The Story Of Assessment

This week has been... well... not great. As I mentioned earlier, my school is on a big "inquiry" kick and the data specialist and the AP have been sparring about binders and table of contents, and all kinds of stuff that has nothing to do with instruction. Now, they have decided that they want us to turn in a summary of our inquiry students' needs and the action that we have taken in our instruction to meet those needs AND the findings. Keep in mind, we have had NO CONVERSATION about what we are even inquiring about. They also want all of our conferring notes for reading so we can "standardize" our notes.

OKAY...so did they forget that report cards are due on Monday and that we have been busting our butts to get all of the children assessed for reading? YEP, they did! They FORGOT about report cards. They must have also forgotten that in order to assess all of our students for reading, it takes TIME... lots of time, like 20-40 minutes per student. And since we have gotten NO EXTRA PREPS in which to assess our students, we are all doing it in the classroom with all of the other students present and since we have no paras or assistants, the students need to be completely independent in order for us to get these assessments done... hence the fact that my colleagues and I agree that we have been literally TEACHING NOTHING for the past 2 weeks.

When I say teaching nothing, I don't mean that the students have not been reading and writing, they have, but I have not taught them anything new. I have been doing lots of "reading response" where I do a read aloud (related to our current area of study in writing), we do some storytelling as a whole class, and the students write the story from beginning to end in their journals. When they finish, they illustrate their favorite part. I know... not so great, but I NEED them to be independent for large chunks of time. Given the current climate, how the heck am I supposed to have addressed the needs of my inquiry student in my instruction? Conferring notes for reading? HA!!! That must be a sick joke, unless they mean my notes from December. I started assessing my students for Promotion in Doubt in mid-January to have the scores ready for February. So this means I have spent half of January and ALL of February ASSESSING!!!! Then, of course, I'm pretty sure they also FORGOT about promotion-in-doubt conferences because we didn't schedule them until this past week. So on top of all the assessing madness, I have been holding conferences every morning before school and sometimes after school with parents.

So, now I am going to reflect on how we reached this point at my school. Things were not always this chaotic AT ALL!!!!! My first year of teaching I was told I had to assess my students using ECLAS. I got a neat little box with neat little booklets for all of the students. It came with nice laminated card stock sheets with the alphabet, sight words, etc. I had all of the books I needed right there in the cute little box. When it was time to assess, I took my neat box of materials out to the hallway and spent and ENTIRE DAY assessing my students. Yes, an entire day, that is because I was given a substitute teacher for an entire day so I could assess my students.

My second year of teaching, we opted not to use ECLAS anymore, but instead went with the TC DYO assessment. It sounded great at first--culturally relevant texts, more levels, etc. That is until I actually had to assemble my assessment binder and I realized that this wouldn't fit in a neat little box like ECLAS. Suddenly I was swimming in photocopies and I literally had to take over a whole work table in my classroom to get this thing set up. If I was missing a copy of something, FORGET IT!!!! I had to deal with the photocopier to replace it. The worst part was that the assessment was almost completely the SAME as ECLAS. The only real difference was the books, which I didn't find in any way better than the ones we used with ECLAS. Yes, they were "culturally relevant" but not AT ALL for my students, so much so that I find myself having to explain what a rodeo is, or finding Vietnam on a map, or explaining what a Dashiki is before we can even sit down to read. The books from ECLAS were about dogs losing tennis balls and simple stuff like that. Things that kids could relate to. Oh, did I mention, this is also when my school stopped giving us a substitute for a day so we could actually get the work done.

Let's jump ahead to this year, my 5th year of teaching. I have used the TC DYO assessment now for 4 years. Now NO ONE supplies us with anything. I have to print the running record sheets off from my HOME COMPUTER and bring them to school to photocopy and file myself. Our new packets were photocopies incorrectly for the 2nd year in a row so I have to staple the spelling section on myself. Last year I had to hand write list C for the word list assessment. I'm just so sick of the explosion of paper that happens in my room and I just think to myself, "For what?" It's all just so stupid. We switched from ECLAS to the TC DYO so that someone else could MAKE MONEY OFF POOR CHILDREN!!!! That is the bottom line!

