I know that many times it seems I’m talking out both sides of my mouth. And, the truth is, I do not, in many cases, have a concrete opinion. I was raised in public school. My father taught the entire 19 years of my life in public schools. He was a huge advocate for public school workers (teachers, bus drivers, other support personnel, etc). For me, public schools were number one and the only people who received homeschooling were either a)sick (either terminally or from a surgery; b) expelled from school for behavior or c) religious zealots. So, understand that I still believed this until just recently.
I don’t know how many of you know the in’s and out’s of why schools are pushing our children. As I said recently, it isn’t one individual teacher, system or state that’s pushing, it is a push nationally. And, with that, I’m going to go over into what is known as AYP or Adequate Yearly Progress. Now, when this Accountability Report comes through, everyone is affected.
Holly sent me this yesterday and I didn’t address it but the more I thought about it, I know I can lend some first hand information on this subject. And, I think nearly everyone will be surprised. Here’s her quote:
“Schools must meet AYP for each year…if they don’t then they must bring in all the people to help them meet the AYP and parents have the right to move their kid out of an school that doesn’t meet AYP.”
Before I tell you about a school that doesn’t meet the AYP Standards, let me tell you where I’m coming from with the state of affairs in schools where I live. Only 83% of schools in Alabama meet AYP standards. The following came out of the Birmingham News in August of this year.
“A report released this morning said 1,140 of 1,367 schools met all of the goals required under federal Adequate Yearly Progress standards.
Among those that did not meet the goals, 137 schools were identified as needing improvement. Of those 137 schools, 73 will be required to notify parents that their children may transfer to other schools within their school systems.
A school is identified as needing improvement when it fails for two years in a row to show improvement in the same category — such as graduation rate or attendance goals. “
In the county where I live, the general average falls from the 83% above to 80%. There’s way more to that pie than I’ve given you here, but that’s a basic overview.
The last time I taught in the public school system was in 2005 and I taught high school biology in a school that had not met the standards set in AYP and was labeled a Target Assistance School. What this meant was, the teachers in the school were being evaluated by a team of “experts”* and given “better” methods than the ones that the teacher was using.
Now, first of all, I was the maternity leave teacher. I was there 9 weeks (lady had 3 weeks extra that she had been donated by other employees from sick leave bank). So, why they were, in my opinion, wasting their time continuing to hound me, I’m not sure. When you take into consideration that I am not a biology highly qualified teacher, heck I’m not even a biology teacher (chemistry is where my minor is but I’m not certified in that either), I saw very little reason for them to be evaluating me when they could have been working with some other long-term teachers. But they did. And, it was not fun.
I know that sounds like a child saying “but that’s no fun” or “it’s boring” but the fact of the matter is, all the teachers felt that way. And, in my opinion, with good reason. Basically, the “experts”* would come into your classroom and observe an entire block (which was 90 minutes - our school system no longer works on a block plan). At the end of the block, the “expert”* would fill out an evaluation form on you, tell you what to change and where you needed to focus and then you had to sign off on it.
Now, for some of you sitting there, you are thinking, well, good, accountability is good. And, I agree, accountability is good. But this method was like Chinese torture. There were many facets of the evaluation, but one segment in particular read: Homework Assignments.
This “expert”* would go through your lesson plans and check your homework assignments, he/she would also evaluate your method of using the homework from the night before. Basically, the form insisted that homework be given EVERY NIGHT. The other part of the evaluation that is pertinent here is that this person would insist that you were involved in instruction the entire 90 minutes. Students were not allowed to work on the homework assignment in class but you were also expected to give a class assignment that you worked through with individuals as they had questions. FOR 90 MINUTES AND THEN HOMEWORK EVERY NIGHT.
I’m going to cut this off here, but I’m going to get into this in detail in some of my thoughts on Sara Bennett and Nancy Kalish’s
The Case Against Homework because this very issue is something we’ve addressed here quite frequently lately and I hear it every day when I go to pick up my son. Plus, I joined the crowd of homework haters yesterday when I saw that my kindergartner had homework.
*Experts - the experts were retired teachers that had been hired by an outside company to go into the schools twice a week and perform these evaluations. These teachers had no more expertise than the ones in the classrooms with the exception of teachers like me and brand new teachers. Many times you had an “expert” evaluating a teacher that had been teaching 5 to 8 years more than the expert. Does this not sound a bit skewed to you? And, who was paying for this? The school system was footing the bill to this consultation firm who had hired these experts AND these experts were also drawing from their retirement. Does any of this not strike you as odd?
**I have my evaluation forms somewhere. When I find them, I will scan one and post it for you to see. They were on carbonless paper so I may have to work with it to make it readable, but I will do that soon.
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