I think Principal Suit might have screwed himself out of a performance bonus this year by insisting that everyone takes the Math A regents. The Special Education students who were told to take the exam were not prepared for it. In fact, they were very frustrated by questions they had no clue how to answer. The kids that had only completed half the course (whether they passed the half they took or not) also were not prepared and failed miserably. These kids brought our statistics down, instead of up, the way Suit had hoped. TOO BAD FOR HIM!!!!! The other thing that really hurt him was annualization of Math B. The kids that failed the first half still took the second half of the course and sat for the regents. The grades were not nearly what he hoped or expected them to be.
Hopefully Suit will learn a lesson from all this and not force kids to take exams that they are not prepared for in the future.
4 comments:
It seems like such a simple lesson: Don't make kids take exams they're not ready for. Obiously, however, it went way over Principal Suit's head. Any way to dumb it down?
These guys get rated so many ways... One of the most insidious is the percent of students tested in certain areas. I think failure to test enough students is a more serious problem for an administrator than the bonus cash.
Of course, the whole thing is ridiculous. Neither the scores nor the percent tested tell us a damned thing about how well the school is being run.
Jonathan you are correct. The guidance department called every kid eligible to come take the exam. Kids showed up that I have not seen since the first week of school.
In my state, all students take the same exam regardless of their special education or language needs (English language learners who have been in the country for only a year even have to take the same exam as everyone else.) I think that the rationale behind it is to make it easier for bean counters to track students' progress relative to a single bar.
Do I like it? Not necessarily, because as you suggest (and as all good educators know), human beings are not standardized.
I suppose, however, that by taking the decision to test everyone the same way out of administrators' hands, the State has relieved the rest of us the frustration and embarassment of knowing exactly who to blame. It must be a huge relief for administrators to not have that onus placed upon them.
I guess that frees 'em up to screw up in other ways. . . .
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