If my child is going to sit for 500 minutes to take a test there better be a good reason.
It is critical that we all understand that everything about the PARCC test is a sharp departure from the previous kinds of standardized testing that has ever been done. The standards upon which they are based were agreed to before they were even written. They were backwards designed from college all the way down to kindergarten. There were few people who are experts in the field of education and zero early childhood educators to help create them. The few who were knowledgeable in their fields have since come out against the standards. The standards are copyrighted and therefore OWNED by this one group and cannot be changed, except by them. And now these tests are going to take longer than those that adults who wish to become lawyers or doctors must take. There is something significantly wrong with this whole process. It has been highly secretive, left out important stakeholders in a democratic society, and has not been proven to accomplish what it claims to do: assure to prepare kids to be college and career ready. Yet they are being forced upon us, regardless of the legitimate concerns expressed, full speed (and a FAST ONE AT THAT) ahead! This speeding train needs to be stopped. Children are on board. Their safety (mental and physical) is at stake! We need to have our kids refuse to take these unfair, unproven tests that will be used to close our schools and continue to unjustly justify opening up more non-community, privately owned and operated charter schools that hand-pick which kids they want to serve. Save your communities by saving your public schools! Say no to PARCC testing and to the Common Core non-State $tandards they rode in on!
If my child is going to sit for 500 minutes to take a test there better be a good reason. To date, I have not heard of any.
What we know:
-The results are given in 6 months.
-We can never see the test.
-We are told every answer is “plausible”.
-We are told the text is above grade level.
-Only15% of ELA standards are tested. Writing, listening & speaking are left out.
-Field test questions are on the test.
-Prepping for this test has taken a month (or more) out of our children’s education and fractured a love of learning.
-There is no proof that this is a measure of college/career readiness.
-We are not preparing them to become “good” test takers, because this is the only 500 minute test they will ever take (regardless of college/career).
-We love…
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The Vergara Trial Teachers Were Not “Grossly Ineffective”
A big “Thank You” to Diane Ravitch for digging into the facts of this trial to uncover the politics behind plaintiff’s case.
It is INCREDIBLY troublesome when a case so full of holes can make it through a court system that is supposed to be just and fair. What was fair about this outcome?
If the appeal fails to throw out this verdict, we need to fill the streets of this country in protest. I, for one, do not intend to live in a country where corruption and lawlessness are a way of life. That is NOT what our founders envisioned and not what we can let happen to OUR country. It belongs to WE, THE PEOPLE, not to the monied profit-mongers who want to throw good people under the bus in order to take over our schools, our neighborhoods and our civil society.
Let’s all follow this case and publicize it from the point of view that demands FACTS to find justice!
I was curious to learn whether the plaintiffs in the Vergara trial actually had “grossly ineffective teachers.” The answer is “no, they did not.”
Not only did none of them have a “grossly ineffective” teacher, but some of the plaintiffs attended schools where there are no tenured teachers. Two of the plaintiffs attend charter schools, where there is no tenure or seniority, and as you will read below, “Beatriz and Elizabeth Vergara both attend a “Pilot School” in LAUSD that is free to let teachers go at the end of the school year for any reason, including ineffectiveness.
It turns out that the lawyers for the defense checked the records of the plaintiffs’ teachers, and this is what they found (filed as a post-trial brief in the case): (See pp. 5-6).
“Plaintiffs have not established that the statutes have ever caused them any harm or are likely to do…
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One Teacher Contemplates Memorial Day Weekend 2014
What do most people do on Memorial Day weekend? Hmmm…I think some travel. I’m pretty sure many get together with family or friends. Barbequing seems to be a popular activity. I suspect others like to get outdoors and engage in sports or some other fun, active endeavor. What am I doing, you ask? I’m a teacher. Any guesses?
I’m procrastinating. That’s what I’m doing. I’m sitting here at my computer, pecking on the keys, throwing words across the screen because I’d rather do anything other than what I need to do right now. I need to complete my portion of my teach evaluation packet (summary of student achievement data and reflection on my professional goals). I also need to begin my student report cards because the last online report card window opened at 4:00 PM on Friday of this holiday weekend. Yep. Opened on a weekend. Doesn’t that imply that I should use this time wisely? And truth be told, there are too many real time distractions at school to complete them there. If others do so, I’d like to see how they did it.
