What is AYP?
Adequate Yearly Progress! Adequate..... meaning you had better make some pretty "adequate gains" in all subject areas based on the SBA test(a National test we give each March to children in grades 3-5). Forget the fact that there is still at least 2 and 1/2 months left to teach. We better cram all they need in 7 months time.
Yearly...meaning "yearly"...and progress .......meaning that you had better show some pertinent progress or you are in the zone. . . or as best stated as ......on your way to the hell zone...taken over by the state...and who knows how the hell THEY will teach the children. Miracles do happen, I suppose.
If your school has met AYP and is able to claim an exemplary mark ; ex: 98% (as one high school managed to make in our district)....that school better show a significant "growth/progress" by the next school YEAR.......thus adequate.
If the school only reaches 98 again! It's all over. They are "on probation". That school did NOT MEET AYP. Schools that do not meet that mark are published in the newspaper, and become toast/dinner/bait for the hogs that write to the editor with such outrage at the public school system. My god, it's so bad. I am one who is patient to a point. I plug along because I love the job. I am seasoned and stronger than most. But it's very difficult if a principal is not prepared to be marched out of the school like a criminal. The testing, the collection of raw data to prove growth and the blame is sickening, indeed. It's ridiculous!
If the test is required, then all that will happen is they will teach to the test.
Yep; but those of us who don't mind getting our school's name in the paper, and our boss inadvertenly on our ass....we don't teach to the test.
I find that the way we are headed in teaching is equal to a communist state. I mean that. We have SCRIPTS we have to follow and we can NOT teach or touch children in a specific way. Humanitarianism is dying and so is the ability to lift a child's knowledge base.
I never thought in all the 32 years that I have taught, that I would say that.
Ok...yes, I blame Bush for that...sorry to have to say that, but yes, I do. I realize that Kennedy started the NCLB act. I do. But Bush has ruined this nation's public school system. Intentions were good for the Reading First NCLB. Sure they were, but there is dysfunction and damage across the nation that is hurting too many to call this one a success. I didn't think I would ever say that...and I would love to be proven wrong, but the system is so broken, that it is an embarrassment to work for it anymore. At least where I live.
By the time I was in the first grade, I could already read. By the second, grade I was reading comic books. In the second grade, the school board did not have enough readers. and we didn;t get them until October. When I got mine, I read the whole thing in one night. The next day, the teacher did a "pre-reading" routine to get the students interested in reading, and asked questions about the first story. I told the whole class the first half of the story before the teacher managed to shut me up.I was told that reading ahead was naughty and that I mustn't "ruin" the reader for the other students. The teacher told my parents the same thing at PTA night. After that I read lots more comics and after that, all those Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew mysteries.
Oddly enough, since we have switched to teaching a program that has become ONE SIZE FITS ALL, and is a research based program, I see more of your experience/example, Xavier.
I have had to tell the child who has already read the story before....to keep it to herself/himself. But, I am at least able to deal with the issue with a bit of PC. Ha! Just one piece of the puzzle that isn't working for children. Teachers are at one another's throats in terms of competition. It's a war out there. It is. You talk about stress.
If you have a child that excels, then it is the parents responsibility to guide him or her to go beyond the usual school stuff. The teachers don't have time for this. They have way too many dullards in the class.
Ok, well I wouldn't consider any student who stuggles "dullards". That's just me. But yes, a lot of the issues we face lands on the parents ability or lack of to support the child. Truth and fact. Researchable if need be...by damn. ha!
However, if a child excels, it's not just the parent's responsibility, it's the responsibility of the school, XO. It really is. I understand what you are saying, though.
The problem is that the "gifted and talented" programs are not funded here, at least not in our state, as much as they once were. There were days in my past as a teacher when we had it ALL. We had quality special education teachers, music teachers full time, and a music room in grades k-6, with sound proof walls to boot.
I have to say that it does take a talented and experienced educator to teach. Period. Whether is be the dullards, or the Brainiacs. YEp, I have also had them ALL.
