Tuesday was Read Across America day, chosen as such because it’s the birthday of Dr. Seuss (who, btw, is probably one of the most influential authors to shape my own writing life).

Me, I read all of my classes GREEN EGGS AND HAM. Literally, I sat them all on the carpet (criss-cross apple sauce style) and these rambunctious, worldy, street smart teens immediately reverted into a crowd of 34 first graders eager for story time.

Never diminish the power of reading to your students. For the sake of modeling. For the sake of fluency. For the sake of fun. Wasn’t a kid in my room who didn’t just LOVE it.

Of course, it’s probably most fun for the teacher, though. Makes me jealous of all the elementary school teachers who get to read to their kids all the time.

Anyway, as a warm up, I wanted the teens in my room to think about their own early childhood experiences with books so I had them do a quick write on: Cite three memories you have about being read to when you were a young child (about the age of 4).

And of course, I got the hands shooting up… “But what if you don’t have any memories of being read to, Mr. Alan?”

Now whodda thunk that the kids with that question floating around in their heads were some of the kids with the lowest skills in my English class 10 years later? Must be a coincidence that these are my most “at-risk” students, right? I mean these kids are still trying to play catch up for the work that was never done before they even really entered “official” school. (I am thinking kindergarden as “official” because pre-school is not mandatory and thus, so, so, so many of the lower-economic students I teach never went to pre-k.)

And speaking of pre-K, my own daughter will, of course, enter kindergarden with two full years of pre-K in her belt (a private school, of course) — and at least 1-2 books a night having been read to her since the moment her dendrites started to form. (Okay, I am a weirdo and used to read to my daughter in the womb… laugh away but I drank the kool-aid on the value of reading long, long ago!)

So, for class homework on March 2? Go find a little kid that needs reading to. Cousin. sister or brother. Neighbor. They are plenty of little munchkins floating around Lynwood. It’s yet another way that I explain the importance of books and reading and literacy to my students over the course of the year. Hopefully, it will be a lesson they will value and pass on to the next generation when that time comes.

Perhaps they’ll even be womb readers!!

Happy Birthday Theodore Geisel (that was the real name of Dr. Seuss). Your work has shaped mine forever.

You are my Homeboy!

As a writer, one of my favorite quotes about writing comes from Douglass Adams. He says: “I love deadlines. I especially like the whooshing sound they make as they go flying by.”

Too funny, right?

Well, it seems as if George Dubya Bush, once again, has a preposterous amount of egg on his face. Why? Because he set forth a ridiculous deadline that no one in the field of education (no one worth their salt, I should say) ever though would possibly be made and poof! now the Obama administration is left with cleaning up more of George Dubya Bush’s mess.

Seems that the “mandate” that all school children reach 100% academic proficiency by the year 2014 is gonna get yanked. (Read here for more.)

And why? Because this deadline was never anything more than a political platitude that Bush used to try and trump up goodwill for his political tenure anyway — crafted into policy at the expense of reality, of course. A reality, BTW, that he knew he’d never be on the hook for because his term in office would have long since been finished. (A few years too late on that front, if you ask me, but that’s fodder for another blog post.)

Yes, the aims of “closing the achievement gap” and “raising academic proficiency” are still going to stick around… but the deadline to do so is gonna be ka-boshed.

Still in Iraq, pulling the plug on NCLB’s proficiency deadline, financially reeling from deregulating the credit markets to the point of implosion while hunting for WMD’s that were trumped up to begin with… The guy makes Nixon look like Lincoln.

Whoosh! Ka-BOOM!

The sound of a deadline colliding with reality.

It’s SAT season and if there is one thing about working in a Title 1 school, it’s that you get to witness a HUGE disparity when it comes to college test prep.

The fact is, those who can afford to take SAT test prep classes are wise to do so. And the parents of kids in upper-socio-economic communities understand the value of this which is why these test prep programs absolutely thrive. As for the parents in communities such as mine, well… they’d love to be able to offer their kids the best (I never doubt their desires to do so) but quite frankly, it’s exceedingly rare that they have the $1,000 (or even more; these classes cost big bucks) needed to spend on stuff like Kaplan, Princeton Review and what not.

I mean, check it out. Kaplan offers “Premier Tutoring for $3,999″. You think a kid with parents who can afford this kind of test prep for their child isn’t at a distinct and very real advantage over a kid who can’t even afford to sign up for the faceless, online test prep Kaplan offers for around $300 bucks?

If you know anything about the SAT, you know that before it’s a test of brains, it’s a test of strategy. Knowing when to guess. Knowing when to move on. Knowing how the test will be scored, knowing the “tricks” and “tips” and so on. To walk in cold without this knowledge is to set yourself up for having your clock cleaned. Parents with money can buy this “How to crack the test” knowledge for their kids (cracking the test is a big slogan in the test prep industry) while parents without cash are often left scrambling to even pay for the SAT registration fees.

