All Testing All the Time

33 Comments:

• 1 R. Skibins
  · Nov 1, 2005 at 2:13 pm

  99.9% of staff development, professional development, professional detention, or whatever else you wish to call it, is completely ineffective and useless. Speaking of testing, why must we grade the standardized math tests in March? I thought that it was a violation to have us mark the tests. Once again, Weingarten and Co. have sold us out!

• 2 redhog
  · Nov 1, 2005 at 2:38 pm

  The reason they are doing it is the precise reason they do each and everything else affecting teachers: Because they can!
  Sometimes the truth is brazenly and exhaustively simple.
  R. Skibins has made some creditable assertions, but his attacks on Randi are torpedoes against himself. I’m sorry.

• 3 northbrooklyn
  · Nov 1, 2005 at 7:28 pm

  People who become administrators do so because they can not teach. We all know that a test prep lesson is a piece of cake. We can all do it in our sleep…and I bet we have. If you’re an administrator what are you going to do during the time you are suppose to do the teaching? Test prep!

• 4 F
  · Nov 1, 2005 at 7:44 pm

  We are doing test prep ALL DAY. We are also expected to get our libraries leveled. I informed one of the higher ups that unless we get some time on Tuesday to do it, it won’t get done anytime soon.

  We have already had 2 Monday PDs on test prep. It’e excessive.

  As for scoring, in my region they are paying teachers to come in for three days on the February break and score the test. That’s going to be something people are itching to do. Not.

• 5 Bklynteacher
  · Nov 1, 2005 at 8:34 pm

  When are they going to ASK the teachers what they would like to have in PD?

  There are many teachers in every school who I’m sure would volunteer to share their expertise with their colleagues.

  This is just common sense! But since when does that mean anything…

• 6 msfrizzle
  · Nov 1, 2005 at 9:03 pm

  In my school, they DID ask us what we wanted for PD, and we responded in surveys. Then a schedule was made. Most of the PD sessions will be led by some of the more experienced teachers, and will include time for teachers to apply what they’ve learned to their lesson plans for upcoming weeks. Some sessions are better than others, but it’s all better than top-down time-wasting test prep junk like I experienced in the other school where I worked.

  I’m saying this to show that it IS possible to have high quality PD, and it IS possible for an administration to do something sensible.

  I’ve been wondering about those test-grading days in March, too… they are the most ridiculous, miserly way to waste teachers’ time that I can imagine. And this from the same administration that wanted to ban fun field trips, Halloween parties, and the like in the interest of the kids spending more time in the classroom. I guess it’s okay to send the kids home if you’re too cheap to pay someone to score the tests.

  If you want to give tests, pay people to grade them. Duh.

• 7 mshalo18
  · Nov 1, 2005 at 9:16 pm

  To all the teachers who work weekends, and especially those will who give up precious February break days to grade tests:
  DO YOU REALIZE YOU ARE SETTING A PRECEDENT? When you work on weekends and breaktime, you are essentially sending the city a message that you don’t need, or want, this time off. Just wait til the next contract- February break will be gone for sure. Everyone needs to stop giving more than they have to- you get to your classroom 5 minutes before the bell, and leave with the kids. Don’t give them ONE MINUTE MORE than you are contractually obligated to give. You can STILL be effective without giving your life’s blood to the NYC DOE. In fact, some down time away from the job is healthy.

• 8 NYC Educator
  · Nov 1, 2005 at 9:44 pm

  It’s very bold of Unity writers to complain about wasteful teacher training.

  It’s remarkable they perceive no irony whatsoever in the fact they’ve signed up 80,000 teachers to three additional days of the same crap, two of them in August, for nothing.

  That’s precisely how much our time is worth to them.

• 9 R. Skibins
  · Nov 1, 2005 at 10:41 pm

  Ms. Frizzle: We were also asked what we wanted in my school. The administration is doing what they want to do anyway.

  Mshalo18, NYC Educator: Right on!

  Redhog: The “attacks” on Weingarten are justified. Besides, how is telling the truth about someone an attack?

