There may be exceptions, actually, but I really believe this in general. The main thing that stands in the way of that goal, though, is often administration. Of course not every student will cooperate, and of course not all students will pay attention, study, or do homework. Of course some will fail. For the most part, though, it doesn't mean they couldn't have passed.

Every teacher I know has heard about differentiated instruction. I know some supervisors have demanded multiple lesson plans for different students. Sometimes supervisors assume teachers have nothing to do and unlimited time. This is not a good approach. We have a lot to do, our work is important, and it's sad when we're burdened with wasteful nonsense.

Differentiation is a tough demand when you have 34 students in a class. Of course, class size tends to be overlooked by administration, and in fact when I go to grieve oversized classes, they fight to keep them that way. It's an ironic attitude from an organization that claims to put, "Children First, Always." Of course, the real meaning of that slogan is demoralizing and devaluing those of us who do the important work of teaching the children (the very children Moskowitz Academies would not accept on a bet).

I'd argue that differentiation is a fundamental human trait. Unless you are in possession of a remarkable lack of sensitivity, you treat people differently. I see, in my classroom, students who will challenge me. I'll let them do it, and I'll challenge them back. I have nothing to lose, really. If they manage to out-talk me, I must be doing a great job. I also see very sensitive and reserved students, students who need my understanding, students for whom a harsh word would be hurtful and damaging.

Then there is talk of assessment. I hear insane things from administrators about assessment. There is evaluative and non-evaluative (formative) assessment, evidently. Supervisors come into classes and trash teachers for failing to offer non-evaluative assessment. They write them up for it, failing to see the irony that they themselves have just failed to offer the formative assessment for which they advocate.
 
As for non-evaluative assessment, it too is often presented as a one-way street. The only way you can do it is if students have red and green cards. Green cards mean they understand, and red cards mean they don't. Or they use left and right hands. Left hand means they understand, and right means they don't. Or vice-versa. Who remembers?

I recently read a Danielson observation form criticizing a teacher for failing to use the left hand-right hand thing. Evidently this teacher was walking around looking at student work. The observer concluded there was no way the teacher could assess the quality of student work that way. I was amazed by this conclusion.

First of all, there is the underlying assumption that 15-year-old students will freely announce to their peers that they do not understand what is going on. There is the assumption that kids at that age are neither obsessed with nor concerned about the opinions of their peers. There are the further assumptions that students who do not know what is going on are aware of it, that they have not yet tuned out altogether, and that they are even listening when the teacher says raise this or that hand, or this color or that color card.

The very worst assumption, though, is that of the binary nature of understanding. You understand it or you don't. There are no degrees. There is no grey, only black and white. That's ridiculous. Once you understand that, you understand how absurd the criticism of looking at student work is. When I look at individual student work, I can offer individual advice. This sentence doesn't make sense. What were you trying to say? That's a good idea--please explain or build on it. This sentence doesn't belong in that paragraph. Eliminate it or start a new paragraph. This word doesn't need an apostrophe. Use a question mark here, please.

If everything is green and red, or left or right, your subject is pretty limited. I don't really want to be in your class if that's how you see things. And even so, if I'm the only student who doesn't get it, why do the other 33 students have to sit around and wait while you explain it to me?

You may as well give only true-false tests and hope for the best. If you're marginally more adventurous, you can give multiple choice tests. I was a pretty terrible high school student, but I loved multiple choice tests. I almost always passed them, whether or not I knew the answers. Now on an open-ended question I could spout a lot of wind, but I couldn't usually appear to know things I didn't. 

There is spectacular irony in the fact that our system demands that every one of our students take the same tests. I mean, if we're going to talk differentiation, how can it possibly exist when final assessment is exactly the same for everyone?

Every kid can learn, but not necessarily the same things in the same way. I'm glad to see that NY State has finally allowed some leeway for different students with different needs. It's a step in the right direction, but it isn't enough. Every kid can learn, but every kid can learn differently at different times. Some kids need more time than others. Some have learning disabilities. Some don't know English. A full 10% of our kids are homeless, and as long as we continue to ignore that, we won't be serving them no matter how often we give them the meaningless label of "college ready."

Learning is not binary, and it's not multiple choice either. It really is individual. The sooner administrators can understand that simple notion, the better we will serve our children.

The beginning of school is pretty exciting, but it’s also pretty frustrating. In my school, for example, there are over 200 oversized classes. I know because I teach four of them. These will mostly be worked out over the next week or so, so that’s not a disaster.

What really frustrates me are the constant changes that we experience. For example, there are 43 students in my afternoon class. A big issue is the fact that at least 15 of them passed that class, with me in fact, last year. To me, that’s an emergency. However, to the 30 other teachers in my department, their classes are the emergency. My problem doesn’t worry them at all.

So really, the only thing to do is wait and hope. You wait, and you hope that your class will come first, or soon, or optimally now. I mean, I’m ready. The issue is that I’m teaching a whole bunch of kids things they don’t need to know, and then when the kids who maybe need to know those things show up, well, I don't think I'm gonna go back to square one and start from "hello."

