More PBE Idiocy

My school is implementing Proficiency - Based education this year. (Some people call it Standards-Based Grading)

We're behind the curve; the State of Vermont has decreed that ALL schools in Vermont will be using PBE so that the Class of 2020 will have had four years of PBE by the time they graduate. That's this year's sophomores.

Yes, that means we're a year behind. Our school's faculty made the decision last May to push forward with this initiative against the wishes of the SU -- we didn't want to wait two more years to begin, putting us three years late according to the directive from the State.

Our reasoning was that, if this is truly a Good Thing, then why should we wait to put it into place?

But our supervisory office and it's IT staff are hopelessly unready. Incompetent isn't a unfair characterization. They have no transcript format ready to go, no sense of how to ascertain academic ineligibility, etc.

So we faculty are doing it for them and fighting against their bad decisions the whole time.

Faculty: "Don't average proficiencies. In fact, don't even think of them as percentages."

"Hold my beer," they said.

Faculty: "Wait, you shouldn't do that ... and what's with the gaps between the levels? .... and what's with 'Not Attempted' being 0% to 15%?"

SU: "Uh, we don't know, and we don't know how to change it."
Faculty: "If you insist we keep percentages AND that they must average, would you at least fix the gaps?"

SU: "Uh, we don't know how to change it."
SU: "Uh, leadership team needs to make that decision."
SU: "Uh, it's your fault for moving too quickly."

Faculty: sigh.

SU: "Uh, you know there's two different scales, right?"

Faculty: "Wait, what? That's ridiculous, and wrong on so many levels. No one would do anything that stupid."

SU: "Yeah, check this out. Hold my beer."

Faculty: "Okay, so the percentages are the same but why is it called Approaching in this scale and 'Nearly' in the other?"

SU: "We thought it would be fun to change it two days before school starts, but not everywhere. You'll randomly see one or the other."

Faculty: "Whaaaat?"

Faculty: "By the way, if I enter a 3 out of 4, I get an NP. It should be Four Levels means One thru Four, but it isn't working that way. Please explain that."

SU: "Uh, we don't know what you're talking about and we don't know how to change it."
SU: "But, we just figured out that if you use a 5-point scale, and enter a 4 out of 5, then you'll get proficient. Think of it as a feature."

Faculty: "You went out of your way and insisting that it was four levels, not five. Would you please get it straight?"

SU: "BTW, did we mention there's a third scale? Check this out!"

Faculty: "WTF is with those percentages changes?"
Faculty: "If I enter a 3 out of 4, I get an NP again. Please explain that. While you're at it, why is 'Emerging' now 0%-50% instead of the 15%-45%?"

SU: "Uh, we don't know what you're talking about and we don't know how to change it, but all three are active in your gradebook at the same time."

Faculty" "Are you serious?" 

SU: "Yep. We're kinda proud of all the work we've done."

Faculty: "It's been all different, the kids and parents are fuming, and we're going back over everything and rescoring everything to make things consistent. THIS HAS NOT BEEN HELPFUL."

SU: "Don't be ungrateful ... BTW, you know how you asked that all of the Common Core State Standards for math be put into the gradebook?"

Faculty: "(Nervously) Um, yeah?"

SU: "We changed the names of each one of them."

Faculty: "Keep your goddamn beer."

The Highly Ineffective Principal: Clerical Error

A certain principal writes a letter for the school yearbook.  In his message, Roosevelt Principal Dr. Steven Strachan tells the graduates how proud he is of them and that they are a class of “great leaders, articulate orators, brilliant scientists, breathtaking athletes and extraordinary artists.”

He plagiarized the message.

Word for word. All of it.

From a principal in CA, uncredited.

But, but, but, but ... he "asked permission to quote"!

Here's the best part:

"I sincerely apologize to the Roosevelt community and to the class of 2014 for the inadvertent clerical error causing mistakes to be printed in the 2014 yearbook. An unedited draft of my remarks was accidentally published rather than the final version, and I take full responsibility for the oversight."

 Clerical error? A clerical error is misspelling the name of the guy you're quoting, or writing that the year is 2041. A clerical error is the yearbook editor rearranging the paragraphs inadvertently. A clerical error does not include you plagiarizing the entire message from another principal and then congratulating the WRONG SENIOR CLASS at the WRONG SCHOOL.

The Roosevelt principal even concluded his message like Barone did, writing, “Congratulations to the Albany High School Class of 2013.”

Blaming your plagiarism on the yearbook editor's "clerical error" is low-class, especially when you phrase it "clerical error causing mistakes to be printed." Passive voice apology fuck-you?

My favorite part of this is that he takes "full responsibility for the oversight." If one of his students did that, suspension would be in order. Nothing is happening to him ... he doesn't even have to pay the piddling amount of money for the reprint: the last line of the piece mentions that the pages are being reprinted with $800 from the "Principal's Discretionary Fund."

