Ummm… This pic makes a nice sound bite, but I do not agree. Yes, a 2.0 student can definitely know more than a 4.0 student. Bright, disobedient students can be experts at hiding knowledge and understanding.

However, I feel compelled to observe that there are damn few 4.0 students who are not ahead of most of their peers academically. Low grades may not reflect true understanding. But a consistent accumulation of high grades over time does reflect understanding. Even if a few teachers in the mix don’t have high standards, or reward quantity over quality, “A” after “A” after “A” across the years can be used as a reliable measure of academic excellence.

When we stop trying to measure and define academic excellence, we will have truly fallen down the rabbit hole. Grades don’t determine intelligence? Of course, they don’t. Grades are merely a measuring tool. But grades remain one of our best tools for determining understanding, despite their flaws.

I’d also like to observe that obedience in a classroom may serve the common good, even if that particular behavioral trait has inexplicably fallen out of fashion.

My last post refers to a girl assaulted in a bathroom. Here’s the thought I did not include in that post; I am sure many similar stories exist but they never have hit the media radar. That radar is all about ratings. Where are the ratings? Right now, Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are great for ratings. We know all about what they are doing. Chris Christie could be meditating in an ashram in Nepal for all most of know, however.

I am sure those assaults in bathrooms have been occurring. But unless someone was seriously injured or killed, such a story would not have qualified for air time. As mores change and the landscape shifts beneath us, similar stories may acquire traction. Suddenly bathroom safety has hit the fringes of the news. Whether these stories get bumped to the head of the line will depend on the ratings from similar stories.

That makes a solid month of periodic PARCC library closures to allow for PARCC tests and then later PARCC make-up tests where I am teaching.

Sigh. This is Batsomething, that’s for sure.

Click on the pic to enlarge it for a better view.

At a meeting to thank the many teachers who have helped with extracurricular activities throughout the year, the Principal uttered one line that deserved to be blogged:

“I really appreciate the many people who helped us get ready for PARCC for the last two and one-half months.”

How much time has been lost to the testing process? Who knows? How many teachers were preparing for a test rather than preparing lesson plans? The test itself sucked up the better part of a month, but the test is only the culmination of a process that involves a tremendous amount of preparatory work and training. I just thought I’d put that “two and one-half months” on the table.

At least they did not split PARCC into two separate testing sessions this year. But my current school has been shutting down the library for testing regularly since… let me look. Hmmm. I’m not sure. There’s a closure notice for April 11th but there may have been earlier notices. My email trash starts on the 11th. I’ll just say the library has been shutting regularly for weeks. The hallways have been on super-secret silent running at odd times during these weeks, as adults shush twelve to fourteen year-old kids who are moving between classes. Sometimes doors are sealed to keep in the silence and kids rove around in odd, multi-floor circuits to get to classes that can no longer be reached by the usual routes.

The whole silence thing got old by the third or fourth day and after that I was shush, shush, shushing kids who were no longer taking the whole testing extravaganza terribly seriously. Sigh. But I got a laugh this morning.

One of my students had been on the make-up list twice. Both times he had been supposed to go for testing at 8:30 but had apparently skipped. He turned up in my second period class a little after 9:00 A.M. on those days. Today, I got the notice that he was to report for make-up testing at 9:30, during the middle of my class. I sent him off, and he finally gave up and went and actually took the test. He was back about ten minutes later. A friend asked him about the test and he answered that the test had been easy. In his own words:

“I finished in three minutes. Every response was an “I don’t know” question.”

They should have let him skip. Hunting the kid down definitely did not help school scores. I have to admit I laughed when he described the test, and then I wrote down his exact words immediately. But a very fine school with a dedicated administration is about to be judged on my student’s test scores.

Eduhonesty:  Gallows humor fed my laughter this morning, but PARCC’s honestly about as funny as the average cholera epidemic.