There's also the issue of the NYSESLAT test, the one that rates and places my kids. I've given and read the test for two years, and as far as I can tell, it has little or nothing to do with whether they know the language or not. So a whole lot of my students tested commanding, or some such thing, which means they are no longer entitled to ESL services. This is unfortunate, because some of them have never passed a single one of my modest teacher-designed tests.

Why might that be important? Well, there's a whole lot of talk about students being "college ready." Now, what that means to New York State is that the students got this grade on some Regents exam, and that grade on some other Regents exam. In fact it's wholly arbitrary and has no bearing whatsoever on whether or not they are ready for college. You know, just like answering questions that involve repeating what a teacher said, like in the NYSESLAT, does not necessarily make you fluent in English.

I taught English in colleges for twenty years, and I have a pretty good idea what they want students to be able to do in English 101. Basically, they'd like to see people write coherently. I personally favor coherent writing. In fact, when I teach grammar and sentence structure, things my kids don't know in English, it certainly helps them. Of course I'm not supposed to teach that. I'm supposed to hand them some book about Hammurabi's Code, or The History of Cement, and have them close-read and answer tedious questions.

Now that would be a great idea if my goal were to make them hate me, hate my class, and hate English altogether. But as I'm not a great thinker like David Coleman, I actually want them to look forward to coming to my class. I want my class to be a safe place, a place they can count on for support, a place where absolutely no one will make fun of their English.

David Coleman's gonna have to place a gun to my head, literally, to make me teach his tedious tripe. I think my oversized classes will get fixed, and I think the kids who passed last year will move up. Some of them, sadly, will move up way too high and lose their chance to learn what they really need to know.

But hey, how would Questar, or whatever company that designs the crap tests that place them there, make money to send their reps to gala luncheons if we didn't have those tests? What's good for business is good for America, and it's unpatriotic to suggest otherwise.

Isn't it?

There's a lot of talk about testing nowadays, and when UFT wishes to discuss it in the union paper, the first person they go to is E4E member Starr Sackstein. Sackstein says she doesn't want to prepare kids for tests, but rather for college. And after all, college readiness is a hallmark of Common Core and all the reformy folk who say our schools are failing.

That's certainly the direction in which we're moving. Personally, I lost seven class days to a newly extended version of the NYSESLAT exam, ostensibly to determine the English level of my students. Having now given the oral part a million times, and having read the written part, I'd argue it's a better measure of just how Common Corey the kids are.

When I teach, I don't aim for test prep or college readiness. For one thing, so-called college readiness is based on a hodge-podge of minimum standardized test grades that likely indicate little. Studies show that teacher grades are, in fact, a much more accurate indicator of ensuing success of lack thereof in college. I teach kids how to speak, write and understand English. I'd argue this is fundamental not only for college, but for life. I'd argue setting up kids to be happy and successful prepares them for college, if they choose college, whether they like it or not.

Of course, I'm not E4E, which is just one reason you won't be finding pearls of wisdom from me in the pages of NY Teacher. The other, of course, is that my philosophy on education is aligned more closely with Diane Ravitch than Michael Mulgrew. Unlike Mulgrew, I oppose VAM absolutely. I don't think it's OK if you dust it off, dress it up and call it a "growth model." I believe the American Statistical Association when they say teachers only affect test scores by a factor of 1-14%, and that using VAM can be counter-productive to good education. I don't believe in mayoral control, or school closings, or charter schools, or two-tier due process, or having teachers work under conditions of abject terror. I believe an appropriate response to meaningless and time-wasting tests is opt-out.

UFT leadership, as is their right, disagrees. That's why the E4E member is pictured in the story, and that's why E4E POV gets top billing. When it comes to fighting for more work for less pay, UFT desperately wants that seat at the table. That's why they cannily negotiated to get money everyone else got in 2010 by 2020. Not only that, but they managed to negotiate this with someone reputed to be the most left-leaning mayor in decades. And as if that weren't enough, we still have no idea how much we'll be paying to help the city, now flush, with health care costs.

But leadership has other priorities. I often get upset with Chalkbeat NY for running idiocy like how E4E got 100 signatures for more effective means of firing teachers, or whatever Gates money has them pushing for this week. It's even more disappointing to see the official UFT paper giving them top billing. I thought one purpose of a union was to seek better working conditions for working people, a group that will soon include our children and students.

I don't think that's what E4E wants, and it's unconscionable that they are promoted in the pages of our union paper.

But I never know what the hell it is that union leadership wants. Yesterday, I got an invite to spend a weekend with Randi Weingarten, TFA's Wendy Kopp, and reps from the Gates Foundation for the low, low AFT price of 50 bucks. I hadn't planned to write about the UFT's E4E feature, but invites like that make me feel like leadership thinks we'd do just about anything for 50 bucks.

