I’ve pulled a couple of posts that created a fair amount of interest. A district/union dispute is underway and, while I believe I am sufficiently anonymous, for the sake of a colleague, I don’t intend to test those waters. I will conclude this apology for the missing posts by saying that if you are suffering because of a district’s numbers in your evaluation, you might check those numbers. America has become fairly innumerate in the last few decades. Funny things can happen to weighted averages in the hands of the innumerate.

As to PARCC, that rocket took off and crashed almost immediately. I know of two other districts where the same thing happened, info received from teachers texting friends in other districts at lunch. We had too many computers on the internet at once and our system could not handle the load. Whether the fault belongs to Pearson, the school district, or AT&T, we scratched afternoon testing and I don’t know what our resumption plans are as yet.

Eduhonesty: We should have opted to do the paper version, especially since we are a poor district; many of our kids do not have working computers in their homes. The computerized version was going to be a problem even if it functioned as intended which, most emphatically, it did not. Any computerized testing system will be heavily biased in favor of higher-technology districts. I understand my district’s desire to step into the 21st century, but personally I would not have made that move without providing considerably more computer training than our students have received.

I had planned to do PARCC practice with my students today, since we were scheduled to test later, but I could not get on the internet either. No one could, except for brief bursts of connectivity that vanished and reappeared in random, fleeting windows of time.

I’ve read most of my PARCC manual, the manual that will be recycled or destroyed when the test ends. All teachers get manuals. All of these manuals are to be destroyed and given that the PARCC test is supplanting state achievement tests throughout the country, I can’t imagine how many manuals have been passed out in the last few weeks. Whole forests died to administer this test. The forbidding tone within the manual’s pages emphasizes the many possible transgressions and irregularities teachers and administrators can make. Transgressions and irregularities are all supposed to be documented. Any scratch paper needs a student name on it and all these sheets must be counted at test’s end. Any wall posters or decorations with any academic content whatsoever must be covered. All my school’s cheery walls are covered up now or stripped. If you’ve seen Matilda, the school looks like Crunchem Hall Primary School on a day when Ms. Trunchbull is visiting. I took my manual to a hair appointment this week-end and joked with the woman doing my hair that she had better not let me leave that manual behind because the feds would probably arrest me if I did.

I am fascinated by the specter of this test.

Eduhonesty: I predict that large chunks of America will fail PARCC. What popular response will follow when this happens? What will we do when the Common Core sinks our test scores and Pearson’s new, computerized test flunks America?

Our tutoring class was doing a little whole child education. Students were supposed to describe a time when they became angry and tell how they managed their anger. Students then were to discuss various responses to anger, helping each other to find constructive ways to deescalate or solve problems. The following entry had the class in stitches.

Sigh. (Just so we are clear, the writer comes from a home where English is not spoken. He’s actually a pretty good student.)

Here’s another one: “I was angry because my brother and sister ate my ice cream and I stopped being angry by eating my brother’s Hot Cheetos.”

Eduhonesty: We had a lot to talk about.

(I have deleted the backstory here for the time being, at least until the issue in this post has been finally resolved.)

My colleague’s evaluation may have been a typo. Our district has been entering numbers into a weighted-average formula to get final, summative evaluation scores. If the formula is right, then any errors in that final number almost have to be typos. A scarier possibility would be a flaw in the algorithm used to find that final summative number. Could the formula be wrong? I doubt that, but I don’t know that anyone has been checking their numbers. In fact, I sat with a veteran teacher friend today discussing the issue and discovered that she had been too scared to look at her evaluation.

“I was afraid it might be bad, so I decided not to look,” she said.

I laughed hard. I haven’t looked at mine, either, although I plan to look shortly.

Eduhonesty: I don’t believe in just one math mistake. If one evaluation is wrong, all evaluations are suspect. I plan to be done this year, so I don’t much care for myself, but I am seized with a desire to make sure that other injustices are not underway. As I said in the staff room today, “These are the same people who screwed up the paychecks this year.” (Another story.) “Anyone who is unhappy had better check their numbers.”