Am I complaining? Yes and no. On the one hand, I love …. uh oh. Choosing the next word isn’t automatic anymore. I had to stop and debate with myself. I was going to say “teaching.” But that’s not so true anymore unless this were May 25, 1991 or so. That’s when I really TAUGHT. Even though I was a relatively new teacher, I wasn’t being told what to do or how to do it. I wasn’t turning in lesson plans to anyone for any reason. The professional goals I made then were entirely up to me. No one dictated how many I HAD to have or what they had to pertain to. That’s not to say that there weren’t expectations. But the main expectation was that I worked to IMPROVE MYSELF as a teacher. I was expected to learn and get better at teaching. I wasn’t expected to figure out how to raise test scores.
So in light of that last paragraph, yes, I’m complaining. My teacher evaluation this year includes a VAM document that crunched a bunch of student achievement data FOR ME. I don’t even know for sure which kind of data was crunched. It also includes reading AND math data, even though I don’t teach math directly. I teach English Language Learners from multiple grade levels, some who speak very little of the language yet. Part of my score also includes data from the whole school. Why that’s done and how that’s done is a mystery. The only thing I really know about this newest system of data crunching for teacher evaluation is that my local union took a long, hard look at the company and their process and forced the administration to retrofit last year’s data (whatever would have been used) into their model so that we could see what the outcome for teachers’ evaluations would have been, to see how it would impact us. According to our union leaders, the system was going to rate a strong majority of teachers positively compared to past models they tried to thrust upon us that would have rated about half of us as either “Needs to Improve” or “Unsatisfactory” and would have put us on remediation plans. At least this time, the data would be used to find out what kind of growth students had made in the past year so that they could project what kind of growth each student was EXPECTED to make this year (known as a “propensity score”). At least this system was comparing each student’s growth to him or herself and not to an arbitrary standard or equally random “grade level” standard. That was an improvement.
But even so, this is the most mundane, boring, unproductive, least useful way I could be using my time. I have been doing some form of “top-down work” now for so many years that my mind has become resistant to it. I told a friend today that I have gone on “mental strike” against what I have to do. I have no autonomy…or so very little that what little I may actually have is really just a farce. The time I spend on Facebook learning about and engaging in the fight against corporate reform and working to save public schools is so much more fulfilling and educative. I learn about what other teachers are doing in their classrooms as they resist the nonsense that is being foisted up them, too! I get a lot of inspiration from them and from their ideas and actions that helps me continue getting out of bed each day and I realize that fighting for the classroom I had in 1992 or so is why I must continue to hang in there and do what I have to do while being creatively subversive when I need to be.
Now, on the other hand, I’m NOT complaining. This is because I know what the dire situations are across the country and I know that my situation, which was once quite dire, is much less so today. I still have my job and I am still fortunate to have absolutely beautiful, curious and excitable students that I get to work with every day. I have many parents in my school who still appreciate what teachers do for their kids and will support us as best they can. Even though we have our challenges with some families, we still pull together as a staff and support one another to find workable solutions to the problems we face. Our principal is also very realistic and supportive and values that which makes teaching and learning authentic and fun. Our school board has begun to listen to and value what the teachers say and have recently hired a new superintendent who is bringing what appears to be a new tone into the district.
So I have much to be thankful for, but must continue to work within a system that would like to see me fail. And that’s where my mind lies…in the middle of this quagmire. I will trudge through it. I will “get ‘er done”. I look forward to being on the other side of it.
Happy Memorial Day to all! I hope your holiday weekend is full of relaxation, uninterrupted time with family and friends, great barbeques and fun in the sun.
I hope one day that I will be able to purposefully enjoy engaging in and completing my work in a more timely way so that I can join you in celebrating more holidays in the near future!
Please join with teachers to bring sanity and useful purpose back to our profession. Help put US back in charge of making it better! Thank you!
Factionista Files 