There are words for people who do anything for 50 bucks, and none of them describe my profession.

Not yet, anyway.

Looks like the geniuses at NYSED have done it again. Even after they field test the questions, they still don't work, so they get to erase them. These, of course, are the tests written by Pearson, which are much better than tests you or I could write. After all, the folks at Pearson have never met any of your students, don't know them from a hole in the wall, and are therefore the only people on earth who are qualified to judge them, or you, or whether your schools stay open.

One of the coolest things about the state tests is that they set the cut scores after they grade them. So if John King says 70% of our kids are gonna fail, well, that's just the way it is. If they say you need to answer 50 questions to pass, and too many kids do it, they can say they need 55. Or if not enough kids pass, they can say they need 45, and so on. Nice work if you can get it, and when you can toss out any questions that skew your results the wrong way, your success is fairly assured.

Here's the thing--that's exactly why head ed. Merryl Tisch decided we couldn't grade our students' Regents exams. Some teachers, horror of horrors, were finding kids who scored 64, and finding ways to bump the scores up to 65. What an awful thing to do, when the kid who scored 64 could simply spend another year studying whatever it was he or she missed by one point. Spending an entire year agonizing over one stinking point builds grit, or rigor, or whatever the hell it is that we're supposed to want for our kids.

Now NY State doesn't go scrimping around for one stinking point. NY State determines what results it wants, and manipulates the scores so they prove whatever. Want all the kids to pass so you look like geniuses? Want all the kids to fail so you can give more schools to Moskowitz? Want to have a sudden improvement? Want a crisis? You can get anything you want in Merryl Tisch's restaurant.

Now, since NYSED blatantly twists the scores to do whatever, they kind of assume we will too. I mean, have you known people who lie and cheat and say any damn thing to suit their purposes? In my experience, people like that tend to suspect the worst of others. They're very free with accusations, usually angry ones, that other people behave as they do. So don't take it personally if NYSED doesn't trust you.

They don't trust anyone, since they can't trust themselves. Because they are a bunch of lying manipulative weasels, they assume we are too. The only bad thing is how many people believe it.

We're gonna have to do something about that.

I was pretty surprised, after having sat through the convoluted explanation of why parents love testing at the DA, that UFT leadership would muster the temerity to pass something resembling a resolution on testing. I went to a seminar on testing this week, and I can tell you the room was not feeling the love for it. There is, of course, AFT President Randi Weingarten's position that she does not oppose testing, but rather the high stakes opposed to it. That sounds good, until you realize they are more or less inseparable and that the position is therefore meaningless. That's precisely the sense I get from the UFT resolution.

In particular, there is this line:

RESOLVED, that the UFT affirms its support of standards and its support of multiple measures to assess student progress, evaluate teachers and gauge the success of schools; 

I mean, what does that say? First of all, as for standards, it says that Mike Mulgrew will still punch you in the face and push you in the dirt if you lay a stinking hand on his Common Core. We know those are the standards he supports, and despite his sarcastic talk about Bill Gates and flying saucers, we know in fact that hundreds of millions of Gates dollars are behind it. When is Mulgrew gonna wake up and realize Gates is not our friend? When is he gonna empathize with the children labeled as failing due to developmentally inappropriate nonsense? 

What are multiple measures? They are in fact, the use of VAM, student test scores to evaluate teachers. The American Statistical Association estimates teachers move test scores from 1 to 14%. Mulgrew openly admits he doesn't understand these formulas, and I wish he'd openly admit about more things he doesn't understand. I don't understand why he went to Albany and helped negotiate a law that made test scores part of our assessment. I don't understand why he never considered the absurdity of music teachers being judged by English tests, whether or not they happen to be students taught by said music teachers. 

And this resolution clearly affirms support for evaluating teachers on such measures. Though Randi Weingarten has openly said, "VAM is a sham," nowhere in this resolution is it repudiated. The original resolution sought to "eliminate high stakes testing." That's pretty clear. UFT says they shouldn't be used to much, we maybe ought to do some other stuff, that we ought not to increase the weight of standardized testing, and so forth. 

Parents are sharp. Parents know all about these tests. They know that the state sets the cut scores and makes them look any damn way they please. Parents remember when the test scores were inflated, when every New York child was above average, when the New York Times reported the tests were dumbed down a full year after Diane Ravitch noticed it. She was right then and she's right now. Kids are overtested, VAM is junk science, and it's ridiculous to condemn schools full of high needs kids as failing simply because they don't get great test scores. It's particularly ridiculous with the Common Core tests, expressly designed to make our public schools appear to be failing. 