I want to check the math in my evaluation. I’d like to check everyone’s numbers, good or bad. I want to know the extent of this problem.

As the line from the old Jackson Browne song goes, “There are lives in the balance.”

The story is “Court rules against ex-teacher with a phobia of young kids,” by Lisa Cornwell of the Associated Press. The link is http://news.yahoo.com/court-rules-against-ex-teacher-phobia-young-kids-190545334.html. Cornwell tells the tale of a retired teacher who sued a school district when she was forced to transfer to a middle school, claiming administrators had discriminated against her because she has a phobia that makes her fear young children. This woman lost her appeal in the federal courts and I suspect that decision will be for the best. The courts in this country would have been inundated with suits if teacher Maria Waltherr-Willard had won.

Still, I feel sorry for Maria Waltherr-Willard. Age and disability discrimination may be involved as Waltherr-Willard claimed. The 63-year-old French and Spanish teacher had taught at Mariemont High School in Cincinnati for over thirty years, until she was transferred by her district to a middle school in 2009. Her lawsuit alleged that the middle-school students triggered the phobia, forcing her retirement in 2011 as her mental health began to suffer and her blood pressure shot skyward.

According to the school district, Waltherr-Willard was the victim of circumstance. The school was shifting to an online French program during a period when the middle school lacked a Spanish teacher. School boards have always had the right to reassign teachers within their districts. I get to decide if I wish to teach in my district. The district decides where they need me.

Simply put, the Court declared that no contract existed which obliged the district to keep Ms. Waltherr-Willard at the high school. Waltherr-Willard must be a woman of her convictions to have pursued the case this far. I wonder that she believed she could ever have won this case and I hope that her attorney was not providing unsound advice solely to keep a paying client.

We hear often in the news about the need to get rid of unsatisfactory teachers. That alleged need has provided support for numbers-based rubrics as instruments for measuring teacher performance. Can we measure teachers? Only at the margins, I suspect, but that has not stopped data-driven government agencies from demanding that administrations attempt this feat. That has not stopped data-driven administrations from creating numbers to flesh out the rubrics, social science numbers that can be highly subjective, like the numbers I now associate with the Danielson Rubric.

I assure readers that districts can manage to get rid of teachers they don’t like, and they don’t need to make-up numbers and then use these fuzzy numbers to create weighted averages as axes. I have known teachers to be pushed into retirement. A couple of years ago, a high school counselor was moved to our middle school. Administration placed her in an isolated classroom in the basement at first, in one of the odd-smelling rooms that no one ever occupies. Those rooms are empty this year, as they have been during my years within this district, despite the fact that we are beginning to double up classrooms. That room had no intercom or phone, no way to contact security in an emergency other than sending a student up the stairs. Mid-year, they changed that counselor/teacher’s assignment and the subject she taught, bringing her up into the light at least. She was a counselor, not a classroom teacher, and the kids were running roughshod over her for the whole year — her last year. I would pass by the second classroom and look at the papers, broken pencils, and textbooks that had been tossed on the floor.

Districts have ways to get rid of teachers they don’t like. Reading between the lines, I’m pretty sure that that’s what happened to Maria, who must have loved her job not to go gently into retirement. Was she expensive, perhaps much more expensive than an alternative on-line program? Was she old-fashioned? Did she make the mistake of teaching grammar and spelling? Was she guilty of whole-group instruction? Did she fail students who did no work? Whatever her transgressions, I am guessing she aggravated someone on top unless she simply became much more costly than a technological alternative.

I also understand why her new position had to the potential to drive Maria toward doctors and federal courts. High-school French draws motivated students. Especially at upper levels, these students tend to be college-bound and academically-oriented. By contrast, there’s a good chance that Maria’s middle-school students were forced to take Spanish whether they liked it or not. Middle school students often have little or no say in their “electives.” Add to that the volatility and immaturity of young adolescents and I’m sure those middle-school classes proved a wild ride for Maria.

