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Ah yes....Johnny's self esteem....THAT is the root of what is wrong with education in this country. We are more concerned with how our kids feel than we are whether they actually learn.
Exit exams would work in three ways. 1) If teachers aren't getting their kids to pass the exams, it would be noted in a short amount of time. 2) Students would have a vested interest in actually learning the material because they have to pass the test placing some responsibility to learn on the learner. 3) Students who had not learned the minimum amount of material needed to move to the next class wouldn't creating a better learning environment for all.
Exit exams increase teacher and student accountability and would eliminate promoting kids into classes where they lack the perquisites to succeed.
Of course it will never be done because it's not PC to place any responsibility to pass on Johnny. Johnny is the one person who we hold blameless. He's growing up believing that any failure to succeed is someone else's fault....never mind we're sending him off to college and out into the world completely unprepared because we're too busy protecting his feelings. Honestly, I'm surprised we don't have more Columbine's than we do. Kids who have never experienced failure and pulling themselves up by their boot straps and getting on with life aren't going to deal with failure well as teens (teens can be cruel) and young adults. They're in for a rude awakening and it should come as no surprise that some of them do not weather this well and seek revenge on those who have what they think they deserve.
In your experience, in your part of the country. Where I teach, little to no energy is wasted on building self-esteem. Rather, a major problem is that students arrive at school approximately 50% behind typical developmental markers, beginning with 5-year-olds whose language development is more on a level associated with 2-year-olds. By the time these students get to high school, their reading and math skills are still 50% behind, with our freshmen typically reading at a 5th grade level. Of course, exit exams don't measure where a student started, only the progress made by the external measurement. Teachers can't refuse to accept these students in class, where the curriculum must be taught, even when the students don't have the prerequisite skills to learn the tested objectives. So then the teachers appear to be inadequate to teaching the curriculum, when in fact, they are in an untenable situation.
In your experience, in your part of the country. Where I teach, little to no energy is wasted on building self-esteem. Rather, a major problem is that students arrive at school approximately 50% behind typical developmental markers, beginning with 5-year-olds whose language development is more on a level associated with 2-year-olds. By the time these students get to high school, their reading and math skills are still 50% behind, with our freshmen typically reading at a 5th grade level. Of course, exit exams don't measure where a student started, only the progress made by the external measurement. Teachers can't refuse to accept these students in class, where the curriculum must be taught, even when the students don't have the prerequisite skills to learn the tested objectives. So then the teachers appear to be inadequate to teaching the curriculum, when in fact, they are in an untenable situation.
Much of educational policy is set with the intention of protecting Jr's. self esteem. I'm aware that the inner city isn't like the burbs, however, the root of the problem is still students not taking responsibility for their own learning just for a different reason. Where you teach it's because their environment doesn't value education and they simply do not have the tools in their toolbox to succeed. Where I teach it's because mommy doesn't want to risk bruising Jr's ego. I'm not sure the end results are really that different. What's different is for the kids I teach, there will be someone to catch them when they fall, and get them into therapy where they will learn that none of this was their fault... Your kids just fall.
I do think that preventing kids from being passed on without the prerequisite skills needed to succeed is a good place to start and exit exams would do that. I'm a firm believer that success breeds success. Put kids in a situation where they can succeed and they will gain confidence from success. Of course I don't teach in the inner city where it can actually be detrimental to your health to be successful in school. I teach in an area where education is expected. Not appreciated or valued but expected as a means to an end. I don't think education is either valued or expected in the inner city. It's viewed more as something done to students and to be resisted. In both cases, it is our view of education that must change.
Ah yes....Johnny's self esteem....THAT is the root of what is wrong with education in this country. We are more concerned with how our kids feel than we are whether they actually learn.
Bingo. Give this person a cigar!
I'm SO GLAD someone picked up on this!!
Dayum, as a child prodigy I kept seeing less deserving students get huge breaks with such bullshyt as "notebook grades" for having an organized notebook (which of course I never effing had, because I did not NEED it) - you got all kind of grade curves for all sorts of bullshyt, and thus, students like me got less and less credit FOR ACTUALLY KNOWING THE PHLUCKING MATERIAL!!
Of course it will never be done because it's not PC to place any responsibility to pass on Johnny. Johnny is the one person who we hold blameless. He's growing up believing that any failure to succeed is someone else's fault....never mind we're sending him off to college and out into the world completely unprepared because we're too busy protecting his feelings.
Football, baseball, basket ball games
Drinkin' bear, kickin' ass and takin' down names
With the top down, get-a-round, shootin' the line
Summer is here and Johnny's feelin' fine
But Johnny can't read
Summer is over and he's gone to seed
Johnny can't read
He never learned nothin' that he'll ever need
Well, Johnny can dance and Johnny can love
Johnny can push and Johnny can shove
Johnny can hang out; Johnny can talk tough
Johnny can get down and Johnny can throw up
Last edited by toobusytoday; 01-01-2014 at 06:55 AM..
