tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-46987745962466117492024-02-20T04:35:11.133-05:00Education: In Search of ReasonAn attorney and former public high-school English teacher examines some of the more absurd and counter-intuitive conventions of modern secondary education.Jason O. Braiman, Esq.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13127952576066942139noreply@blogger.comBlogger76125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4698774596246611749.post-41356015724312924572011-01-29T11:51:00.000-05:002011-01-29T11:51:11.196-05:00FAQHere's something I just dug up: a FAQ I put together for parent-teacher conferences. I wrote this to serve two purposes: (1), obviously, to avoid having to give the same explanation over and over to parents who typically asked the same basic questions, and (2) to give parents waiting to see me something to do in the meantime. A lot of my colleagues seemed to like it.<br />
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;">1. Why did my child fail?</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">If your child failed, it is because either (a.) he did not do his work, or (b.) his work did not meet the minimum requirement or the minimum grade-level performance standard. Put simply, he did not earn enough points to pass.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Every student’s average is based on the grades received on assigned work. If the assigned work does not meet the minimum requirement, or the minimum standard for his grade level, it receives a failing grade (an F = 18 points out of 40). If the work is not done at all, it receives a zero (no credit). This includes a notebook being missing from the classroom when it is scheduled to be checked, and the student being absent on the day a final essay exam is written in class.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;">2. How exactly did you figure out my child’s grade?</span></b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">The notebooks, in which we write in class every day, are collectively worth <b>40%</b> of the grade average. Notebook grades are based on <i>volume </i>of work, <i>comprehension </i>of the assigned material, and <i>response</i> to the assigned readings and daily quotes. We have had two (2) notebook checks so far, and we also had a take-home quiz at the start of the term which counts as a notebook. Also, homework assignments (up to 4 points each) are added together, with the total score counting as one notebook. These four scores are averaged together (A+B+C+D / 4). </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Formal writing projects, such as ELA Regents essays, are also worth <b>40%</b> of the grade. Only one essay was written and graded in the first marking period; therefore, the score your child received on that essay was worth the full 40%. Essay grades are based on what the student’s score would be for the same essay on the actual ELA Regents Exam.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-size: 11pt;">20%</span></b><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> of the grade is for participation, conduct, attendance, behavior, attitude, and other observable indicators of day-to-day classroom performance. This is an holistic score which I determine based on my records and my overall impression of your child’s behavior, partici-pation, conduct and general approach to learning throughout the semester. Generally, 20 is for excellent conduct and participation; 15 is for good conduct but limited participation; 10 is for occasional misconduct or attendance problems; 5 is for frequent misconduct; zero (0) is for persistent misconduct indicating a complete lack of interest in this aspect of the grade. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;">3. Why is my child’s grade in your class lower than his other classes?</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">I don’t know. A grade in one subject area does not necessitate the same level of proficiency, or actual performance, in another. I can tell you that English is fundamentally different from other high school subjects, in that it is entirely performance-based. There is also a significant difference between competence and excellence, between adequate and exceptional performance,<i> </i>when it comes to literacy.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;">4. Can my child make up the work he did not do?</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">No. The work assigned must be done as assigned, when assigned. I do not believe in “make-ups” or “extra credit,” as I insist that ill-considered or careless decision-making be held to account. The only way to make up for missing work is to do all of the assigned work from now on; the more work we do, the less the zero will impact the average, but it will take time.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">It is the student’s responsibility to know what the requirements, standards, assignments, due dates, etc. are, and to act accordingly. I provide students with all the information they need; they have plentiful resources, including myself, my website, and their classmates, to find it.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;">5. What if my child was absent on the day of the final essay?</span></b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">She should have done two things: (1) write the essay on her own, and (2) demonstrate to my satisfaction that her absence was <i>necessary and unavoidable</i>, not the result of conscious choice or her own negligence. I will not accept it otherwise. It is her responsibility to produce the essay and make sure I receive it immediately, not wait for me to tell her what to do. It is also her responsibility to explain her absence and provide adequate proof of that explanation.</span></div><b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;"><br clear="all" style="page-break-before: always;" /> </span></b> <div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;">6. What if my child took the notebook home </span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: -21pt;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;"><span>(a.)<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span></b><b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;">because he did not know it was supposed to be left in the class-room?</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Students were told early on that notebooks are supposed to be left in the classroom, under their desks. This is also clearly stated in the English Handbook. All work in the notebook is written <i>in class</i>. There is no reason for him not to know the policy, and no reason to take the notebook home.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: -21pt;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;"><span>(b.)<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span></b><b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;">because she was concerned that it might be stolen?</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">The risk that a notebook left in the classroom will be stolen is extremely low; it has probably never happened in the six-plus years I have had this policy in place. The risk that a notebook taken out of the classroom will be lost, stolen, misplaced, left at home, etc. is <i>substantially </i>greater. If she takes the notebook home, she does so at her own risk. In any event, she is responsible for making sure I receive it on the day it is scheduled to be checked, which is written on the whiteboard in the classroom.