• 10 Jackie Bennett
  · Nov 1, 2005 at 11:32 pm

  Ms. Halo18 –

  Your posting just doesn’t seem to reflect the real lives of teachers. I guess there are some teachers who work strictly for the employer, by the contract, by the clock. I’m not sure who they are, though. I’ve never met them. The teachers I’ve known over the past two decades in two very different schools tend not to think about contracts, clocks, or, for that matter the DoE at all. Mostly they are simply leading professional lives in professional communities that happen to be overrun with kids. They go to proms, they attend basketball games, they go to graduations after hours. They answer emails at 11:00 on a Saturday night, and they show up at PTA meetings, or at the winter concert, even though it’s a Friday night in January There they are, it happens every year (I’ll bet it happens to you too, Ms. Halo) – and it’s January 8th, and you find yourself in a broken seat in an overheated school auditorium listening to some absolutely dreadful violins eek out the theme from Psycho – all because some hopeful child asked.

  That doesn’t make us saints or martyrs or Pollyannas, either. We are just doing our job, the way a doctor goes out to deliver a baby, or a lawyer stays up late working on a case. We don’t get the money or respect they get (we are, in a sense, a bastard profession) but most of the teachers I know would rather think of themselves like that – as professionals with a work life that is part and parcel of their larger life — rather than as laborers, by the contract on the clock.

  That doesn’t mean that contract and the union do not matter. In fact, I can’t imagine life in the DoE without it. The string of grievances in my wake will bear that out.

  But the contract – for most of us, it does not represent the maximum of what we will do, but rather, the minimum standards of decency to which we insist we are entitled. It’s a fight for dignity, not a fight for walking out the door at 3:09.

  Still, I understand the rage, and the reaction. The DoE insults us right and left with its egg-timed lessons, and its 37 minutes and one half minutes, and its productivity increases, as if Bloomberg were Ford and the children were a string of Model T’s. “They want a factory,” we are tempted to say. “Okay, then we’ll give them a factory. Give me a time card. Punch me out.”

  But for me the solution to that insult does not lie (lay?) in responding in ways that turn us into exactly what they seem to want us to become.

  You know that line in Joyce? Where we are told that the beleaguered young boy insists on “bearing his chalice through a throng of foes?” A lot of us, we’re just hanging onto the chalice. Which in our profession means keeping one eye on the power, beating it where we can and subverting it where we cant, and then, finally, closing the door on all of it, to teach.

• 11 Jackie Bennett
  · Nov 1, 2005 at 11:41 pm

  As far as the subject of this post goes (how does the DoE plan to fill an entire day with test prep), it’s an interesting question, and one I;ll bet the DoE can’t answer either. The fact is that the central DoE has only one tool in its box (to subvert a much-loved phrase of Ms. Farena’s), and once they’ve done the workshop model to death, they just can’t think of anything else. Unless it’s of course – what a surprise! — it’s test prep!

  It’s an indication of just how very bankrupt the whole damned system really is.

  But if they’re out of suggestions, they ought to just ask teachers. Teachers have all sorts of wonderful ideas about what to do on staff development, and good administrators know how to tap that. Let the teachers run staff development and all of a sudden staff development ends and the teachers don’t want to go home. Good leaders know that. Not, however, the central DoE.

• 12 mshalo18
  · Nov 2, 2005 at 7:27 am

  Jackie- I didn’t ask, nor do I want, to be perceived as a martyr or a Pollyanna. I’ve chaperoned proms, dances, gone to recitals, had kids join me in my classroom for lunch, gone to their Sweet 16′s years after they graduated, taught, counseled, and parented. And through it all, I never gave a moment’s thought to the contract, or the DOE, or what I was giving up personally. I did it because I felt it was the right thing to do. Well, guess what? I’ve had enough. I’m tired of the bureaucracy that has overridden the DOE- yes, it was always there, but not to the extent it is now. From one day to another, they can’t decide if your lesson is good, your lesson is bad, you’re lecturing too much, you’re teaching too little, your bulletin board looks great, no, sorry, today it looks like crap- it’s enough. I work in a WONDERFUL school with some of the hardest working teachers you’d ever care to meet-and they all share these sentiments. So, in the name of sanity, we do our jobs, and at the end of the day, we go home to our lives. If that makes us bad people, so be it- but I dare ANYBODY to come into our classrooms and tell us we’re bad teachers who aren’t doing right by our kids every single day.

