A New SIGIS Series is Coming

My last post in this space was in July and was the most recent in a series of posts about the coronavirus and returning to the classroom during a pandemic. I've had a busy fall and school for me, for everyone, has been very different, but still the same too. 

Since the spring we have all learned a lot more about the virus. Politicization of the virus has created huge divisions in thinking and approach, but in the classroom none of that comes into play. In my classroom, we are socially distanced as much as possible, for example. This was a lot easier when we did the hybrid A/B schedule, but that was not working for the students, so when we returned to normal schedule, I've returned to pretty much normal numbers in the desks. This means nobody is really spread out anymore. So, we clean and sanitize a whole lot. 

The latest data suggests getting the virus from surfaces is a long shot, but we clean anyway. I'm not taking chances. Between every single class I spray and wipe the desks and let them dry the required ten minutes, although between blocks three and four the dry time doesn't happen. When we use Chromebooks, those get wiped down too. High touch surfaces are wiped constantly and we don't share supplies. 

We wear masks. The students, for the most part, are pretty good about it, but I see them getting lax as time goes on. I have a few that I've battled from day one to keep the mask on, or pulled up. But, I'd say 95% of my students are in compliance and that's not a bad number. 

The massive outbreaks of Covid have not happened. There have been cases, sure, but in a pandemic we expect this. Nobody has become critically ill that I know about, however we only really hear about exposures through the grapevine. That, and when someone comes into your room with a yardstick and pulls kids out for the fourteen day quarantine. This has not happened in my room, but it's happened. 

So, it's really not been as bad as we thought initially. And with this knowledge, it's easier to see that the benefit of being in school is so much better than keeping the kids at home.  The kids need the normalcy of school and they need the structure, the social aspect, the food, the security net. 

I don't really regret going back, as nervous as I was.

With numbers rising again, we just need to stay vigilant. I can't spread kids out in my classroom, and my windows don't open, so ventilation is poor. I bought an air purifier which I have on all the time, and maybe that does some good. I don't know. As we return to school after Thanksgiving break, we will have to reaffirm our diligence to cleaning, mask-wearing, distancing, as much as possible. More outbreaks are inevitable. 

I have six more months before I retire from the classroom after twenty-five years. With that in mind, I'm beginning a new series in this space inspired by a teacher friend of mine who is also retiring this year. She and I have been childhood friends, taught together for five years in Caddo Parish, and we are both retiring this year although she has more years in than I do. She's been doing a series on her Facebook page, "Tales of a Teacher" and it's been a lot of fun to read. I hope she compiles them in a book when she retires! Duly inspired, I'm going to record my reflections in this space. 

I've been compiling these in my head for about twenty years. I won't ever publish them in a book; when I retire, I will be writing more books but one about teaching won't be one of them. Any reflecting I do will be right here. 

Lots of teachers write memoirs, I think. I don't usually read them...I mean, I live it every day. In my opinion, the best, most honest teacher "memoir" has already been written. Bel Kauffman's Up the Down Staircase is blisteringly funny and oh so true! No one should go into teaching without reading it. It may be a little dated, but it's still all so true. If that's what I could name this series without getting sued, I would.

I taught French in Caddo for five years...I wasn't certified to teach French, but if I'd been asked to teach calculus I'd have figured it out and done it. I needed a job. I moved to Bossier High School in 2001; my career in Bossier Parish began with 9/11 and it's ending in a pandemic. But it's been my home for twenty years and I never gave one second thought to leaving my school. You'll see why.

Teaching has been an incredibly rewarding career; I've met the most memorable kids, a few forgettable ones, some fabulous administrators, and made some of the best friends I will ever have. I've been inspired every single day. Sometimes I've been red hot angry and wanted to blow everything up with my words; other times, moved to tears by the love I have for my job, my friends, my school, my classroom, my students, and the difference we as teachers and administrators make every single day. 

You'll hear about all of it, the good, the bad, the love and inspiration.

My picture for this post is the pathway I walk every morning when I get to school at 6:35 a.m.. Come on inside with me.

The Classroom Library Project: Look What You Did!!!

Where I live nine months of the year.

While the calendar says summer is still here, my school calendar says it isn't, and so back to work I go.

I've spent several days at school already working to get my room back together for year twenty-four, and I think for the most part I am ready.

Really what I want to do here is to thank everyone who has sent or donated books to our new Classroom Library, and I want to show you where they have gone.

I'm still loading books onto shelves so they aren't all in these photos yet, but you'll get the idea, I'm sure.

My goal was to get 500 books by August 6, which is when our year starts.  As of right now, I have 246 books and 224 of those are unique titles; I have some duplicates but that is absolutely fine.  People have been so generous in sending books, it has revived my jaded spirit!

Almost every day there are books in the mail from the Amazon Wish List (it's still being updated if you want to jump in on this!).

I came home from vacation and found two huge boxes of books that some generous people shipped to me.  In my school mailbox I got a beautiful, hardback copy of Anthony Doerr's All the Light We Cannot See; it was carefully packed in a nice box with styrofoam peanuts.  I will treasure it.

I've had friends hand me cash money to buy books and another friend just handed me his credit card and said, "Get a couple of books!"  It's so gratifying that people support this project.

On my own, I've raided Goodwill and The Thrifty Peanut almost weekly loading up on books!  We have two Little Free Libraries in my neighborhood and I've pulled a few books from those (always leaving another book in its place!)

And I've ordered books from my own Wish List just to be sure we get them.

I've submitted a couple of grants and hope at least one comes through, but I know that's a long shot.  I've got a Donor's Choose project up and sometimes some great philanthropist will come through and fund a bunch of projects before school starts - I'm hoping someone funds mine!

So, I'm not finished gathering books, but I did want you generous folks who have helped me to see my progress.

This is my fiction shelf:

My fiction shelf

That's A-Z, all fiction, and as you can see, it's about to fill up.

This is my non-fiction shelf - it needs some books so that's where I've been concentrating my Wish List lately.  I came through and added a bunch of non-fiction to the list and people started sending those!  This shelf holds biography/memoir (that's the full shelf), informational books, poetry, and I have a shelf going for the Chicken Soup books that I've picked up.  There's room to grow.

Non-fiction

I've got to fill that one up!

I have two more shelves in my room; one is built in and currently holds class sets of textbooks that we no longer use (but I can't let go of them), and the other just holds our Common Core Guidebooks and Student Readers.  I have boxes with all the copies of things we have to read there.  All that can be moved if I need to use that shelf for actual books.