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: -21pt;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;"><span>(c.)<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span></b><b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;">by mistake?</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Mistakes or negligence cannot be corrected or avoided in the future if they are absolved and un-done in the present. Your child must learn to be more careful, and that he cannot afford to be careless. The notebook may receive partial credit the next time it is checked, but I will not undo his mistake.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;">7. How can my child raise his grade average?</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">The only way to improve one’s grade average is to do <b><i>all</i></b> of the assigned work, as assigned, when assigned, and to improve one’s performance.<span> </span>Better work means better grades.<span> </span>As the quality of his work improves, his grade average should improve as well. Improved conduct and meaningful class participation can also add points to the grade average.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;">8. What can I do to help my child improve her grades?</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">I always recommend that students read more in order to improve their fluency and literacy. Regularly reading such things as newspapers, current-affairs periodicals, fiction and non-fiction books, and other texts of appropriate sophistication and subject matter will go a long way toward improving both reading and writing skills. In addition, although I do not send assigned readings home with students, discussing the readings we do in class with your child would also be helpful, as would obtaining her own copy of the text to read on her own.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Students need to understand, above all else, that the English Regents is no easy mark; the performance standards are <i>very </i>high, and there is no body of information one can memorize to ensure a high score. Merely being a <i>competent </i>reader and writer, while it may be enough to pass, is not enough to excel. It is important that your child recognize the need for improvement, and take that need very seriously. In high school, the standards are higher than they are in middle school, and they are particularly high on the English Regents.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;">9. Will you call me any time my child has difficulty, misbehaves, or receives a failing grade in your class?</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">I will continue to send letters home to notify you of missing or failing work, or of persistent behavior problems. This is the most efficient way to provide such information. I can be reached via e-mail at <u>english@mrbraiman.com</u> if you would like to request a personal, individual update on your child’s performance.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;">10. What are the students learning in class now?</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">We just finished reading <i>The Catcher in the Rye.</i> Presently, we will begin our second writing project which is taken from Session Two, Part A of a previous ELA Regents exam. The syllabus for the entire semester is available on my website at www.mrbraiman.com. </span></div>Jason O. Braiman, Esq.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13127952576066942139noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4698774596246611749.post-30953677334444797752010-11-20T12:39:00.001-05:002010-11-27T11:47:08.136-05:00Repost: Testing, 1 - 2 - 3 ... (January 22, 2009)A lot of people, of all ages, like to complain about what they feel is an inappropriate and excessive emphasis on "testing" as a <span style="font-style: italic;">modus operandi</span> in schools. No one likes the idea of using standardized tests to make consequential decisions about students, and certainly about teachers, and "teaching to the test" is apparently one of the worst things a teacher or school could be doing. "Teaching to the test" could not possibly result in actual learning, because...<br />
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I think the value of standardized testing in general, and the New York English Regents exam in particular, is a topic for another day; I'm not talking about <span style="font-style: italic;">standardized </span>testing. I'm talking about something more fundamental: the emphasis on testing to determine students' <span style="font-style: italic;">academic course grades</span>.<br />
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I know I've discussed performance-based assessments before, so anyone reading this blog will know that I don't even use traditional testing to determine my students' grades. But for some reason it occurred to me today just how much opposition I've gotten over the years from supervisors and from other teachers, as well as kids, to the idea that students should have to actually <span style="font-style: italic;">produce </span>work product, let alone that they should be required to do so on an <span style="font-style: italic;">everyday basis </span>and be evaluated and graded just as much, if not more, on that everyday work than on some sort of cumulative "test."<br />
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Throughout my teaching career, I have based a significant portion of my students' grades on their <span style="font-style: italic;">everyday work</span>. In one form or another, I have required students to write in a notebook every day, whether in class, at home, or both, and submit those notebooks periodically to be graded based on a performance rubric. The notebook is worth 40% of the grade; a student cannot pass the class without it.<br />
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Of course, high school students in most places are not accustomed to doing everyday work. They are only worried about passing the test at the end of the unit, and don't really bother to do the everyday work (classwork or homework) in the meantime, because they figure they can probably do the former without doing the latter and the former is the only thing that "really matters," and what's more, they usually turn out to be right. Even I managed to get by in school without doing the everyday work, for the same reason, even though I probably could have been a straight-A student if I had actually done the everyday work.<br />
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In fact, the only subject I consistently aced in secondary school was French, in 6th through 8th grades. My French teacher, Mrs. Dutacq-Benson, gave a graded written test/quiz/assignment in class <span style="font-style: italic;">every single day</span>. Monday, vocabulary French-to-English; Tuesday, vocabulary English-to-French; Wednesday, dictation; Friday, sentence test (there was no French class on Thursdays). The next week, same thing. The cycle repeated itself as we worked our way through the textbook. The only homework was to prepare for these activities. There were no mid-terms or final exams to cram for, no papers or other long-term assignments, just <span style="font-style: italic;">everyday work</span>. I never got such consistently high grades in any class in any subject on any secondary grade level.<br />