Personally, I find the following particularly offensive:

WHEREAS, setting standards is also a natural and appropriate part of education, as without them, students who may be struggling - such as English language learners, students from high-poverty neighborhoods or students with special needs - can fall through the cracks;

These are precisely the students whose schools we've sat by and watched as they close. These are the kids with whom I work every day. The tests they take are inappropriate, have been so for years, and are only getting worse. From what I hear, the placement tests are beginning to resemble Common Core tests. ESL students have particular needs that are not being met. The best tests my kids take are the one I write. It's not because I'm a brilliant writer of tests, it's simply because I see these kids every day, and base the tests on what they really need to learn. I write on each test how much each answer is worth. I grade it by the set rules, and usually give it back the next day. We go over it in class, and kids can say where they need to improve and how to do it.

That's a whole lot different from some test for which you sit hours, never get back, never see what you got wrong, and never even know whether or not the questions are just practice for Pearson. What stand is UFT leadership instructing the loyalty oath signers to approve here?

I'm not really sure. They've been concurrently for and against so many things for so long I just can't tell anymore.

I've been attending curriculum development workshops all week. We're looking at Common Core, without which no sentient being can function, and one of our sub-categories is rubrics. Yesterday we created some of our own.

I'll be frank. I have never liked rubrics. The first time I saw them was when a new, two-day, four-composition English Regents exam came out. I read the grading rubrics and got a general idea of what levels 1-4 meant. From then on I marked more or less holistically. I used to know one teacher who treated the rubrics with great reverence and examined them quite thoroughly. It was very rough partnering because by the time you finished a class set of essays this teacher would be on number 2 or 3, if you were lucky.

I've been teaching for 30 years. I'm pretty good about reading papers. I comment on them and offer advice as needed. One of the most frustrating things, to me, is watching a kid look at the paper, or not, and then crumple and toss it away. More motivated kids tend to reflect a little more. My question is this--after I spend time writing a rubric, who's to say kids wont toss them away too?

I kind of understand the thinking. There's got to be a way to get a good grade. What the hell is this teacher looking for? And it's true there are conventions, and mechanics, and standard usage. I like paragraphs and organization, and I like being able to easily understand things. But during the presentation I kept hearing words like "grapple" and "complex." The word "simple" is used as a pejorative. I think Pete Seegar said, of iconic American songwriter Woody Guthrie:

Any damn fool can get complicated. It takes a genius to attain simplicity.

People don't still sing This Land Is Your Land because they want to grapple with complex ideas. They sing it because it's direct and simple, because it hits you like an arrow to your heart. Still, dedicated Gates-o-philes want to measure things with lexiles and make kids read train schedules instead of To Kill a Mockingbird.

If I'm forced to use rubrics to rate my kids' essays I'll do it. I do, after all, get paid for this stuff. But I'm more comfortable issuing general checklists, which kids understand better, and then demanding particular and different things from particular and different kids for rewrites. Isn't that actually the elusive differentiation of instruction we hear about?

And, in fact, the essays and projects are fine, but we still have tests that overshadow and override them. No matter how many projects they do, my students, who don't necessarily know English yet, can't graduate until they pass an English Regents exam that tests very little of what it is they actually need to know. Grappling with complex text is not their first priority, and I'd argue it ought not to be the first priority of native-born kids either. That's what you do way better after you learn to love and appreciate reading, and something you do when you need to. It's not remotely how you teach. 

How can we differentiate instruction if the test is always the same, and the evaluation is always the same? In the quest to quantify everything, we're producing a lot of rules. It's hard for me to see, though, how we're producing critical thinking or better-equipped kids, unless our ultimate goal is to make them take more and more standardized tests.

In all the discussion of higher standards, I doubt the "reformers" have given much consideration to the complexities of motivation.

Some "reformers" seem to think that students who fail will seize the day.  They will harness their inner grit, work harder than ever and power their way to success.  Some may.  Most will not.  Many will wonder what is the purpose of trying.  Many will grow resentful.  Some will shut down their young minds.  These tests and the people who make them do a disservice to humanity.

I learned my first year on the job that a classroom test which fails nearly everybody represents a failure on the part of the teacher who created the test.  Teachers must deal in realities, meet students where they are and try to raise them up.  It is no good to aim far over students' heads to try to smugly prove one's own "smarts."  When NY State sets cut scores to fail 70% of its 2013 Common-Core test takers, the State turned a blind eye to reality and, itself, failed.

Some reformers seem to think that everything meaningful must be measured under conditions of time-pressure.  They think students will be motivated to show off their best stuff.  But, many kids can't sit for that long, let alone, for six days of testing.  They have young minds that wander and sometimes their legs need to do so, also.  Words and numbers may swim on the page.  Kids may over think some questions and tune out others.  They may grow nervous, agitated, fidgety and uncomfortable.  The classroom teacher best understands a child's academic strengths and weaknesses, not a cold, cruel and calculating standardized test.  These tests and the people who make them do a disservice to humanity.

Some "reformers" think that students will be motivated by the promise of becoming "college and career ready."  With the price of college and the lack of meaningful careers, however, the promise may prove false.  Reformers tout their own definition of success, measured primarily in terms of test points and, ultimately, salary figures.  It fails to motivate me.  I don't deal in their definitions, nor do most of the people I know.  To do so would be a disservice to humanity.