My non-fiction shelf is the one that I covered with pages from To Kill a Mockingbird.  I love it.

In this shot you can see the fiction shelf on the far right and on the left is the built in shelf with textbooks and dictionaries:

And the non-fiction shelf can be seen in this one:

And in this photo you can see the shelf that holds our copies of Common Core material.

(It's no secret how I feel about Common Core and this new curriculum but I'm not going to revisit that here.)

It's not a big room at all, but it's home for 180 + days for me and for my students.  (And dig those gorgeous parquet floors!)

I am super excited about the great reading that will be happening inside this room and once again want to really thank everyone who helped us fill these shelves!  And of course as we progress through the year I'm going to keep you posted!



Previously on SIGIS:
Building a Classroom Library: Help!  (May 7, 2018)
There's a Sad, Empty Bookshelf in M205 (May 11, 2018)
M205 Library Update: You Guy's ROCK! (May 14, 2018)
We Are Up to 73 Books!  (May 22, 2018)
M205 Classroom Library: The Shelf Project (May 31, 2018)
"Can I Read This?" A Teacher's Dream Comes True (June 21, 2018)

Further Reading:
Every Child, Every Day  (ASCD, March 2012)
Statement on Classroom Libraries (NCTE, May 31, 2017)
Building Relationships With Students Through Books (Cult of Pedagogy, May 8, 2016)
The Importance of a Classroom Library (Edutopia, April 16, 2009)
How to Stop Killing the Love of Reading (Cult of Pedagogy, December 3, 2017)
The Book Whisperer by Donalyn Miller (Amazon)
Readicide by Kelly Gallagher (Amazon)

The Amazon Wish List

What is a Scripted Curriculum and How Flexible is it?

They always tell you that teaching is "a calling" and that teachers "aren't in this profession for the money!"  I've heard that countless times in my teaching career.  It's true: nobody ever went into teaching for the money and if you did, you were sorely disappointed.  I always knew I wanted to teach; it was my passion.

I had some wonderful, memorable teachers at Byrd High School that inspired me and made me want to be just like them: Miss Barbara Whitehead taught American History and I'll never forget her.  Her blackboard was filled edge to edge every single day with notes we had to copy or questions to be answered, and she brooked no nonsense whatsoever.  I loved her.  For English, Nancy Lonnegan and Mary McClanahan were the epitome of what an English teacher should be.  They were both passionate about their material and they held very high standards for their students. They filled their lessons with "laignappe" which inspired further learning.

Teaching is indeed a passion and it seems to me that the best teachers are those that inspire and mentor.  It is about so much more than just the material in the textbook.

Teaching is about building relationships; a child will learn more from a teacher if there is a connection made between them.  If that child knows that the teacher cares about him and is interested in his success, he will learn. Teachers develop these relationships in part through meaningful lessons developed with the needs and interests of their students in mind as well as through individual conversations with students.

This common bond is harder to develop with scripted lessons.

After my end of the school year post last week I've received several inquiries about the scripted lessons that Louisiana ELA teachers are now mandated to use as our newly adopted curriculum.  In my post last week I wrote:

It began with a series of workshops and in-services throughout the summer last year which served to introduce us to a drastically new curriculum which we were mandated to implement "with fidelity" this year. It was so radically different from what we have been doing that this was a terribly stressful objective to me.  

I'm "old school" in many ways and teaching without a textbook and following a script has been hard for me. I am also a rule follower and so while I wanted to follow my mandate, I'll admit publicly right now that I did not always follow the script. I tried. We are on block schedule and so our academic year is made up of two semesters: I have one group of students from August through December, and then new ones from January through May.  

First semester I tried really hard to do that first unit as prescribed. It took less than two weeks for the light in my students' eyes to go out and for them to start eyeing me with dread. I stuck with it and supplemented more engaging lessons where I could while teaching all the same standards. Second semester it was much the same. I was a little more comfortable with the new curriculum, but it is still mind numbing and dull. Nothing but annotation, graphic organizers, and Cornell Notes. All day, every day.

I've been asked to explain what I mean by "following a script," and how much deviation from that script is actually allowed, so I want to clarify that.

A few years ago a group of Louisiana educators came together to write a new ELA curriculum designed to help students be successful on the high stakes end-of-course tests:

[Meredith] Starks is one of the more than 75 teachers who have been selected by the Louisiana education department to write an English/language arts curriculum. While most states using the Common Core State Standards tend to look to commercial publishers for standards-based curricula, Louisiana educators couldn't find material that fully and coherently represented the now 7-year-old ELA standards.  

"We just decided ... there wasn't anything on the market good enough for our teachers," said Rebecca Kockler, the assistant superintendent of academic content at the state education department. And who better to fill that void than actual teachers?  

The state started developing its ELA curricula, called "guidebooks," in 2012, and the first iteration was published in April 2014. Louisiana has since revised its own standards, which are based on the common core, and revamped the guidebooks to give teachers more resources.

These Guidebooks are what we are now using in lieu of traditional textbooks in our classrooms; they are comprised of "readers" which are copies of material bound together which are non-consumable and serve as a sort of textbook.  Students also receive a consumable packet with each of the four units and these are copies of graphic organizers, text passages, speeches, charts, etc. that students can write on and annotate as required.  These are reproduced and distributed each semester to students.

Teachers work from scripted Teacher Notes and prepared slides which we are instructed to follow "with fidelity" so that every student in every classroom gets the same text on the same day in the same way.

That's what I mean by scripted lessons.

As an example, let's just walk through a typical lesson in tenth grade English.

Unit 1 is on Rhetoric in grade ten and Unit 1, Lesson 1 goes like this:

After verbally introducing the unit, this is slide 3 in which the teacher introduces the unit objectives to the students:

With the unaltered slide displayed, the teacher is to say:

“Throughout this unit we will read texts that use language to achieve a purpose. At the end of the unit, you will be asked to select one of the texts and write an essay about how that text uses language to achieve a purpose. You will also research a topic of your choosing and write a speech about that topic. Finally, you will demonstrate your ability to analyze the language of a new text. To do this, we will need to study the specific choices authors make in order to achieve their purpose and advance their argument. We will read speeches, essays, and informational texts.”

The teacher is then directed to distribute handouts, highlighters, and Reader Response Journals. It's a lot of paper.  Students also receive a copy of "What is Rhetoric" by Gideon Burton. 

The teacher reads the text to students while students follow along.  This is supposed to take about two minutes.