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While it is true that college and graduate school grades <span style="font-style: italic;">are </span>based on one or two major assessments (mid-terms, final exams, papers), I really believe that high school kids should have their grades based primarily on everyday work. Testing has always been the easiest method of assessing accumulated knowledge and skills, but one cannot truly acquire knowledge and skills by cramming for a test the night before and then forgetting everything the next day. Neither can one acquire the study habits one needs for success in college, graduate school or professional (e.g., law and medical) school without becoming accustomed to doing everyday work, and engaging with large-scale tasks in small, incremental steps. In high school, kids are still very much <span style="font-style: italic;">learning how to learn</span>. The end result is, I think, less important than one's engagement with the process.<br />
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I like to think of the school year like the baseball season; 162 games, each one as important as any other, and while even the best teams lose 1/3 of their games they approach each game as if they can and must win it. While one loss may not seem like a big deal at the time, in the scheme of the whole season, any single loss in April as well as September can be the difference between making the playoffs and not (just ask a Mets fan...) Very few people, kids or adults, think of a high school class as a <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">course</span><span style="font-style: italic;">, </span></span>in the truest sense of the word. One of the reasons kids don't learn is because they don't approach each and every assignment as if their grades depend on it. They view the everyday work as a nuisance, as just a means to an end (the end being the test), even, in some cases, as optional. They know that they can pass the test, and by extension the class, without doing the everyday work.<br />
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This is one reason why I don't give homework. As I've pointed out previously, I've always had about 1/3 of every class fail, sometimes more, rarely less, in part because I require kids to actually produce the everyday work and submit it for a grade, I set up the grading formula so that they can't pass without doing it, and about 1/3 of any random group of kids of any background in any place simply won't do the everyday work. Since I stopped giving homework, the failure percentage has declined.<br />
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The problem with homework is that it is essentially a Catch-22: If we make the homework so important, i.e., such a large percentage of the grade that the kids will fail if they don't do it, at least 1/3 of every class will fail. If we make it less important, i.e., a smaller percentage of the grade, then kids know they can pass the class without doing it and therefore won't bother to do it. Neither outcome is particularly desirable, and the possibility of failure has proven time and time again to be an inadequate motivator for students, especially when they know that the teacher, not they, will be blamed if they fail. In addition, very few teachers truly and properly scrutinize and assess each and every homework assignment, because not only do they not have the time but they don't consider it worth the effort.<br />
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Homework is therefore self-defeating; it either leads to widespread failure or becomes so insignificant to the final course grade that it can't be all that valuable to begin with as a learning tool. It only works for the kids who "get it;" the ones who truly want to learn and are already inclined to dedicate themselves to their studies. Yet we continue to give homework because for one thing, like so many other secondary-school conventions, we've always done it and long ago stopped asking why, and also because we like to give kids the benefit of the doubt, which as the two or three people who read this blog know, I don't think we should ever do. I think it is foolish and dangerous to assume that teenagers will be naturally inclined to do the right thing most of the time, especially in this day and age.<br />
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I suppose it was my experience on Long Island, and to a lesser degree at the phony, corrupt Queens "Arts" School of Narcissism and Dishonesty, that really drove this point home. These were the only places where supervisors openly and explicitly blamed me for the students' not doing their work. On Long Island, I was basically told that if more than one or two kids out of 150 failed, then I was surely doing something wrong. I wondered if it ever occurred to anyone that students have little, if any, incentive to learn or do their work if they know they can't fail. This was where the English chairwoman told me that the kids weren't doing their work because they "didn't get it," meaning I must not have explained it properly, if at all. She seemed mystified by the idea that kids would not "get it" and would not do their work if they knew they didn't have to, i.e., if they knew they would not be blamed, faulted or sanctioned for not doing it, or if they could be relieved of the obligation by simply claiming that they didn't know or understand what they were supposed to do.<br />
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It is a tremendous burden for a teacher to be responsible not only for planning and delivering his lessons and assessments, but for the individual decisionmaking processes of 150 teenagers over whom he has little or no direct control. Again, this woman was operating on the assumption that these kids were naturally inclined to do their work unless there was a serious and insurmountable impediment to their doing so. In other words, if a student did not submit an assignment then, <span style="font-style: italic;">res ipsa loquitur</span>, he was <span style="font-style: italic;">unable </span>to do the assignment, meaning something I had done or failed to do <i>prevented </i>him from being able to do it. What is a teacher to do when, in reality, that non-performance is a <span style="font-style: italic;">choice</span>? Or the result of the student's own negligence? What is a teacher to do once students realize that all they need to do is claim they "don't get it" and they're off the hook?<br />