Thank goodness we have great thinkers like Merryl Tisch working for us. If it weren't for her, teachers would still be grading Regents exams of their own students. Back in the bad old days, that would translate into rampant corruption. Sometimes, in fact, a bunch of evil teachers would look at a grade of 64 and try to find ways to make it a 65.

Obviously that's unacceptable. It's vital that any kid with a grade of 64 be forced to go to summer school, or take another year of that course, or whatever it takes to learn that this is a rigorous world. Because this world is not about curiosity or joy, but rather rigor and grit (unless your father is Andrew Cuomo, Bill Gates, Barack Obama or John King, but that's another story). In public schools, we let kids know life is filled with tedium and unnecessary nonsense. Otherwise, how will we persuade people to make careers at Walmart?

Since Merryl Tisch has determined that public school teachers are a bunch of lowlife animals, unworthy of the public trust, we can't allow their favoritism to sully our practice of giving kids grades of 64. We've placed incredible pressure on teachers to have their kids pass tests, and it's important that we preclude their giving any comfort or aid to the kids they work with. Again, it's kibbles and bits. Or rigor and grit. Or something we need to teach the kids who don't go to Montessori schools, like John King's kids.

In NYC, we've taken this thinking to a whole new level. One year, we took all the papers to Connecticut or someplace, and teachers couldn't even touch the physical papers. Unfortunately, some of them fell off the truck or something before we could scan them. I guess that meant more rigor and bits for the kids who just had to take the test again.

Now it's different. Before, city teachers would sit and grade papers. Now, they travel to other schools and do it. But for some reason, it just doesn't get done on school time. Therefore we now pay teachers to grade the papers of kids from other schools. How much? Who knows? But friends tell me they're offered all sorts of extra hours to do what used to get done on school time.

I get emails from the DOE offering me hours if I'll go grade English Regents exams. I don't do it because I'm not at all interested in reading papers of strangers. But a lot of people need the money and they have no problem getting enough people to do it. Is that a good use of taxpayer money?

I'm a taxpayer, and I don't think so. Why should we pay extra just to make sure more kids fail?

I'm really curious why not one education writer has even noticed this. It would make a great story if some enterprising writer could find out how much extra money the city pays in per-session in order to maintain this idiotic policy.

But I guess with Campbell Brown out attacking tenure as the civil rights issue of our time, there just isn't enough space.

The new Common Core test scores are about to come out, and are anticipated to be a disaster. This, naturally, will give further credence to the corporate-created myth that our schools are in crisis and need to be "reformed," despite the fact that CC itself is quite reformy. The fact that no one actually knew what would be on the tests is of no importance, nor is the fact that this system has never been proven, let alone tested, anywhere.

The papers will write editorials about "failing" schools, and will revel in this as proof that unionized teachers are goofing off when they should be teaching. Of course, since no one knew what would be on the tests, no one could prepare students for the tests. And, of course, we don't really know what passing or failing these tests establishes.

In fact, even today, elementary and middle schools haven't got a curriculum for this all-important program. The thing about reformy programs is they are absolutely urgent. That's why we can't wait to find out whether or not they work. In fact, in the case of things like VAM and merit pay, the fact that they have failed everywhere they've been tried is no reason to stop using them. In times of crisis, we must do whatever Bill Gates says we must do, no matter how counter-productive or idiotic it is.

So despite the fact that these tests have not been established to determine anything whatsoever, they will be used to place teachers on a fast track to unemployment, one of the long-cherished goals of reformy people everywhere. So what if we vilify a few more city teachers for no reason whatsoever?  As long as we can fire them, we're making progress.

Now I don't know whether or not these tests will establish anything. But when the scores are as abysmal as projected, they'll be used as a battering ram to trash working teachers. Why on earth didn't teachers prepare kids for the tests they had never seen? Why didn't they spend a little time going over the material that didn't exist?

And, of course, in schools with high numbers of learning disabled and ESL students, the scores will be lower, and reformy Arne Duncan will press for their closure. Never mind that every school targeted for closure has had high numbers of such students. That's just a coincidence. It must be the fault of the unionized teachers.

It can have nothing to do with the lack of planning and preparation. We are simply to assume that Common Core is wonderful, despite the fact there is no evidence whatsoever.

Because reformy Arne Duncan says so, and that ought to be enough for anyone.

I spent several days over at Bayside High School reading English Regents exams. I was entrusted with this task because I knew none of the kids whose papers I graded, and therefore was not prejudiced. I was "disinterested," which is apparently a desirable quality in a teacher nowadays. Because I did not care one way or another about the kids whose papers I read, my keen eye was somehow more accurate.

Thank you for your time and effort in serving as a scorer for Regents Distributed Scoring. Your commitment contributed to the scoring of approximately 220,000 exams across this city.

If you have any feedback about the process, please let your principal know.


Thank you.