Then with the above slide displayed, the teacher directs students to read the text independently and annotate.

The teacher notes at this point look like this:

Suggested Pacing: ~ 7 minutes  Directions: Have students read the first section of the text again, independently. Instruct them to use a yellow highlighter to mark “central ideas” and green highlighter to mark “supporting details.”
Guiding Questions and Prompts:  Say, “ Central ideas are main ideas. They are what the reader should remember after studying the text. They are usually followed by details that provide support. What is the central idea of this section?
Say, “Supporting details are specific pieces of information that support the central idea. They can provide explanations and/or examples of the central idea.” What details does the author use to develop the central idea?
Student Look-Fors: Students should indicate that a big idea is an important part of the text.
Access the annotated exemplar in the Additional Materials section. Be absolutely sure students understand what a big idea is before beginning the task.
Students should re-read the text independently, marking the big ideas of the text with their yellow highlighter.

Students are directed to take out their "Vocabulary Log," write down "rhetoric" and define it.

The teacher notes  look like this.

Suggested Pacing: ~ 12 minutes Directions: Be sure students have access to dictionaries. Have students retrieve the vocabulary log they received at the beginning of class.
Say “You will add to this log throughout the unit. It is very important that you keep track of this handout.”
 Select a student to read the sentence in grey, using an established class procedure.
 Place a blank handout under the document camera.
Fill in the word “rhetoric” and prompt the students to do the same.
 Ask: “What part of speech is the word rhetoric?”
 Prompt the students to look up a concise definition for the word “rhetoric”.
 Fill in the definition under the document camera as students follow along.
 Ask students to locate a synonym, antonym, and/or related word for “rhetoric”.
 Fill in the fourth column under the document camera as students follow along.
 Have students record the source sentence from the slide.
 Prompt students to turn-and-talk for 30 seconds to a partner about their understanding of the term “rhetoric.”
Keep time. Have partners switch. Monitor the room during the turn-and-talk, checking for understanding.
 Guiding Questions and Prompts: In your own words, what is “rhetoric?”
Turn-and talk to a partner for 30 seconds.
 Student Look-Fors: Access a partially completed vocabulary log under the Additional Materials tab. Students should fill out the first row of the vocabulary log along with you.
 Rhetoric is a noun.  Be sure to clarify what you mean by “concise”
 Not all words have synonyms, antonyms, and word families, but each word has at least one of the three.
Refer to the partially completed handout for guidance for each word throughout the unit. Students should copy the source sentence directly from the slide, including the citation.
Additional Notes: Consider collecting the logs and storing them in the classroom to prevent student loss. You could also have the students store the log in their class folder, if that fits in your daily class routine. Develop a system for soliciting individual student feedback early and use it often (i.e. a cold-call system).
Then the student is directed to turn to his partner and talk about the word "rhetoric."

Following this, students are then directed back to the text and their annotations and the teacher is directed to have the students write a "summary statement":

Ask: “ What is the most important information in this section of the text?”
Ask: “How can we boil that down to one statement?"
 Have students write their summary statement in their RRJ. Then, model a concise summary statement under the document camera or on the whiteboard.
Ask the guiding questions below.
 Guiding Questions and Prompts:
 “What makes my model summary statement good?"
“Does your model have the same qualities?”
 Student Look-Fors: Students should indicate that the definition of rhetoric is the most important information in this section. Students should then write a practice summary statement in the reading response section of their RRJ. Model summary statement: “Rhetoric is the study of the effective use of language in one’s own writing and in the writing of others.”

With this new slide displayed, the teacher then directs students to revise their summary statement.

Following that, the teacher verbally recaps what students should have learned in the lesson and then she moves on to lesson two.

Unit 1, Lesson 1 is comprised of eleven slides that must be displayed as the teacher works through the lesson.  In districts on a 90-minute block, two lessons are to be completed each day.

The teacher can vary slightly from the script but must follow the lesson with fidelity.

In Lesson Two, students read the same text again, "What is Rhetoric," and highlight in multiple colors to identify main ideas and supporting details.

That's what a scripted lesson looks like.  They are literally that: scripted.  Teachers have a printed stack of these teacher notes which are to be annotated before presenting each lesson and which she can produce to supervisors upon request.  The lesson number and standards must be visible to students on the board each day as well as the objective.

In this way, theory goes, every child across the district gets the same lesson on the same day in the same way.  There are no "rock star" teachers who have an unfair advantage over less capable teachers.  The playing field is leveled and this helps measure how effective these lessons are in meeting the criteria for standardized testing.

The Guidebooks are on the Louisiana DOE website and most of the graphic organizers and their completed versions can be found there by both parents and students.  It's important that students do not have their cellphones in use in class or they can just look up the answers and copy them down; teachers must monitor this.

Scripted lessons have pros and cons.  Many teachers bristle at the loss of their own creativity and autonomy; many feel that scripted lessons strip the passion from teaching and focus too much on the test while others are relieved at not having to write lesson plans or create their own lessons. Districts know exactly what is happening in each classroom on any given day and feel that a prepared curriculum is one way to ensure all necessary standards are taught.

However you feel about scripted lessons and the prepared curriculum, parents should at least know what it is and how their child is being taught.

If you still have questions or comments, email or leave a note in the comments; I'll answer as best I can.

Knowledge is power!

End of School Year Reflection (or the Burrito of Gratitude, with a nod to Colene)

The last day of the school year finally arrived and I am officially on summer vacation.  We go back to school August 6, which I know will be here in a heartbeat.

This year has been both the longest and the quickest year of my 23-year career.

It began with a series of workshops and in-services throughout the summer last year which served to introduce us to a drastically new curriculum which we were mandated to implement "with fidelity" this year.  It was so radically different from what we have been doing that this was a terribly stressful objective to me.  I'm "old school" in many ways and teaching without a textbook and following a script has been hard for me.

I am also a rule follower and so while I wanted to follow my mandate, I'll admit publicly right now that I did not always follow the script.  I tried.  We are on block schedule and so our academic year is made up of two semesters: I have one group of students from August through December, and then new ones from January through May.

First semester I tried really hard to do that first unit as prescribed.  It took less than two weeks for the light in my students' eyes to go out and for them to start eyeing me with dread. I stuck with it and supplemented more engaging lessons where  I could while teaching all the same standards.  Second semester it was much the same. I was a little more comfortable with the new curriculum, but it is still mind numbing and dull. Nothing but annotation, graphic organizers, and Cornell Notes.  All day, every day.