Eduhonesty: Hiring/firing, employing/riffing — the point I want to make here is that I don’t believe we need to create fuzzy numbers to manage the educational labor force. The idea that districts must helplessly sit by while tenured teachers fail to fulfill their responsibilities sounds attractive, but I have watched districts force multiple teachers out. I can say with certainty that districts are hardly powerless. In Illinois and other states, governments are busy fixing educational systems that were never shown to be broken, despite occasional anecdotal reports of individuals who were not doing their jobs.

Friday we will test, a test to measure teacher effectiveness that will be used to demonstrate student growth. Sounds good, right? Except for the fact that there goes Friday. Thursday will be gone as well, since we will be doing test prep only indirectly related to what we are teaching. PARCC starts next week. That will suck up most of next week. MAP testing is coming up, as well as AIMSWEB testing. We also have some semi-random tests from the company assisting the state in efforts to improve our school. After a few of “normal” weeks, the testing dragon has come roaring out of its cave again. I’ll be recording more numbers in the near future.

Eduhonesty: I enjoyed having a few of calm, normal weeks in which to indulge in a little actual teaching.

My colleague in the last post is in better shape than we first thought. Apparently, Human Resources screwed up the math on her evaluation and her average is conspicuously higher than first reported. She’s still not in awesome shape, but she may survive any upcoming purge.

Ummm. these are people’s lives out here. A teacher just went from the bottom of our barrel back up into the middle BECAUSE of a MATH CORRECTION. Readers will know that I generally disdain foul language, but holy fuck, what kind of a mistake is that? They plunged that woman into an abyss of deep despair for weeks. Fortunately, the Union checked the district’s math.

Hooray for the Union. Apparently, other mistakes have been found as well, although I can’t confirm this. Regardless, I rather suspect we all ought to recheck the math from our evaluations.

Eduhonesty: If the district is looking to reduce employee costs, I know where they should start. Whoever tallied up my colleague’s point values ought to be fired. Yesterday.

My colleague has seventeen years in the district. Her 22 page evaluation yielded a frightening number, a number that would have forced any newer teacher out of the district at year’s end. She will be allowed to remediate herself until October, she told me. I talked to the union rep about the situation. (Sort of.) He’s a good man and no gossip, a consummate professional. We phrased the conversation hypothetically, my question being a simple one: Does my colleague have any possible union remedies? His answer was no. Charlotte’s* scores are not grievable, unless discrimination is involved. My colleague can write a rebuttal for her file, but that’s about her only option. She’s screwed, blued and tattooed.

The union rep and I discussed the fact that these 22 page documents are highly subjective, with luck of the evaluator a major factor in results. How well you connect with your evaluator matters. Whether or not you have the same views on best educational practices can skew scores significantly. Does the evaluator like loud and busy classrooms? Does the evaluator prefer a quieter, more traditional atmosphere? Will the evaluator factor student behavioral history into observed misbehaviors? Is the evaluator so scared for his or her own job that test-score paranoia has kicked in, leading the evaluator to tense up in fear at any signs of student obtuseness? A mere snippet of a school year has determined my colleague’s numbers and she is in serious trouble.

The pension system has been set up so that the best times to quit are multiples of 10. I am hitting one of these breakpoints this year. My colleague still has three years to travel before she reaches a good stopping point. She’s an expensive hire and no district is likely to pay for all her experience. She’s also in an area of teaching where jobs are scarce. America has no shortage of P.E., English, or history teachers. Any attempt to move after seventeen years has to be explained, too. I see no good way to spin this mess. The odds that she can find another position don’t seem high, given the number of lower-cost, new graduates who are looking for a first opportunity.

Eduhonesty: I’ve never sat in my colleague’s classroom. I don’t know the fine points of this story. I do know that an injustice appears to be underway. If my colleague has so little to recommend her, why did the district need seventeen years to uncover that fact? Charlotte’s axe seems poised to lop off a good woman’s head. I have no way to judge those rubric scores, but my colleague strongly wishes to continue teaching. With the pension system operating the way it does, and a possible mid-year job loss in the works, though, I’m not sure she can afford to be remediated, not with so little likely help and encouragement from her remediators. The administration appears to want this woman gone.