Office of Assessment

New York City Department of Education

I'm particularly interested in that last sentence. They appreciate my commitment, but they're letting me know they don't want to hear from me. And what can I tell my principal? What difference would it make to him if the kids from school X wrote great essays, or if the kids from school Y wrote poor ones? He's probably concerned with the kids from our school.

Here's what I would tell him---the kids I know best attend our school. I've been reading their papers since the day they arrived here. I know them better than the strangers on the other side of town and I can assess their work better than any "disinterested" party ever could. If I can't make decisions about them because, yes, I care about them, then it's time to take children away from their parents.

Clearly parents care about their kids and want the best for them. By the preposterous logic of NY State, kids ought to be shuttled off to strangers who are "disinterested." And that's what I'd like to tell the DOE.

But they've clearly told me they don't want to hear about it. They're far too busy putting "Children First, Always," to bother listening to the voices of their teachers.

Leonie Haimson has a great new piece pointing out that the preposterous things we demand from American children don't apply to the kids of the President of the United States. Sasha and Malia attend the Sidwell Friends School, where they are not subject to high-stakes tests, and where they enjoy small class sizes. Obama was very vocal in criticizing Romney for opposing reasonable class sizes, yet his Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, did the same thing months earlier.

One would think this would suggest a change in Education Secretaries for term two, but one would be mistaken. Many public school parents and working teachers are upset with his insane and non-science-based policies, but it appears we're headed for more of the same. I often question why the NEA and AFT supported a second term for such policies and I get varying responses. One is that Romney would have been worse. Indeed, Romney supported not only all the crap Obama supports, but also vouchers. However, Obama's education policies are pretty bad, as evidenced by supporters like Jeb Bush.

The other talking point I get from union reps is that Obama has said many positive things about class size, but again he never refuted Duncan's contradictory statements. More importantly, there has been absolutely no action to support these words. Also, Obama has spoken out against excessive testing, but policies like Race to the Top and Common Core will almost certainly exacerbate the problem. Sad to say, his words look very much like lip service, and, unless they are accompanied by deeds, will surely be meaningless.

Would it have been tougher for a GOP President to have enabled such things? Probably. Democrats may have opposed such nonsense on principle had it been suggested by a Republican. But we are Barack Obama's Sister Souljah moment, and nonsensical VAM evaluations will surely result in teachers being fired for no reason whatsoever. However, now that Democrats have jumped on the "reform" bandwagon, this is a tough issue for us. Until these programs fail, as they certainly will, and enough people notice it, which may or may not happen, we're stuck here.

We missed a golden opportunity by not making demands before endorsing Obama. LGBT and immigrant groups extracted concessions from this President, and I marvel day after day why our union leaders, in what promised to be a very close election, did not deem this worth negotiating over.

I've had a few people implore me to do that over the last few weeks. The first time, I was discussing Walcott's scheme to override arbitrators so he could fire teachers based on not only unproven, but plainly rejected allegations. This person said it was unseemly for me, as a teacher, to stand up for adults, and that I should focus only on the kids.

Yesterday I was chided for complaining about politicians and their wacky antics. Why can't I just focus on helping the kids? Why am I so negative?

This seems to be a favorite argument of those who claim to put children first. A huge flaw in this particular argument is the fact that people like me spend our working lives with said children, and we don't sit in classrooms lecturing them about our political views, whatever they may be. Another is the fact that those of us who care about these kids know they will grow up one day. Would it be responsible for us, as teachers, as parents, to ignore the world into which we're sending our children?

I teach 100% high-needs kids, and it's my job to make sure their needs are met. I'm hampered by the imposition of idiotic high-stakes tests that don't even measure what my kids need most. They lose valuable time that could be devoted to addressing their needs, and are likely placed in more remedial college courses as a direct result. There's nothing these remedial courses can offer them that I couldn't give them in high school.

By debasing the teaching profession to a test-prep, low-security, Walmart model we not only hurt teachers, but also children. First, we're offering them lower quality and less dedication. For many of us, teaching is not just what we do, but who we are. We're not here to pad our resumes for a couple of years before we move into making real money. More importantly, by eviscerating what teachers have worked for for decades, we're removing a very viable path to middle class for kids like those we serve.

If we care about kids, if behooves us to take our heads out of the sand and stand up for things that will help ensure their future. That most certainly includes leaving them more opportunities, specifically including the opportunity to serve those who come after them by teaching them.

It's incredible to read that even 4-year-olds are now taking tests, due to the brilliance of common core. No more of this play nonsense, no more discovery, and no more fun for children. Unless, of course, they go to schools like Sidwell Friends, where the president's kids, and the VP's grandchildren go. For the rest of us, it's get ready for a life of sheer drudgery as a Walmart associate, and no wonder the Walmart folks put their big bucks behind this.

