A teenage girl walks into a classroom every day, usually a few minutes late. She then puts her head down on the desk and falls asleep.
When the teacher asks the kid why she even bothers to show up at all, the girl explains that she has two kids of her own (who are being taken care of, free of charge, at the day-care center elsewhere on campus), and her social worker has told her that if she doesn’t show up to school, she won’t get her government checks (yes, checks, multiple) every month.
In the same class, a hulking boy enters, earbuds in, cell phone in hand. He brushes past a couple of smaller boys and plops down in his seat. When the bell rings, he’s still texting. The teacher tells him to put his electronic stuff away, but the kid keeps texting. Finally, he looks up, smiles slightly and flashes a gang sign. This kid is in the class because after he got popped for multiple crimes—some rather serious in nature—a judge (who needs to be taken out back and pimp-slapped) gave the kid a choice of going to jail or going to school.
Earlier in the year, the teacher had requested that, for the good and safety of others, the disruptive kid be removed from the class. He was told that since the kid consumed copious amounts of illegal narcotics, the kid’s mom had used some idiotic federal loophole to get the kid a classification that prevents him from being removed from the classroom or the school. So, according to the screwed-up system, the fact that this knucklehead flunked multiple drug tests (and almost certainly continues to do so) actually enhances his ability to stay out of jail and in the classroom, where he makes life miserable for the teacher as well as for those students who might actually want to learn something.
The teacher, who, for obvious reasons asked not to be identified, says that he loves teaching. He finds his time in the classroom a “thrilling opportunity to do good things.” He doesn’t mind skipping lunch or staying after school to tutor those kids who ask for extra help. He even shrugs when he notes that his salary has gone down in recent years. (That’s one of those things that the Frank Antenoris and Al Melvins of the world never mention when defending their recent War on Public Education. Thousands of teachers in Arizona have had their pay cut over the past few years, something that affects them in the present and will have a significant impact on them when they retire, as their pensions are based on their salaries over the final few years of their careers.)
However, after seeing what’s on the horizon, the teacher has started to rethink his career choice: What’s coming is standardized testing to be used for teacher evaluation. This is the latest rallying cry for the knee-jerkers on the right, as well as for far too many people in the Obama administration. During the recent Chicago teachers’ strike, the main issue was not money, but rather the implementation of illogical and mathematically inefficient teacher-evaluation programs.
I’m all for testing. The analysis of standardized-test results can be a valuable tool in identifying areas of strength and weakness. But if the teacher’s job depends on the outcome of those tests, that’s short-sighted and stupid.
Take that teacher’s classroom, for example. Let’s assume that the two aforementioned miscreants are the only two anchors-around-society’s-neck in the classroom. (They almost certainly aren’t, but we’ll pretend that they are.) Since those kids are going to produce nothing but zeroes all school year, you will need two kids who get nothing but 100 percent on everything all year just to counterbalance the negative effects. And since the chances of any kid getting nothing but 100s on everything are slim, those two kids at the bottom will likely erase the positive efforts of three or even four kids at the top. This skews downward the mean, the mode and the median.
I understand that some would use pre-testing and post-testing to evaluate progress during the school year as a means of teacher evaluation. This, too, would be inefficient and unfair. Let’s say the class was trigonometry. (If the judge was stupid enough to put the gangbanger in school, he’s certainly stupid enough to put the kid in a trig class.) The two dregs are going to start at zero and end at zero, for an improvement over the school year of (let’s say it together) zero. But the good kids, who have done well in algebra and geometry, will be able to get at least some of the answers right on the pre-test. Even if they go on to get every question correct on the post-test at the end of the year, that’s still not a 100 percent improvement, so, again, it will take several good kids to counterbalance the two zeroes.
There’s really nothing wrong with testing, and teachers certainly need to be evaluated (and the bad ones need to leave). But this politically motivated push to use standardized tests as the main (or even sole) means for evaluating teacher performance is simply wrong.
This article appears in Oct 11-17, 2012.
The apocalypse must be nigh as I find myself in total agreement with a Danehy article. Thank you for pointing out the Byzantine insanity code that rules our educational system, Tom.
I have to agree with RJ. Unlike most of Danehy’s caca del toro, my eye twitch failed to manifest itself.
Every teacher needs to read ARS 15-841. Teachers have the legal right to remove disruptive students from their classroom. Know your rights and fight for the other students in your classrooms. I’d throw both of those students out every day if they weren’t doing what I ask of them!
Sounds like parents who care should have a choice. If they want their kids on the resume track, then they should be able to pull their child out of the class room with the crazies and put them in a class room which emphasizes learning over confinement. That could be private or public…whichever gives the parent the best result. For parents who don’t care there would be a ” reform-school lite” where everybody knows that the purpose is keeping the kids off the streets and teaching them at best, how to write a Tweet or that spending more money than you have means you will have less money . Teachers on the resume track would be evaluated on there ability to engage and teach the student ( tests would play a role no doubt). Teachers of the rap sheet crowd would be evaluated on the crime statistics of their charges…. while the kids are in school, they can’t prey on society.
Probably the best way to accomplish this approach is a voucher system. Unfortunately, it has been pretty successfully resisted by the teachers unions. They may want to reconsider if things are a bad as depicted in this article.
Tom’s world of high school is populated with 21st century welfare queens, insolent gangsters and soft-on-crime liberal judges. Poor teachers… poor Tom.
There are soooo many things wrong with this story, the most important is that teachers should be evaluated by student’s progress. If a child shows up everyday, for whatever reason, and the teacher cannot help that child make any progress, then someone new should be allowed to try. There are examples all across the country of troubled teens being inspired to climb out of their rut, digital insanity etc. and choose futures. Teaching is the hardest job there is and the good teachers don’t make excuses for lack of progress. No one goes to school everyday and wants to fail and be a loser. Read the research on orchid children.
Poor Frank…you haven’t been in a classroom or courtroom for a really long time, have you?
Hey Tom, you just made the argument for home schooling. We know how much you dislike the thought of keeping your kids away from these hostile learning environments where teachers spend a big part of their days trying to discipline losers. Until schools start giving the boot to these classroom troublemakers, and there are more each year, the educational system will continue to decline. I seriously doubt that there are a bunch of unqualified teachers that need to be tested on their abilities to teach, rather it is more likely that they can’t properly teach because of all the distractions from those students who could care less. The teachers get no support from school administrators because all they are concerned with is filling the classroom seats each day so they can get the maximum funding.
Let’s face it, home schooling should be mandatory for the type of students that Mr. Danehy mentions in this article. It should not be for the other students who are just trying to learn to better themselves mentally & socially, it should be for the ones who choose not to better themselves in any way and then the “system” can waive their fingers at those parents for not meeting the school administration’s demands. Why should the teachers suffer for a child/teenager that either has a parenting or a mental problem? As a parent myself, I can speak freely to say if my children acted like this in school that their life at home would be hell for them.
Just a technical note on the median. Outliers don’t change (skew) the median of a distribution of numbers. The median value of a bunch of numbers is the middle value (rank the numbers and find the middle one). Extreme values (outliers) on either side won’t change that middle value. The two zeros in this column could have been minus a million and the median wouldn’t have been affected. The mean yes, but the median no. Immunity from adverse effects by outliers is why median values are a good idea in analyses of numbers, either instead of or at least in addition to, means.
Almost as if you actually attended a TUSD school with me. However, your fictional writing about the Juvenile justice system is so far fetched its not even comical.