• 13 Maisie
  · Nov 2, 2005 at 1:24 pm

  Regarding the test grading that several commenters have mentioned: it’s voluntary and paid.

  A DOE posting went up Oct 25 offering teachers and literacy coaches paid (per-session) positions to score the state ELA for Grades 3-8 (the state is taking over all grades testing this year) for three days over the February break. This is voluntary of course.

  The DOE took the action after a few years of individual and union complaints that the previous system of pulling out teachers to score these tests caused disruptions, forced coverages and doubling up in schools. This new system was devised to resolve that problem.

  Whether DOE can fill the 12,000 positions they’re asking for remains to be seen. And probably they’re planning to do the same thing for the 3-8 state math exam that will given in March.

  And for the record: I am not a member of the Unity caucus. I’m professional staff here.

• 14 Maisie
  · Nov 2, 2005 at 3:44 pm

  So professional development on the tests is test prep, then. And unless you are lucky and your school lets teachers guide the PD, it’s a lecture on test prep. My God, what a waste of time.

  Professional development around testing can show a school staff how to analyze student results at the classroom or even individual level. This is not even unusual–are the GROW reports still used in schools? They can do that. Scores can be mined to determine areas of weakness and strength, e.g., reasoning skills that more than a few kids didn’t grasp (and so could be retaught sometime in the year). You can look at patterns of improvement rather than absolute scores, and see if the patterns align with any demographic in the school, or any other trend that teachers may be concened about.

  Of course, you could not look at tests at all if teachers felt they had limited feedback value, and do PD on infusing arts into the curriculum or maybe just get the computers hooked up and working. It’ll be interesting to hear how the day goes–pls. share your experiences here. And at least use that Election Day to vote–be sure to express any displeasure you may feel

• 15 msfrizzle
  · Nov 2, 2005 at 7:06 pm

  mshalo18 – It seems to me that it’s a better precedent for only those teachers who choose to to grade tests, for extra pay, than to send the kids home and make ALL of us do it, which is what they’re doing with the Math test. It infuriates me that my time is going to be wasted grading tests that aren’t even in my subject area. If they want to give 17 tests a year, they’d better be prepared to pay someone to score them. I have no problem with people who want some extra cash stepping forward to score tests under those circumstances.

  It has also started to get on my nerves that I am constantly covering classes for math & english teachers who are out getting trained in every last detail of the tests. I don’t know if it’s avoidable, they do need to be up to speed on the tests, but I will say that in a tiny school like mine, having one teacher out makes a noticeable difference in the rest of our teaching burdens. And I have started to feel like the rest of us are handmaidens of the ELA & Math tests. We science teachers haven’t even gotten our scores back for the ILS exam – which happened almost 6 months ago (and which we graded more than 1/2 by hand)! – yet we have to spend a day learning to administer the ELA & Math test. Totally unfair.

• 16 Schoolgal
  · Nov 2, 2005 at 7:17 pm

  I am glad someone is writing about this topic. I seem to recall that when we voted on this SBO last year, there was a provision about teachers being able to select PD topics. Yet my principal made us go through 3 Mondays of hell rather than listening to our suggestions.

  I would appreciate it if someone could find the provision I am writing about and what can be done to make sure we get input.

  The sample ELA is also a joke. Not one essay was included on the new 5th-grade test. So what’s the point? It is only taking away prep time for the SS test as well as report cards and PTC.

  On another matter, if and when we go to an extended day, can an admin put 20 or more students in a class and then place a cluster, OTP, or para in the room and still call it a 10-1 ratio?

  That seems to be what is now being discussed at my school.

• 17 mshalo18
  · Nov 2, 2005 at 8:24 pm

  msfrizzle- I hear you about test grading. The ELA and Math have nothing to do with me (I’m a science teacher as well)- yet I had to help grade the practice ELA. However, when it came to grading the ILS, I had to beg, borrow, and plead for people to help me!