If you teach at a college for brilliant students, they pay lots more, but it is easy to teach geniuses, as they really want to learn. The hard job is teaching the lazy, the mediocre, the uninspired, the dunces. I speak from experience, believe me.
Welcome to my world. I love it, though. I really find the challenge to help of the students, at whatever level they are at. It has taken years for me to be able to do this. The problem for us here in NM is that we lack the $$ to fund things like more hands on materials, books, and extra support teachers. Yes, the administration gets the bulk of the money each and every year. They also "reinvent" jobs and job descriptions in our district to meet the needs of BULL CRAP IDEALS. IMO.
it is becoming almost impossible to reach every child in one classroom setting. Brilliant students don't just attend private schools, by the way. And yes, they are also easier to teach for me, because they love to learn. Unless you have a gifted student who has an attitude problem. That's frustrating. But the challenge to make sure that a 3rd grade child who reads at a first grade level read at grade level is never going to happen unless a parent steps in. These days I seemore single parents raising children that ever before.
The dynamics would shock most of you out there. I had a child who chose to pee on a wall one year. He is a child of a gang here in town. NEedless to say that child was and still is broken. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
But, all in all he did learn to READ. God, inner school teaching in a middle class neighborhood. That's my world.
The worst thing that can happen to you if you teach geniuses is that they will figure out the weaknesses in your knowledge base and show you up, so you have to stay on your toes. This makes teaching and learning fun for everyone.
YEs, and the educator has to have a healhty sense of humor and be able to duck and say.....I don't know...let's find out together. . .at least in my situation. College is something else all together, I suppose.
It is far, far worse, when you have a room full of lazy dunces who have zero intellectual curiosity, who would rather be watching reruns of Gilligan. I have had entire classes where not one student knew the capital of Canada. A friend of mine used to teach geography, and there were always several Floridian students who could not find Florida on a map of the USA. The outline of the peninsula is on every highway route sign in the state.
THe "facts" get lost along the way, I have found over the years. Each decade educators find a way to switch the focus of learning and what is important. Facts are weak and lower in priority for some districts, I find. But, again, I am not at that level. Yet, by darn my kids better know that New Mexico is a state in the US of A. ha!
Kids are not dullards because they are born that way. Parents create them by watching bad TV and not reading anything to them, ever. We have never had a time in history like this, where you could find passive entertainment 24 hours a day. Add cellphones to that and you have millions of children who will never read one single book or have one original thought.
Amen! You are an educator, Xavier. This I can see. Pure and simple.
American folks need to do the following:
Take the time to talk to a child, really TALK to a child on a daily basis. . .
Take the time to show the child that there is more in the world than just a box full of advertisments and bad cartoons.
Take the time to read like you've never read before..by damn. . .
Take the time...Just TAKE more time with your child. Period.
The problem for educators often times is that parents are still children, in a way. They need to be educated in parenting. Who hasn't needed that? But more recently, we see more parents with a priority to get home early enough to feed themselves. Others who make sure their child can lie well, and steal even better. Those are worst case scenarios. But overall, parents don't know anything else but VIDEO and TV, themselves.
It is an uphill battle, and the whole idea of providing the students with a "well rounded education" is falling to the side-bar level.
Thus the challenge...and thus the dedication for me.
I love the ability to teach a child. But, I hate the slap in the face when it comes to punitive actions via the FEDs.
Don't give me a letter to the editor about my sick leave days. Don't write that we use too many of them. By damn, we don't have the time to plan for a substitute, and often times we go to work SICKER THAN CRAP.
It feels good to vent here about the issues of education, but overall, things will never change until the system is honestly dealt with. Administration and red tape, and expectations that are toxic in this system, lately.
The good old days keeps coming up in conversation.
But, change is good. There is more to the story. Math is coming home in terms of constructivism. I dig that.
MOre later on that one.
C*