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Whether we give kids the benefit of the doubt or not, it is still unreasonable to assume that anyone<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>will be automatically inclined to do anything if there is no meaningful consequence of <span style="font-style: italic;">not </span>doing it. The fact that some people <i>are</i><span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>so inclined does not change this basic logic. If we want everyone to do the right thing, we have to provide adequate incentives for doing the right thing, and for not doing the wrong thing, even for those who don't need them. The only way to <span style="font-style: italic;">require </span>anyone to do anything is to create an undesirable, and inescapable, consequence for not doing it. No teacher wants a significant number of students to fail, but we also don't want to teach kids that it's OK to choose<span style="font-style: italic;"> <span style="font-style: italic;">not </span></span>to do their assigned work, or to be careless and negligent. Yet a great many administrators and teachers continue to insist on <span style="font-style: italic;">dis</span>incentivizing work, whether by letting kids pass their classes without doing the everyday work, blaming teachers when kids choose not to do it, changing requirements and grading formulae to reflect what kids are willing or unwilling to do (as opposed to what they actually do or don't do, in the context of what <i>we </i>require of them), or some combination of these.<br />
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So much of the law, especially in the civil context, is about <span style="font-style: italic;">incentivizing behavior</span>. We use the law to encourage people to make the right decisions, to act reasonably and allocate their resources efficiently, in order to encourage desirable behaviors and outcomes and discourage those which are harmful to society or to the individual. All this emphasis on "testing" in schools, whether we're talking about standardized tests or academic classes, has a highly undesirable side effect that I've never heard anyone mention: It causes kids to neglect<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>their everyday work to the point where they become unwilling and/or unable to engage in any real learning <span style="font-style: italic;">process</span>, and thus prevents any real learning from occurring.<br />
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A lot of teachers probably don't care whether or not kids do their everyday work. That's fine. But I do, and I will not apologize for it. I have always insisted not only that students do their everyday work, and be evaluated on their performance in doing that everyday work, but also that one of the keys to improving education is to shift the emphasis away from testing, on both the state and school level, and toward an insistence that students take the time and effort to do their work and learn <span style="font-style: italic;">each and every day</span> they are in school.Jason O. Braiman, Esq.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13127952576066942139noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4698774596246611749.post-53788222219730170082010-10-07T17:12:00.000-04:002016-03-21T15:01:36.503-04:00Repost: Race to the Bottom (March 16, 2009)Here's the official meme from the Grand High Inquisitors with respect to the tragicomedy they call "differentiated instruction." The following is quoted directly from a memo we received last week about the upcoming Quality Review:<br />
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<blockquote>
Reviewers understand differentiation as:<br />
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"...modified instruction that helps students with diverse needs and learning styles master the same challenging academic content...through the use of varied material, varying instructional activities and varied assessments.<br />
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Additionally, Reviewers will observe that teachers are demonstrating the skill of differentiation when they:<br />
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"differentiate the method of instruction by utilizing: flexible, skill-based groupings, cooperative groups, etc., group investigations, learning stations/centers, learning contracts and independent studies, modeling/demonstrating, think alouds and meta-cognition... visuals, varied questions and strategies to promote thinking such as: compare/contrast, categorize by characteristics, hypothesize & experiment, predict, evaluate using criteria, etc."<br />
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"differentiate the content by: providing supplemental or levelled materials at varying degrees of difficulty, offering multi-option assignments, allowing student to select..., creating simplified and/or extension activities, etc."<br />
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"differentiate the products by varying, modifying, and/or offering student choice..."</blockquote>
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(emphasis in original)<br />
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Allright...does any of this make sense? The first paragraph, the supposed "definition" of "differentiation," seems to be somewhat innocuous. It does not suggest, however, that the use of "varied material, varying instructional activities and varied assessments" has to be carried out simultaneously, at the same time. It is perfectly reasonable to interpret that "differentiation" implies that these various materials, activities and assessments will be presented to students at different times throughout the course of a school year. How this definition necessitates any of what follows is beyond me.<br />
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The second paragraph, concerning "method of instruction," is naught but gobbledygook, a litany of buzzwords and euphemisms that bear no meaningful conceptual relationship to one another, are not presented in any sort of coherent sequence, and don't really add up to a larger point. Each of the ideas presented is, by itself, worthy of consideration, but unless a "Reviewer" observes a teacher for a long and continuous period of time, he cannot assess whether or not a teacher has "differentiated his method of instruction." That is, unless the Reviewer expects to see several of these things being practiced simultaneously.<br />
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The third paragraph, "differentiate the content," introduces the idea of letting students select what materials they want to learn and what assignments they want to do. I think there could be some value in this and have actually done it before, giving kids two or three options to choose from when producing a writing project. I can't really do it anymore, since all of my writing projects are now Regents-based. I've done independent readings too, in the past, where kids select the book they want to read, although when I do that I always have several students pick nothing at all. But during literature studies, all the kids read the same book. I cannot and will not teach multiple titles simultaneously.<br />
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The last paragraph, with respect to differentiated "products" provides nothing of use or value; it only repeats the vague concepts of "varying, modifying" and "student choice." If we think carefully, though, about what "differentiated products" means, it is probably the closest to what I do. The "product" that the student produces in my class is the individual response to the reading. Each student writes his own response, can choose which of the provided Guiding Questions to answer, and there's really no "right" or "wrong" response. In other words, every product which my students produce is unique to the student who produced it; no two notebooks or essays can ever be alike (unless they're copying from one another, but that's a separate topic). However, they're all graded on the same Volume-Comprehension-Response rubric.<br />
