Nancy tells it like it is!
Nancy tells it like it is……..
President Bush, my fellow americans, parents in our school community… we’re no slackers! We’re working hard. Our days are spent studying about the needs of diverse learners, backward designing around the big ideas to effectively teach the standards through mediated scaffolding/conspicuous strategies/use of direct instruction, collaborating, doing peer observations, reflecting, revising, debriefing lessons, assessing periodically, using the data to drive instruction, planning for differentiation, moving, pushing, pulling, all to nudge along our students, most of whom are english learners struggling within a cycle of poverty, violence, grief, fear, and loss… and none of this seems to be on your timeline… your NCLB timeline!
We know the importance of our work. The urgency. Our kids need a ticket out of the cycle. Our kids are bright. They can achieve. We can achieve. But, you just don’t know what we’re up against. Police chase/helicopter overhead this week. Monday, we arrived to broken windows and stolen computers in the 2nd grade pod. As I was giving a demonstration lesson in a classroom the construction crew arrived, hammering and drilling to replace broken window grills. And the news arrived–we didn’t get the CTAP grant we applied for so no digital cameras, no digital narratives… no one wants to hear our stories.
No, I’m not making excuses. I can learn new strategies, change, take risks, stand up to scrutiny. But… the stuff of school is people… students and teachers… human beings, not robots… and we do bleed…
Yes, the stuff of schools is people. Nancy has an excellent post about what can happen when evaluation of our teachers and schools is totally based on the results of one test. I have written about this several times before. I see the grave consequences every day when I walk in the schools….
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excellent teachers feeling stressed out and not valued
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students getting sick when test day arrives
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schools being pitted one against another
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teachers trying to do the impossible with little help from those outside of education
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good programs in art, music, PE being cut so more time can be spent on basic skills
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prepping, cramming, teaching for tests is rampant
Yes, we teachers want accountability but by multiple measures and a whole lot of common sense about developmental stages in children. I hate this skill a day mentality. We need time to talk, discuss, reflect and connect in our classrooms so we can share the joy of learning. If not, the consequences are indeed grave.
Frontline has a comprehensive website, Testing Our Schools, that really hones in on the issues here.
October 7th, 2004 at 3:17 pm
Hey, Annie:
Yes, it’s sad when teacher performance is only determined by test scores.
It reminds me of Skinner’s behaviorism, which claimed progress and accompliment of a goal must be able to be observed. What is cared is what a learner can do, rather what is going on in the learner’s mind.
I agree more with Piaget’s cognitive development theory. He believed children undergo several stages developing their undifferentiated mental state to a higher level of mental state that allows them to logically, induce, reason, and solve complex tasks. However, the development from one stage to the next is not immediately observable. In this sense, being not able to do something is not equal to not learning or not knowing.
So, back to Nancy’s comment, students’ test score is not an abosolute standard for teacher evaluation because it only tells a part of what students can do.
I like this post of yours.
Wei