, money and energy. Since nothing else but the bubble tests matter, why are we even bothering to pretend that anything other than the bubble tests do matter.

Of course, once we parse the data, we’ll know who to keep, who to fire, which kid to shame and which kid to put on the cover of the school district’s newsletter.

It’s a simple solution really. I have no idea why it’s taken them so long to figure it out.

A great failure of our country is that America is not supporting universal pre-school. By the time so many kids get to high school, they are WAY behind.

Because they started off kindergarden way behind. Some kids show up on day one writing their name, knowing how to sit in a group and listen to a teacher and others don’t yet even know the entire alphabet and cry for their mommies when the teacher asks them to sit and and pay attention.

By first grade a self-image of who is competent in school has already begun to form in the minds of children. And that self-image is, in lots of cases (especially without excellent early education/elementary teachers) a self-fulfilling prohesy.

By 3rd grade kids who have not received any sort of individual tutoring, mentoring, SOMETHING to derail them from the inner belief of low competency in school fall into ruts whereby they expect less of themselves because they have a history of delivering less than the kid next to them. (Often, that’s a kid who went to pre-school.)

By the following year we get to see the joy of the infamous 4th grade plunge. Here’s something from the Spring 2003 issue of the American Educator. The title: “The Fourth-Grade Plunge: The Cause, the Cure”. The cover of the special includes a summary that states:

“In fourth grade, poor children’s reading comprehension starts a drastic decline-and rarely recovers. The Cause: They hear millions fewer words at home than do their advantaged peers-and since words represent knowledge, they don’t gain the knowledge that underpins reading comprehension. The Cure: Immerse these children, and the many others whose comprehension is low, in words and the knowledge the words represent- as early as possible.”

Middle school means puberty, awkwardness and a world of personal discombobulation. High school… well, I’ve written tomes about that in the past.

Does every kid need pre-school? Well, Bill Gates didn’t need college and Kobe went right to the NBA from high school so no… every kid does not.

But does every kid need pre-school? In this day and age, I’d say yes.

And if I am a bubble test maker right now, I gotta be thinking, “Ya know… he’s right. And I bet if we do get universal pre-school accepted across the nation, we could finagle our way into bubble testing the 3 year olds too… cause any highly functioning pre-school is, of course, informed by high quality data-driven assessment.”

Get kids up to speed in high school? In far too many high schools teachers are struggling to get kids up to a middle school level. And so, so many middle school teachers are struggling to get their kids to an elementary level.

And elementary teachers are so, so dependent on the background of the learner before they ever came to school.

I am back on the bandwagon and preaching, I feel, to the choir.

Feeling good about the work one does is not an option.

It’s mandatory. I do not believe a person can ever be authentically excellent if they are not greatly enjoying the effort they spend on tasks.

This transposes itself to the world of students quite readily. Does a kid who couldn’t give a poop about an assessment ever step up and really rock the house in terms of their performance? Sure, if the material presents little to no academic challenge for them. But if the assessment asks a kid to reach deep and the kid isn’t internally driven to reach deep because they just do not care about what is being asked of them (and they don’t feel threatened enough by the consequences of not giving their all) then you’re never going to see stellar performance.

To wit, I cite project-based learning (with a self-directed inquiry based approach to the work) as compared to bubble test assessment. At which task is a student most likely to “give more”? At which task is a student more likely to really care about their performance? In which do you think a teacher better sees the true abilities and competencies of a kid?

It’s a no brainer. Meaningfulness matters.

This is true of teachers as well. Is a teacher who feels oppressed by administration, demonized by the media, and much like a rabbit in a den full of coyotes in the lunch room best positioned to prosper at their job?

Doesn’t a teacher who shows up to school with a bounce in their step and a ton of eagerness in their hearts to get the day rollin’ because of all the exciting, awesome, challenging, interesting things on tap perform better at the job of being a teacher than one who shows up merely trying to get through the day and bide their time until the next three-day weekend?

Before competency comes feelings and attitude.

And (yep, here I go with my Mr. Happy Talk spiel) positive attitudes matter. Much more than many people often think. For without them, the ceiling of achievement is limited. That’s a condition of humanity, almost a truism.