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Ultimately, I don't see much to this "differentiated instruction" business; the material provided here suggests that the Reviewers don't really understand it either, let alone have a clear or workable idea for how it might be practiced, let alone demonstrated in a single class period (or portion thereof). The key will be whether the Reviewers approach this from a pragmatic or an ideological standpoint. A pragmatist will look at my classroom and find students writing their own responses to readings and their own essays, and find me basing my writing lessons on their previous work, and conclude that my instruction is adequately "differentiated." An ideologue will look at the same class and find that the students are writing responses to the same reading, or doing the same Regents essay writing assignment, and being graded on the same rubrics, and that will not be satisfactory.<br />
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This was the problem I had at the phony, corrupt Queens "Arts" high school, and the demented gargoyle who was principal there in 2002-03. When it came to pedagogy, and particularly his ill-considered "Humanities" idea, this thing was an ideologue, not a pragmatist. It wanted two things: (1) "student-centered" instruction; and (2) exclusive focus on Social Studies content. Rather than go on a lengthy dissertation about this arduous and ultimately heartbreaking experience, suffice it to say that everything I did fit reasonably within the definitions this creature had given us for what it wanted. Yet nothing I did seemed to satisfy it; whatever I did was not sufficiently "student-centered" or did not sufficiently invoke or involve Social Studies content.<br />
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My sense right now at my current school is that the administration has taken a pragmatic approach to "differentiated instruction," not an ideological one. That is good. Who knows, it might even work if it is approached pragmatically rather than ideologically. Whether the Reviewers will do so remains to be seen.<br />
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The problem with "differentiated instruction," as either an ideology or a pragmatic concern, is that it will encourage what economists and legal scholars call a "race to the bottom." The term is usually used in the context of commercial regulation, in that where the federal government does not regulate a particular industry the states will then compete to have the fewest rules and the lowest, most lenient regulatory standards, in order to encourage businesses to go there. In the school context, not only does "differentiated instruction" dilute the student's incentive to learn and improve, it actually gives the student an incentive to become, and remain, as <i>in</i>capable as possible. Instead of competing with one another for high grades under the same high standards, as they should be doing, students will instead be competing with one another to get the easiest work, the least-challenging assignments and the lowest, most accommodating standards.<br />
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As it stands today, Special Ed students each have something called an IEP, or Individualized Education Plan. These may include, among other things, testing modifications such as extended time, physical accommodations like reading aloud or scribing, and specific enumerated learning goals. The expectation is, however, that if a Special Ed student with an IEP is in a regular academic class, that the teacher has to accommodate that student by giving him separate materials and teaching him on a different level from the rest of the class. This, of course, is nigh impossible in most circumstances. The only practical way to accommodate Special Ed students in a regular class is to lower the entire class's content and standard to the Special Ed student's grade level.<br />
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This is the point I'm trying to make. "Differentiated Instruction," as it's been described to me, essentially seeks to give every student in the system an IEP. I'm starting to believe that this is where we are truly headed. Within five years, every student in the New York City schools, and beyond, will have an IEP. The whole idea of an academic "course" on the secondary level will completely disappear, as every student will be allowed to choose his own materials and set his own standards in every academic class. Ultimately, the lowest standards and least-challenging content will become the norm. Hence the "race to the bottom," for students, teachers, and schools. Students will compete for the easiest work and the easiest path to an "A", teachers and schools will compete for the highest number of passing and high-average students and hence will have to pursue the lowest possible standards.<br />
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I don't see any other alternative. "Differentiated Instruction" is just another way to make high school more like elementary school and less like college. It's another avenue to the subjectivization of content and standards that I've criticized and lamented so often on this blog, an attempt to codify and mandate this "race to the bottom." The objective standards I've been advocating are going to disappear completely from our educational lexicon. When that happens, it's over. Thankfully, I won't be around to see it.Jason O. Braiman, Esq.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13127952576066942139noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4698774596246611749.post-46324661030195921762010-09-16T09:10:00.002-04:002010-09-16T09:24:54.241-04:00Nodody Expects the Spanish Inquisition, ReduxRemember <a href="http://educationsanity.blogspot.com/2009/05/nobody-expects-spanish-inquisition.html">last year I wrote about</a> my school's Grand High Inquisition (a.k.a., Quality Review), and how the result was absolutely hilarious because with all our emphasis on "differentiation" we had not shown sufficient academic "rigor," and I found that hilarious because you can't have differentiation and rigor at the same time?<br />
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Well, I finally got around to reading the 2010 Quality Review for my now-former school, which was done in the spring after I left. Yup, you guessed it ... they found plenty of rigor but not enough differentiation.<br />
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And round and round it goes ...<br />
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<object style="height: 344px; width: 425px"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/sAn7baRbhx4?version=3"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/sAn7baRbhx4?version=3" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" width="425" height="344"></object></embed>Jason O. Braiman, Esq.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13127952576066942139noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4698774596246611749.post-64007835785170316092010-08-30T14:47:00.000-04:002010-08-30T14:47:45.828-04:00Trousers in Conflagration, ReduxHere's something I've also been saying for years:<br />