  My feeling is this- let the DOE figure out how to get the tests graded- it’s not our problem.

  (BTW, I haven’t seen ILS scores for my kids in 3 years!)

• 18 Jackie Bennett
  · Nov 2, 2005 at 10:16 pm

  Masie mentions the GROW reports above. It sounds promising, but I’m not so sure they are ultimately of any use.

  The way I understand it (and I could be wrong), the GROW reports aren’t based on all that many testing questions. Then, depending on the type of question the student got wrong (this part I’m more sure of), the GROW report indicates the reading sub-skill in which the student is deficient. If tests in general are a bit unreliable, I think figuring out sub-skills from a limited number of questions is probably a very shaky business indeed.

  But let’s say the tests are reliable and the tests are correct. The next step is (according to my old prinicpal, who loved GROW reports) to teach to that sub-skill. The sub-skill might be “making predictions,” “understanding words from context,” or “getting the main idea.” A teacher might even divide the students in her class by subskill and focus on different skills with different groups.

  The problem is this: I think the jury is very much still out on the notion that emphasizing reading sub-skills pays off after grade 2. I think the AFT magazine (or maybe it was somewhere else), did an article on research saying that that students are just fine with all the sub-skills so long as they have some handle on content. In other words, if a student reads an article about a bicycle on a particular grade level, he does not have comprehension problems, even if words are unfamiliar. All the skills fall right into place because he know about bikes. But if the article is about, say, Christopher Columbus on the same grade level, he falls to pieces. The implication of that might be that we need to stop worrying about skills and worry more about content. You can’t think if you have nothing to think with, that sort of thing. Ideas like that have been hashed out by plenty of educational experts but – possibly for reasons more political than pedagogical – they are not in favor with the current DoE.

  This in fact, is what I find so distressing about the DoE. It has implemented an entire way of teaching centered on reading (and math) skill development for grades well beyond grade 2, but it has de-emphasized content, even though there is no solid research (from my understanding) to buttress this approach. And it has implemented the skill drills almost uniformly. The DoE can talk about content-rich all it wants, but the mind-set top to bottom is on skills.

  Why is the DoE so sure it is right?

  Anyway, back to GROW. Like I said, first the tests on which GROW relies are probably very unreliable in determining reading sub-skills. Second, it may not pay off to teach sub-skill anyway. And then there’s the third thing.

  The third thing is this. In my admittedly limited experience with the reports (my own school, about two years ago), I noticed that kids seem to do just fine with questions that ask about things like main idea. Then they tend to fall apart on “words in context.” Why is that?

  Of course it may just be a reflection of the unreliability of the tests – in other words, it may mean nothing. But there’s another possibility. Could it be they fall apart on “context” because to get those questions right the student has to actually read the text? For some sub-skills, like main idea, skimming will do the trick. But “context” means the students must actually read a sentence, a paragraph, a whole darned text from the beginning to the end just to get the meaning of a word.

  So, if students don’t do well on “words in context” it might not simply mean that students are deficient in that skill. Rather, it might mean something much more radical – that students simply never really read, and – even worse – -that something happens in our classrooms that facilitates and enocurages their resistance to the printed page.

• 19 institutional memory
  · Nov 3, 2005 at 12:14 pm

  The Great Grow Scam

  Nowhere in the entire DOE is there a bigger scam than the Grow Report, another ripoff brought to you by Bush’s good buddies at McGraw-Hill.

  It’s nothing but a tarted-up version of an old-fashioned item analysis, based on too few questions of inconsistent difficulty and dubious reliability.

  The millions of dollars wasted on this well-marketed travesty would be better spent on books, field trips, tutoring, reduced class size, or any rational educational endeavor.

  Only in a misguided pseudo-data-driven era such as the one we’re living through could The Grow Report prosper. It should be trashed as soon as possible.

• 20 SRG
  · Nov 3, 2005 at 8:59 pm

  What’s the point of having pd on test prep when we’re not allowed to do it. My school has become strictly Teacher’s College. Test prep are considered (2) four letter words. The kids are so busy writing their “small moments” that they have no idea how to find the main idea. They also can’t spell because it’s forbidden to correct their spelling. We cannot write on their paper because it will damage their self-esteem. How will their self-esteem be when they score a level 1 on the state exams?

