I’ve said the below before but I’ll keep hammering on this particular nail. Nothing in this blog may be more important than the idea following:

Eduhonesty: Sensitive children may well accept buy into the idea that test scores show how capable they are in general. Especially when scores are consistently low – or are low on ”important” evaluations – they hurt. I am not saying students should never receive low scores. If you don’t know the math, you should not pass the test. What I am saying is that we need to make certain our testing instruments are appropriate. We should know our students. We should test our students on information they may reasonably be expected to know. In a classroom, new material should never be introduced during a test. If we must have unfamiliar material on a standardized test, we need to make certain that our students understand that the test is a state test. We do not expect them to be able to answer everything on the test. We only want to learn what they know so that we can figure out what we still need to teach them.

And frankly, if a test cannot tell us what our students need to be taught, we need to scrap the test.

It’s vital to keep in mind that some students will take a poor grade and decide to work harder. Others will give up. I am convinced that “failing” state tests year after year makes some students decide to exit the academic arena, a place where they feel they cannot compete.

If the Fix is in, can we fix the fix?

I become weary as I lay out the challenges that face educators today, and more weary still as I attempt to teach within the framework these challenges create. The ghost of Jacob Marley probably felt like I do. I’ll grant that I get regular time off and I’m not condemned to carry chains and heavy weights through all eternity, but I walk through every teaching day carrying a list of invisible weights. The list is long: NCLB and the standardized testing frenzy that resulted, Power Standards, RTI, unreadable books, inflated grading, irrational curricula, inappropriate classroom placements, unattainable lesson plans matched to those pie-in-the-sky books and standards, changing demographics, technological gaps that leave my students with little and sometimes no access to modern technology. These have been my chains.

The technology situation has improved dramatically, but most of the rest of the list remains as my status quo.

This is why I blog.

I teach because I love the little blighters. My computer flashes pictures from my photo library across my screen as a screensaver. I have photos from so many places and times. Many of them are classroom pics. I look at students from past years and often I smile at Ceydi, Arturo and the many others.

Opener, Bell Ringer, Do Now — These are some of the names for the 5-10 minute activity that starts a class. That activity performs multiple functions. Students are put to work right away. Students get to practice previous academic material. Teachers can take attendance and deal with small administrative issues.

I never did put Peter in as absent during those first few minutes. He wasn’t in his seat, but I knew the odds favored Peter’s eventual arrival. I wrote him a few referrals for tardiness. I called home. Others called home. I talked to Peter. Peter kept missing openers. He missed the introduction for a variety of new topics as well. In the end, he barely passed math.

Eduhonesty: When kids are walkers, if no parent gets them up and on their way, sometimes tardiness becomes a habit. I have hopes for Peter. He reads for pleasure. That alone can make the difference when (if) he pulls his act together. The potential remains for Peter to go on to college where he will need a remedial math class or two. I never give up on readers.

But Peter’s referrals might as well have gone directly into the recycling for all the good they were going to do. I wrote them because I needed to document my useless interventions. I recorded phone calls for the same reason. In the end, however, when a 13 year old is made responsible for getting himself up, a first period teacher may have little chance to fix the tardiness problem.

Looking back, I wonder if I should have been calling to wake him up. If I have a similar problem next year, I think I will try being the alarm clock. This approach may not work, but nothing ventured, nothing gained, I guess.

I wrote a fair number of referrals for Ervin, mostly all about breaking the cell phone policy — he was constantly texting or gaming — or not doing any work. He did breathtakingly little work, almost none in an average week, in any of his classes. The administration tried numerous interventions, tried to find him an off-campus placement, and talked until they were turning blue in the face.

Nothing worked.

But his attendance was excellent. He was there almost every day, phone in hand. He came even when told he was suspended at least once.

Eduhonesty: I liked Ervin. He had nothing against me. He had just stepped out of the educational process without leaving the building. The reason had a locker down my hall and I must admit she was a very pretty girl. She was considered to be a good student as well.

If Ervin hadn’t been such a bad example, I might not even have written him up. He sat in the back of the room doing nothing. When I moved him up front, he did nothing. I settled him in the back of the room where he could not been seen as easily since laziness begets laziness. Most of the students in the room understood Ervin was on a path to the fast-food drive-up window (although I don’t know if he’ll be able to muster up the work ethic for any job that rigorous) and paid him no attention. A couple of boys thought he was cool, though, and overall learning loss from his example trickled through the classroom.

I spoke with his mom often. By the end, she was just waiting for him to drop out since she could see no point in Ervin’s going to school anyway. I agreed. I’m sure everyone was relieved when he dropped out before the end of the school year. His mind had left the building many months before his body finally exited.

“Fernando” was a special education student. He could not read or write for all intents and purposes. He was placed in a bilingual math class that I taught a few years ago. When I pointed out that he did not fit, I was told that we “had a legal obligation to meet IEP (individualized instruction plan) demands but also provide as much regular curriculum as possible.”

More and more often, special education students are being placed in regular classes so they can receive instruction in the curriculum we use to get ready for the standardized tests the district must take. Teachers in other states report the same. The intent is to maximize test scores.

