I actually did it

 

I said I was going to do it and I really did.  Unfortunately I might have made a mistake.

 

I signed up for the GACE biology test.  I should have looked at the review questions first.  Out of 18 practice questions, I was only able to answer 7 of them correctly.  This just won’t do!  I have a biological science background with the agriculture, botany, genetics and biochemistry, but it has been over 15 years since I did stuff with the Krebs cycle and photosynthesis. 

 

In contrast, I took the science practice test and scored 17 out of 20, which is a lot better than I thought I’d do.  The physical science stuff stuck with me better since that is what I spent the most time teaching way back in the day.  The geology section is a bit rusty, and I don’t have much of a background in that at all.  But that’s the test I should have taken.  Oh well.

 

So I’m busily studying an old college biology hoping to bone up on the subject.  I hate the thought of wasting $120 like that.  I took the NTE version of this thing back in 1989 or so and passed, but that was then. 

 

The purpose of this testing is to open up some new teaching options for me.  As much as the world of severe disabilities has chosen me, I feel like it is beginning to UNchoose me.  There are many factors coming into play.  The alternate assessment is certainly significant, but it’s not the only thing.  Taz’s mother is driving me batty as she works at the school.  If it were just for 4 or 5 years, it wouldn’t be such a big deal.  But 7 or 8 years; it’s almost like some sort of marriage or something!  It’s longer than most military enlistments!  It’s a long time to have the same kids everyday day after day.

 

  I’ve had Spaz for 6 years and I’m coming up on 7 years with him.  Even though he walked for graduation, he can stay through his 22nd birthday.  So he will be staying around another year.  It just takes so long to finish out a student and progress is often at a glacial pace. 

 

The physical nature of the work is something I have to watch out for.  In my mid 40′s, I’m no spring chicken.  I do okay with the lifting but having to do all of it all the time will get old quickly since Coach will be gone.  Larry and Ravi require constant lifting and moving and they continue to grow and get bigger! 

 

And with only 20 years to retirement, I need to find a quieter place to settle in and do the minimum amount of work necessary in order to draw a salary until my golden years.

 

 

Just kidding!

 

The pull and attraction of doing collaborative work involves marrying my science background with my Sp. Ed. experience plus possibly helping some other teachers with classes that are becoming more and more diverse.  Inclusion is becoming more and more of a reality and I wouldn’t mind getting in on that wave while it’s still cresting.

 

And since I’m chained to the oars of the NCLB slave galley, like every other teacher, I’d at least like to be on the productive side of things.  This monkey-brained alternate assessment crap is for the birds.  I can have an opportunity to work in the golden zone, and push a few over the line into a passing score.

 

I feel like I’m being pushed along plus enticed into something better.  But I’m going to do another year of this business and see how it goes.

 

D.

 

25 Years Ago

 

I recently attended my 25 year class reunion. This was the first reunion I was able to attend and it was a lot of fun. I had a chance to catch up with a number of old friends. My, how things and people change! The guys particularly were a major challenge to identify as the women seemed to age better or change less dramatically. There were several guys who I had no idea who they were, even before drinking anything at the bar.

 

 

On Friday night, a bunch of us met at about the only bar around that still existed 25 years ago. We had a discussion about how lousy most of us were in math and came to the conclusion that we had some very poor math teachers. Indeed, starting in middle school, every math teacher we had, without exception, was a coach of of some sort. And coaching seemed to be the major focus rather than the teaching of math as this was a small school and athletics were the center of school and small town life.

 

 

However, it wasn’t totally the fault of my mediocre math teachers. The next night of our reunion were had a banquet honoring the alumni from several years, and I noticed the ones who were not at the bar the night before. Pretty much the same smart folks who were not partying in high school were not in on the discussion we had in the pub over a few beers. This made me think that perhaps there might have been as strong of a correlation between the lifestyles of the students and their grades and study habits as there was with our teacher/coaches.