But, it's the curriculum and I have to follow it if I want to keep my job.  To me it's almost a moral dilemma: do I kill the love of learning by shoveling more copies of speeches and more worksheets at them while reading scripts from prepared slides?  Or do I subvert the system, close the curtains, and teach from the heart?  I've spent the entire semester questioning myself and my career.

That's what made the semester long.

What made the semester go by too quick was my students.  I love them.  I love them with my heart!  As they were leaving yesterday I had so many hug me goodbye and wish me a happy summer.  We're talking high school kids: not the little elementary ones who hug so easily.  I had students from previous semesters come by just for a hug.  Mikayla brought me a doughnut! Teyniah made a card for me!  So did Te'asia!  Maria (who I taught last semester), came down the stairs with her ponytail and her shy smile and reached out for a hug.  My heart melted and my eyes still get misty when they go.

We don't have a PTA at our school, wealthy parents, or big booster clubs that bring teachers expensive gifts at the end of the year like some other schools.  At our school we don't get gifted Chromebooks, televisions, or cruises like other schools.  Nobody will ever gift me an Apple Watch. We don't even get cute coffee mugs and Starbucks cards.

But these parents give us their children and I swear that's all I need at the end of the year.  That hug, that home made card, that single doughnut in a styrofoam bowl is all I need to reassure me that I'm in exactly the right place.

I love our kids and I love our school.

Today, we had a rare teacher work day which was glorious!  I was gifted two bookshelves from one of my teacher friends and I spend the entire day refurbishing them.

The first one was bright pink:

This is too pink for me.

...and now it is teal blue.  I'm just not a pink kind of girl.

Progress. Calming blue.

That bulletin board is going to get a makeover this summer, too.

The other shelf was beat up wood:

This might be the perfect shelf.

and now it is on its way to being covered in the pages from To Kill a Mockingbird.

I figured why not?  We aren't allowed to read novels any more in class and this is the only way I can get my favorite book in the room!  Boom!

To Kill a Mockingbird: one page at a time

Once I finish the inside I will polyurethane the entire thing and it will be fabulous.

It was relaxing and fun to be engaged in these DIY projects today.  We all moved around from room to room, visiting with each other (something teachers so seldom are able to do!).  Nikki brought a pan of banana pudding around to share with everyone.  Samantha came and ate her lunch in my room.  Emily came by with Colene to look at my bookshelf.  Macie came in to visit while I painted and Karrie and I ate lunch in my room.  There was a lot of laughter and fun.  I love my co-workers!

I went to Colene's room and watched her organize papers, in the library Stacy had her daughter's dance recital on video to show us, and in the lounge we all gathered for breakfast burritos from Sonic.

All in all it was a really nice day, reconnecting with my friends and doing just the smallest bit of prep work for next year.  My shelf isn't finished, but I guess neither am I.  I'm still learning and still growing as a teacher every year.

What I learned today is that no matter how badly I might fundamentally disagree with certain things, I will always find a way to stand up for my students and do right by them because that's what matters to me more than anything else.  I go to work everyday exactly where I want to and I will never need expensive thank you gifts from booster clubs or parents to make my job more more rewarding.

My students, their smiles, and the occasional breakfast burrito are all I need!

Now, it's time to decompress and take a little time off!

Previously:
An Open Letter to Hal Braswell
Full of Promise: Bossier Bearkats Receive their Tickets to the Future
The SIGIS Summer Begins
Bearkat Pride Forever

Raising Reading Scores and NAEP: We Can Only Go Up

I've been thinking about my students a lot lately; more so than usual, after looking at the latest NAEP scores which I wrote briefly about here.

To recap, Louisiana is once again at the bottom, or near bottom, of the list.  In reading, only 25% of our students are "proficient." We are tied at 48 with Mississippi; New Mexico is ranked 50 at 24%.

This really bothers me.

So, what does that score mean?  What, exactly, is "proficient?"

Proficient is defined this way:

When it comes to reading, eighth-grade “students performing at the Proficient level should be able to provide relevant information and summarize main ideas and themes,” says NCES. “They should be able to make and support inferences about a text, connect parts of a text, and analyze text features. Students performing at this level should also be able to fully substantiate judgments about content and presentation of content.”

About the same time I started fretting about the NAEP results, I came across this article on the Cult of Pedagogy blog urging teachers to "stop killing reading."

And in that article, the author referenced a book called Readicide by Kelly Gallagher, which I immediately ordered and have now read.

Gallagher's book was so on point I kept highlighting passages and sharing them with colleagues.

In my twenty-three year career I've seen more than a few kids who don't like to read, have never voluntarily read a book, and have no idea where the school library is.  I may not ever turn those kids into bookworms who read three books a week, but at least I have always been able to get them to admire the artistry and message of To Kill a Mockingbird or to relate themes in The Great Gatsby to the real world around them.

Sometimes that admiration is grudging, but it always comes.  It has been one of the highlights of my teaching career to see that light bulb go off over a kid's head when he grasps the symbolism of Mrs. Dubose's camellias or Atticus's shooting of Tim Johnson, the rabid dog.  If you've never seen that happen, that light bulb thing, it's amazing and it warms you all over to know that something great has just rattled the brain cells in that kid and a new understanding of the world around him has occurred.

Maybe I'm overstating it, but I don't think so.

I think Kelly Gallagher advocates for student readers and for teaching the classics quite admirably in his book when he writes:

"When every student in the country reads Romeo and Juliet, it means we all acquire a shared cultural literacy, a sharing that is foundational if we, as a culture are going to be able to communicate with one another."

And earlier in the book, he points out that "Reading Animal Farm is not simply an unusual trip to an English farm; Orwell's classic presents our students with the opportunity to discuss what happens when a citizenry fails to pay attention to its leadership."  It makes students think about the world around them.

The ironies with Fahrenheit 451 are obvious, right?  (But how will kids today know that?  They only read parts of this novel, if at all).

Gallagher's point is that the classic novels we teach in school provide opportunities for students to "rehearse" real world situations and ideas, an opportunity to become wiser under the leadership of a teacher.

It's a valid point.  But beyond the classics, he argues, we also need to provide opportunities for students to read for fun.  Many, many students do not read for the pure enjoyment of getting lost in a book and this is especially true with our underprivileged kids or children that come from impoverished homes.  They come to us with what Gallagher refers to as "word poverty" and spend their entire educational experience trying to catch up.

Why wouldn't we give them every opportunity to do so?

Because we are teaching the test. That's why.

