Bad teachers or the system

[ASUADPi]

The problem is with the sped students and why the parents are suing, is because their child won't ever pass AIMS but their child has acheived their goals set forth on their IEP. The IEP is a federal document, so the parents don't understand, which I completely agree with, why their child, who is special needs has successful completed their goals but won't be able to recieve their diploma because they can't pass AIMS. It's not fair to those kids.

I don't know enough about funding so I'm not even going to hazard a guess about funding

That's totally fine that you don't agree with my analogy of the 4.0 kid, but I can say, from my personal experience, that when I was in high school I had about a 3.5 and I don't standardize test well. Giving me a math test and saying you have 40 problems and 30 minutes to finish, I can't do it. I can't do it.

And that is how AIMS is, the writing is untimed (but basically the writing portion has to be completed in the school day so it's "timed" in that aspect). But the reading and math portions are timed.

What's worse is that in 08 the kids get tested in science and 09 in social studies. I can say from teaching and talking to teachers at my school, the kids AREN'T learning the science and social studies required by the state's standard (which is what the AIMS test will cover). There isn't enough hours in the day.

There has been this huge push for reading, writing and math and now they are realizing "oops science and social studies are floundering, let's test them on it" but we don't have the time to teach it.

Let me give y'all an example of my day:

8:15-10:45 Voyager, which is the current adopted reading/writing curriculum
10:50-11:20 Lunch
11:30-12:15 DLT (this is the differentiated instruction time that the office of
civil right is demanding that we give to to children labeled
ELL. It is a crock of crap and basically we are losing 45
minutes of instructional time)
12:20-12:55 Math
1:00-1:30 specials
1:34-2:00 review, clean up, pack up, home

I was using that 45 minutes that was taken away from us for science and socials studies and so were my coworkers. But since the stupid office of civil rights (did I mention that we are SEGREGATING these children from their first grade peers) has demanded we do this, we have lost the ability to teach the science and social studies standards.

My kids will not be ready to take science and social studies when they get to 3rd grade. Yes, they have learned some science and social studies but nothing based on the AZ standards. Yet, they will be expected to pass it.

Doesn't seem quite fair does it?

Every day my job is hard. Every school year the state or the federal government makes it 10 times harder with their mandates.

[KSig RC]

Originally Posted by ASUADPi

That's totally fine that you don't agree with my analogy of the 4.0 kid, but I can say, from my personal experience, that when I was in high school I had about a 3.5 and I don't standardize test well. Giving me a math test and saying you have 40 problems and 30 minutes to finish, I can't do it. I can't do it.

You should not have gotten a B in math, then - this means your 3.5 should have come from other areas, which is fine.

You're chicken-and-egg'ing the problem here - 'you don't test well' usually means "you're bad at one area" (which is fine, but should be reflected in the test) or "you read/analyze slowly" which is ALSO a measure of aptitude.

I'll go back and address some others when I'm not in the middle of the war room, but one last thing: if you actually think Carnation's analogy holds ANY water, you're way out of touch with reality.

[AGDee]

I don't think she is saying that she's unable to finish 40 problems in 30 minutes. I think she means that when she knows she's being timed, she goes into test panic mode and can't do it, but she can confirm or deny that herself.

When you say that reading and analyzing slowly is a measure of aptitude, you are exactly making our point. Aptitude is capacity to learn. A teacher cannot change a child's aptitude. Some of it is genetic, some of it is environmental and some of it could be related to a disability. The NCLB doesn't allow for these differences. All teachers are supposed to get all children up to an identical level regardless of their aptitude.

ETA: We had at least one district in Michigan who did not meet their AYP last year because to meet the AYP, they have to show improvement. If you have 98% of the kids in your district already meeting the standard, it's nearly impossible to increase that number because of the ELL and sped kids who cannot do any better no matter what.

[carnation]

Originally Posted by KSig RC

I'll go back and address some others when I'm not in the middle of the war room, but one last thing: if you actually think Carnation's analogy holds ANY water, you're way out of touch with reality.

Oh it holds water, all right! I'll try to put some more versions of NCLB on here--I'll look on my old staff emails later. The point of all of them is....NCLB is unachievable. I don't know a teacher or administrator who thinks it is, although heaven knows we keep trying.

I wish it were achievable. I've taught since 1974, my husband has since 1972, and heaven knows how we've knocked ourselves out going the extra mile for hundreds of kids. We've spent so much of our own money, tutored kids at our house for free, I could go on and on, but until we get to heaven we'll never be in a perfect world and anyone who thinks that all children will achieve a certain standard is a dreamer or insane.

[UGAalum94]

Originally Posted by AGDee

ETA: We had at least one district in Michigan who did not meet their AYP last year because to meet the AYP, they have to show improvement. If you have 98% of the kids in your district already meeting the standard, it's nearly impossible to increase that number because of the ELL and sped kids who cannot do any better no matter what.

It's possible that this district didn't make enough progress with their ELL and special education students because sub groups do count. (If all groups had to be at 75% passing, and the ELL kids weren't, the district could fail.)

However, it's completely false that your overall rate has to go up each year. If your passing rate remains above the increasing required pass rates in all areas, you will be fine. A district at 98% in all its subgroups won't be "needs improvement" until the very end of the increases: it could not have failed to AYP in the past for this reason.

I think this is another case where what's getting said about NCLB and what actually happened don't match.

ETA: Carnation, I agree that we won't ever have all the kids at grade level if we define grade level accurately, at least. But I think we could be doing better than we have been if we focus on well defined academic goals; we embrace methods related to achieving those goals; and we don't let other educrap get in the way. (I mean this in on a systemic level, not that you, your husband, or any other particular person could have done more.)