In case you're not familiar with public school budgetary BS, that's a slush fund that the principal may use at his discretion. Usually, it's used for things like buying a poor senior her cap and gown, or funding some low-income students tickets to a show that other kids are going to. Maybe supplying the SpecialEd department with some bit of tech that they can't get under normal budgets. Feel-good stuff or charitable-type things.

Educator of the Year.

The Daily Schedule, or Why do we do this?

When Amnesty International works to ban a practice in prisons, you might want to rethink doing it in schools.

My school has 1.5 hour blocks separated by 3 minute passing times.  Long ago, I began to tell students that I didn't want to know when or if they were going to the bathroom, just go one at a time and don't dawdle.

"It's none of my business. The pass is right there. Carry it to get yourself past the AP.  I don't need to know why ... TMI, people."

You know what? They go if they need to. But the vast majority doesn't abuse that and class runs just fine.

"I know that sometimes you don't really need to go, but that you need to walk down the stairs, across the building and up the other stairs and then back.  Just realize that when you get back, we will be focused on something and you'll have to pick up the thread quickly. Be ready."

Yes, I admit. That kid in the third row goes every day. He's a wanderer and the AP gets on his case and wants me to restrict his movement, but I refuse. Having him sit and fidget and whine will only distract everyone -- far more than if I just let him go -- and letting him get it out of his system means that he can focus when he returns.

If the situation calls for it, I will ask him directly, "Do you NEED to go? These instructions are important and you'll need to be ready to start this when you get back. Can it wait?"

I don't like it much but it's necessary. 

Admin bitches about tardiness, yet we give them 3 minutes to move two floors and across to a different building. We are told to stand at our doors so we can greet the students but also to monitor the hallway and ensure the kids are moving in an efficient way.

Admin stresses about teaching "bell to bell" -- for 90 goddam minutes -- as if the stresses we put on students don't count. "Teach to the bell" means that kids have to write, think, or be doing something right to the last second, then collect all their stuff, make it down the hall or further, get into the next room and be seated before the tardy bell.

In three minutes?

Why do we torture kids in this fashion?

They have a cup of coffee in the morning to help wake themselves up ... and caffeine is a diuretic. who in their right mind thinks that students will be able to take care of business AND walk to the other building in just three minutes?  Apparently, we do.

At lunch, many will down a 3/4L bottle of Gatorade.

We're all instructed to let the kids drink as much water as they want. We're reminded that 8 cups of water is necessary, so water is the only thing we're all supposed to allow in class -- and many students have a water bottle and the school just installed those nifty water fountain extensions with the reusable bottle filler spout thing.

But you can't go to the bathroom? Does anyone understand how the human body works?

Apparently not.

What brought this up?  Taught by Finland, "For every 45 minutes of classroom instruction in Finland, students are entitled to a 15-minute break. This is guaranteed by law!"

I love this guy. He's an American teacher who moved to Finland and is a teacher there. Well worth reading regularly. What set him off? This Chicago Administrator's note:

In addition to scheduled restroom breaks, students will be given restroom passes to use if they need to use the restroom outside of the scheduled time. Students will be given two restroom passes to use between now and the end of the quarter. They can choose to hold on to them and trade them in for a reward at the end of the quarter. Following these guidelines:

Have students fill in their names as soon as they receive them. Passes are invalid if names are crossed out for another name.

 For the upper grades, students can use one teacher's pass in another classroom, but they still only get the same number of passes per quarter.

 Use a class roster to have student initial next to their name to indicate that they received the passes.

 Have students fill in the "time out" and "time in" and then turn the pass in to the teacher when finished. This will help them practice the [Common Core Standards] of telling time with both digital and analog clocks.

 Promote the benefit of not using the passes by reminding students that rewards will be given for left over passes at the end of the quarter.

Return of the HIPster - Highly Ineffective Principal

HIPster tactic - pass the buck.

The Buck Stops over There.

At issue is a major schedule change involving midterm exams for all-year courses and final exams for block courses, the start of the new semester, the tech center, and other schools in the district that share our buses ... that will go into place NEXT WEEK!

HIP: "I won't make the decision without asking the faculty." Faculty are rather surprised by this - there has been no mention of this idea which originated a couple days ago. As you might imagine, opinions on this are all over the place. Finally, Random Teacher speaks up.
Random Teacher: "Just MAKE the decision, already."
HIP: "Let's see if we get consensus. All in favor?"
Maybe 1/4 of hands go up. Some discussion ensues.
HIP: "Okay, we seem to have a consensus in favor."
Random Teacher: "Wait, you never actually asked the others and most people are against it."
HIP: "All those in favor?" Again, the one-fourth.
HIP: "All those against?" Maybe one-fifth.
Random Teacher: "So just make the decision."
HIP: "I'll talk it over with the other principal and get back to you all in the morning."