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<a href="http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/david/education-secretary-schools-have-been-lying-">Education Secretary: Schools Have Been Lying to Students</a><br />
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(h/t Crooks and Liars)<br />
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"As a country we're dumbing down standards and reduced them due to political pressure and we've actually been lying to children and parents telling them they're ready when they're not." - Education Secretary Arne Duncan.<br />
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I can think of one eminently appropriate response to this statement:<br />
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Duh.Jason O. Braiman, Esq.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13127952576066942139noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4698774596246611749.post-73685129117164670362010-08-25T21:35:00.002-04:002010-08-30T14:49:34.793-04:00Cross-Post: Dropout FactoriesI ran across <a href="http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/08/dropout-factories-contd-again.html#more">this</a> today at Andrew Sullivan's blog <i>The Daily Dish</i>, posted by Conor Friedersdorf. It's a letter to the editor from a California college professor, a lengthy piece and worth reading in its entirety, but I'm going to quote the last two paragraphs. <br />
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<blockquote>Before I taught college, I taught at Berkeley High School in Berkeley, CA. I had one student who had a basketball scholarship to UC Berkeley, dependent upon getting a C average her senior year. She was failing my algebra course. We brought her parents in. Her dad told me to give her a C no matter how well she did in my course, because she was the first person in their family to get into college. I told her parents that grades did not work that way, and that she could get free tutoring before or after school, but that she had to pass my course on her own merits. She missed the midterm exam, and her mother called the next day to tell me that her daughter missed the midterm because the daughter was getting her hair braided that day. I told her that she should take the money budgeted to the hair braider and spend it on a private tutor. The parents filed a complaint against me and I was reprimanded for that suggestion as "culturally insensitive". She was a bright, likable girl, and very popular. She had played basketball overseas in youth tournaments, and was a great player. As it became clear she might not pass the class, I had students and other teachers pressuring me to pass her regardless of her grade. I graded her final exam five times, each time being more generous, trying to give her enough partial credit to pass. I was able to work her grade on the exam up to 58%. I gave her an F and she lost her Berkeley scholarship. It still breaks my heart to hear her sobs when I told her. I still think I did the right thing.<br />
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The common denominator in all of these cases is an assumption the students had that education consists of indulgences bestowed upon the student by a more socially privileged teacher or administrator who pities them. These students were uniformly astonished when other considerations, such as merit, trumped pity. When we lower the bar of merit to admit the underprivileged, the message we send is that merit does not apply to them. Then we fail them by failing to disabuse them of this assumption.</blockquote><br />
As any of the three people who have read this blog knows, I've told many stories like this, and argued over and over again what this professor says in his last paragraph. He is absolutely correct that students, and parents, expect their experience in school to consist entirely of being showered with praise and adulation, being treated with deference, indulgence and, yes, pity by teachers and administrators. They expect teachers to feel sorry for them because of their life circumstances, an expectation often shared by administrators (see "<a href="http://educationsanity.blogspot.com/2007/12/dumb-down-or-else.html">Dumb Down or Else</a>" from December 2007 for a more detailed discussion and example). <br />
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The professor is also correct that students are "uniformly astonished" when they discover that teacher has expectations of them, in place of pity or sympathy for them; that they have responsibilities in school, that they have to <i>do something </i>in order to learn, let alone earn a passing grade. Being told "no" when seeking permission for something, or having an excuse not be accepted as such by a teacher, is unimaginable to most kids, an entirely foreign concept. And we absolutely do fail them by failing to disabuse them of these assumptions, such as by having them start the school year with a 100 average.<br />
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It's always refreshing to find another educator who "gets it." And for the record, I think he did the right thing too.Jason O. Braiman, Esq.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13127952576066942139noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4698774596246611749.post-60693415386857098642010-08-03T09:50:00.004-04:002010-08-03T10:00:51.276-04:00Repost: Redefining Failure (June 6, 2007)A couple of years ago I read an article in the <span style="font-style: italic;">Daily News</span> about school officials in Britain who wanted to remove the word "failure" from the educational lexicon and replace it with the ridiculous euphemism "deferred success." In other words, if a child does not perform up to the minimum standard on an assessment, such as by answering too few questions correctly on an exam, we will not say that he "failed" that exam. The reason behind this, as stated in the article, was -- all together now -- we don't want the child to "feel bad" and "turn off to learning."<br />
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The only thing that really surprised me at the time was that it was happening in Britain, not here, though I'm sure it's crept its way across the pond. Many people have heard about this by now (Dana Carvey mentioned it last month on <span style="font-style: italic;">Real Time with Bill Maher</span>), and thankfully it hasn't taken hold, at least not from what I've seen (the sentiment obviously has, but the euphemism hasn't). I only bring it up because I've been thinking a lot about what I wrote yesterday [<a href="http://educationsanity.blogspot.com/2007/06/twenty-questions.html">"Twenty Questions" (June 5, 2007)</a>], and I think there's a connection. The problem with the word "failure" is not that it makes kids "feel bad;" it's that no one seems to understand what it really means, least of all students, and yet no one wants to deal with it. Those who would solve the problem by simply eliminating the word "failure" and replacing it with a benign euphemism, regardless of their motivation, completely miss the point. They are correct that the word has power, but they are mistaken as to what that power is and where it comes from, let alone how to remedy it.<br />