There.  I said it.

Go back to those NAEP results.  We spend all of our time now putting articles and passages in front of students like those that they will see on a test.  We inundate them with multiple choice questions.  We highlight and close read and analyze and use sticky notes and we fill out graphic organizers, we analyze some more, we pick and pick and prod and well, it's no wonder that kids begin to hate to read.

We don't give them "books" any longer, we give them "chunks of text."

We don't give them the freedom to read as long as they wish ("If they want to read the entire novel they can do that on their own, outside of school!").  Instead, we give them chopped up passages to endlessly analyze. Where's the fun?  Where's the engagement?  Where's the love in that?

Gallagher talks about this practice a great deal in his book and its worth your time to read it if you're concerned at all about what Common Core and endless test prep is doing to kids.

The bottom line is that we really should be more interested in creating lifelong readers in our students.  They will carry a love of books and reading forever, long after that test score is gone.

Do we really want a generation of kids who have read nothing but passages and articles?

Imagine a world where cultural references such as "Beware the Ides of March!" are meaningless!  Or "Stay gold, Ponyboy...stay gold."  It breaks my heart to turn my sophomores out into the world never having encountered Mayella Ewell or Atticus Finch.  To Kill a Mockingbird is now "summer reading" in our district for freshmen and The Grapes of Wrath is "summer reading" for sophomores.  Imagine the loss at tackling either of those on your own as a young teenager!

Some districts know that they will likely never return to reading full novels in class again.

Instead, under Common Core, (which in Louisiana is called Louisiana Believes), students read selected chapters of books, or articles about books.  In tenth grade, for example, you read only the Prologue of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, and then lots of articles about ethics.

You get the idea.

It's my belief, and I believe there is science and data (that ever present golden key - data) - to back me up, that kids who read a lot are better writers and have a much more developed vocabulary.  They are more rounded.  They are better equipped to deal with the unknown.  So, teach a kid to read for fun, and you've created something truly wonderful and given that kid a lifelong gift.

Is that enough to raise NAEP scores?  Probably not.  There are a lot of other factors that go into those scores: poverty, parental involvement, technology access, life-trauma, environment, etc.  Those scores reflect a whole plethora of factors beyond reading comprehension.

But hey, we've got no place to go but up.  Let's bring reading back into the curriculum.  And I mean reading fiction (we currently read about 75% non-fiction in grade 10 ELA), long books, novels, not just "chunks of text" or Xeroxed passages.  We need to give kids time to read IN SCHOOL and not just on their own.  What tenth grader can truly grapple with  The Grapes of Wrath without some help?!

My bottom line:  Kids need time to read, time without having to organize, annotate, highlight, determine this or that - just time to read to get lost in the pages.

Do that, and I guarantee we will have smarter kids; now, whether the test scores reflect that or not is a whole 'nother kettle of fish, as they say.

Conversations in Education: Testing and Burnout

Christmas break is coming to an end and the new school semester begins Monday.  It has been absolute bliss to have this time to rest, recharge, and regroup.  I feel like I've accomplished quite a lot over my break: I've worked through the queries from my copy editor on the book, cleaned house, organized my planner for 2018, unsubscribed to a large number of email clutter, done some writing, some cooking, and some reading.  It's been busy, but productive.

Much of my reading has been work related. During the school semester there is little time for that sort of thing and over break I've read several different pieces that, taken together, seem to indicate some troubling trends.

The article that most resonated with me was this one by Bruce Dixon about standardized testing, a practice he equates to "tyranny" and "an insidious virus."

Dixon writes:

We are way overdue for the debate around standardized tests to become prominent in the mainstream media led by educational leaders, instead of politicians, journalists or in particular those who benefit most, the testing, tutoring and textbook industry.

There is little doubt that the testing industry is huge business; testing and textbook giant Pearson is at the top of that list earning billions of dollars from testing alone.  Their profit statement for 2016 is here.  Note their goals for 2017:  "Our priorities for 2017 are clear. We will continue to accelerate our digital transformation, simplify our portfolio, control our costs, and focus our investment on the biggest growth opportunities in education."  What are those biggest growth opportunities in education, exactly?

Back to Dixon's piece.  He quoted this 2014 article in The Washington Post by Valerie Strauss which quotes extensively from her own 2013 piece about the resignation of a very talented and creative teacher, Ron Maggiano.

As for standardized testing, Maggiano says:

The overemphasis on testing has led many teachers to eliminate projects and activities that provide students with an opportunity to be creative and imaginative, and scripted curriculum has become the norm in many classrooms. There is nothing creative or imaginative about filling in a bubble sheet for a multiple choice test. Students are so tired of prepping for and taking standardized test that some have protested by dressing up like zombies to protest — and thousands of families are opting their children out of taking high-stakes exams.

How true this is.  Excessive standardized testing crushes kids.  The ones who are very concerned about their GPA feel one type of pressure and the apathetic ones, the ones we have to work harder to reach, are reinforced in their ideas of failure and inadequacy.

Magianno also notes the "scripted curriculum."  Think about that for a moment and think about your own education.  The scripted curriculum is literally that: teachers read from a script and teach the same content in the same way on the same day in every classroom across the district.  Depending on the district there may or may not be room for creative leeway, but more often than not, teachers are required to stick to the script, thus confirming Maggiano's statement that teacher's no longer have an "opportunity to be creative or imaginative."

Standardized tests do not require creativity or imagination.

This quote by Maggiano resonated with me:

Every student is a unique individual with their own talents and abilities. The standardized testing regime fails to recognize the importance of individual achievement in education and instead uses a “cookie cutter” approach to learning that ignores students’ individual interests and abilities.

Amen to that.  The reason I love teaching is because my students are all unique individuals.  Every single one of them.  Helping them find their own talents and abilities is the primary goal and perhaps the most rewarding part of my job.  Standardized testing quashes that.  Standardized testing assumes they are all the same individual who must score above a certain level on a test to assess mastery of material learned that was taught from a script.

Back to Blake's piece.  Aside from killing creativity and innovation in the classroom, and assuming that all students learn the same material in the same way at the same pace, Blake points out yet another flaw in standardized testing:

And if all of that isn’t enough, don’t forget that one of the hidden curses of standardized testing is the insidious manner in which it penalizes diversity. By statistical definition, it ignores the “edges” which include all of those students who have cultural, geographic physical or intellectual disadvantage. Far from helping to “close the gap,” the use of standardized testing has in fact found to be most damaging for low-income and minority students.