Kids who are eager and excited to learn learn more than kids who are not. Teachers who are thrilled and energized by teaching make better teachers than those who view it as a “mere job”.

Yet, we already know this. The touchy-feely aspects of learning matter a ton. Even widgets, I am sure, like to be massaged.

Gut check time: How’s your own sense of positivity about your work measuring up these days? Me, simply by giving it voice, I already feel better.

You only live once. Don’t trudge.

With Back-to-School season upon us, I ask myself, what is it that we should really want for all our nation’s students this year?

Less bullying?
Heightened meaningfulness in the classroom?
Better cafeteria food?

I think one core answer is growth. We want our student to elevate their aptitudes.

Kids will come into our nation’s rooms this year with certain skill sets. The goal to which we should all aspire is that they leave our classrooms at the end of the year with improved and heightened abilities.

Their growth ought to mean something. If there’s no growth, it’s troubling. If there’s supreme growth it brings smiles.

However, this is exactly why our current system of assessment is so ridiculously dysfunctional. We don’t reward growth. We aim for arbitrarily chosen targets.

For example, I have kids that have come to my room with 4th grade reading skills… and have left the year at an 8th grade level. And yet, when it comes to the 10th grade tests, they paint my kid’s performance that year as entirely inadequate and underachieving. 8th grade skills in 10th grade student mean we are a failing school and I am a failing teacher, regardless of how much improvement was demonstrated.

It’s hurtful to the kid, it’s demoralizing to the teacher and it’s detrimental to the school. (They act as if I had my feet up on the desk reading the newspaper all year. Sheesh!)

However, if we used growth model assessments, suddenly we’d see a lot more happy face emoticons being implanted in the emails the state department of education sends to our school district.

Instead, because of the means by which assessment is measured, we are ostracized.

Does a 14 month old who does not yet know how to walk get ripped by their parents because the “average” 14 month old can walk?

Does the 5 year old who does not yet know how to write their name get shamed publicly because the “average” 5 year can achieve this task?

Of course not. We reward growth towards these target objectives. And, most importantly, we continue to teach – through praise!!

We continue to inspire and encourage. It’s just common sense.

Yet, does anyone in this country right now think our current form of assessment is characterized by words like encouragement, praise or inspiration.

And are not those some of the most effective tools of terrific teachers?

Screw up the bubble tests and you will be humiliated, scolded, reprimanded and threatened. Pass the bubble tests with flying colors and you’ll get a few checkmarks… maybe an “attaboy” here and there.

Is it not time we started to measure growth?

So a kid breaks the school rules by say, ditching class, and what do we do? Suspend them for 5 days.

Oh, that really teaches them.

Maybe back in the old days being suspended from school carried a stigma but for oh-so-many of my kids, when they get suspended, it’s like a vacation for them.

Sure, maybe they get in trouble at home. Perhaps their mother is angry at them or what-not… but what we’re inevitably doing is making a problem that much worse by keeping kids out of class.

I say, when a kid violates the rules and earns a suspension, what they should really earn is School Boot Camp.

That’s right… you have a major infraction, that means more time, not less at school working on your deficiencies of both character and academic ability… and you are going to be forced to contribute to both your own benefit and that of the campus at large.

Obviously, we are talking Saturday School here. (BTW, immediately we have a deterrent. Right now, being threatened with a 5 day vacation/suspension is not any kid of deterrent with teeth at all. But make a kid give up weekend hours and you’ll see a newfound respect for campus law.)

Instead of 5 days worth of suspension, I say we given them a month of Saturdays, from 8:00 – 3:00.

The “suspension time” would be divided up into two categories. Personal enrichment and campus beautification.

I’ll start with campus beautification. That’s a euphemism for grab a freakin’ broom, buster… you are going sweeping.

And wiping.

There’s gum to be scraped, graffiti to be removed, trash to be picked up and bathroom sinks to be polished.

You violate the rules of this community, you need to step up and improve the ambience of this community.

That’ll learn ya!

But there’s gotta be academic work, too. Clearly, there is often a link between low academic skills and behavior issues. How about if the suspended student’s learning profile was taken into consideration and if, for example, they showed a lack of proficiency with pre-Algebra skills, they were afforded the intervention needed to help them raise their mathematical abilities?

