If you have ever been curious about how your state measures upt to any other state in education, you might want to go the the Nation's Report Card website for some quick statistics. I think it's pretty cool to see how much per pupil student spending differs among different regions. Check out New York, then Arizona, for example.
I came across this link while looking up information regarding this year's NAEP teacher survey. You see, I was told asked to participate in this survey, which I really don't mind doing at all, except that when my booklet was given to me, Ms. Whatsit was emblazoned across the front where no place for a name existed.
You might be wondering, Big deal. Why is she so sensitive? For me it is a poignant reminder that nothing is ever truly confidential in my building.
Earlier in the year in response to district-wide grumblings regarding some radical changes filtering down from the top, my union asked Superintendent to conduct a survey to ascertain the level of disgruntled-ness employees were really feeling. It was a survey designed for all different types of employees, not just teachers, and it included a hundred-something questions about every department you could think of. We were asked about our "feelings" regarding transportation, dining, instruction and assessments. Many questions addressed our trust and confidence in the leadership we served in all areas we interacted with, from the superintendent all the way down to department heads and building principals. Most importantly, we were assured that it was a confidential survey, that staff were to fill out on their own time and to submit it for data analysis. With each survey came and addressed envelope to the district main building
Yet, at a staff meeting this is how we were encouraged how to turn them in.
1. Give their survey to Principal's secretary so she could give it to Principal.
2. The principal would send all of the surveys to the district assessment office.
3. The district assessment office would gather the surveys from all of the schools and send them off to a neutral third party for analysis.
I honestly do not like the person I have become over the course of the past year. I have become cynical and non-trusting of those in charge. I would say that I have a love-hate relationship with Principal, for I really do enjoy talking with her on a social level. Yet there are many things that she does that I don't agree with, and quite frankly, she scares the crap out of me when I think about how she managed to fire of some teachers over the course of the past decade. Principal is also a statistics freak, for she is always sending us her own data analysis. And it isn't just the standardized tests that she scrutinizes. Who among you has an administrator who sends each teacher a comparative analysis of the follow-up letter grades your former students from two years back? Fortunately, I measure up well under according to her research, but it makes me uncomfortable nonetheless. For ever piece of information she shares with teachers, there is an underlying sense that there is more that she hangs on to just in case she needs to shake up things once more. Might she have taken the liberty to look at our surveys? I don't know, but I don't like the feeling of being put in a position that maybe they were.
I suppose this must be how students feel, for our current culture of high-stakes testing has led us down this kind of path.
I don't like feeling paranoid, but I do. I believe that NCLB has thrown us in the dark ages. The caring, human component of education is purposely being sucked out of classrooms and schools, and we have raised a generation of children to believe that learning isn't fun.
And I don't like the cynical paranoia that clouds my thinking either. I am an effective educator, and I love the kids. It's the adults in charge who have somehow forgotten what it's like to be in the classroom that bring me down.
at 5:47 AM
2 comments:
Pissed Off said...
Your blog entry sounds like something I would write. While I am not overly paranoid (that happens when you reach the FU age), I know that spies exist in my building. Conversations held in the bathrooms and cafeteria are repeated to the principal.
The real emphasis is not on education, but on statisitics. Our principal and ap's got performance bonuses, and now they are pushing more than ever for kids to pass and take higher level courses. Administrations doesn't care about kids. They want to show that the kids are moving ahead so they can do better in surveys and make more money.
One of my recently retired friends is planning on writing an expose book about the school. I hope she does and gets it published.
February 02, 2007 1:59 PM
Ellie said...
Not only is the emphasis on statistics, but on the acquisition of bought and sold packages that pass for "education". Textbook companies write curricula, not education professionals with a working body of knowledge. I am cynical because I am a parent of a 6th grader who is not that thrilled with 6th grade, and neither am I. It looks like he fell off a cliff. He's holding his own, but is not inspired any more in school. The system is heartless spiritless and cruel to teachers ( the professional educators!!) and now children, whose parents are not respected either by these powerful but inept "leaders". The need for "spies" in a school is only because all leadership in our schools doubts itself due to Bloomberg and Klein's scorched earth policy of destroying or altering even schools that work for some ulterior motive. One of those motives is, of course, to get rid of senior teachers since we are not only an economic burden but also know more than they do about education, since we have always been the professionals in the field, not them.
February 02, 2007 2:55 PM
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