• 21 BronxTeacher
  · Nov 4, 2005 at 10:05 pm

  It seems to me that there IS no more education–that everything and anything in a school now revolves around test prep and percentages. What hell it must be now to be a student in these classes. I’m the teacher and I’m bored and sickened by test prep day in and day out. What happened to reading for joy? What happened to examining texts for truth? God in heaven! We are manufacturing test-taking experts who will never voluntarily pick up a book again in their lives, because they hate it so much.

• 22 northbrooklyn
  · Nov 5, 2005 at 10:42 am

  Maisie-I find union management to be pretty mysterious. What is the definition of professional staff and what is the defintion of Unity?
  I agree with everyone about the test prep stuff…if you add the worktime in the rooms of the teachers, plus the worktime of the students, then put it into monetary terms [salaries of teachers and an hourly wage for students] the amount of money spent on test prep is in the billions.
  But it does give everyone something to do…and it’s an easy day. My family schedules their visits to me around the testing days because we know I can slide into school the last minute and leave right away. I don’t have any work to do after school and I’m not setting anything up that would require my attention before/after school, i.e. trips, exhibits, multi-grade classes, anything having to do with real teaching. The more testing we have; the more family time I have.

• 23 firebrand
  · Nov 6, 2005 at 11:22 am

  Staff development is a joke It has been since, I’d say, 2000 or so. At least when we used to go to different schools for staff development we could take mini classes on things we were interested in. WE were able to get valuable ideas from fellow teachers. We were able to (at least the English teachers) get free books or teacher’s copies of books.

  Now all we do is sit in our schools and fart around with the arrangements of our desks,sit in boring meetings and wander around the building. Staff development days are completely useless.

  Now we have three more. I teach in a high school. I am in three rooms. Do you know how long it takes me to get those three rooms set up? ONE DAY. Do you know how long it took me to get the room set up…years ago when I was only in one room…? ONE DAY.

  Last year an hour and a half of our day after Labor Day staff development faculty meeting was devoted to our principal’s trip to Korea…granted I believe he went there for educational reasons…This year…we had an hour and a half of stories about a fish market in Seattle.

• 24 Bklynteacher
  · Nov 6, 2005 at 4:07 pm

  Firebrand

  Trust me, it’s a whole different ballgame in an elementary school (as far as classroom setup). Teachers have come in a week before (on their own time) so they could have their rooms ready. Leveled libraries, desk setup, meeting area,computer centers, etc. all take time to set up.

  They give you two days to set up but half of the time they make you sit through the same boring staff development they give every year.

  Glad I’m a cluster now. My room, like yours is ready in ONE day.

• 25 redhog
  · Nov 6, 2005 at 8:16 pm

  Why do teachers give up entire days to decorate their rooms? Why do they go to meetings during “prep” and lunch periods? Why do they run off materials for hours before and after the school day? Why do they reach into their own pockets to pay for materials with a 20 billion dollar DOE budget? Madness!

  A teacher whom I know well continues to spend 6 hours after school contacting parents and grading papers as he’s done for more than 30 years. He got a letter in file for being caught by an assistant principal,aged just enough to no longer go to a pediatrician, sitting at a desk taking attendance, rather than being on his feet, as mandated, for the full 90 minute period.

  Another teacher just got a letter threatening a “U” rating, as she’s been absent 3 days so far this year due to documented hardship. But the assistant principal has taken off the first several weeks of every school year for consecutive years to have some vanity procedures done.Principal has no problem.

  And another teacher is being counseled about attendance. She’s taken a few days off, with doctor’s notes. For years she came to school at 5:45 A.M. to answer the phones til the school day began at 8. Every day for years. Maybe 2000 hours of voluntary unpaid school service! For what gratitude??

• 26 Bklynteacher
  · Nov 7, 2005 at 6:38 pm

  Posting on this blog has given me a whole new appreciation for my administrators. What a nightmare it is out there for some of our colleagues.