My colleague’s best move appears to be surrender, but she seems unlikely to go quietly. I admire her ongoing pedagogical diligence, her efforts to teach as this craziness swirls around her. I’m not sure I would continue to work that hard with an axe hanging above me.

I’d love to end this post with a ringing call to action. I can’t because we are buried in politics out here, obscuring any clear view of what is occurring in our classrooms. Perhaps my colleague actually lacks teaching skills. As I say, I’ve never watched her in action. Perhaps, though, she is merely older, experienced and therefore expensive. Perhaps her views are politically incorrect and she is unwilling to spout the party-line of small groups and extreme diversification. We are a profession of buzzwords, driven by fashion and test scores. Politically savvy teachers adopt the latest fashions and try to make them work. Some older teachers stick with the outdated fashions that have always produced results for them. Perhaps my colleague is one of the victims of test-score panic. All across America, teachers are being blamed for lower test scores that may or may not be in their control. The societal forces that hold urban students down can’t always be addressed by the best of teachers.

Who knows what’s going on? I don’t. Layers upon layers of quiet politics seem to underlay many recent administrative decisions and I am not talking to my administration, never about matters of substance anyway.

*The woman who wrote the rubric that created the 22 page evaluation.

Lyrics to a song by Nicki Minaj, requested more than once in my classes:

“Anaconda”

My Anaconda don’t…
My Anaconda don’t…
My Anaconda don’t want none unless you got buns hun

Boy toy named Troy used to live in Detroit
Big dope dealer money, he was getting some coins
Was in shootouts with the law, but he live in a palace
Bought me Alexander McQueen, he was keeping me stylish
Now that’s real, real, real,
Gun in my purse, bitch I came dressed to kill
Who wanna go first? I had them pushing daffodils
I’m high as hell, I only took a half of pill
I’m on some dumb shit

By the way, what he say?
He can tell I ain’t missing no meals
Come through and fuck ’em in my automobile
Let him eat it with his grills,
He keep telling me to chill
He keep telling me it’s real, that he love my sex appeal
Because he don’t like ’em boney, he want something he can grab
So I pulled up in the Jag, and i hit ’em with the jab like…
Dun-d-d-dun-dun-d-d-dun-dun

My Anaconda don’t…
My Anaconda don’t…
My Anaconda don’t want none unless you got buns hun

Oh my gosh, look at her butt
Oh my gosh, look at her butt
Oh my gosh, look at her butt
Look at her butt (look at her butt)

This dude named Michael used to ride motorcycles
Dick bigger than a tower, I ain’t talking about Eiffel’s
Real country ass nigga, let me play with his rifle
Pussy put his ass to sleep, now he calling me NyQuil
Now that bang bang bang,
I let him hit it ’cause he slang Cocaine
He toss my salad like his name Romaine
And when we done, I make him buy me Balmain
I’m on some dumb shit

Etc.

Eduhonesty: These are middle school kids and this song is popular. Music reflects culture. Music sometimes reflects character and aspirations. We have a cultural crisis out here. Trust me.

The crumpled page contains a description of Type I, II, and III assessments. It’s from some professional development meeting related to our evaluations. All I can say is that any evaluation system that requires 20 or more appendices desperately needs to be rewritten. The state law that resulted in this appendix needs to be repealed.

Our government’s claws may eviscerate education at the rate we are going. Twenty-two page evaluations are ridiculous, especially when they are based on about half a day’s observation at most. I’m not against data. I’m against made-up data. Any twenty-two page document based on a half-day’s observation has a large element of fiction in its pages.

At some point, I’ll bother to read that chunk of dead trees and find out how much fiction. Or not. I’m at a natural retirement break point and I announced to the break room that I was going. Will I continue teaching elsewhere? Life would be easier if I moved up the socioeconomic ladder to a place where test scores are higher and administrators don’t have the state breathing down their necks. Still, I may quit to follow my North Star toward writing instead.

Eduhonesty: I’m sure some of these evaluation documents are larger and some are smaller. Regardless, I believe three to five pages at most ought to cover a teacher’s evaluation, just as I think one week of standardized testing each year ought to cover student data needs. The data dragon needs to be slain.