[Phimuteach]

Originally Posted by KSig RC

You should not have gotten a B in math, then - this means your 3.5 should have come from other areas, which is fine.

You're chicken-and-egg'ing the problem here - 'you don't test well' usually means "you're bad at one area" (which is fine, but should be reflected in the test) or "you read/analyze slowly" which is ALSO a measure of aptitude.

Not necessarily true. "You don't test well" can oftentimes mean you get nervous under the pressure or don't respond well to the conditions under which the test is given. Environment and comfortability play a bigger part than you may realize.

[ASUADPi]

Originally Posted by AGDee

I don't think she is saying that she's unable to finish 40 problems in 30 minutes. I think she means that when she knows she's being timed, she goes into test panic mode and can't do it, but she can confirm or deny that herself.

Originally Posted by phimuteach

Not necessarily true. "You don't test well" can oftentimes mean you get nervous under the pressure or don't respond well to the conditions under which the test is given. Environment and comfortability play a bigger part than you may realize.

Thank you for understanding what I meant

That was exactly my problem in school. It wasn't that I didn't know the stuff, but when I was told that I only had 30 minutes to do 40 problems (which is less than a minute a problem), I would freak out. Mentally, I would realize that I had less than a minute to get each problem done.

Kids psych themselves out.

[AchtungBaby80]

Originally Posted by KSig RC

What does "teaching to the test" even mean?

Other people have already answered but I'm adding mine since you asked nicely. :-) Different people may mean different things when they use the phrase "teach to the test," but I have always understood it to refer to situations in which teachers are forced to teach certain things solely because they appear on a standardized test and not necessarily because those are the most important things for students to learn. The best example from personal experience that I can give you is what I saw when I was student teaching in a high school--I had spent ages writing painstakingly detailed lesson plans and they were good (if I do say so myself) but unfortunately they were never used because I happened to start my placement at that school just before testing time. Instead of teaching what I had planned, which were lessons aligned with our state's core curriculum and standards, I had to spend (or waste, rather) days going over a bunch of PowerPoints that were supposed to review everything that would appear on the state test for my subject area. These presentations were distributed by the school to each teacher, and everyone had to use them. Reviews are against the rules, but somehow this was circumvented as we (the teachers) were instructed not to refer to these PowerPoints as "reviews"--rather, they were "refreshers" or something equally idiotic. I probably still have those CDs around here somewhere, but you wouldn't believe the stuff that was on them; it was the biggest mixed-bag of stuff possible, spanning everything from consumerism to nutrition (my subject area is Family & Consumer Sciences). The students were bored stiff and to be honest, so was I. Instead of going on and teaching my students something they could've used, we had to speed through slide after slide after slide after slide of yawn-inducing facts that they were supposed to be able to spout on demand once that test landed on their desks. Come on.

And carnation, I'm totally with you! And so is every other educator in my family.

[UGAalum94]

But would you say that kids who feel pressure should just be allowed to opt out of standardized tests?

(Even with the graduation test that I know of kids have multiple chances to pass, so even though passing the test is necessary to graduate, they could avoid being totally freaked out at any one administration.)

Don't you agree that some schools give passing grades to almost anyone enrolled? (and in Georgia with the HOPE grant, the pressure may be one to give Bs, rather than just passing grades)?

If schools are passing kids who haven't learned stuff, how would you measure what they actually learned if not with standardized tests?

[1908Revelations]

Originally Posted by KSig RC

What does "teaching to the test" even mean?

Often refered to as drill and kill especially around test time (like 3 weeks befor a test) it is serious! I get tired myself, so I know the kids are like damn!

[AGDee]

I question whether these types of tests are actually standardized. When I took testing courses in grad school (for a masters in clinical psych, which I didn't finish), we defined standardized tests as tests that were rigorously tested for norms over time and which would result in a bell shaped curve among the population for which it was designed. They met certain standards for norms, validity and reliability.

Since I saw an ad for summer jobs for teachers to write questions for the Fall MEAPs, I really question whether that would give time for the questions to be tested against these standards. Link that describes this in more detail:
http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issu...ld/ea5lk31.htm

Tests like the SAT, ACT and Stanford-Binet have gone through the rigors. When I took the GRE, they told us that one of the sections was a just a test section and wouldn't count, but they couldn't tell us which one. They were working on getting norms and testing reliability and validity of those questions.

My last complaint about the Michigan one (the MEAP) is that the writing questions given are just kind of weird. For my son, in 4th grade, it was for him to write about who his hero is. He had no idea what to write, because he didn't have a hero. He's never thought about who he would consider a hero or why. It seems like kids could be given more than one option so that perhaps one of the questions might inspire them to write something substantial.

[UGAalum94]

AGDee,

I think they force the scores into a normal distribution after the fact based on the students' relative performance.

The state tests are probably nowhere near as well done as the national exam. Say what one will about the College Board and ETS, they do some impressive analysis of the data, before, during and after testing.

On the Georgia tests, some of the individual questions are really bad; on the other hand, there seems to be a massive curve and the cut score or failing scores are really low, so they don't hurt the kids in that regard.

[madmax]

Everyone knows the problem but they can't say it because Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson will show up. The problem is the Democrats. They don't take care of their kids. They don't stress education. Half the kids don't even know their parents. Their fathers are in jail and their mothers are turning tricks. The kids grow up with their 30 year old grandmothers and they end up mad at the world. When it comes time to go to school the kids are not interested in learing and they don't respect authority. They slack off and figure they are going to the NBA and if that doesn't work out they can cut a rap album. If I told my father I was going to be a rapper he would slap me in the head and tell me to go out and rap on some doors and get a job.

[RU OX Alum]

the problem is....no one cares about anyone's children but their own, and then it's only about half