This is a fact proven to be true.  Consider this quote from Noliwe Rooks's article in TIME (2012):

And if the standardized testing gap between racial minorities is bad, it’s nothing compared to the gap between the poor and the wealthy. For example, one recent study by the Annie E. Casey Foundation found that the gap for achievement test scores between rich and poor have grown by almost 60% since the 1960s and are now almost twice as large as the gap between white students and children of other races. The playing field is far from level when we continue to use tests where we know at the outset that wealthy students will do better than less wealthy students and white and Asian students will outperform blacks and Latinos.

There is a great deal of research out there to support this theory.

Another trend that is disturbing is that of teacher burnout and not surprisingly some of this comes from the testing atmosphere.  We have long been aware of the challenges that new teachers face; often once they get into the classroom they realize this is not what they anticipated and so the dropout rate for new teachers is relatively high.  In this 2015 Washington Post article, one can see the climbing rate of new-teacher-dropout.  In 2011-2012, seventeen percent of new teachers left the profession within five years.

On January 4, 2018, Elizabeth Mulvahill posted this list of why teachers at all levels are leaving the profession and one of those reasons was standardized testing:

The demands teachers are feeling as a result of high-stakes standardized testing and the emphasis on data collection is definitely a hot button issue among teachers who are leaving. According to an NEA survey of classroom teachers, 72 percent replied that they felt “moderate” or “extreme” pressure to increase test scores from both school and district administrators.

The NEA survey cited in Mulvahill's article is dated 2014 and sounds remarkably similar to Bruce Dixon's article discussed above:

The sheer volume of tests that teachers are tasked with administering and preparing students for is enormously time-consuming. Fifty-two percent of teachers surveyed said they spend too much time on testing and test prep. The average teacher now reports spending about 30 percent of their work time on testing-related tasks, including preparing students, proctoring, and reviewing results of standardized tests. Teresa Smith Johnson, a 5th grade teacher in Georgia, says her school spends a minimum of 8 weeks testing during the school year. “That doesn’t include preparing for testing, talking about testing, and examining data from testing,” she adds. “Imagine what we could do with that time. There must be a better plan.”

The time cited here, about 30 percent of time on test prep and testing is spot on and I would suggest a little higher now, three years after the date of this survey.

In August 2014, this NEA article by Richard Naithram contends that parents are tired of the testing obsession and says that 68% of the parents surveyed have no faith in the tests.

Finally, moving away from standardized testing, another source of stress for teachers is lack of time to adequately plan and the incessant demands on their planning time, including but not limited to the growing stress on professional development and the professional learning community model.  This post, dated January 5, 2018, at The Great Handshake blog describes the busy day of any teacher, the long hours, the plethora of necessary duties on any given day:

Good teachers are artists, yet we are not allowing them studio time. Art can’t be manufactured on an assembly line, but that is the position we put teachers in. They have one spare hour a day in which to plan, collaborate with colleagues, meet with students, grade tests, provide feedback, make copies, eat, and pee. It shouldn’t shock us that the rigor of their schedule can cause good people and thoughtful educators to leave student-centered education fall by the wayside.

Why would a teacher need time to plan if you have scripted lessons, one might ask.  Because even scripted lessons need planning, perhaps even more so because they are not your lessons and not designed for your kids.  You have to find some way within the script to make them relevant.  The planning period is filled with many more tasks than just writing a lesson plan.

Yet too often that planning time is scheduled for PLC meetings, test administration, covering classes, faculty meetings, and other tasks that must be met.  There simply is not enough time.

This paragraph from The Great Handshake post resonates:

Conversations about increasing teacher planning time are essential to any conversation on how we can make education better for our young people. And, when we make choices under the pressure of a system set up for teachers to burn out and eventually fail, they are often counterproductive. We throw things on our walls without thought, yell at kids instead of working with them, are short with parents, whine about our administrators, brag about things that don’t matter, overlook things that do, hand out worksheets, and see lonely kids as bad.

And also this:

Not having enough prep time can turn a great teacher good, a good teacher average, an average teacher bad, and a bad teacher abusive.

This all sounds very negative about the state of education today and it is not meant to, but I do believe it's time to have these conversations.  Are parents content with the constant testing and teaching to the test or do they want a more creative, innovative classroom?  Do parents want their children taught from a script or do they want a curriculum modeled to their child's needs as assessed by the professional in the classroom with him?  Do teachers have adequate time to prepare, assess, communicate with both students and parents, and teach?  Are we teaching our kids to take tests or be critical thinkers and good, well-rounded citizens?  Are we preparing our kids for the future adequately if what they primarily know when they leave high-school is how to take a test?

There are many conversations that need to happen in the field of education today.  The changes are happening very quickly and perhaps not enough parents are paying attention to them.

At the end of the day it should all come down to what is best for the students and it may be that that is not what is happening any longer.  At the very least, it's time we started talking about it.

For further reading:

The Testing Emperor Finally Has No Clothes
Why Good Teachers Quit Teaching
Don't Eat Supermarket Cupcakes
11 Problems Created by the Standardized Testing Obsession
Award-winning Virginia Teacher: "I can no longer cooperate with testing regime"

The State of American Education

Did you catch my post this weekend at DaTechGuy's blog?  A snip:

With regard to burnout and frustration, consider that one of the requirements of Common Core is that states must also implement a rigorous teacher evaluation system.  Professional evaluation is important and I don’t know of a single profession that doesn’t have an evaluation system, but common sense must prevail.  Some of these evaluation tools are profoundly subjective and unfair.  When a teacher is marked off on an evaluation because a student put a dab of lotion on her knees during the observation, which obviously means classroom expectations haven’t been taught and the teacher has poor classroom management, frustration will result. 

When those observations and evaluations are tied to teacher pay and that annual incentive check comes out, the teacher that has Honors and AP kids will get the big incentive check while the teacher with the low-performing, struggling kids who have not been taught social skills at home gets the very small check.  Frustration results. 

In reality, teachers aren’t frustrated with their work or with their job.  They are frustrated with the system that prevents them from doing their job and that persecutes them for things beyond their control.  I don’t know one single teacher who went into the profession to get rich.  Every teacher I know does it because of a love for kids and for the opportunity to make a difference in just one kid’s life.  When that passion is squelched by a system that ties their hands, strips their decision making, persecutes them, and makes them feel like failures, then there is something wrong with the system, not the teachers.

Click on over to read the whole thing.  Let me know what you think.

