Nobody Does It Better

When it comes to wasting money and time and then more money, no one does it better than the New York City Department of Education.  Now, if you happen to be a McGraw Hill stockholder, or a city bureaucrat with ties to that company, I am sure you are vehemently disagreeing with me.

Today was Acuity test day for the algebra classes.  The kids got to spend a period bubbling answers to questions most not only had no clue as to how to answer, but had no clue as to what the question was asking.  The test predominantly covered material they will be taught this term.  The good kids were frustrated.  I don't like being given questions I can't answer and they felt the same.  The not so good kids just bubbled anything and used the period as an excuse to do no work.

We gave Acuity tests to the same kids in June and we never saw those results.  They performed as they did today. 

I have been told that these tests are given so teachers can determine what their students know or do not know. I know that the kids don't know how to graph or how to recognize a parabola.  That work is in this year's curriculum.  They haven't been exposed to yet.  Besides, I am the teacher.  I evaluate what my students know or do not know on a daily basis.  McGraw Hill is being paid thousands of dollars to do what teachers do daily.  The big difference is they are not doing a very good job and teachers are not making the money the execs at this big company make.

Money is tight, budgets are stretched to the limit but McGraw Hill and its stockholders are still doing well.

Where is the accountability for all this wasted time and money? 

McGraw Hill Stockhold Shows Big Gains

At a time when money is tight, the DOE is spending a fortune on Acuity tests for the students scheduled to take the integrated algebra regents in June. The test is designed (supposedly) to point out the areas the students need more work in because teachers are not capable of figuring this out on their own. (We only test and assess our students daily but this is obviously not good enough.) Teachers have only done this by themselves since the beginning of time but the big shot politicians have to take care of their wealthy friends and these lucrative contracts must be given out. School budgets are being cut all over the place, services to children are being withdrawn, but McGraw Hill stockholders are still bringing in the big bucks. When I think of the waste involved with this testing I get physically ill. To add insult to this injury, teacher salaries, pensions and unions are still being blamed for the financial woes of the system.

Aside from the financial strain, there was the waste of time component. A full period was spent administering this exam, a period that could have better been spent on learning. Some of the topics on the exam have not even been taught yet. No computer program is needed to tell a breathing teacher that the kids will not know these topics.

It is time for the general public to wake up and realize that politicians do not care one iota about improving education. They care about making themselves look good and about increasing the spending money of their cronies. We've got to take a stand, for us, for our children and for future generations.

Priceless

Schools are improving due to standardized test data and teachers that can't improve their stats are not doing their jobs. I'm in trouble this year.

I just looked at my two algebra classes.

Class 1 has a register at present of 30 students. Last year 15 were absent more than 20 times, and 8 more than 25 times. Class 2 has a register of 33,with 20 absent more than 15 times, 8 absent more than 25 5 times and 6 absent more than 30 times. One kid was out 45 times and another was out 64 times. (I am willing to bet all I own that the registers of both classes will be up to max before the end of the first week, if they are not up there already.)

Their Acuity Predictives are low. Their attendance is awful. Yet, I will be held accountable for what they produce in my class?

It seems to me these kids have big problems, bigger than anything I am equipped to handle. According to Accountable Talk, if Jack Welch, former CEO of GE and man on top at the Leadership Academy, has his way, you will find me on the unemployment line in June.

$80 billion on a computer to provide the data to show the problems......$0 on how to solve the problems. Priceless.

What A Waste of Time

Mr. AP was quite nasty when I walked into last month's departmental meeting a few minutes late. I don't let his rude comments get to me but still, this month I tried to be on time (minus the delays caused by hall traffic.) Well, this month punctuality did not matter because Mr. AP was busy. I did not comment to him but I did manage to make a few comments behind the scenes.

I was proud of myself. I managed to keep my mouth shut for the entire conference. Maybe it was the poison ivy or maybe it was just disgust, but I spent forty minutes in the room with him without opening my mouth and believe me, there was plenty to open my mouth about.

For starters, our school is not going to offer the first term of math B anymore. Good students who are finishing math A will now skip the first term and go right into the second one and then take the regents in June. To get more kids through the exam and increase his statistics he has decided that the geometry unit is unimportant. The kids can just go to tutoring to pick up the entire semester they are missing.

Next we discussed the results of Acuity test. I'm not teaching an Integrated Algebra class so I took that as an opportunity to put my head down and nap. The poison ivy kept me up all night. (I really didn't nap, I just wanted to see what he would say when he saw me that way. He always bitches about kids with heads down in class.) Most teachers had not bothered to look at the results for their classes. One teacher, whose results we analyzed, had no kids in Tier I, this meaning none that were destined (according to this exam) to fail. She was in shock when she heard this because many of her students are math illiterates. Mr. AP went on to point out that the exam was given before some of the topics had been taught, so that should be taken into account. He also said that two questions on a particular topic did not show whether a concept was mastered or not but the test was an indicator that we should use. It is a good thing we had that indicator. A teacher who has already given 10 -12 classroom exams and has been working with kids since September would have no way of knowing what her students know without this million dollar test. Besides, we have lots of extra days to reteach all the topics that our students have not mastered since September.

As our meeting ended and the next group began trickling in to start their meeting, Mr AP left to get his lunch. He can be late. He works hard. He doesn't have the easy life of a classroom teacher. In a twelve period school, the poor overworked administrators must meetings. I didn't hang around to see how late he came back. And so, another exciting meeting day has ended.