But the math in that class was far beyond anything Fernando could tackle. I wrote multiple referrals for this kid because he cursed, he bothered other students, he wrote on his desk, etc. “F” words were flying, gouges were appearing in wood, and hallway shoves were requiring regular, futile conferences about behaviors that only worsened as the year continued. He glared around the room regularly at boys who would wait to cause trouble outside of the classroom.

Eduhonesty: Fernando acted out because he had been placed in a totally inappropriate environment. He should have had a teacher’s aide at the very least to read him the material he could not read himself. After awhile, he had social problems because he was an outsider and his disruptions annoyed the class.

I threw this situation into the blog, although I don’t group Fernando with students in the last few posts. Fernando was only a difficult student because of a wacky administrative decision. In an appropriate math class, I suspect he might have been a genuine pleasure to teach.

I consider the story of Fernando a cautionary tale about what happens when we make desisions based on tests and broad-based policies rather than individual students. Kids don’t just sit still while we spout gibberish at them. If the curriculum has been set too far out of line with the students in the room, misbehavior will be a natural result.

It’s important to understand that many students will go through middle school and high school without a single referral. Just as some students rack up referrals, others rack up academic awards and extra credit points.

Eduhonesty: The posts on referrals are intended to present snapshots of real teaching challenges. Taken out of context, they might make that classroom seem unpleasant or even threatening. For the most part, though, a classroom will be working and learning.

We are sending all of America’s children to school, no matter who they are or what they are like as people. Every year, then, teachers get to see the luck in their draw. In a lucky year, I hardly write any referrals at all. I think I wrote maybe four total for my last group of students. I received solid work to post on my walls, showing effort and creativity.

Some past years have proven less fortunate. A few years have been golden. Teachers say to each other, “It only takes two or three kids.” In a good year, you don’t get those kids and learning proceeds with only a few glitches. When you do get disruptive students, learning depends tremendously on the administration and procedures set up to deal with misbehavior. A well-run school can rescue the learning environment.

Sometimes the numbers of referrals for misbehavior in a school can sound horrifying, especially if we only have the gross numbers. A school may have thousands of referrals over the course of a year. It’s important to remember that a relatively small number of students may generate a great many of those referrals. Dennis from a few posts back was a regular when he bothered to come to school.

Bob was another repeat offender. He used his phone when he felt like it. He used my desk phone when he felt like it. He refused to go to his desk. He refused to get or do his work. He cursed. He yelled. He lied. He had recently been forced to move. He did not like the move. He wanted to go home. He did not like the new school and just about any authority figure in that school.

He was an adolescent in high school throwing the biggest, longest temper tantrum I have ever seen. His only chance to make it through high school will be placement in a special education class for students with behavioral/emotional disorders. In the meantime, all his classes regularly lost learning time due to the latest need to deal with “Bob.” School administration tried valiently to help the kid. He yelled at them too.

Eduhonesty: I see no win here, none at all. Bob is off the chain. I doubt he is going to get to go home, although I might be wrong. Parents in similar situations have caved and sacrified all the money they used to move, returning to the old home for the one child who won’t stop screaming. But if Bob succeeds in getting his family to move with this behavior, I pity anyone who ever gets in the way of something he wants. Bob will be an emotional bully for the rest of his life.

Some referrals are tiny. Tina asked to go to the bathroom. I asked if she had finished her opening work. She said yes and left. I checked. Zero work. This might not even have been a referral except she borrowed a workbook to copy that day (with permission) and then wrote in it, tore out pages and denied she had done so.

Eduhonesty: A small lie would likely never hit the Dean’s office. That’s a classroom management issue with a call home. Two in one day, especially with property damage, ups the stakes and she deserved her referral and detention.

Tina missed many days of school and skirted the edge of failure often. She has fallen years behind in her classes. I doubt she will finish high school. First, you have to care. She doesn’t care, not about academics anyway. She goes to school almost exclusively to socialize and pursue boys. This approach to education hardly ever ends well.

I reread my last post and I thought readers might be upset. You let that kid leave unescorted? You said yourself he might be dangerous.

Eduhonesty: Especially in urban and financially disadvantaged schools — but in schools everywhere — all teachers have kids like Dennis in their classes. The Dennises are a fact of life. In poor districts, so is the lack of security at times. Security guards (or Dean’s Assistants as they are called in some upscale buildings) can only manage so many situations at the same time. Certain times of day are also more problematic, especially lunch times and late afternoon classes. One good food fight can suck up the whole security staff. As I noted earlier, we guarantee an education to everyone who does not bring a gun to school. Drugs and other weapons may also get a kid thrown out, but cursing at teachers is generally safe, at least until you take a punch at the poor teacher. Cursing at teachers carries an added benefit; this behavior makes an in-school detention likely. Dennis liked in-school detention. A lot of kids do. They prop a book open and get left alone.

So teachers regularly make judgement calls. I never would have let Dennis out by himself if I thought he was dangerous that day, even with a teacher to watch his progress. I thought he just wanted some quiet time free of expectations and responsibilities. He got it.