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First, let's define "failure." What does it mean to "fail," in the general sense? My definition of failure is simple: the non-achievement of an achievable goal; a non-performance where performance is necessary or required and may be reasonably expected. Regardless of context, that is essentially what it means to fail. Now, toss yesterday's discussion into the mix: the economic model of grading (i.e., students start from zero and earn points by doing their work) on one side, and the entitlement model (i.e., students start from 100 and have points deducted along the way) on the other.<br />
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Under the economic model, a student can only fail as a result of <span style="font-style: italic;">inaction</span> or <span style="font-style: italic;">deficiency</span>. The student must complete and submit her assigned work in order to pass (i.e., earn 65 points or more), and also must perform at a certain level to demonstrate proficiency, learning, progress, and (eventually, hopefully) mastery, and thus be rewarded with a significant number of grade points. She must do her work to pass, and must do <span style="font-style: italic;">exceptional </span>work to earn the highest grades. Therefore, the only way a student can "fail" under the economic grading model is if his work is substandard or deficient, i.e., below what he should reasonably be able to do at his grade level, or if he does not do the work at all, whether by choice or by negligence. This meets the basic definition of failure, <span style="font-style: italic;">supra</span>. The student has an <span style="font-style: italic;">incentive </span>to do the work and an <span style="font-style: italic;">incentive </span>to demonstrate learning and thus increase his grade by producing higher-quality work product.<br />
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However, when we look at the entitlement model, and couple it with the ideas about blameworthiness which I also discussed yesterday, we realize almost instantly that the definition of failure, and the student's understanding thereof, must change under this scenario. Bearing in mind the necessary but mistaken belief that the student's grade should remain the same if she does <span style="font-style: italic;">not </span>do her work, and that if she does the grade can only go down; i.e., where the student's final grade is a matter of how many points have been <span style="font-style: italic;">deducted </span>rather than <span style="font-style: italic;">earned</span>, the student now can only fail through <span style="font-style: italic;">action</span>, and more to the point, profoundly negative and blameworthy action. If a student fails, it means she <span style="font-style: italic;">lost </span>a significant number of points, that the teacher <span style="font-style: italic;">took them away, </span>which could only have been the result of some terrible thing she <span style="font-style: italic;">did</span>.<br />
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Regardless of whether the student (or parent) actually believes that he did something blameworthy to cause these points to be deducted, the perception nonetheless remains that a failing grade is some sort of proactive punishment; a "fine," if you will, a deprivation (unjust, of course) of something the student already possessed and to which he was rightfully entitled. A "failure" thus becomes tantamount to an <span style="font-style: italic;">accusation</span> of grievous misconduct; "fail" becomes a transitive verb, an action taken by the teacher instead of a denotation of the student's performance. Hence students inevitably ask "Why did you<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>fail me?" instead of "Why did I fail?<span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;">"<br />
</span></span>Whereas under the economic grading model a failure means the student did not or could not obtain something, under the entitlement model it means the student has had something taken away. Whether we call it failure or "deferred success," this perception will not change.<br />
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It's no wonder, then, that the word "failure" is so upsetting to children and their parents. It has been made to carry a connotation which it should not, under any reasonable definition of the word, thanks to a misguided and counter-intuitive educational policy designed, like everything else, to make the children "feel good." Changing it to "deferred success" would merely sweep the problem under the carpet. The entitlement model of grading combined with the subjective performance standards I discussed earlier actually give students a powerful <span style="font-style: italic;">dis</span>incentive to do their work, learn, progress, and master their academic subjects. Why do your work if it can only make your grade average go down? Why try to improve when whatever your "best" is now will get you an "A" and allow you to keep that perfect 100 average you started with?<br />
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With all this talk about eliminating or redefining the word "failure," what about the meaning of "success" or "achievement?" Starting with nothing and earning 95 out of a possible 100 points is an achievement. Starting with 100 and only losing five along the way is not. In the real world, particularly in a merit-driven capitalist system like we have here in the U.S., success means making something out of nothing; taking what you have and <span style="font-style: italic;">gaining </span>something more through skill, hard work, resourcefulness and perseverance. This is the lesson we need to be teaching our youth. Success is not starting with everything and ending up with only slightly less; it is not an accomplishment to merely avoid having what you already own be taken away, especially if you didn't earn it to begin with. Entitlements do not motivate people to better themselves.<br />
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Ultimately, I don't think the word "failure" needs to be replaced or even redefined; I think it needs to be better understood. So, too, do the words "success" and "achievement." These words should mean what they are supposed to mean, and nothing more.Jason O. Braiman, Esq.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13127952576066942139noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4698774596246611749.post-84829970137760766702010-06-06T21:40:00.000-04:002010-06-06T21:40:45.865-04:00Gee, What a Suprise.This was in today's <i>NY Post:</i><br />
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<a href="http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/how_do_you_pass_ny_school_tests_tCqFKo40FhcwkO5SoPYWRI"><u>NY Passes Students Who Get Wrong Answers on Tests</u></a><br />
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<blockquote>State education officials had vowed to "strengthen" and "increase the rigor" of both the questions and the scoring when about 1.2 million kids in grades 3 to 8 -- including 450,000 in New York City -- took English exams in April and math exams last month. <br />