  I have worked for 5 principals over 28 years. Some were worse than others but I have to say I never really had the kind of problems I’m reading about here.

  What’s going on? Is it the Leadership Academy graduates that are making conditions so difficult?

  Seems to me we need some strong Union representation in those schools. My administrators are good but the truth is my Union Rep definitely keeps them honest. I don’t know how this new contract will impact on that, though.
  She is not happy with the contract either. She thinks it will tie her hands in some cases now where she was definitely able to help out.

• 27 northbrooklyn
  · Nov 7, 2005 at 7:55 pm

  Bklynteacher-I could tell you stories that would curl your hair…Leadership Academy is just the newest manifestation of an administrative culture that goes back as long as I have been teaching. Here are two…a principal who used the astrological signs of her students and teachers to match them up for the new year. A principal who objected to my desire for a subscription to the nytimes and time for kids because she thought the daily news was on their grade level therefore better.
  As for dr’s, mine hasn’t been in the building more than twice in the 4/5 years he has been in position. He is completely incompetent and doesn’t know the contract-he will mislead you just because he has no knowledge. And yeah, complaints have been lodged to no avail.

• 28 Bklynteacher
  · Nov 7, 2005 at 8:19 pm

  Is there no-one else in the building who wants the job (Rep)? I figure no one else could be worse than the person you have described.

• 29 Bklynteacher
  · Nov 7, 2005 at 8:21 pm

  I just realized you were talking about the District Rep, not the school rep. How is the school rep?

• 30 Maisie
  · Nov 8, 2005 at 11:38 am

  Northbrooklyn:
  Sorry to be late replying. Unity is a political caucus within the UFT. It is composed of members who share a (roughly) similar outlook and political platform. The caucus supports candidates for union offices, such as president, VP, treasurer, etc. Randi Weingarten is a member of the Unity caucus and ran for president with their support. ICE (Independent Community of Educators) is another caucus of UFT members with a different outlook and candidates for union offices. I am not a member of the UFT (though I did teach some years ago). I am hired to do research and writing for the union, which makes me professional staff, an employee of the union, not of the DOE. So I wouldn’t offer my opinions pro or con on the contract, since I myself don’t vote on it. I generally blog on education policy issues.
  Clear as mud? (Hope a little better than that.)

• 31 northbrooklyn
  · Nov 8, 2005 at 7:20 pm

  The CL is great-new and inexperienced in the position but a seasoned teacher. It’s a whole other ballgame when you have to deal with the union management-they are the mirror image of the doe. As for the dr he’s a young guy and will never be removed by the members [because the cl are the ones who vote for or against-which I think just stinks] or by the executive board. Becoming a dr is like becoming pope. The faithful have nothing to do with your election, but you get to make their lives miserable until you decide to leave or die.
  Maisie-thanks for clearing that up-I don’t want to put you in an a difficult position but what research or writing does the uft require?

• 32 Maisie
  · Nov 9, 2005 at 12:46 pm

  Northbrooklyn:
  You’re kidding, right? I know you’re not. I think I expected your question. I am one of more than a dozen writers and researchers here. There is the newspaper staff (and I write for the paper too). There is testimony–to oversight bodies, government agencies, city council, state ed dept. etc; speeches (Randi and the other officers give dozens a month); newsletters (we publish a bunch of them); the main web site which has hundreds of pages, plus a second web site strictly on class sizes; not to mention legal writing (a little of which I do) such as briefs, fact-finding memoranda, amicus submissions etc.; and then internal briefs and statistical analysis (much of which I do) on test scores analysis, the latest debates on merit pay, low-performing schools, teacher retention, small schools, etc etc (this union plays an active role in advocating for education reforms, which is one reason I love working here); and then our own research using Excel and other software to determine things like number of teachers with different levels of experience, teacher attrition rates, teacher salary levels, school safety statistics and other data we maintain and update on our members since we cannot trust a lot of the DOE data these days. That’s all before breakfast!

• 33 Maisie
  · Nov 9, 2005 at 12:48 pm

  By the way… how was your professional development day yesterday? What did you learn about standardized test prep??