My daughter took four days of standardized tests called the Terra Nova when she was in kindergarten. Granted, she was five rather than four, but I was very surprised by it. When I got the results, I was even more surprised. My daughter, who certainly did not know how to read, was deemed excellent in reading. However, she had no English language skills whatsoever. Now I'm not a testing expert, having never actually run a hedge fund, but to my limited understanding reading is an English language skill, and a rather vital one.

I went to the school and spoke with the teacher, who told me these results were typical of the class. Apparently, the reading skills test had been given the first day, when the kids were focused. The English skills test was given on the last, when the kids were well beyond their comfort level. The teacher clearly had as much regard for the test as I did, and had no choice but to administer it.

Of course kids at that age should be pushing trucks on the floor, blowing bubbles in their milk, and out playing with their friends. But in this test-oriented society, as we fervently try to erase the twentieth century in our drive to bring back feudalism, that's unlikely to occur.

But it's nice to see pieces like this one by Tim Clifford featured in Schoolbook. Apparently there are people paying attention, wanting to add real value and engagement to education. The more of us who push back against the rantings of corporate-backed garbage designed to reduce our children to automatons, the more likely we are to capture the limited attention of a country more focused on American Idol than the education of its children

These are the interesting times of the apocryphal Chinese curse, but there are those of us who are standing up, and what we lack in money, we have in numbers. Parents, teachers and students have a common cause, and that is what's good enough for Obama's children and Biden's grandchildren--reasonable class sizes, worthwhile instruction, focus on education rather than test and punish nonsense--is good enough for our children and grandchildren too.

At the AFT Convention, the exalted meeting place in Detroit for UFT members who've been invited to join the Unity Caucus, there will be two resolutions. One will be in protest of excessive testing. The other will be in support of the Common Core. Exactly why the AFT needs to support Common Core, as it's already been accepted by many states, is a mystery to me.

But if you're going to oppose excessive testing, perhaps supporting a measure that will see kids tested 9 times a year is not precisely the best way to go. I personally do not support Common Core. For one thing, anything that exists because Bill and Melinda Gates want it is likely not good for working teachers. For another, it's unconscionable that teachers are not trusted to design their own tests and assess their own students. If we're really that unreliable and untrustworthy, we may as well be replaced by Bill's virus-ridden, ever freezing computers.

Are we schizophrenic or something? Do we have multiple personalities? Do we support excessive testing or do we oppose it? I oppose it, and that's another reason to oppose Common Core.

It's kind of upsetting to know that my view will not be represented at the AFT convention. In fact, the only UFT members at the convention will be those who've signed a paper agreeing never to disagree with the Unity position in public. That's hardly representative of working teachers, and hardly helpful to us.

If union leadership wants to support this, oppose that, or even take contradictory positions, that's fine. What is not fine is their apparent disinterest in consulting with those who espouse other points of view. This was taken to an extreme when those who declined to genuflect to Bill Gates last time were ridiculed at the convention. While I don't expect Bill to make a return visit, Common Core is a notion he and his billions have stuffed down the throats of the American people. Quite frankly, it doesn't need any help from us. Supporting it will not cause those who hate and vilify us to stop doing so.

If union leadership wishes to consult with representative members, rather than simply put on a show, I'm available, and ready, willing and able to provide many concerned reinforcements.

This notwithstanding, I'm a realist, and I shall sit while I wait.

Today, while I was marking papers, someone came into our office with a question about Spanish. I thought they were looking for someone to speak Spanish, so I volunteered. After all, it seemed like a nice break from reading papers.

But it turned out that there was a problem with the city's Spanish test. The instructions said pick two questions from 31, 32, and 33, but question 33 turned out not to exist. This posed a problem for our young test-takers.

I spoke to some Spanish teachers who told me that 33 would have been a picture, and that their students were prepared to write about a picture, but there was just no darn picture.

And this, dear readers, is what is wrong with standardized testing. Last week, I gave a final exam, and left some words out. I was able to write them on the board when a student pointed it out to me. However, no one can correct the city, since Mayor Bloomberg already knows everything. Otherwise, why would he have all that money?

So city kids, I suppose, have to work it out for themselves. If Mayor Bloomberg's test designers can't be bothered to check whether or not they included the last question, the last question simply doesn't belong there. After all, 8 of 13 members of the PEP are selected by Mayor Bloomberg, and if they say the mayor is never wrong, that ought to be good enough for anyone.

Could be my school got a bad batch. But the question is, who's accountable? In Mayor Bloomberg's ideal New York, teachers would be fired for offenses they'd already been cleared of. Will heads roll for this, or does "accountability" apply only to unionized teachers?
Update: A commenter states this happened at another school. Did it happen at yours? Any Spanish teachers out there

Update 2: Tweet from Leonie points to what looks like confirmation.

This morning, I'm off to read 5 million papers. Our ESL department is going to read the papers of our ESL students. They are all taking the Regents exam, because NY State has decided, in its infinite wisdom, that there is no difference between kids who were born here, kids who have spoken English all their lives, and kids from other countries, who have spoken English only weeks or months.

