Back to Leave No Child Behind

Drew -- At the high school where I now work, one very senior teacher demanded the right to honors classes during the final decade of her career. Another teacher asked for C2 classes this year. Frankly, each teacher's roster is a mix of levels, including honors, advanced, C1 and C2.
I'm not certain how many sections of Advanced Placement classes exist although the chairman of the English department teaches one.

A single teacher presents all of the upper level chemistry and physics classes. Frankly, until the new chairman took over this year, no else on the science faculty had the credentials.

My kids attended the public high school in a neighboring town and the situation in the English department there was the same, with teachers assigned a mix of classes. However, the department chairman taught more than the single class the chairman teaches here. Her schedule included several levels. The final chair during my kids' tenure there was a nationally recognized expert on Shakespeare.

BTW, as an editor and an English teacher, I know writing. I wouldn't make the same claim about math.

Glad to hear that you're school/district spreads the love around.

Certainly a different experience from my mother-in-law's and my wife's.




BTW, criticism is easy. And none of here are your students. Unsolicited criticism of one's preferred writing style could certainly be interpreted as a personal attack. Unless one encounters egregious problems (all caps, no punctuation, no paragraphing) I, for one, certainly feel we should limit our comments to discussion of the subject matter.

I don't think anyone should criticize schools today when they give evidence that their own educations are somehow less than perfect. I strongly believe that if you yourself can not do something, you have no right to criticise.

Besides, no one should have to wade through bombast. People go through a stage of "this'll get'um" when they write: a time when they think convoluted structure will make up for a lack of content. It doesn't.

Perhaps some folks have difficulty distinguishin' between convoluted structure and complex, clearly delineated thought - particularly when such thought is fact-laden and runs counter to the preferences of the confused.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Perhaps some folks have difficulty distinguishin' between convoluted structure and complex, clearly delineated thought - particularly when such thought is fact-laden and runs counter to the preferences of the confused


Funny statement coming from someone who couldn't even manage to finish a degree. Again, you've demonstrated a basic inability to comprehend the written word here.

Today, a teacher here at AHS complained that NCLB is preventing her from accomplishing as much as she has in the past.

Yesterday, I attended a lecture by Stephen Greenblatt and used the little pocket diary I keep with me at all times. When I opened it, this entry struck me:

Friday, 3 January 2003
Substituted for a fourth grade, special needs aide:
Kids asked the teacher about MCAS. Teacher told children that the test is meant to keep all the students together in terms of accomplishment.

Q: Then, the MCAS is more for you than for us.

A: No, it's more for the school system.

Q: Well, if the MCAS is more for the school system, why, in the 10th grade, if you don't pass the MCAS, do you not graduate?

Let's return to the situation I posted above, involving two applicants, one qualified beyond the basic level, the other marginal at best.

Someone suggested that personality matters. Well, are then saying that being a certain kind of person -- in this case, something of a sorority girl -- is more important than being educated? experienced? intelligent?

It really sounds like you would tolerate hiring a candidate with marginal qualifications.

Hm... I decided not to finish my degree.

Seems you're taking the easy way out: anyone who disagrees with you is just wrong because they're incapable of following your logic.

An intellectual cop-out that is demonstrated by many on this board.

Drew Dad -- Seems like you answered a post that wasn't addressed to you. I don't take any easy way out at all. Timberlandko insists that he writes well. He would be placed in a CI or C2 level class in a decent high school today. He insists he draws on facts but most of his posts are based on opinion.

So, either you and T are the same person and you slipped up by posting under the wrong nom d'email or else something is bothering you tremendously.

Well, let me break this down.

1. This isn't a private discussion. If you wish to address something specifically to another user, then use a PM.
2. I suspect that Timber can write standard English quite as well as you or me. He simply chooses to write with a particular style. I think it says more about you that you seem to think that a dialect is indicative of intelligence or ability.

But I'm going to leave all that for now.

As for the hypothetical hiring:

I'm saying that a principle, or any hiring manager, has a lot of things to balance when hiring. Why did this highly-qualified person leave her last job? Would this person be happy teaching the classes that I need a teacher for?

And do you have something against sorority girls? Does being a member of a sorority make them incompetent, or automatically less qualified? Why did you choose to toss that little bit of info into the mix?



McG, are you advocating a national curriculum, or are you saying that a national standardized test is the wrong way to go?

A conjectural assessment grievously in error.


I believe what has been demonstrated is the quoted critic's basic refusal to get in step with the real world. Also evident is the quoted critic's continuing lack of understanding, or at least lack of implementation, of the principles and protocols of civil debate.

. I suspect that Timber can write standard English quite as well as you or me. He simply chooses to write with a particular style. I think it says more about you that you seem to think that a dialect is indicative of intelligence or ability.
--------------
It is his sentence structure and the bombastic tone (the sort boys in the 9th and 10th grade use) that I find objectionable. One of the the points on which an English teacher grades a paper up or down is whether the style interferes with the communication of ideas. Timberlandko's bombast interferes with his communication. Bombast is generally viewed either as an indication of foggy thinking or of an attempt to "snow" the reader.