 

 

Outside of math, I think we had some good teachers in high school and we got a good basic education. We were certainly all literate as I can’t remember anyone who couldn’t read in middle school. I also don’t remember the newspaper ever publishing the school’s test scores or comparing them to neighboring districts. Such was the culture of small town Iowa schools 25 years ago. When I eventually moved to Georgia I was surprised to see scores in the paper and even more shocked at the low scores that schools actually bragged about! Any school a point or two above the state or national average claimed bragging rights. I know in the testing game there will be winners and losers, but when did mediocrity come to be something we bragged about and published in the paper?!?

 

 

Other than the Atlanta Hawks or Falcons, of course.

 

 

I’m happy to say that the math instructional deficit has been lessened at my old school. The class of ’82′s valedictorian went on to major in math education and returned to the hometown and is presently teaching math at the old high school. And she’s not coaching any varsity sports, as far as I know. Now if her students can refrain from partying long enough maybe they can learn a thing or two!

 

dick

 

NCLB Strikes Again

Okay, I’m going to have to talk about it, because no one else wants to do it. Or perhaps I’m abnormally obsessed with this. I’ve certainly been traumatized by the alternate assessment crap that is sweeping the nation.

NCLB strikes again, this time in Mississippi.

Mississippi is apparently using some sort of end-of-course testing in order to satisfy the test requirements of NCLB. We have EOCTs in Georgia, but it is the high school graduation test that determines whether or not a school makes adequate yearly progress. In Mississippi, some school districts apparently decided not to give the test to students who had not taken the courses. Why would you give a test over algebra to a student who had never taken the algebra course? And truly, this makes sense to me, except it does not make sense to the federal DOE.

At least one parent is quoted as liking the idea, and for students with milder disabilities, can understand that. I sat in on several IEPs this past year where the student was going to go through the alternate assessment simply because they had not taken the course work. His is one bad thing about using the graduation test, because now the student is in 11^th grade which is long past where he/she should have taken those courses. At least this way, a student who missed one year can take the course and the test the next year. But the problem is that these students will often need much more support and time to acquire mastery over these core skills. And this sucks time away from other things like actually learning some practical job or life skills. Sure, the kid can now do U.S. history but they can’t balance a checkbook or make change.

I’m going to say it again: what kind of rigorous standards are you setting when you expect someone with an I.Q. of 50 to master them?
You dishonor the students who are really working hard to show mastery of high academic standards and do a disservice to the students with cognitive disabilities who needs multiple trials (about 500) just to master a new skill. Is solving a quadratic equation so essential that the student must forfeit time that might be spent learning to count money, or fill out a job application?

A U.S. spokewoman for the U.S. DOE (Jo Ann Webb says that only Mississippi and Maine are having issues with including special ed students. And that is patently false. Every state has struggled with the special education subgroup, and every single one has had to struggle with making grade level standards available to those with severe disabilities. Mississippi and Maine are simply the last ones to be thoroughly victimized and sodomized by NCLB’s draconian and senseless insistence on bringing a regular high school curriculum to students who have I.Q.’s in the single digits.

Here’s one other funny yet sad thing about this: thanks to this several schools will fail to make AYP. When they fail to make AYP, extra help must be made available and students are allowed to transferred to other schools. The problem is this: how does transferring to another school help our severely intellectually disabled kids? How does extra tutoring in physics and geometry help them learn to use the bathroom independently? Can extra tutoring in U.S. history or economics help them feed or dress themselves? The fact is, parents see only that the school failed to make AYP, not that it was only the one subgroup that didn’t make it. All of the college bound kids may be doing exceptionally well with outstanding teachers and yet the entire school is sanctioned by that label.

News flash: that’s not accountability. That’s stupidity. If you want to measure accountability, how about measuring the performance of those students who have actually been taught the courses and for whom written standardized tests are appropriate.

I still can’t believe anyone would still be supporting NCLB after is has fish-gutted education so badly. No amount of extra funding can fix something that is so discriminatory and unjust.

I’ll quit now, before I blow a gasket. You all enjoy your summer!

Dick

And here’s another article, highlighting the absurdity in Virginia.

The most amazing thing is, that almost every time, the state department cites how valuable this foolishness is, all in the name of accountability.