I am going to take a break from blogging for a bit. Getting spit on last week hurt and the truth is, it kinda all goes back to grandma’s old rule: if you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything at all.

With pink slips flying all around my school district – heck, all around our state – and our district preparing to hire me back next year at a pay cut of up to 12% (on top of the 3% we already took this year)… and I am one of the lucky ones cause a host of folks are being “chopped” from their positions… and the dragon of NCLB allowing the tests from ETS to be the tail that wags our entire institutional dog, well… I need to pause.

Will I rise like a phoenix from the ashes? Of course. My life is GREAT and I wouldn’t trade it for anyone’s. I love teaching, I love writing, I love working with teachers and students and I get paid to do it. My avocation is my vocation and how many people can really say that?

Yet, before the Phoenix rises from the ashes, well… people forget the part about what it’s like to descend and be mired in the ashes. There is a period of gestation when one is down and to blog my way through it, well… I just sense it could be a little ugly, cynical, jaded and dark.

Like our profession really needs that kind of energy right now.

BTW, it’s not like I don’t have some other writing to do. I am under contract for another new book of YA fiction for Disney, another new book of YA fiction for Penguin, the BookJams are just roaring right now (best teaching I have ever done) and I already have 2 new books for kids in the hopper due to be released in the next 12 months (meaning 4 in the next 24 months on top of the new BookJams as well).

So essentially, yes, I will be writing like a fiend and yes, I might return to blog sooner than I think (I feel a bit like an addict being that I have become so prolific over the past 14 months as a blogger) but, well… it all goes back to grandma’s rule.

I don’t really have a lot of nice things to say right now about school/education so I am not going to say them. However, this doesn’t mean there aren’t a heck of a lot of nice things that ought to be said.

But getting spit on was the straw that broke this camel’s back and right now, I am in a funk that requires a bit of time to sharpen the saw and figure out a few things.

Thanks for being a reader/responder/supporter/compadre… more to come… eventually.

On Monday we had a department-wide staff meeting in my room and I felt the need to apologize to everyone. Why? Because the week prior I was feeling salty and frustrated and aggravated at having been asked by our administration to lead our ELA department out of the bowels of NCLB hell (I’m not even the Department Chair) and during the course of doing some internal, department wide PD I was doing, I was kinda blunt.

I was brusque.

Indeed, I was chippy.

And usually, that’s not me. But damn, my buttons were pushed.

I should know better though. I mean face it, in a way, teachers can be the absolute WORST audience for other teachers to teach. Every rule they have in their own room is a room is a rule they feel they can break when someone else is at the front board. They talk when they feel like it, take phone calls when they feel like it, and already know the answers to all the questions even before the questions are asked.

Forget about the tardiness factor. Sheesh… just show up whenever the heck you want, why don’t you?

And when you dare to suggest that they might in some, slight way be acting hypocritical for this behavior — even if you are right, you are wrong. Ya can’t win for losing.

Like I said… Sheesh!

This is why I have no real ambition to be an administrator. Wrangling teachers is like herding cats and sometimes, when the screws of NCLB are being turned and the district offices (and front offices) are looking to you to make academic magic occur on a data-driven level, it becomes exhaustive.

Give me kids any day of the week. I mean I do PD because 1) I can and 2) because I believe I have something worth offering. No magic bullets, but some good, sound tools that can help classroom teachers improve their own classroom practice while simultaneously taking more joy and positive, fulfilling, meaningful efficacy from the work of being a teacher. I do PD with a win/win mentality in mind.

But I work with kids because I love it. That’s where the soulful stuff is for me… and that makes all the difference between this being a job and this being my life’s work.

Working with adults in a school system — sometimes it’ll drive ya bonkers. I just don’t know why I can’t seem to remember that more often.

Yep, gimme kids any day of the week.

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…

A-HA!! I finally figured out when the madness of NCLB will end. Now I am not sure I know how to to do the math properly, but I think it works out to something like this:

There are 26 letters in the alphabet. If you multiply 26 x 26 that means there are 676 possible two-letter combinations of acronyms to which they can ascribe names of punch-drunk policy.

This means that once NCLB hit the 677th clownish matter of educational legislation that requires an acronym, the system shuts down and we, the teachers are freed from this buffoonish dungeon.

