I guess I've seen this happen too many times to even feel much sympathy any longer.

Sylvia James hardly considers herself clueless in mathematics. After all, she finished sixth grade with a B-plus in the subject and made the Honor Roll, which she saw as a victory in a challenging year of fraction conversion and decimal placement.

But what happened when she took the state math test?

She flunked it.

I'd come up with a list of reasons that could explain this outcome, but the Washington post already does that for me.

Students and teachers offer an array of explanations for why test scores sometimes fail to match up with grades. Some students don't take the exams seriously. Some freeze up. Still others trip over unfamiliar language. And teachers sometimes are not prepped in what the exams cover, especially when the tests are new. Occasionally, some school officials suspect, classes aren't rigorous enough to prepare students adequately.

How about all of the above. I've got students who don't do well on the sort of standardized tests that are used to test competency by the various states -- heck, my class valedictorian scored lower than me on both the SAT and ACT despite making straight As for four years of high school except in PE. Some kids do come in and just start bubbling -- or put their heads down and take a nap instead of testing. In some cases, teachers have not covered what will be on the test -- in my state, tenth graders take World History but the Social Studies TAKS covers primarily the pre-Civil War American History they took two years before in eighth grade and which I have time to only spend three or four class periods reviewing in the week or so before the test.

And then there is course rigor.I hear stories from teacher friends about what they do -- indeed, what they are required to do -- to keep the grades up and prevent too many students from failing. I've heard about principals walking into faculty meetings and telling teacher that no period may have a failure rate of more than 10% -- and that teachers who exceed that rate had better start polishing up their resumes. I know of one district that requires (in a policy adopted by the school board in open session) teachers to take any late work up until three days before the end of a marking period, and that further requires that any kid who fails a test be permitted to come in and correct it for a grade of 70% (the minimum passing grade) any time during the marking period. Do such grades really reflect learning -- or simply the ability of students to copy late assignments and make better guesses with wrong answers eliminated?

I won't even get in to the question of how some states, like Texas, change standards after the test is taken to ensure that the passing rate (or failing rate) isn't too high -- during the first year of the TAKS test, the test was "re-meaned" and the number of correct answers needed to pass was raised, causing six of my students to fail despite achieving the score that school districts had been told all year constituted a passing grade.

Quite frankly, the current testing regime around the country is a failure. It doesn't show what the government thinks it shows. What needs to be implemented is a set of rigorous start-of-course and end-of-course tests that show where a student begins and ends the school year, and how much actual learning has gone on in between. Otherwise, we have a free-floating measurement that doesn't show what a student learns, and is instead a mere snapshot of where kids are on a given day during the year.

But then again, the two-test strategy might actually reveal something relevant about student learning, rather than serve as a club to use against all of us crappy public school teachers.

Posted by: Greg at 02:43 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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I’ve got students on probation in my classes. I’ve even got students on parole. But I only know about it if they tell me – and only know what their crime was if they disclose it.

That’s right – as a teacher, I have no right to know that I have students who are felons – even violent felons – in my class room.

There is one exception – convicted sex offenders. But even then, will the local police do their job and notify my school? Will the school do its job and notify me? This article leaves me questioning whether I really know who is in my classroom.

Background checks prevent teachers who are registered sex offenders from working in schools, but no law keeps students with histories of committing sex crimes from sharing history lessons and hot lunches with their classmates in Texas.

That leaves parents in the dark about who might be sitting in the desks next to their children.

No single authority knows how many registered sex offenders are high school students. About 2,400 registered sex offenders are younger than 21, the oldest age allowed for high school students in Texas. About 320 are younger than 17, said Tela Mange of the Texas Department of Public Safety.

But those figures do not likely reflect the actual number of youthful sex offenders. Those who are 17 or 18 can petition the courts to have their cases removed from the registry. Others may have dropped out of school, said Shannon Edwards, a staff attorney with the Texas District and County Attorneys Association.

"It's a very fluid number," said Tom Vinger, a spokesman for the public safety department.

In one recent case in Austin, a teacher was attacked by a student who was already a registered sex offender – one of three in the district. She didn’t know about his status, though it is unclear whether the school knew and withheld the information or whether they were unaware.

One of the major state teacher organizations (we have four – and as a right-to-work state, membership is voluntary) is seeking to ensure that the current law is followed. They are also seeking closer monitoring of those students convicted of violent or sexual crimes.

It's also led at least one teachers' advocacy group to call for stricter monitoring of students with histories of committing violent or sexual crimes.

"In my mind, good public policy dictates that the public and specifically educators be aware when there is a registered sex offender in their midst," said Jeri Stone, executive director of the Texas Classroom Teachers Association.

I agree wholeheartedly – and question why students with histories of sec crime or crime of violence are permitted back in a regular classroom setting. This isn’t me looking to add one more level of punishment, it is me being concerned about the safety of every other student on the campus. Shouldn’t these individuals be in a closely monitored alternative setting where it is less likely that they will have the opportunity to do harm to other students?

Posted by: Greg at 06:21 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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