Recycling man, why do you hate me? I put my recycling in the street on time, but not too early. I put it in the street rather than the gutter. I try to keep it away from the trash can so you can get your pick-up-device around it. I do my best not to contaminate my recyclables with food waste. So why oh why do you, every week, put my recycling bin in the street right in the middle of my driveway so that I have to stop my car in the street, get out, move the bin back, then get back in the car to park? Why?
I'm indulging in just a little bit of self-hatred lately because I feel like I've been trying really hard to lose weight and eat healthily, but not only am I not losing, I'm gaining! Listen, I have reduced my junk food, I'm eating more veggies and fruits, I've upped my exercise, what the hell, dude? I'm kind of pissed about it.
I'm home in the middle of the day today because I attended an off-campus meeting all morning, and am going back for an after-school meeting at 1:15, but I decided not to go teach half of one class -- even if it's not going well with the sub, it would only get worse if I interrupted halfway through.
I actually learned a lot at today's meeting. Some of that stuff about API scores and AYP scores and No Child Left Behind can be really incomprehensible. Today's presenter really laid it out clearly. Sadly, I was right about one thing I was hoping I was wrong about -- the best way to meet our goals in one category is to reduce the number of students in the special ed program. Sad, huh? They force us to test students who, by definition, can't meet the goals of the test, then punish us when they don't. So how do we not get punished? Stop serving those kids.
There's good news though. There's this "Safe Harbor" clause. The short story is, even if you don't hit your target, if you have improved by a certain (lower) number of percentage points, you can still meet your AYP goal. I disagree with our principal on this issue, though. He doesn't want to tell the staff this, because he wants them to shoot for the higher goal. Which makes sense, except that the higher goal is damn near unattainable. My theory is, tell them that it IS possible to reach our goal so that they're inspired to work for it. Otherwise, they might think "Well, I'll try (heavy sigh) but since we'll never make it anyway . . ."
An interesting piece of news for folks not in the biz -- you've heard how crappy California is doing education-wise, right? Well, in part it's a statistics game. Compare California to Texas, for example: Texas has a way higher percentage of students scoring "proficient" than California does. That means they're doing a better job, right? Wrong. Each state sets its own standards, and California's are a lot more rigorous than Texas'. For example, in each content area (math is a content area), Texas has about 6 standards. California has 30-40 per content area. Also, Texas has more students scoring in the "proficient" range. But they define "proficient" differently than California does. There are five categories kids can fall into -- Advanced, Proficient, Basic, Below Basic, and Far Below Basic. CA counts only the top two categories as proficient. Texas counts the top three. And finally, Texas' tests are just easier. You can look it up yourself online. There are sample questions from real tests on each state's department of ed web site. Compare the test questions at each grade level. Anyway, when you start looking at the real information behind the numbers, it's totally comparing apples and oranges to say that Texas has more proficient kids. If in my class, I set the goal for a standing long jump at 12 inches and another teacher sets hers at 5 feet, well no damn wonder that 100% of my kids are meeting the goals and only 30% of hers are. It doesn't mean I'm doing a better job.
I guess that's about it. I would have sworn I had something else interesting to say, but it has completeley slipped away.
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