Circle the wagons, ma...

"Circle the wagons, Ma! I think I see a band of consultants ridin' down on us!"



Well, the inspectors are here with that "kicking ass and taking names" look on their faces. They're ducking into and out of classrooms so fast that I think I'm watching a Marx Bros. movie. All we teachers can do is sit in our Potemkin Village classrooms hoping that they don't look behind the newly decorated bulletin boards and discover the sham that we teachers "must be" (because why would they be here if we weren't?). I feel like a subjugated ward of the state.

However, they too are guilty of a sham. How can they possibly know what is the one (or two) right teaching steps that we should take to immediately turn our high school around - "Show more student work." ..."Use fewer 'teacher-directed' lessons in your class." Yeah, right!

I think it's their sanctimonious certitude that bothers me the most. If they knew the answers - I mean REALLY knew the answers- the districts in which the state took control would be "flying high" in academic achievement. But those districts are still mired in the 10 percentile swamps of the state tests.

I could understand suggestions from the inspectors, but it seems that they spell suggestions d-i-r-e-c-t-i-v-e-s. But they, like us, know that failing districts are like "unhappy families"- each is failing in its own way, and usually for myriad reasons.

Moreover, it's presumptuous when anyone says that we know how to "fix" broken schools. If that were true, then there wouldn't be so many broken schools still out there.

Looking back at this blog, I realize that it is so very bitter in tone, but I'm getting very tired of all these "experts" who are so sure that their "simplistic" remedies will effortlessly solve our complex problems. I believe that failing schools can be fixed, but it will take hard work, time, and money. Remedies that most people don't want to hear or to acknowledge.

Surrender or Die!

Well, after seven years of declining state test scores, we are on the verge of being declared a failing school. The state dept. of education has sent in observers to evaluate the quality of the entire school - administrators, teachers, students, physical plant, community, etc. However, I have a feeling that only the administrators (central and of our school) and the teachers will be held accountable. All others will be granted dispensation. I'm not saying that staff is not responsible for some of the lack of progress, but this "play" has many actors and, to paraphrase the Prince in Romeo and Juliet, "... all should be Punished"*


*Pronounced - Punis-'shed- because that way it sounds more Shakespearean!

Where's the rest of me?

I'm dying the "Death of a Thousand Acronyms". Everywhere and everyday I am constantly reminded of my and my students' accountability to the PSAT, and/or SAT and/or the ACT, and the HSPT (High School Proficiency Test), or, if they don't pass it the SRA's (now renamed the AHRA's), and/or the NEAP (National Educational Assessment Program), or the CAPA ( I forget - but some monitoring program), and/or the HSTW (High Schools That Work), and the GPA (Grade Point Average), or the NMSQT (National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test), or the ASVAB (Armed Forces Vocational Aptitude Battery), the IQ test, not to mention the CAT's or the ERB's, and many, many more... . ARRRGHHHHHHHHH

Two things are evident to me with all these acronyms:

1. With all this Jargon (some might say Argot) somebody's hiding something...

2. With all these extra programs it's evident that public schools aren't seen as bastions of learning, but as reservoirs of "mineable" data.

and, as a corollary to #'s 1 & 2, there's a lot of money to be made serving up "Alphabet Soup"...

"Three card Monte"

It seems to me that one of the hallmarks of troubled schools is the inability to allocate resources efficiently and effectively. Perhaps this is the effect of ineffective or non-existent planning or in lack of continuity. In any case, failing or troubled schools always seem to engage in practices which are at cross purposes to practices which would actually allieviate or solve problems. One might say that they are, "Robbing Peter to pay Paul," but it's actually worse than that. They are "Robbing Simon to pay Peter to get better credit from Paul." Everything is reactive - very little is pro-active.

Mea culpa

Well, what I was afraid would happen - happened. I feared that as the school year progressed I would become too tired or too preoccupied to write a continuous blog. This has always been one of my shortcomings when I've tried to keep a journal (I have numerous journals - started with a New Year's resolution - all petered out by mid-January). So it seems to have happened again. However, I will try once again to revive my creative juices (Oh boy, that sounds like fun!) and continue to write more often - at least something.

One other thing, when I started this blog I envisioned it to be sort of a dialogue between me and whomever might want to engage in it. However, it seems that the dialogue is not taking place. I have some reason to believe that there is something wrong with the comment box. So, if you want to engage in dialogue and can't seem to post a comment you can reach me at russ.zolotoi@gmail.com.