Unfortunately, NCLB is a 4-letter acronym which means that they actually have 456,976 potential matters of acronym-al policy to work through before we are all free. (26 x 26 x 26 x 26). There’s good news and bad news in that.

The bad news: we still have a few hundred thousand more clodhopper mandates to work through before we are off this preposterous hook.

The worse news: sometimes they use 5 letter acronyms so we’re gonna have to multiply it again by another 26.

The good news… well, there ain’t much because I think they’ll start incorporating numbers once they recognize this flaw in the system… so just like the web gave birth to web 2. so too, will we one day be faced with NCLB 1.5 — it’ll try to be twice as good but it’ll fall half as short.

The only guarantee: it’ll be 1.5 times as maddening. Cubed! (That’s 3.375 times as loony if you multiply 1.5 x 1.5 x 1.5. — which is really the only guarantee in the whole post.)

I think people have become numb to the issue of race in our schools. And to bring it up, I think people just roll their eyes and feel a bit exhausted by it all. It’s like we’ve all heard about the Achievement Gap and we are all familiar with Kozol and we are all aware of the fact that the black and brown kids are, in many ways, getting less — and performing in an lower capacity — than white and Asian kids.

Has our national conversation petered out? Has the conversation about teacher quality, tenure, budget cuts and national standards bludgeoned the race issue to the point of it being like a punch drunk boxer who still wants to fight, still feels they need to fight but yet, can’t really keep up with the current fight going on?

On one hand we can take credit for having come far. It’s admirable the progress we, as a nation, have made. But have we come far enough?

Have we lost the mojo behind this “cause”?

As America becomes more and more and more racially diverse, has the issue of race become a tired talking point? Or worse, are we simply coming to accept that inequality is simply going to be the order of the day?

I mean there are like almost no white kids at my school… and we are in deep NCLB probation territory.

Are their any all-white schools, I wonder, that have absolutely no minorities which are in deep NCLB probation territory?

I know… sssshhhh! Go talk about teacher quality, tenure, budget cuts and national standards. Social justice, we did that already. Moving on…

Ultimately, if I was a principal charged with the task of distributing my teachers, I think I’d try the following…

(Caveat: my thinking below is just part of the reason why I have little desire to be a principal in this day and age. I mean hats off to the people that tackle this task — it’s crazy, grueling, almost thankless work — but the way you are almost forced to think doesn’t seem like it always harmonizes with the way I believe kids ought to be taught or teachers ought to be supported… and yet, NCLB forces an administrator’s hand with almost draconian threats.)

And so, at the risk of being called every name in the book, here is what I would do…

1. I’d talk to my teachers and see where each educator felt they could best succeed.

Can’t really say I see this being done in too many schools across the country, but I do feel as if there is a sense that a teacher would assume the greatest amount of ownership over the course they are charged with teaching if they got to choose/self-select their own class sections. Now for the “best” teachers, ownership is rarely a problem and for the Lemons it might be an incurable problem but for those in the middle, every little edge I can get/provide seems wise to try.

Go ahead, let’s see if we can get everyone to pretty much choose their own classes and then take responsibility of the classes you selected in a big, great way. But they would have to buy into the idea of “we are a team” and that their ultimate placement would depend on a few other mitigating factors. This leads to point 2…

2. I’d put my “best” teachers in the classes that would bring me the highest API and AYP score benefit.

(Before you start in on the name-calling, read why…

Look, if I am a principal (and again, this is part of the reason why I am not) my whole raison d’etre can best be summarized by those that hire me and evaluate me in one core way, above and beyond anything else: what are his test scores? Personally, I think it’s foolish and short-sighted and I have little faith in the assessments being used to evaluate schools or teachers these days. (Have I ever mentioned “growth models” as the only real, true indicator of student achievement/ teacher performance? Another time…) So if I am an organ monkey being forced to dance to the silly tune being played by the federal government’s bubble sheet mania, I am gonna be forced to play the cards in my hands as best as possible. And that means placing my best teachers in the places where they can raise the most amount of student test scores to the highest level.

Sad but true.

And in looking at the way things shake out, it would not be the “lowest, most challenged” students who get my “best” teachers. Now as a teacher or a parent or even a citizen, I think I have conflicting beliefs about this distribution of my best teaching talent. But as a principal, not at all.