It's important that we have a standardized test because teachers can't be trusted to construct their own. I, for example, would never exhibit the wisdom of NY State. I would test my kids on things like grammar and usage, the things that show up in their writing, the things they will be tested on when they enter college, and the things they will take no-credit remedial courses to correct. I'm thoroughly corrupt like that, teaching them what they really need rather than what Pearson or Common Core says they need.

And next year, because teachers cannot be trusted even to grade tests that don't measure what kids need, I'll be grading tests from somewhere else. That way, I will not be personally involved with the kids whose papers I grade, and will have no stake in whether or not they pass or fail. This is because I, like all teachers, actually want my kids to pass and therefore cannot be trusted to evaluate them. Kids will benefit from graders who don't know them, who couldn't care less whether they do well or not. At least that's the thinking from the geniuses who run education in New York.

So, as a thoroughly corrupt teacher, as the state assumes all of us to be, I bid you good morning.

Is NY State right to abolish the Global History Regents exam? Lots of us have had our fill of standardized testing, and would like to see far less of it. Of course that's not the case, as the state plans all sorts of nonsense, largely to assess teachers. Kids will be spending hours of potential learning time indulging in nonsensical junk science, to appease those who wish to fire teachers by any means necessary.

The problem with this proposal is not that there will be one fewer test. The problem is the rationale behind eliminating it--that too few students pass it. As the test with the worst record, it needs to be eliminated, disappeared. There is a counter proposal to make two tests rather than one, but that will cost more money. It's kind of amazing where they choose to make cuts--like the January Regents exams that not only allowed kids to graduate on time, but also boosted school stats.

That, of course, was a huge waste of money, as the notion here is to close as many schools as possible. This global exam, though, not only made the schools look bad, but also made the state look bad. That is unacceptable. So, like Geoffrey Canada dumping an entire cohort rather than deal with scores that make his school look bad, the state is exercising its absolute power rather than deal with a problem.

If the state were taking a reasonable approach, like empowering rather than vilifying teachers, we could present history in a way that might actually interest our kids in it. We could incorporate current events, and try to develop involved citizens. Or, we could simply dump the tests, hope interest in history wanes, fire hundreds of teachers who don't contribute to valuable test-taking, and try to raise a generation of citizens who believe people like John King, Mike Bloomberg, Andrew Cuomo, and Arne Duncan actually work for them rather than zillionaires like Bill Gates.

AFT President Randi Weingarten has an interesting article up at the AFT website. Ms. Weingarten suggests we drop our "fixation" on testing. She points out that this is not what students need, and that there are other forms of learning that will better benefit them. She even cites the President, who used his "bully pulpit" to say much the same thing at the SOTU speech.

I couldn't agree more, actually. Learning is more about doing than testing, and no one remembers, "Oh, that Miss Wormwood. Boy, could she give a multiple choice test. I lived to blacken those circles..."

Yet Barack Obama has enabled a sea of testing, first by appointing basketball expert Arne Duncan as Secretary of Education, and next by allowing his baseless programs like Race to the Top to promote testing even more. In fact he boasted about how, with a relatively small amount of federal money, he got cash-starved states to jump up and down and show just how "reformy" they really were.

And Ms. Weingarten, despite her principled opposition, supports the reelection of this President, just as she supported mayoral control and its renewal, despite its clear inability to help New York's teachers or students.

So it's hard, for me, to understand how Obama and Weingarten are opposing such programs by supporting them. It's positively Orwellian. I'd love to get behind both of them and help them achieve their professed goal of halting our testing obsession. But as long as they keep giving lip service to good ideas while energetically promoting bad ones, that's going to be very tough indeed.

When I see stories like this one, I'm not remotely surprised. When you put a gun to the head of a principal and say, "Get higher grades or I'll kill you," that principal may just decide the hell with all that achievement nonsense--I'm just gonna pass everyone any damn way I can. Then, said principal will pressure staff to do the same.

In fact, this has been going on for years, in varying degrees, in just about every school in the city. Teachers are told it's their fault if kids fail, and run around trying to figure ways to pass every kid. So what if he's asleep every day. He passed that test three months ago. Sure he copied, but that showed initiative.

This mania for testing will not end well. It's not at all surprising that kids with apparently good grades are not college ready. But when it's entirely the fault of the school when kids fail, that's what you get. Who wants to have 500K per year Geoffrey Canada label you a "dropout factory." Canada doesn't tolerate such things, which is why he dumped an entire grade rather than have them make him look bad. And, of course, if we had such preposterous options, we'd always look good too.

It's a whole lot easier to blame teachers and schools than to eradicate poverty. In fact, the biggest "reformers," like Mayor4Life, while constantly bitching about those darn teachers, actively contribute to poverty by firing working people. At the same time, they insist millionaires can't spare another dime in taxes.

With such patently ridiculous values, if they can be called that, it's not surprising that they can't imagine anything to improve education other than constantly rising test scores, meaningless though they may be.