It absolutely feeds into the conversation about social justice, iniquity in education and the Achievement Gap. Kids at my school simply cannot afford top quality test preparation and that puts them at a tremendous disadvantage when it comes to test time.

Like I said, and this is no secret, before the SAT is a test of one’s intellectual aptitude, it’s a test of one’s ability to know how to navigate the test in order to manipulate the scoring methodology to the test-taker’s best advantage.

This is also why I offer over 50 FREE pages of SAT prep on my website. Because I don’t believe money should be the reason that a kid can’t fare well on the SAT if they are willing to put in the elbow grease. Now, do I compete with a $4,000.00 price tag? Of course not. But I do empower people to have the ability to use some good ol’ fashioned “roll up their shirt sleeves and get to work” self-empowerment to even the playing field… and I do it at absolutely no charge.

That’s right…

• No fee.
• No sign up with your email and I’ll spam you to death for the next 1,000 years. (Trust me, I don’t have time.)
• Just free as in free. All I am trying to do is level the playing field a bit.

Again, here’s the resource — click on the link on the left under Free Resources and pass it on.

Below are some tips for all test takers. (You can owe me the 4,000 smackers… LOL! But it is amazing how folks are just being absolutely FLEECED isn’t it? I mean why don’t our public schools, if the SAT is so important — and it certainly is for college bound kids — offer free SAT courses instead of allowing the corporate behemoths to drink from the wallets of the rich parents while the poor kids get shortchanged? Geesh!)

Tips ALL Students Must Know for Success on the SAT

• Do NOT answer every question.
  • There is a PENALTY for guessing – if a question is too difficult, the best strategy is to move on and use your time to solve questions that are more within your reach.
  • NOTE: The #1 biggest pitfall of ALL students on the SAT is that they attempt to answer too many questions. Skipping super difficult problems is a very critical strategy for success.
• Use the process of elimination.
  • Get rid of wrong answers. 80% of the answers are wrong on the test – wrong answers are much easier to identify because they are much more abundant.
• Read the questions carefully.
• Do not make assumptions. Answer what is being asked of you.
• Identify “key” words.
  • Key words clue you in to correct answers. Context is critical to unlocking answers on the SAT.
  • Underline “key” information in the reading passages.
  • Studies show that one common theme of students who score well on the SAT is that they mark up their test with notes.
• Refer back to the reading passages as needed.
  • Flipping back and forth on the critical reading section is a strategy.
• Read each answer choice completely.
  • Don’t be afraid to re-read information (and test questions) to aid comprehension.
• Do not be afraid of unfamiliar words.
  • Strive to get a feeling for unknown words and see if they have a sense of being positive, negative or neutral in tone. Use this knowledge to help “crack” the answer.
• Know your grammar!

For those of us with students who don’t think they’d ever want to consider a career in writing, this article might be an arrow in your quiver to help inflate a student’s sense of why knowing how to properly punctuate a sentence is a skill that they might want to have in their professional, job hunting arsenal.

After all, who’s going to want to read reviews about sensie bud from a person that doesn’t even know how to correctly incorporate a lucid and illuminating appositive phrase?

That’s right, a new day is here with new, 21rst century jobs out there for the taking and as marijuana clinics boom all over the country we now find ourselves in need of weed connoisseurs.

The day of the critic has arrived. Don’t laugh, because just as cars need reviewing, restaurants need reviewing and wine needs reviewing so do the multitude of different styles and offerings of the wacky tabacky!

Wanted: Pot Critic

Experience Required:

• lots of smoking
• lots of toking
• having visited lots of laser light shows while blazing out of your mind on Thai Stick a plus.

Skills Required:

• joint rolling
• bong loading
• pipe stuffing
• able to self-edit manuscripts because your bosses will probably be too high to actually read what you write.

Hours:

• whenever, dude

Okay, I jest. But the thing is, the city of Los Angeles has seen an explosion in “medical dispensaries” this year and they have become so popular that there is a very real job out there to be a Bud Critic. (Read this article and be amazed: 966 clinics are now open in L.A.) I mean from what I have heard some of this pot will hit you like an elephant gun and some will simply give you a “mild, light buzz, you can still remain semi-coherent” buzz. Users want to know what’s what and what to expect.

Imagine not knowing the difference between having two beers and having two shots of Arkansas moonshine. This is where the erudite dope folk come in. They will have sampled the goods, smoked the various strains, and done their “get high as a friggin’ kite homework” in order to be a guide, a judge and a navigator for other users journeying through this very green forest.

Do we turn our noses up at wine critics? Will weed experts be welcomed into society with the same open arms? Will there be a stigma to be a stoner or is this just a new brand of cultural connoisseur?

Either way, the job requires a person to be able to write… and do it well.

And really, look at those hours.