Fingers crossed

So, it's out there, I really can't stand working for this corrupted system and I can't stand administrators regurgitating useless information that they get from their millions of "meetings" with their networks and mentors and data specialists many of which do not even have degrees or experience in education. It's all just such a waste of time and it's meaningless for the children.

Right now my school is on a big "inquiry" kick. Now, don't get me wrong, I think teacher inquiry is a great thing and something that I participate in with my own classroom and instruction each year, mostly informally, but also formally on occasion. I want to be on board with inquiry, but I just can't stand to be at meetings with the data specialist and the assistant principal. They are constantly butting heads and spouting off useless stuff about what our binders should look like and what the table of contents could look like that they are not listening to the teachers about the needs of our students and they are not helping us shape our inquiry and look deeply at our practice (which is the whole point, right?). Anyway, I'm one of those people who does not have a poker face, so when I hear something ridiculous, I just can't hide it (my colleagues tend to nod and agree with everything, so I'm pretty much the only one). The data specialist was running her mouth about how we need a separate binder for each teacher and another binder for the grade level and blah blah blah and I looked across the table at a consultant we work with from a university nearby and her face was just like mine and I thought to myself "I don't know what I'd do if she weren't here." You see our consultant actually comes with expertise in the area of literacy and listens to the teachers and cares about the children. She comes from a university with a strong research background and knows about the current research and findings in the field. If I were her I'd probably run away as fast as I could.

THIS is why I have to get my doctorate. I don't know what I would do if my school did not have a relationship with a university. I'd be lost in the land of standardization and education as business. Sometimes I actually feel like I'm in that movie "Idiocracy." Deep breath. At this point I'm keeping my fingers crossed and hoping to be accepted to the only program to which I applied (in retrospect putting all my eggs in one basked may not have been the best of ideas). I know that with an acceptance letter, I will be able to anchor myself to this university and to find company in the community of educators who do actual research. I can't wait to get my own research in place for my students. It is the ONLY way I feel I can stay at my school. If I am denied acceptance I'm not sure what I'll do. I guess I'll apply somewhere else.

Wish me luck!

Why I haven't posted

It has been way too long since the last time I posted. I spent this past week of vacation doing a lot of thinking, reading, working, and general organizing of my life and future. I would click on my blog every day, but I had nothing to write. I would read other bloggers posts to get some inspiration, but still I felt nothing. I think this is a reflection on how I am feeling professionally: like nothing. All of the problems at my school have gotten worse this year. Last year was bad and I remember telling myself that if this year was like that I would leave my school. I wish it were as easy as that... I wish I could just leave. Last year I tried to leave. I posted my resume on the open market website and decided I would go for it. When I started getting phone calls, I freaked out. At first I just didn't call the principals back and then finally at one point I told a principal that I had decided to stay at my school another year... and that was when I realized that I would stay another year. So I stayed and everything got worse and children continued to be under/mis-served by a disgusting and criminal system and now I feel totally helpless like nothing will ever change. Part the reasoning behind my decision to stay was that I was afraid of what other schools might be like. I figured it could be worse somewhere else. At least at my school I have great colleagues. Now I'm in a situation where I don't feel that I can leave. Personal situations have come up for some of my colleagues and I feel that I must stay to support them for at least one more year. Plus, if I stay another year, I am eligible for loan forgiveness which I desperately need and I will be vested in the pension so I won't lose it if I leave. I keep telling myself I can do it for one more year and then I'm in the clear and I can go somewhere else.

Part of this is also due to the fact that I have had to revisit a lot of recent publications and research in the area of TESOL and bilingual education recently and I just get depressed at how much we used to do and how little we do now at my school. The problem of siblings being denied registration has continued and has now affected one of our most loyal and vulnerable families in our program. I realized that we have not had ONE parent workshop this entire school year and no one seems to care. No one has even asked the teachers to choose a topic or anything. Why are we paying a parent coordinator? In one reading, a suggestion to help issues of low literacy was to have open library time before school for parents to come and read with their children. This just reminded me that my school got rid of its library last year when we used to have that resource.

Everyone asks me if it's because of budget cuts and I always immediately answer with NO! It's absolutely NOT about budget cuts, its about having caring and capable administrators with a vision for a school who actually make people DO THEIR JOBS!!! The sad part is that my administrators have probably never even read the publications and research that I am reading now and revisiting from my masters and they have NO IDEA nor do they even care to learn.