My best teachers need to serve two masters. First, they need to make sure that my “best” students are still scoring in an “Advanced” manner on those silly, but all-important bubble tests. I must remember where my bread gets buttered and not screw that up. Their scores carry my school.

And to lose sight of this might cost me my job.

Second, I need my best teachers to raise the test scores of the most reachable kids, the ones who, if properly pushed, will rise to the challenge and move up a category, from either “below basic” to “basic” or from “basic” to “proficient”.

That’s money in my test score bank if I can only unlock the passcode and my best teachers… well, they are my best safe-crackers.

All this means that since 12th grade doesn’t take NCLB tests that count towards my AYP and API, seniors would not get my “best” teacher. Yep, I know that sucks for everyone. But really, until my school’s scores are unassailable, putting my best teachers in front of the classrooms that don’t count for NCLB makes no strategic sense. Why? I’ll say it again…

As we all know these days, test scores are the tail that wags the dog and if you have ever seen the look of a principal or Ass. Principal in the halls of a school that’s on NCLB probation for their test scores (my school is currently at Dante’s Level of Hell Probation Circle #4 right now — consultants are now on the district payroll though to remedy this problem, so never fear — and if we hit Level 5 supposedly the entire staff can be replaced, tenured or not, so heads are turning) you know exactly what I am talking about when I say that test scores are the tail that wags the dog.

Or how about the idea that 2nd graders are being given pep talks, “Let’s go give our BEST on these tests this week!” (I’ve never heard such enthusiasm being dispersed in almost mantra like tones by the admins about minor things like “character, values, work ethic, responsibility and so on… but test scores… they have become worthy of elementary school pep rallies!)

Therefore, in the factory model of public education in which this bonkers assessment model lives and breathes, I am forced to think about where I can reap the most test score rewards. And while the “most challenged kids” are the ones where my may heart call me, my mind knows that if test scores are the end-all, be-all of neighborhood property taxes, the district’s measurement of my job performance, the local newspaper’s flaunting of my relevant performance and so on, I gotta go for the scores first and foremost so that I can get everyone off my back and then try to serve the “whole child” at a later date (as if it is some kind of luxury).

Because if I try to serve the whole child first and take pride in the fact that I raised the test scores of a 10th grade kid with 5th grade skills and elevated him all the way to an 8th grade level in one mere academic year (happens all the time with a good teacher at the front of the room), my school’s ranking ain’t gonna receive no love at all (because these silly tests do not measure student growth from start to finish.)

But if I can get the kid with 9th grade skills to hit the 10th grade mark, then I am covering my bases. And if I can get the kid with 8th grade skills to hit the 10 grade mark, I am in the money. But if I spend too many of my resources trying to get the kids with the 5th grade skills trying to reach the 10 grade mark, it just seems like bad strategy.

I am thus literally “teaching to the test.” Kaplan, The Princeton Review and so on have made billions on the strategy element of standardized testing performance and only a fool doesn’t try to figure out how to “crack” these “crackable” tests in order to elevate their school’s NCLB evaluation.

Critical thinking. Citizenship. 21rst century skills. Come on, those are platitudes and buzzwords. Right now, it’s all about who can get the most correct bubbles.

As a principal I know that unless I take care of my test scores, I won’t live to see another day and while one might assume that the two ambitions of serving the best needs of kids and serving the school’s needs to have high test scores are the same, I do not believe they are.

Of course, NCLB doesn’t allow for nuances. Or moral quandary. Your kids are either proficient or they are not. And your damn subgroups better be as well.

Data driven instruction… feed it to me.

And so there it is, my answer to where, if I were a principal, I’d be placing my “best” teachers. And the Lemons, yep, I’d do what most principals are forced to try and do right now themselves — try to hide them in classes that won’t weigh down my test scores.

It’s like being the captain of a school baseball team. My best ball players play the infield, pitch and bat at the top of the order. My weakest players sit the bench, play right field and bat last — and when they do step up to the plate, I, the coach, close my eyes and groan about how I wish I never had to have this kid on my team in the first place.

It’s ugly stuff. And yet, it seems to be a conversation that too few folks are really having right now.