And, yes, I think in this sort of discourse, the use of pseudo-dialect is out of place. However, I do not feel it is an indication of intelligence. It is meant to annoy, and, therefore, is an expression of immaturity.

Returning to my first statement, I will add that if the bombast is an outgrowth of foggy thinking, the the writer has no ground to stand on when he criticizes education today.

Timberlandko repeatedly writes that education has gone down hill. The implication is that he received a superior education. However, he demonstrates that he is deficient in writing skills, and, by extension, logic.

Following what Timberlandko has to say to its logical conclusion means that he wishes today's schools were like the schools he attended.

I feel that would be a step backward. Why? Because I know the instruction my own kids (now adults) received is superior to the instruction I received in several areas. As a substitute teacher, I saw fifth graders in academic 2002-03 working (in certain areas) on the level that was demanded of my eighth grade class in academic 1960-61.

Granted, there are kids today that are discipline problems. But there have always been kids who couldn't behave in class. Social critics, educators, creators of popular culture have tended to focus on them, rather than the successes or the kids that are simply quiet and passive.

Plain wrote


Hmmm. Well at least two of us like Timber's pseudo-dialect and consider him not the least bit immature--he doesn't tout his resume but it isn't one given to immaturity--and he goes out of his way to be one of the least annoying members on A2K, not to mention that he gently encourages the rest of us not to be annoying. Some take the hint. Some don't.

McGentrix's call for a national curriculum is not only the ringing of the death knell of education, it is in direct contradiction of his conservative principles. As a political science student in the 1960s, I was taught that conservatives believe that the government that is closest to the governed, protects the governed best. In other words, local government has the interests of its constituency at heart.

Most conservatives would promptly answer that it is not the role of government to protect the individual.

I would like McG to answer the following:
1.) Why he thinks a national curriculum is the answer?
2.) What will a national curriculum do that the aggregate local curriculi do not?
3.) Who will compose said curriculum?
4.) What mechanics will be put in place for revisions?
5.) How specific should said curriculum be? In other words, should every 10th grade student study American literature or should each child read the same books at the same time?
6.) What does he propose to do about the Fundamentalists' issue of Creationism, Intelligent Design or Creation Science?

I'm sorry, from where did you get your degree in mind-reading?

Re-read his post:

If national test, then national curriculum.

Did he call for a national test and I missed it?

plainoldme wrote:
It is meant to annoy...

I'm sorry, from where did you get your degree in mind-reading?

-----------------

I hope that you don't exclude yourself from the list of people who fail to follow the rules of civil discourse.

When a person is told that a habit, like the above mentioned use of pseudo-dialect is annoying and, more importantly, casts them in an unfavorable light, then their continued use is meant to annoy.

Besides, I doubt that you'd consider mind-reading a teachable skill.

Well, just remember that we have two votes for and only one vote against.

Has anyone had any luck in proving that tests are designed to assess students learning not teachers teaching abilities.
----

PBS produced a documentary on these tests a few years back. Most of them began with for profit companies, headed by people attempting to gather dollars for themselves. They're composed by people who. like our lowest level students, turn to the back of text, look up a subject like Marie Antoinette, then turn to the pages which deal with her, and compose questions.

The Massachusetts test is currently considered the most stringent. While the state did buy a standardized test from a for-profit corporation, it pulled a large group of the teachers considered the best, from their classrooms for two years to improve the test.

Whether the students would have been better off with the teachers in place at the head of their classes or away working on the standardized test is an unanswerable question. On the one hand, I feel the action of the state does show more responsibility than a state that accepts uncritically a test made by a for-profit company. On the other, these people were the veterans, the ones that young faculty members turn to for guidance, information and knowledge, to say nothing of the kids that were deprived of their wisdom for two years.

the higher-qualified candidate might have expectations such as teaching a honors course or somesuch.

What's wrong with that? Have you considered without honors classes, a school has nothing to "pave the way," that is, to set and raise standards?

When I was substituting in the elementary schools in 2002-03, a parent pinned me down after school to tell me about her husband's plans to improve the schools. She said the four tracks (C1, C2, Advanced and Honors) offered by the high school wasted money.

That puzzled me. The state demands each student take four years of English. Why is it more expensive to teach four different levels of English? Technically, the same number of books are still needed. In theory, classes would enroll the same number of students taught by the same number of teachers. Hopefully, the same number of papers would be written, or would they?

Generally, more advanced students are expected to not only write more papers, but to write longer papers.

What about the special needs kids, the handful that read at the eighth grade level and still smaller group that reads at the fifth grade level? Do you integrate them with the kids who at 16 write like graduate students and will easily gain admission to an Ivy? Do you hold back to brightest to accomodate the less fortunate?

The kids I mention whose reading is below level are all sweet. What about "the sweathogs"? When you were in school, they might have been called "hoods" or "greasers," but no matter what nick name they're given, they're the kids who don't care and never will. Do you punish your potential Yalie by placing him in a class with goof-offs?