Please Watch This Viral Video

I'm working 16 hours today y'all so no time to post anything profound or any deep analysis on anything but - please, do me a favor and watch this video:



And then go here and watch Glenn Beck's interview with this woman.

I'm literally drowning in work, paperwork, absorbing new initiatives, making new manipulatives, writing lesson plans, monitoring senior projects, responding to parents, attending meetings, and trying not to get the flu.

Watch Karen Lamoreaux's video and interview and let me know what you think.  I really want to know.

Education Challenges in Louisiana for 2014

Michael Deshotels has a new post regarding education challenges (and progress) in Louisiana for 2014:

Unfortunately the new Common Core curriculum was adopted by Louisiana and many other states sight-unseen. None of it was tested before being mandated. As a result, we are finding many flaws in the program relating to early childhood education, English standards that seem to be too narrow, and math standards that require unorthodox and impractical methods. Now many parents are finally demanding accountability from the reformers!They are objecting to their kids being guinea pigs for untested math and ELA methods. They are siding with teachers against the abuse of standardized testing and the use of their childrens' private data to create profit opportunities for multinational corporations, and to prejudice future employers against their children.  

Teachers are finally talking to their elected legislators about the abuses of VAM and Compass and the lack of support from the state Department of Education as officials mandate untested curricula and expect the teachers to fend for themselves while remaining vulnerable to firing based on student test scores. One legislator commented at a recent hearing on the botched Common Core implementation in Louisiana, that he had visited all schools in his district and had found almost all teachers considering either leaving the state or taking early retirement.

Read the whole thing.

Frustrated Teacher in Maryland Resigns: "We have sacrificed wisdom and abandoned its fruits."

I posted last week on declining teacher morale across the country.  Here's another letter to add to the list; this is part of a resignation teacher from Maryland:

It is with a heavy, frustrated heart that I announce the end of my personal career in education, disappointed and resigned because I believe in learning. I was brought up to believe that education meant exploring new things, experimenting, and broadening horizons. This involved a great deal of messing up. As part of the experimentation that is growing up, I would try something, and I would either succeed or fail. I didn’t always get a chance to fix my mistakes, to go back in time and erase my failures, but instead I learned what not to do the next time. Failing grades stood, lumpy pieces of pottery graced the mantle, broken bones got casts. As a result of my education, I not only learned information, I learned to think through my ideas, to try my best every single time; I learned effort. I’d like to say that in some idealistic moment of nostalgia and pride, I decided to become a teacher, but the truth is that I never thought I would do anything else. I come from a long line of teachers and I loved school from day one. 

To pursue this calling, I worked hard to earn the title of “classroom teacher,” but I became quickly disillusioned when my title of teacher did not in any way reflect my actual job. I realized that I am not permitted to really teach students anything. When I was in middle school, I studied Shakespeare, Chaucer, Poe, Twain, O. Henry, the founding fathers, if you will, of modern literary culture. Now, I was called to drag them through shallow activities that measured meaningless but “measurable” objectives.

Read the whole thing.  Read the comments, too.

Frustrated and devalued, she decided to quit.  She was not allowed to fail students because that meant that she was a failure.  Besieged by administrators, parents, an ignorant general public who assumes teachers only work between vacations, and a system that treats kids like data points, she quit:

I am paid to give out gold stars to everyone so that no one feels left out, to give everyone an A because they feel sad if they don’t have one. I take the perpetual, insane harassment from parents who insist that their child’s failings are solely my fault because I do not coddle them to the point of being unable to accept any sort of critique; if each student is not perfect and prepared for college and life by age twelve, then I must be wrong about the quality of their work. I lower my own standards so much that I have been thinking my grades were generous. After years of being harangued, I gave Bs to D-quality work, but that is never good enough. All I can do is field the various phone calls, meetings, and e-mails, to let myself be abused, slandered, spit at because that is my career, taking the fall for our country’s mistakes and skewed priorities. So if you want your child to get an education, then I’m afraid that as a teacher, I can’t help you, but feel free to stop by if you want a sticker and a C.

I'm not sure if this is a new thing, or something that has been ongoing; you know how once you're made aware of something then all of a sudden there are stories popping up everywhere on the same subject.  There are probably just as many letters of glowing satisfaction from teachers out there as well.  We just aren't hearing about them.  If you find any, link them in the comments or send them to me.  Fair and balanced, you know.

At any rate, it does seem to be a growing national problem.

Stacy McCain linked to this same letter and comments:

More and more good, honest, decent, caring teachers are quitting the public school system. The deteriorating quality of faculty and administration is increasingly pervasive because no intelligent person would willingly submit themselves to such an oppressive bureaucratic yoke. The public education system is doomed beyond all hope of redemption, and the sooner Americans cease cooperating with the system — get your children out and support alternatives — the sooner its final collapse will arrive.

Charter schools, home schooling, private schools, school vouchers.  Whatever the answer, we need to figure it out and we need to quit blaming the teachers.

Teacher Morale Across the Country Plummets

Teachers in the state of North Carolina, and probably lots of other states if truth be known, are demoralized and depressed.

Via The Huffington Post:

After North Carolina recently passed legislation that eliminated teacher tenure, halted teacher pay raises and initiated a statewide school voucher program, a new survey reveals that the state's educators are extremely frustrated with the way they are being treated. 

The online survey, conducted by University of North Carolina Wilmington professors Dr. Scott Imig and Dr. Robert Smith, asked over 600 North Carolina educators about their feelings on topics like recent changes to state education policy and teacher morale. Overall, the results of the survey, which were not based on a scientific sampling, are less than encouraging. 

Of the teachers surveyed, 96 percent signaled that they “think public education in North Carolina is headed in the wrong direction,” while 97 percent of those surveyed said they thought recent “legislative changes have had a negative effect on teacher morale.” Even before recent legislative changes, North Carolina educators were some of the lowest paid in the country.

Teacher morale is the white elephant in the room when it comes to "education reform."  As the experts focus on how to improve test scores and school report card scores, too often the blame focuses on the teacher.  If a child isn't learning then the teacher must not be doing something right.  None of the magic bullet answers to solving today's educational woes focus on the teacher except in a punitive way.  All of the onus for improvement is on the school administrators, passed on to the classroom teacher, yet no new accountability is placed on the student or the parent.

Simple fact:  no amount of Kagan strategies or Harry Wong magic will improve test scores and performance when parents are not involved.

Nobody denies the benefit of parental involvement.  Study after study supports this.