I know. Too sensible. Send ‘em home, let ‘em meander and pretend we all don’t ultimately pay for it later on once they are uneducated adults.

When you think about it, school suspension makes no sense.
A kid’s time could be used so much more productively to forge character as well as academic aptitude.
A month of Saturdays is a much better approach to trying to snap a misbehaving kid into shape.
I say SCHOOL BOOT CAMP!

Diary of a Wimpy Kid is about to absolutely rock the Hollywood box office this weekend. And it has been a rip-roaring success in the world of book publishing. As a teacher, when I see this I know that I can leverage the power of an author who has found a way to reach real kids into classroom success for me and my kids.

Here’s how I do it.

First of all, I know that the state has hired me to teach the content standards. (They clearly say so.) And when they assess my student performance, the material they test is not text specific but rather, standards-based. This means that they are not going to be testing my kids on Kafka, Twain, and Joyce but rather on denotation vs. connotation, theme, tone and so on.

And hey, Diary of a Wimpy Kid uses all of the literary elements of denotation vs. connotation, theme, tone and so on. So why not use Diary of a Wimpy Kid as a text to teach the standards in my classroom?

I do.

Now before I get crucified as being someone that does not revere the GREAT BOOKS of human civilization – a canon blaster, if you will — please take a few things into consideration.

California is a state with 6.4 million students. And 1.6 million of them are English Language Learners. This means that I need to differentiate, accommodate and be responsive to the real literary needs of the students that are sitting in my class — all while still teaching the appropriate grade level content standards.

I am not sure if there is a more accessible book for English Language Learners out there right now than Diary of a Wimpy Kid.

-It’s funny. (And kids will wrestle with text when the reward is material that will make them laugh).
-There’s a lot of white space on the page. (Check the research on the value of that to a student with low literacy skills – especially when English is not their first language).
-It’s relevant and kids relate. (The bumbling, fumbling shenanigans of Greg allow students to see their own lives reflected directly in the text.)

And Diary of a Wimpy Kid (for those who want to take a moment to jump off their high horse of that books in school absolutely must be dense, erudite art) is a good read. Personally, I greatly enjoyed it because it’s an energetic, funny and page turner.

Plus, guess what? There’s a theme. (A few of them, in fact: 1) We learn from our mistakes. 2) Self-image is very important. 3) No one escapes problems in their life. 4) You’ve got to show initiative if you are going to get anywhere in this world.)

And there are examples of denotation vs. connotation.

And the text provides me examples of tone, perspective, hyperbole and on and on.

The same stuff that the standards ask me to teach.

Should Diary of a Wimpy Kid replace Mark Twain? Nope, not even close. But can it be used as a bridge to build capacity? Can it be used as a text to illuminate literary devices?

Can it be used as a vehicle to get 100% of your class to do ALL the assigned reading? (And how often do our classes do that? I mean “faking it” through books has become so ingrained in our culture that there’s a multi-million dollar industry to provide resources as to how to better fake it — Cliff’s Notes, Spark Notes, Pink Monkey and so on.)

Yes, I read Diary of a Wimpy Kid with my classes. And guess what? It was a home-run success and a great teaching tool.

And guess what else?

We had FUN!

Since when are fun and and learning mutually exclusive to one another?

But, don’t worry — keep using those 20th century tools to reach today’s 21rst century kids. After all I am sure Hollywood is going to race right out and make a movie of your classroom textbook any day this week.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid… it certainly can have it’s place in a classroom where students are achieving.

If a kid leaves school without the ability to comprehend Ralph Ellison, well… it pales compared to the consequences of a kid not being able to read their credit card agreement.

Why does that not seem more obvious to people who wield power over the directions of our school curriculum?

Why do we not spend more time teaching “functional literacy” to our kids?

If I was a conspiracy theorist, I’d say it was because this is how we keep the lower socio-economic class in the lower socio-economic rungs of society. Upper socio-economic parents teach their kids the tenets of managing money, the financial rules attendant to cash. (Well, they certainly try but there are rubes to be taken to the cleaners at all levels of society.)

People who do not know this stuff, however, do not have the ability to teach it to their kids. And worse, they [incorrectly] presume that our public schools will show this stuff to their offspring.

