Saturday, March 04, 2006

It's been a while

A lot of time has passed since my last posting. I'm not even going to check the date on the last post, it's been an embarrassingly long time. I'd wanted to post something useful for the spring's batch of student teachers since I knew at least a few would be reading, but I think that time has passed. Most have probably discovered whatever I could have said for themselves already.

I returned from the park with the dog this morning to find that someone had sent a reply, and that's what it took to finally make me sit down and write again. So thank you, whoever you were.

There was never a problem of procrastination, or having nothing to write. The problem was the exact opposite; there's been so much to write that I couldn't decide where to start. The fact that when I'm overwhelmed with too many choices I often fail to start probably says a lot about my personality. Probably not anything particularly good, either, I'll have to reflect on that more another time.

For those that have been reading frequently, I'd like to get you caught up. In mid-January I was preparing 3 students for the NY state regents exams. For those of you that don't know, the regents exams are a ridiculous set of standardized exams for every major subject area, spread out over 4 years. The "standard" diploma kids get in NY now is a regents diploma, which means they're supposed to be ready to go on to college. Without passing these tests, kids can get a local diploma, which is about half a step up from a GED. I'll probably write more about these tests later, but for now I'll just say that the only thing I think they're effective at is spending a lot of taxpayer money, eating up school days, and crippling effective classroom education. I haven't seen any evidence that they do anything useful for the curriculum, and I'm quite sure that they're anything but standardized across the state.

So, the scorecard after the regents tests: The girl passed all but one of her tests. Considering the amount of work she had to get done, I think she did amazingly well. I think she bombed one on purpose, knowing that she'd be very lucky to pass. Apparently she showed up to the test 1/2 an hour late, started distracting other students on purpose, and then had an argument with the teacher. Since students put their names on their exams and the exam is graded by the teacher, I'm not convinced that the teacher didn't fail her on purpose. The good news is that the girl decided not to drop out, and the principal offered a deal so that she'd come to school just 4 hours a week to prepare for that last test. The bad news is that she's very good at telling adults what they want to hear to get of out a situation and I'm not convinced that she'll hold up her end of the bargain. The other bad news is that the teacher she's working with has no love for her and believes strongly that the girl can't pass anyway. You can't save them all, I guess, but I'm keeping a good thought that she'll pull through this.

The boy that had convinced me that he would fail managed to pass all of his exams. I have no idea how; he refused to do his homework and we'd only managed to get halfway through the material for the Global History exam. But he passed, and that's what's important.

The other boy passed, and I knew he would. The weird thing is that he got lousy scores on the tests, but when doing review work he knew the material. This turns out to be somewhat typical for him, though. We've been catching up on a lot of math work, and he always picks up on the concepts quickly and easily. He'll do any number of review problems correctly. I even do review with him for 15 or 20 minutes before giving him a test. But then he'll make mistakes on the test on concepts he explained to me just a few minutes before. It's frustrating, for sure.

It could be simply because the kid is so lazy. He's even too lazy to figure out a simple way to do things. Last week I told him to do the odd numbered math problems on a particular page, figuring that half of the exercises were more than enough for him. He proceeded to do all of the problems and when I asked why he said "I didn't feel like thinking hard enough to skip the even ones."

You figure it out, it's beyond me right now.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

There are so many, many factors that go into how students perform on standardized tests, and only a few have anything to do with how they perform on the work leading up to them. The assumption that the two have a direct, linear relationship is the very thing that allows so many students to fall through the cracks. If that relationship doesn't happen to be so direct in a student, he or she will either be written off or diagnosed with something.

Not that that is always a bad thing, but it gets a student labeled and tracked differently.

I find it ironic that you used the sentence "but he passed, and that's what's important," because it's clearly exactly the opposite of what you believe, but it's a structural reality of the public education system, and it breaks teachers. Don't forget the irony, and you'll do fine.

David Hardesty said...

Well, he got over the particular hurdle he was trying to jump so, for this goal, that was the important thing.

Of course, it would be best if they all learned AND passed.

And made their teachers feel good while doing so.

Eric said...

Ben, I'm glad you pointed out that irony, because it was lost on me for the moment. You're right, I really don't believe that simply passing is all that matters. Unfortunately for this kid, I don't think we can hope for much more. Unfortunately, he only works when the work is easy, regardless of anything I try to do to get him engaged. Anything that is the least bit challenging causes him to shut right down. Every once in a while a baby step will get him to learn something, but these are awfully small steps. With him, it's a small triumph that he's working at all and may pass with a regents diploma. He's about two steps away from dropping out and trying for a GED, so right now I'll take passing if it's all I can get.