As Joseph Campbell once famously said, “Follow your passion!”
As the military once famously said,” “It’s not just a job, it’s an adventure.”
Or, as Cheech and Chong once famously said, “Hey man, how am I drivin?… I think we’re parked man.”

(BTW, that pic above shows a map — as identified by little red marijuana leafs — where all the pot clinics in L.A. currently are open. The explosion is so large that there are now two of them within walking distance of my house… each open less than a year. Can’t say I’m the biggest fan at all of the ubiquity but then again, I never even bother to count the bars. Fodder for another post, I guess.)

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.

Newsweek just came out with their annual list of America’s best high schools. On one hand, I really do love this list. Why? Because year in and year out it brings education to the front page of one of America’s most popular magazines. And as the old saying goes, there ain’t no such thing as bad publicity — just no publicity — and our country sure could use some extended dialogue about our schools. Particularly our high schools.

So thumbs up… especially for giving me an inferiority complex.

Though I checked the top 10, and the top 100, and the top 1,000, my own school wasn’t listed. (As Don Adams used to say, “Missed it by that much.”) So of course, before I dared to dispute the rankings, I decided to see how these rankings were determined.

Reading this made me feel better. Essentially, it’s a multi-page document acknowledging how preposterously subjective these rankings really are. Simply put, there is no “objective science” to evaluating a school. For the Newsweek piece, which is sure to make a big splash in Dallas, Texas, they arrive at their numbers through a formula called The Challenge Index.

Read the article for their explanation/justification/rationalization of why their Challenge Index has merit. Whether one agrees or not, it’s interesting to see their perspective on what makes for a school that deserves high praise.

They do raise one other point that certainly deserve a little bit of a chat though. As the article states…

Question: How can you call these the best schools or the top schools if you are using just one narrow measure? High school is more than just AP or IB tests.

Answer: Indeed it is, and if I could quantify all those other things in a meaningful way, I would give it a try. But teacher quality, extracurricular activities and other important factors are too subjective for a ranked list. Participation in challenging courses and tests, on the other hand, can be counted, and the results expose a significant failing in most high schools—SO far less than 6 percent of the public high schools in the United States qualify for the NEWSWEEK list.

As we face questions of merit pay, sanctions against those who are under-performing, blue- ribbon honors for those who do, the impact of socio-economics and community culture on a a school’s AYP and so on and so on, it’s easy to see why people get so down about their rankings. THEY ARE JUST SO DAMN SUBJECTIVE! I mean the fact that my school has a teacher who literally save a student’s life this year by talking them down off the ledge of suicide wasn’t given any points for credit by Newsweek. Go figure.

Ultimately, what our schools are supposed to do and what they being asked to do are, in so many ways, two entirely different conversations. It’d be nice to see Newsweek devote a sidebar to that, huh?

Congratulations to the schools that are on this list. Really, I mean it. It makes no sense to pull others down — we need to be hoisting more schools up. And for those who “missed it by that much” don’t worry, the thorny stick of NCLB will be coming to demonize you soon enough.

At my school, it has already arrived.

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.

When I was named Teacher of the Year for the state of California in 2007 I was given, among other things, a free trip to Princeton, New Jersey to visit the HQ of ETS.

Talk about georgoeus. I mean this place was Shangra-la.

And all I kept asking myself was, “This place is non-profit?” No freakin’ way. They gotta be hauling in money by the truckload.

The SAT. The PSAT. The AP tests. The GRE.

Holy smokes… is anybody doing the math on these guys? That’s all I could think about my entire stay.

Well, someone did do the math.

Read this and tell me that that something isn’t reminiscent of a famous quote from the play Hamlet.

Here are some highlights:

Last year, the SAT cost $45 for the basic test, which 1.5 million U.S. students took. The College Board does not comment on how much revenue each test brings in, but once you factor in the nearly 222,000 students who received fee waivers from the College Board, you can roughly estimate that SAT revenue was at least $58,360,365. I say at least because many students take the test over and over again, trying to refine their scores to get into better colleges. That’s not to mention the litany of extra fees the College Board charges if you get your scores by phone ($12.50), rush the results ($36.50), or ask for a refund ($7). The real revenue is likely to be millions more than $58,360,365, and that’s before you factor in the foreigners who want a piece of an American education ($26 international processing fee; $23 more if you’re taking it in India or Pakistan).

In 2006—the most recent year for which the College Board’s tax returns are available—the College Board brought in a total of $582.9 million of revenue.

Over a half a billion per year for the bubble test industry? When people cry out for change, we have to realize the forces which are in opposition to this change.

And the forces of opposition will always be the folks who are raking in the serious cash. Heck, I’m scared that I’m gonna get a poison blow dart in my neck simply from typing this type of post.

You think Wall Street is worthy of investigation and re-thinking? Might I suggest… twwwppp!

There’s the blowdart!