“You’re really doing what you need to be doing” & teachers would tell me “But the test says I’m Not"

[LWolf]

2. I have some problems with this.

First of all, this:

My second year as a principal (at School 50), I got 90 percent of my fourth graders passing the math test. We were busting our butts. Back then, the only students who had to take the tests were in fourth grade and eighth grade. The very next year, the state instituted grades 3 to 8 testing, and when they did that, test scores across the state crumbled. And when the test scores crumbled, so did teacher morale.

It took me five years of steady gains to move the scores back up to the point of getting 68 percent to 69 percent passing the English language arts tests and 72 percent passing math.

HE got students to pass tests? HE got scores back up?

No. The teachers and students did.

He may have been a driving force; in my district, principals are evaluated partly on school test scores and testing goals. Therefore, the principal exerts extreme pressure to teach to the test, and makes sure everything we do is directed towards standardized scores. He can use our evaluations as a weapon in that process.

FYI, higher scores don't necessarily mean more learning. It's about statistics. It's about manipulating data. It's not really about learning.

Then there is this:

What happens in schools today needs to occur within a system. Gone is the day when teachers walk into their classroom, shut the door, and do whatever they want to do.

For example, if we both teach fourth grade, but we don't teach the same thing, then when the fifth-grade teacher gets our kids, the students are not going to be at the same place in math.

I have problems with this. Why? Because the system is too authoritarian. It's TOO standardized, trying to force students into a standard mold, when people just aren't. It doesn't matter HOW strictly you standardize curriculum and instruction, students do not walk into ANY classroom all "at the same place." That's because they are people, not factory parts.

I worked for a district a dozen years ago who was adopting scripted curriculum and standardized pacing schedules for EVERYTHING. We were told that we had to use the scripted BULLETIN BOARDS in our scripted teacher's manual; that there would be random visits from district personnel to check compliance, and if our bulletin boards were on the wrong day, it would affect our evaluations. One admin in that district told his teachers that, if he walked down a hallway and didn't hear the exact same thing (reading the teaching script) coming from the exact same grade level rooms at the same time, that it would reflect badly in teachers' evaluations.

Finally, my principal told me he had to observe me reading the script from the adopted curriculum, and he had to use what he observed to evaluate me on the teacher's standards for professional practice, which included things like development of lesson plans, flexible delivery to respond to perceived need, etc.. In other words, the script didn't match the standards. I asked him what he wanted me to do; he shrugged and said, "Read the script." So I did. The students were confused. It was the first time I'd ever done that, and the script itself was awkward and not very coherent. My principal walked out after the observation, and I put the script down and taught the kids. He wrote up an evaluation based on things he'd seen me doing when I wasn't reading the script, and pretended it was all about the script.

Real teaching and learning just doesn't work that way. That's why there are so many problems trying to use a factory model and/or a corporate/business model.

At the same time, Mains does acknowledge many of the frustrations we're facing. I wish he'd recognize that it's the standardized reforms and privatization that has broken the system.