EdObserver

We have just finished three rounds of our state’s assessment tests, and there is one more to go. It is, as I have discussed previously, made as tedious as possible for the entire school. Then it is discussed endlessly, always concluding that they are worthless because they do nothing but encourage the dreaded “teaching to the test.” This is a term, a warning really, that I believe was coined by the teachers’ union to offer an argument against standardized testing.

Without standardized tests we do not have any real measure of what a student in a public school has learned. It is therefore imperative that the educational community encourages parents to think that these tests are invalid. Most parents have bought the argument. Start a discussion of the state of education in America, mention standardized tests, count to three, and some parent will tell you that they only encourage “teaching to the test.” Then look around and see how many heads are bobbing in agreement. The problem is really the reverse: what we thought was important to test was not taught. Our test scores reflect this. The problem with the testing is the lack of curriculum that supports the knowledge we test.

The tests aren’t perfect, neither is the teaching.

Do you think all eleventh-graders should be able to solve a simple algebra equation, that many should be able to recognize and plot simple linear equations, and that some should know about quadratic equations and the graphs that go along with them? Then put that in a test and see how many students have been taught those concepts. If I successfully teach a student these concepts, did I impart the knowledge we value or did I just teach to the test? And if I taught the knowledge we value, why are the kids not passing the test?

We don’t use textbooks very much in our high school. I don’t know why. Teachers don’t like to talk about it. Maybe some of them think that they are outdated, or too politically correct, or too restricting. It doesn’t matter what the reasons are; we don’t use them.

In some classes, they aren’t even assigned. In others they are given out, with instructions to take them home and leave them there, because there are classroom copies that will be used. Or the students are told to leave them in their lockers, waiting for the few times that they will be told to bring them to class. In any case, I have been in no class, in this school, where students have been required to bring a textbook to class regularly. The lessons are never coordinated to the assigned textbook.
This is almost always the case in math and science, where it can create a big problem. It’s a problem for any student who would like to read ahead and come in prepared for the next day’s class, or a student who left class thinking he knew the lesson later to realize that he is still a bit confused, or a student who was absent and would like to read about the missed lesson in detail. It also hurts the parents who would like to see what their child is learning, possibly hoping to help. This last one is important because if parents can’t help, they lose a little bit of the connection between their child and the child’s education.

The textbooks are awful.

I have my own objections to today’s math texts. Our daughter was probably among the last students to use math texts (without four-color pictures that have nothing to do with the math process) which stepped you through the lesson. When she missed a geometry lesson on angles, I couldn’t remember all of the rules. But once you see an illustration of parallel lines with a transverse line and corresponding angles clearly labeled, you can come around pretty quickly. I’ve even helped Kathy with some topics I wasn’t familiar with, just by reading the textbook.

Look at the most recent math texts to see what I am talking about. They begin with applications, and then introduce the math process. There are four-color pictures of mathematicians, or track and field performances. There is sometimes a little PC philosophy tagged on: “Women in Science” (Their numbers are increasing.) or “the future with global warming” (If the temperature rises 0.01% every year… )  In the two districts in which I have worked, no math class has used a text, though both have recently purchased new texts for every grade level. By the way, there’s still a text for every student and they cost $75 – $100 each.

I went to school in a different time, but it sometimes seems like a different planet. For one thing, there was homework almost every night, even on weekends. And though teachers sometimes checked to see if you had done the assignment, if it wasn’t a long-term project, it was never graded. In other words, while you might get a demerit for failing to do it, you didn’t really get credit for doing it. Homework was practice. Learn a new lesson; reinforce the lesson with homework as practice .

I was not a perfect student. I should have spent more time studying every night instead of cramming before tests. But I almost always did my homework. I once got caught with a missing assignment only 30 seconds before the principal announced that President Kennedy had been shot. Everyone remembers what he or she was doing when they heard the news. I was getting a zero for not completing my homework.

Today, homework counts. In most classes it accounts for 10% of a student’s grade. It is usually not a letter grade; some cruder, more flexible grading system is used. Some teachers will evaluate each assignment on a five-point scale, or they will use “√ +, √, and √ ─.” This system lets a teacher assign a weighted grade at the end of a marking period that might more fairly reflect the student’s homework participation.

It doesn’t matter. For the “at risk” students, homework is a waste of time and they just won’t do it. Just doing it will give the student a score of 100% for 10% of your grade. It doesn’t even have to be done correctly, or completely. It doesn’t even have to be done at home.

In most classes, homework is merely the completion of the class work, worksheet or problems, which you didn’t finish in class – usually because you were talking, or texting a friend on your cell phone held under your desk. There seems to be an unwritten code of honor, in a group with an unofficial membership, and a slogan that says “We don’t do homework. No we don’t!”

I deal daily with the type of student that’s referred to in the education community as “at risk” whether they have an IEP (Individual Education Plan) or not. The “at risk” students are most frequently categorized by the baggage they come to school with: broken homes, busy or uncaring parents, peer pressure, learning disabilities, social and psychological difficulties. But a bigger problem is what they come to school without.

It doesn’t matter what their socio-economic condition is; I have had kids who lived in low-income units, students from trailer parks and students from near million dollar subdivisions. They all come without pencils or pens, without paper or notebooks, and without their homework.

My previous high school of 1600 students used one million pieces of paper in the 2006-07 school-year. The assistant principal responsible for purchases noticed that the number of reams had increased steadily and she did the math. This includes plain white printer/copier paper, colored paper, and composition or lined paper. This is usually unpunched but it replaces the loose leaf paper that some kids still bring to school, but every kid brought to school in the old days.

The paper sits in a tray in the front of almost every class room. It may sit in a tray in the library. It is not in the larger spaces where kids have study halls, such as the cafeteria or in our case, the auditorium balcony. That may explain why you can enter most study hall spaces and see no one working. Or maybe it’s that in the large spaces they don’t have a teacher to borrow a pencil from.

The Derby Begins…

The level of class that includes a goodly number of the “at risk” never starts before a timeout for what I call the “writing stick derby.” Here’s how it goes: 1) Student who never has a pen or pencil asks the teacher for one. 2) If teacher has chosen to participate in the derby, he or she keeps a clear shoebox of pencils to lend. By the way, they are often not returned and by the end of the week there may be none left in the box. 3) If teacher has tired of buying pencils by the gross, he may lend one, if the student gives up something of value – a shoe, a cell phone, an iPod. The negotiation takes precious minutes from class time. 4) If the teacher is a non-participant in the derby, the student asks his best friend, who may be tired of buying pencils that are never returned, or may not have a pencil of his own. 5) Failing with BFF the student tries an acquaintance. No luck? 6) Student goes right for the class’ most serious student (who always comes prepared.)

When I worked in a middle school, our team of 125 students sold pencils as a fund-raiser; they didn’t sell. So we sold them at cost, as a convenience. Not only did they not sell well, but more often than not, when a student came back into class with a new pencil, a friend —yes, friend—would grab it and snap it in two.

Round two of the derby is when the riskiest students ask in every class, every day, where the paper is. I will talk about homework in my next post.