Reason: copyright. Link and three sentences please
Much of educational policy is set with the intention of protecting Jr's. self esteem. I'm aware that the inner city isn't like the burbs, however, the root of the problem is still students not taking responsibility for their own learning just for a different reason. Where you teach it's because their environment doesn't value education and they simply do not have the tools in their toolbox to succeed. Where I teach it's because mommy doesn't want to risk bruising Jr's ego. I'm not sure the end results are really that different. What's different is for the kids I teach, there will be someone to catch them when they fall, and get them into therapy where they will learn that none of this was their fault... Your kids just fall.
I do think that preventing kids from being passed on without the prerequisite skills needed to succeed is a good place to start and exit exams would do that. I'm a firm believer that success breeds success. Put kids in a situation where they can succeed and they will gain confidence from success. Of course I don't teach in the inner city where it can actually be detrimental to your health to be successful in school. I teach in an area where education is expected. Not appreciated or valued but expected as a means to an end. I don't think education is either valued or expected in the inner city. It's viewed more as something done to students and to be resisted. In both cases, it is our view of education that must change.
The disparity between our two experiences is just one of the many challenges that exist when addressing the improvement of education in America. Like the five blind men who were examining the elephant, each individual's experience colors his or her perspective, and thus the perceived remedies for the "system." And we can all agree that this so-called system does not actually exist. There are more authorities for education just in the various levels of government than are manageable as a system.
One reason that I believe the powers of centralization are pushing the Common Core is so that they can better control the more local authorities. No one with the power to effect change wants to address the realities that exist in the day-to-day lives of our students that lead to such disparities in their academic achievement despite the fact that many modern nations have successfully mitigated the adverse consequences of the gaps between students of diverse backgrounds. In the countries that are touted as surpassing the US on international rankings such as PISA and the NAEP, poverty still exists, but social policies exist that palliate its effects somewhat.
In my previous post I mentioned the lack of early childhood preparation for formal learning as a significant obstacle in my region of the country. In many countries, early childhood education, whether formal or informal, is regarded as a critical part of the nation's overall successfulness. It makes no sense to spend fortunes on schooling for children who are not in prime learning condition, unless keeping poor children poor is actually part of the plan. Most countries that take education seriously don't consider preschool to be primarily daycare for the parents' benefit but rather an investment that will ensure that the next generation of citizens are in top form to receive the educational benefits that society will bestow upon it. I can't think of a rational reason why Americans are so turned around on this one.
Based on your succeeding suggestion, am I correct in presuming that the predicted growth is intended to be less than your curriculum?
I mean, if your curriculum covers X subject to Y degree, the predicted growth is some percentage of Y less than 100%, right?
And that's based on the student having achieved only a percentage of X subject the preceeding year, right?
So if the predicted growth was 80% of the basic algebra curriculum taken in grade 9, then the predicted growth would be--what? Ninety percent of the advanced algebra curriculum in grade 10? I
How does "predicted growth" work?
That is the question, isn't it?
And when I say they use previous exams to predict those scores, I mean they use 6th & 8th grade TCAP's and Algebra I, Biology (and possibly English 9 and American History) scores to predict my students' Chemistry scores. And how they (the TN DoE) does this is a secret they don't want use to know.
"If all or our teachers were excellent we would not be faced with failing schools!"
That was the comment from a friend of mine who was talking about the problem with schools and education today.
I tried to tell him that it was not really the teachers fault but the fault of unmotivated students, poverty, ignorance, teachers unions, a sick youth society, and government policies that says anyone who is interested in learning is a nerd, and a thousand other reasons. He would not buy it.
He went on to say: "If the teachers were any good they could get the students to listen to them and every student would excel. And if the teacher does not get results, fire them and bring in someone who can do the job."
Do you think my friend is right? Most of the fault is the teachers?
If all of our students were excellent, we wouldn't have failing schools.
If all of our parents were excellent we wouldn't have failing students.
If all of our families were excellent we wouldn't have failing parents.
If all of our jobs were excellent we wouldn't have failing families.
If our economy was excellent we wouldn't have millions working in crummy jobs and millions more w/o work of any kind.
How come your friend can't think beyond the end of his nose?
Indeed. I refer you to the song "Johnny Can't Read" by Don Henley.
Interesting poem.
FTR, I'm not saying that teachers don't have responsibility. What I'm saying is we can't do our jobs if no one will hold Johnny accountable for learning what we teach. We simply cannot open his head and pour in the knowledge. He has to be an active participant in his own learning.
Give me students who at least try to learn and I can reach the stars with them. Give me students who don't put in any effort and it doesn't matter how much effort I put in, they will not learn. Teaching students who don't want to learn is like painting a wall by throwing sponges loaded with paint at the wall from across the room. You don't cover much ground and what you do cover you don't cover well. People have this idea if teachers were only engaging enough, entertaining enough, whatever enough, that all the Johnny's out there would be able to read. It just ain't so.