Wow.

Arrested Over a T-Shirt.

and the rules didn't specify that an image of a gun was "illegal", they just prohibit violence. In my mind this incident is wrong on many, many levels.

In a minor way (pun intended), the boy probably figured he was going to exploit a loophole and knew someone would react. In that very small sense, he takes a bit of the blame for initiating this incident.

The much, much bigger problem is the over-reaction by the teacher ("arguing"? Really?), the drastic over-reaction by the administration in calling the police.

Jared Marcum showed up at his West Virginia middle school Thursday wearing an NRA shirt with a picture of a hunting rifle on it, and ended up getting arrested over it. He and a teacher argued over the shirt, and the 8th grader was eventually suspended, arrested, and now finds himself facing charges of obstruction and disturbing the education process, WOWK-TV reports. The 14-year-old's dad says school policy doesn't forbid images of guns on T-shirts; the dress code does prohibit clothing displaying "violence," but gun images are not listed specifically.

Once called, the police have to put everything down on paper, but they should have toned this down instead of raising the stakes ("arrested?" "charged?"). And the judge should throw out the case entirely.

This is NOT the proper use of the criminal justice system.

The Irony? "Protect Your Rights"

I don't care how disruptive this kid may have gotten, or how much he argued. He is a 14 year old middle school student. Discipline is the job of the administration and the administration failed because this should not have even been an issue. This shirt does not depict violence.

And it's West Virginia, for crying out loud. If they're anything like us Vermonters, kids wear these shirts or camouflage or other hunting gear all the time. What's the big deal?

Highly Ineffective Principal: HIPster of the Month.

Cops in school cause changes.

But not the changes everyone was hoping for.

Police are police. They've been trained in a certain way to do a job that is more often than not dealing with criminals, very often dangerous as hell, and involves the chance (remote though it may be) that the officer will have to use his weapon to kill someone. To keep checks and balances aligned, police operate under strict rules and the laws are written to protect the innocent, etc.

Students are not criminals. Students are not committing "assault" but rather are "horsing around".  Johnny didn't commit "assault and battery", he hit Jack because Jack said his mother was fat and neither boy was serious.

When the administration gives up its responsibility and hands over discipline to the police, then you have created a bad place. Putting a school under police patrol changes the attitude, mood and responses of the administration in the 99.995% of the day that doesn't involve actions serious to warrant police action. The rest of the time? That hired gun wouldn't do jack squat.

From NYTimes, via Joanne Jacobs:

Since the early 1990s, thousands of districts, often with federal subsidies, have paid local police agencies to provide armed “school resource officers” for high schools, middle schools and sometimes even elementary schools. Hundreds of additional districts, including those in Houston, Los Angeles and Philadelphia, have created police forces of their own, employing thousands of sworn officers.
. . . “There is no evidence that placing officers in the schools improves safety,” said Denise C. Gottfredson, a criminologist at the University of Maryland who is an expert in school violence. “And it increases the number of minor behavior problems that are referred to the police, pushing kids into the criminal system.”

Joanne:

In the wake of Newtown, many districts are hiring police officers to guard schools. But once they’re on campus, cops usually end up enforcing discipline. We are criminalizing our children for nonviolent offenses,” Wallace B. Jefferson, the chief justice of the Supreme Court of Texas, said in a speech to the Legislature in March.

And you wonder why the kids don't take the administration all that seriously. It has abdicated in favor of the guy with the gun.

When a 14-year-old boy “angrily” threw a football at another boy’s leg, middle school officials called the police, who arrested the boy for assault. The other boy was not injured. There was no real explanation as to why the incident was considered serious enough to involve police. The police report states that the unnamed juvenile suspect appeared “angry.”

Data-Driven is Driving out the Good Ones

from Jay Mattthews:

Cotton worked hard. He said his evaluations from classroom observers got better as the year went on. But his students failed to outdo their suspiciously high fourth-grade scores to save his job. Those test results counted 50 percent in Cotton’s final evaluation.

He might have been a lousy teacher, but most first-year teachers need a lot of practice to get this job right. It takes about three years to catch up to the standard. It makes no sense to toss him under the bus.

The data requires me to be 
stupid, that's why.

The test maker sees evidence of cheating in the previous year's answer sheets, for a "suspicious number of wrong to right erasures". A former teacher is fired for cheating, or as the administration puts it, "is no longer at the school" because of  "a lapse of integrity".  What to do?  Fire the new guy because his more honest scores are too low, because you can fire a probationary teacher without cause or reason, because you will be "doing something", because "we will turn this place around".

Decisions must be data-driven instead of intelligence-based, apparently.