But we don’t. Hmm, how many folks with poor literacy skills have been duped into under-buying phone plans so that they end up getting $860 phone bills because they thought txt messages were included with unlimited talk time?

Okay, could happen to anybody.

Hmm, how many folks with poor literacy skills have been duped into signing up for one of those “no payments for six months” promotions then fallen victim to the fact that the rate skyrockets to 28% and they backdate the interest owed to all the way to the date of original purchase?

Okay, could happen to anybody.

Hmm, how many people have been tricked into buying one of those “gift cards” to a superstore in their local supermarket (i.e. Best Buy, Staples, Target, and so on) and not realized that there is a 4% processing fee so that for every dollar you spend on the gift card, the recipient only gets 96 cents worth of goods.

Okay, could happen to anybody.

Hmm, now ask yourself… How many people have fallen victim to all three of the above scenarios?

Uhm waiter, more literary canon please.

Funny but English teachers will go to war to defend the canon. (Just you dare try to remove TKAM or Huck or Gatsby… you’ll have to pry it from my cold dead hands.)

But teach basic day-to-day functional document interpretation. That’s not for English teachers who teach reading, is it? I mean isn’t their some kind of business ed class or home ec book that covers that?

When we teach reading, we teach Reading with a capital R… even when so many of our kids are in desperate need of learning how to read all the lower case r stuff.

Not so sure I buy into the “objective measure” argument in regards to student test scores being an inarguable method of insight into teacher performance. I mean just because all kids take the same test well, does it really mean that their performance on those tests translate so flawlessly to “windows on the teacher at the front of the room”?.

For example, just the other day a teacher in 11th grade showed me his grade book for his 5th period class.

It looked like it had been shot up by gunfire. Zero, zero, zero… bullet holes everywhere.

He showed me a kid who had perfect attendance and yet had 17 doughnut holes (i.e. “did not turn in work”, scores of zero) in a row.

The kid came.
The kid showed up.
The kid did nothing.

The kid has issues. He is short a zillion credits, doesn’t even bring a backpack to school and certainly doesn’t look like he has much of a chance of graduating.

Conversely, another kid in that same class has terrible attendance… but shows up just often enough so that the school has not yet bounced him off the roster.

Bullet holes in the grade book – for both of them. It’s an entire class like that.

Are either of these kids going to reflect test scores that 1) favor this teacher or 2) prove anything about this teacher’s merit?

Cause this is a good teacher. A guy who tries. A guy who shows up and takes the “lowest kids” because he feels he can reach them.

And he likes to reach them. It’s his life’s work. But nope, he doesn’t reach all of them. Not even close.

Aren’t these kids actually illuminating shortcomings of…
-parents?
-community?
-truant officers?
-administration?
-politicians?
…as much as they are illuminating the shortcomings of educators?

Does this man deserve to be demonized? Who is going to want to take on our most challenging kids, the ones that need the most help, if there are draconian punishments waiting for those who do not “deliver measurable performance”?

Perhaps he reaches all those kids… when they are 22 years old and finally decide that they are gonna stop being a screw-up and listen to Mr. _______’s words — the ones that have been hauntingly careening through their head for the past seven years?

Now, take a guess at what an AP Calculus teacher’s grade book looks like. There might not be straight A’s for everyone but it certainly isn’t bullet holes all around either.

Those kids work. They show up, turn in assignments and even do extra credit assignments when they already have an A in the course.

Whaddya think his scores are going to reflect on the state tests? (Especially since they barely touch on Algebra II in their most challenging form.)

Doesn’t the actual teaching assignment you get directly have a correlation to the test scores your students deliver? At least in a measure that deserves some real weight?

And is any weight given?

BZZZPP!!

No, it is not.

(Because that’s just liberal coddling and buying into having low expectations for our children, I assume. After all, it’s No Child Left Behind by 2014… even if they are leaving themselves behind.)

Just not sure about how apples equal oranges on this front. And I am HUGELY skeptical of the word “objectivity”.

Let’s be honest… it’s really hard to give a damn about a kid’s grades when a kid doesn’t give a damn themself.