Maybe it's time to admit that we're dummying down education for Johnny and change Johnny's name to Herbie. In industry a Herbie is the part of a process that slows everything else down. It's the bottle neck operation. This come from a story of a boy scout camping trip where Herbie was the slow kid and they had to keep slowing down for Herbie. The leader got the bright idea that if he could figure out how to speed Herbie up, he'd speed up the entire group and that's what he did by lightening Herbie's load and having the other kids encourage Herbie. In industry, you find your Herbies and you figure out how to make them faster and you make no excuses to the other 30 processes that are faster than Herbie while you work on Herbie. Maybe it's time to openly admit that we will not move on until Johnny can read. The rest of the class just has to wait just like the other processes wait in industry. I wonder how much attention Johnny would get then. I'm also willing to be that he'd be held accountable for learning if everyone else was waiting on him.
In reality they are waiting on Johnny but we lie and say it ain't so. We're not dummying down education for all and reducing the amount we teach because of Johnny. We'd NEVER do that......Actually we would and did we just don't admit it. Johnny is the bottleneck operation. He's slowing down everyone but we pretend that what we do we do for the benefit of all students. We tell parents things like by slowing down we can go deeper but we don't really. We just slowed down because Johnny can't read and because he can't read he can't keep up with his peers. The problem is that by slowing down and teaching less we are NOT fixing the problem which is that Johnny can't read.
The charter school my dd's attended did a lot of things right in elementary school. They took Johnny and sent him down to the lower grades to help the other kids by reading to them (the kids often had jobs to do helping the younger kids like this). This gave Johnny practice reading at a level he could handle, gave him something to feel good about because he was helping the little kids and it helped the little kids learn to read.
I did this with my dd's. Dd#1 wasn't taught phonics and started to fall apart in reading in 3rd grade. I took her in and had her evaluated and they told me she could not decode words and that her capacity to memorize words was maxing out. She needed to learn how to decode words. So I bought Hooked on Phonics for her little sister and had her help her learn phonics. She had a blast playing teacher and both of my kids learned phonics as a result.
Last edited by Ivorytickler; 01-01-2014 at 01:10 AM..
The disparity between our two experiences is just one of the many challenges that exist when addressing the improvement of education in America. Like the five blind men who were examining the elephant, each individual's experience colors his or her perspective, and thus the perceived remedies for the "system." And we can all agree that this so-called system does not actually exist. There are more authorities for education just in the various levels of government than are manageable as a system.
One reason that I believe the powers of centralization are pushing the Common Core is so that they can better control the more local authorities. No one with the power to effect change wants to address the realities that exist in the day-to-day lives of our students that lead to such disparities in their academic achievement despite the fact that many modern nations have successfully mitigated the adverse consequences of the gaps between students of diverse backgrounds. In the countries that are touted as surpassing the US on international rankings such as PISA and the NAEP, poverty still exists, but social policies exist that palliate its effects somewhat.
In my previous post I mentioned the lack of early childhood preparation for formal learning as a significant obstacle in my region of the country. In many countries, early childhood education, whether formal or informal, is regarded as a critical part of the nation's overall successfulness. It makes no sense to spend fortunes on schooling for children who are not in prime learning condition, unless keeping poor children poor is actually part of the plan. Most countries that take education seriously don't consider preschool to be primarily daycare for the parents' benefit but rather an investment that will ensure that the next generation of citizens are in top form to receive the educational benefits that society will bestow upon it. I can't think of a rational reason why Americans are so turned around on this one.
ITA. You cannot teach a hungry child until you feed him breakfast because his mind is on his empty stomach. I have often wondered why schools don't serve breakfast in impoverished areas. I find it interesting that my own school serves breakfast one day a year. The day the kids take the test that the school is judged by. Now we're not a poor district by any stretch of the imagination but if breakfast is that important, shouldn't it be important every day?
If hunger were the only issue, we could fix it easily but there are lots more stemming from poor family lives. Parents who are working multiple jobs to pay the bills, parents who are out partying and not there, parents who abuse their kids physically and emotionally, kids who get too little sleep because they are playing parent to younger siblings...How do we get all of these kids ready to educate?
I do still think that we need exit exams. Stopping the practice of pushing kids forward who are not ready to move forward would be a good first step for both of our districts. It gets fuzzy after that. There has to be remediation for kids who need to repeat material. Simply sticking them in the same class next year and doing the same thing that resulted in failure the first time will surely result in failure a second time too because the issues that led to the failure are not being addressed.
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Honestly, I'm surprised we don't have more Columbine's than we do. Kids who have never experienced failure and pulling themselves up by their boot straps and getting on with life aren't going to deal with failure well as teens (teens can be cruel) and young adults. They're in for a rude awakening and it should come as no surprise that some of them do not weather this well and seek revenge on those who have what they think they deserve.
It's all so easy!
