Re: Wasting Class Time

[Monty Neill <monty@FAIRTEST.ORG>]

Thanks for sharing the nightmare. These are important stories, and they should be gathered to be combined with more statistical studies to show the destruction being wrought on schools, particularly, tho certainly not always, on poor kids, kids of color, recent immigrants, special needs and vocational students...

So keep sharing these horrors.

Monty
  -----Original Message-----
  From: George Sheridan <learn@JPS.NET>
  To: ARN-L@LISTS.CUA.EDU <ARN-L@LISTS.CUA.EDU>
  Date: Tuesday, February 05, 2002 10:40 PM
  Subject: Wasting Class Time


  In a recent conversation with teachers from large urban districts in Orange County (California), I learned that in one district with a large population of Limited English Proficient students, teachers were told to concentrate on teaching math--because it's easier to raise those scores in the short term than to make students proficient in English. Never mind what students - or society as a whole -  might need in the long run.

  In the same district, I am told, administrators have instituted a system of triage. Whereas teachers serving needy populations often devote much of their time and effort to students in the bottom third of the class, teachers in this district have been told to focus on the middle third. The theory is that with much effort a student might move from the second to the tenth percentile, but it wouldn't help the API (Academic Performance Index). Students at the 35th or 40th percentile might be able to get scores above 50. The goal is to get "above the mean."

  A teacher described the horrible feeling of meeting with parents at the first conference, informing them that their child was likely to be retained because she was far from "meeting standards," and knowing (as parents asked, "What can we do, Senora?") that she was not supposed to "waste" class time on assisting those students.

  At the school where one of my informants works, the principal discourages field trips and assemblies, so that teachers and students can focus on tested curriculum. Of course, these co-curricular activities are the very thing that students would be most likely to remember and that would be most likely to build a positive attitude toward school.

  When it was time for physical fitness testing, one teacher pointed out that students had had no opportunity to develop these abilities. Every activity is supposed to be related to the math and English tests, so many elementary classes have stopped having P.E. 

  George Sheridan
  Black Oak Mine Teachers Association, CTA/NEA
  Garden Valley, California

  "Intelligence, in short, is not a thing but a behavior. It is not something we possess but something we do."

  British psychologist Ken Richardson, in his book The Making of Intelligence (Quoted by Evans Clinchy in a forthcoming book)