Obviously parental involvement varies across socio-economic backgrounds; What of the parent who is working two jobs just to keep the electricity on?  How much time does that parent have to come volunteer for the PTA?  What about that child whose only parent is incarcerated and the child is living in a hotel with a relative?

There are so many variables to consider.

So too often it's just easier to blame the teacher.  Let's accelerate the professional development, they say, and put these teachers in meetings to learn how to better reach kids like this.  Let's assign readings for teachers to do in their down time.  Well, okay.  No teacher, no good teacher, wants to leave any child frustrated and without hope.  All good teachers are open to learning new ways to reach students and help them achieve.  Frustration leads to behavior problems; behavior problems contribute to low academic success - not just for that misbehaving child but for all the kids in that particular classroom.

Professional development is fine and welcome.

The point is, teachers are trying.  Teachers go into those classrooms every day with the single goal of reaching that one child who is struggling.  Teachers want every child to succeed.

Teachers teach because they love what they do.

Where the teachers in North Carolina, as well as other states, are frustrated is that they feel "devalued."  The punitive evaluation rubrics required with the adoption of the Common Core standards puts in place an evaluation system which is designed to keep the majority of teachers from attaining a perfect score.  In many states teacher pay is tied to these rubrics.  Again, it's not about the money; the demoralization comes from being devalued.

Consider this excerpt of a letter blogger Michael Deshotels posted on his Louisiana Educator blog last month:

 “Everything has been put into action to be accomplished by the teachers and the schools. The entire burden is on us.--- In all the newspapers and press releases and theories proposed, the idea touted is that if the teachers change, improve, comply, then students will progress better than ever before. First, this idea is insulting to all of us because it negates what we have accomplished in all the years we have taught. Second it is a faulty “if/then” because there is MUCH, MUCH more to the equation than just teachers teaching. The unspoken issues that no one wants to utter are these: 1. Despite our best efforts, in reality some students are simply more capable than others, as is true and has been true for time and eternity in every place on this earth. 2. Many, many students have unconcerned parents who have, by the very nature of their faulty parenting handicapped their children long before they enter school. If I remember my educational psychology, the first three years of a child's life are pivotal ----- Many children are not being spoken to, read to, introduced to concepts and ideas in those years. Their learning only begins when they enter school, and at that point, a large deficit already exists. Even than, many parents don't concern themselves about homework, tests, projects or valuing school. I am weary of hearing “Every child deserves a great teacher”. How about “Every child deserves a great parent?” 

Can you feel that teacher's frustration?

Diane Ravitch posted this letter from a frustrated teacher:

I am exhausted from trying to figure out what to teach for the next county test……then state test. 

I am tired of the CLAWS that come at you and the Ugly Faces of the Powers that be when your class of 33 can not make an A on one of those SO BAD BAD TESTS!!!. 

Those “Frowny Powers that Be” people may not know it but they will die early and have so many wrinkles form those Ugly Ugly Facial Gestures!!! 

I am so tired of the hiring of all of the coaches that nag and nag and nag the veteran teachers and pretend to know more…but they do not.. 

I am tired of the Professional Learning whatevers where teachers discuss TEST SCORES for a kid with a 58 I.Q….while an administrator that has never taught more than one year takes notes back to the Super Powers…or they have some person whose position has been created to sit there and take notes to take back to the Super Powers.

Another letter posted by Deshotels notes the Louisiana COMPASS evaluation rubric:

This plan pushed through against the good advice of many knowledgeable people is ludicrously full of erroneous assumptions and unattainable goals. There is no way that it is a just and fair practice to put in something that is still evolving into motion and expect immediate proficiency to the point of using it as a ranking and punitive measure.---- Additionally the rubric itself is worded so that it is near impossible to get a 4 rating, to get the huge “carrot on a stick stipend”. The very creator of the rubric has admitted that earning “highly effective” several times in a row is highly unlikely. To earn a 4, students basically have to be in charge of the classroom. 

Louisiana has delayed implementation of some of the Common Core and COMPASS elements in order to address some of these concerns:

For the next two years, schools will be graded on a curve, not by absolute test scores: The distribution of grades will stay the same as they are now. While the specific formula for the curve remains to be determined, the 2012-13 tests showed 43 percent of schools were graded A or B, and 8 percent were graded F. 

The Louisiana School Boards Association and Louisiana Association of School Superintendents had asked to suspend school grades altogether for two years. A BESE motion to do that failed, 2-9. Metairie member James Garvey said good schools deserved to keep their hard-won A and B grades, and Stephanie Desselle of the Council for a Better Louisiana said families needed to know how schools were performing. 

Under the Compass evaluation system that went into effect this past year, about one third of teachers are evaluated based on "value-added" statistics that measure actual student test scores against how the student, based on past scores, was expected to perform. It's been a major bone of contention between White and the teacher unions. 

But White is now taking the issue off the table, saying he agreed with educators that value-added scores were meaningless when the tests were changing. For two years, the state will not issue those calculations, and local school systems will measure student growth through other means.

But teachers are still being evaluated under those rubrics and so when a good teacher gets a lower-than-expected score, morale plummets.

How is it fair to a teacher in a low socio-economic school with almost no parental involvement and no PTA in place to be graded the same as a high achieving magnet school with an active PTA and high parental involvement?   Are the teachers in those high-achieving schools really all that better than the ones in low achieving schools?  Is the system designed to make teachers in low achieving schools bail out of those schools and go to schools where they can get higher scores, and therefore more pay?

How is it fair for teachers of core subjects to be graded on the VAM model and other teachers not?

Maybe those teachers in those low performing schools should be valued even more for their commitment to the low achieving and struggling student - that student who despite all the odds stacked against him continues to try to achieve something nobody in his family has done before:  graduate.  Maybe those teachers should be encouraged for their commitment and dedication.

But, no.  Instead, those teachers are told that they work in a "D" or an "F" school and it's their fault.  They're told it's better to teach in a low performing school because then the only place to go is up!  Rationalizations.

No wonder morale is low.

Are there bad teachers?  Of course there are.  And good administrators get rid of them; tenure or not, a bad teacher can be terminated.

Education reform is a topic that will continue to be debated and tested.  The simple fact is, there IS no magic bullet.  The bottom line is that the federal government needs to stay out of education, leave it to the states as intended, and let good teachers do their jobs.  Stop implementing fad curriculum and standards requirements that take all the creativity out of the classroom; stop making students have to perform like robots, stop making education all about accountability, and above all, stop killing the souls of your teachers by telling them what failures they are.