I know I am supposed to be mature, compassionate, professional and perpetually hopeful and encouraging but wow, sometimes it is just so hard when you are being asked to care about the performance of a student at a level that exceeds their own concern. I mean after having just done grades and participating in a school-wide dialogue about “low performing students”, I feel like very few people want to acknowledge a hard truth about being a teacher in this day and age.

We are being asked to care at a level that exceeds the caring shown by 1) the student themself and 2) a host of “other” adults in many of these students’ lives.

I think we all know what I mean when I say that it’s supremely challenging to care about a kid’s grade when they themselves couldn’t give a flying fudgesicle about their own academic performance. This aspect of our job is almost self-explanatory.

But who else is supposed to care… besides me?

To the administrators and the district, every F I give is more a piece of data than it is a real kid. Same with the politicians and such. I mean they know there are real faces behind the grades — and they pay lip service to the idea that these are real people — but at the end of the day, they see trends and charts and graphs and data much more than they see real people.

And the way that they are slashing budgets and cutting services and resources and programs and personnel (and on and on and on, geesh, what aren’t they cutting nowadays?) it’s hard for me to buy into the idea that many of these folks really care about kids the way I believe they ought — or care about them more than I do.

What about the parents? (I am not even going to go there right now because it’s a can of worms that I don’t even know how to properly address. Just SO complicated.)

Now some teachers relish giving the F, as if it’s their own little revenge on a semester filled with grief and aggravation. “Ha!” they think. “You may have tortured me, but with this F, I get to throw a wee bit of gunk into your future karma… SO TAKE THAT YOU LITTLE PUNK!”

Other teachers feel sadness about giving an F to a kid that demonstrates no concern for their own academic well-being. They give F’s with a, “This F is gonna cook you in a way that you don’t even realize and I hate to do it but you’ve boxed me in — there’s no other way.”

And then, once you have been doing this long enough, you hear about how as a teacher, you shouldn’t take it home with you. How it is just part of the gig. It’s part and parcel. You learn the Q-TIP principal.

Quit
Taking
It
Personally

Well, I am still waiting for the point in my career when that actually happens. And when it does, isn’t that also a signal it might be time to leave the classroom?

Is there such a thing as “bad” kids?

Walking the halls of school and chatting (as I get to do) with teachers from all over the country, I often hear the term “the good kids”. They are the ones that (this is my own, rough definition here; one I am drawing by assumption) come to class, behave in a civil manner, make an attempt to respect authority, do their work and strive for [so called] “admirable goals” like good grades, graduation, becoming well educated, going to college and so forth.

Good kids are, well… good kids. We all kind of understand who they are.

But if there are good kids, by definition, that must mean there are also “bad kids”, right? It really is a question I am not sure I know the answer to.

I mean, the bleeding heart California liberal in me wants to say, “There is no such thing as a bad kid.” And a part of me wants to truly believe that. I really do.

But to work in an urban, title I school you see kids that deal drugs, commits viscous acts of violence, show absolutely no regard for authority on campus, actively seek to destroy our school through vandalism, graffiti, and so on… and generally show absolutely no interest whatsoever in pursuing any academic aspirations whatsoever. To some kids, school is nothing more than a social venue where they get their kicks causing mayhem, chillin’ with friends and trying to score a little nooky from the hottie they just made eye contact with in the hallway.

And when other campus employees refer to them as the “bad kids” I often find myself biting my tongue. I mean I work hard not to label kids good or bad — in my book, kids are kids are kids and they vary along such a diverse continuum that there really is no way to generalize them with such imprecise vocabulary words. Yet… when other campus employees use the term “bad kids” and are referencing the type of students that demonstrate behaviors like the ones I just listed, is it really unfair of them to call these young people “bad kids”?

I wonder.

And if not, is there even such a thing as a “bad kid”?

Some folks will blame the parents of the child and talk about how they are being raised. Some people will blame the kids themselves for not acting more intelligently, responsibly, properly. Some people will blame the school and teachers for not being able to do a better job of reaching these students. However, this is a different discussion.

The question is, is there such a thing as a “bad kid” when you work at a school.

And are we ashamed to admit that “yes, there are” out of a fear that we will be transgressing some sort of “moral spirit of what a teacher ought to be” if we do indeed cop to the idea that some kids are just “bad”.