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</div>But scoring guides obtained by The Post reveal that kids get half-credit or more for showing fragments of work related to the problem -- even if they screw up the calculations or leave the answer blank. <br />
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The scoring guidelines, called "holistic rubrics," require that points be given if a kid's attempt at an answer reflects a "partial understanding" of the math concept, "addresses some element of the task correctly," or uses the "appropriate process" to arrive at a wrong solution. Despite flubbing the answer, students can get 1 point on a 2-point problem and 1 or 2 points on a 3-pointer. <div style="background-color: transparent; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"><br />
Ray Domanico, a former head of data analysis for city schools, said kids deserve a little credit for partial knowledge but agreed the scoring system "raises some questions about whether it's too generous." </div></blockquote><div style="background-color: transparent; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"><br />
I'm not going to reproduce the entire article here, but you get the point; click the link above if you want to see some examples. The basic gist of it is that even on standardized <i>math </i>tests, just "trying your best" is good enough; the standards are being lowered to allow students who cannot do the work to pass anyway. This is further proof that our educational system values participation more than achievement, seeks to reward the <i>attempt </i>as much as <i>success</i>, and is unwilling to distinguish those who <i>can </i>do the work from those who <i>can't</i>.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"><br />
</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not entirely opposed to the concept of "partial credit," and I do think kids should get <i>some </i>credit for trying. But there comes a point where "partial credit" becomes a hindrance to the learning process. Kids ultimately will not learn if they keep having it drilled into their heads that the result is always fine as long as they "tried," or as long as they produced <i>something</i>, or as long as they have some inkling of what they're doing no matter how limited, misguided or misapplied that inkling is.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"><br />
</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">When I taught on Long Island, I was told going in that the kids in that school were excellent writers. As one might expect, their actual essays told a different story. Their grammar and syntax were imprecise, their sentences were wordy and vague, they used the verb 'to be' far too often, and they used far too many 5th-grade "training-wheels" phrases ["What this quote means is..." "Another example of ___ is..." "This is a good example of ___ because ...."] Unfortunately, I was the first teacher who had ever told them that their writing wasn't very good, and they deeply resented me for it. When I showed a level-3 essay to my supervisor, she insisted it was a level-5; when I noted the language problems, she said, "Well, if you can pretty much understand what they're trying to say, that's good enough." </div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"><br />
</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">No, I replied, it's not "good enough." Writing in English requires <i>precision.</i> When you write, your words need to say <i>exactly precisely </i>what you mean; nothing more or less. It's one thing to give a student appropriate credit for his or her work, but it does no one any good to pretend that imprecise language is anything other than imprecise, and inadequate to the task of communicating ideas to the reader. </div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"><br />
</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">I've gone off on an English-related tangent here; math, of course, is different. An essay or a notebook entry in English Language Arts is never "right" or "wrong" the way the answer to a math problem is. In English we identify and distinguish <i>levels of performance</i>, not "right" and "wrong" "answers" (although students in English, I have found, have a hard time telling the difference between these paradigms). Giving "partial credit" is one way to make math more performance-oriented and less result-oriented, and having thought about it I don't find the rubrics quite as outrageous as the <i>Post </i>does. Yet it's really just another symptom of how our educational system has shifted away from promoting and instilling new knowledge and new skills, to validating what kids already know and can already do. </div>Jason O. Braiman, Esq.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13127952576066942139noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4698774596246611749.post-67117984519157637362010-04-03T09:35:00.003-04:002010-08-03T10:54:19.534-04:00Repost: Toxic Truths, Part II (March 28, 2008)As a follow-up to a previous post, <a href="http://educationsanity.blogspot.com/2008/03/toxic-truths.html">Toxic Truths</a> (which you might want to read first; this is a <span style="font-style: italic;">very </span>long post), I'd like to examine each of the individual concepts separately, to show precisely how parents and educators have convinced themselves and others to believe the opposite, how such belief manifests itself in school and in the classroom, and why it is ultimately counter-intuitive and counter-productive.<br />
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Before I begin, allow me to reiterate that any criticism of student behavior and attitudes which might come up here is intended as an indictment of the <span style="font-weight: bold;">adults</span> who accept, enable and encourage such behavior by teaching kids that it's OK, neglecting to teach them that it's not, or giving them the benefit of the doubt when their behavior or its propriety come under dispute.<br />
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So...<br />
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<span style="font-style: italic;">- Not all children are smart.</span><br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">- Not all children are talented.</span><br />
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</span>These two basically go together. This was part of George Carlin's riff which I cited <a href="http://educationsanity.blogspot.com/2008/03/carlin-nails-itagain.html">previously</a>; the idea that "every child is special." What this morphs into is the idea that children who perform poorly in school, or in particular subject areas, must be good at <span style="font-style: italic;">something</span>, so it's our job to find what each individual child is good at, create a curriculum and standards based on that for that one child, and be sure to compliment the child as often as possible on how good he is at that particular thing.<br />
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Perhaps another way of putting this, albeit a blunt and over-simplified way, is that if the child's schoolwork is poor we still have to say that it's good, so we have to find something good about it or, barring that, make something up. There is certainly nothing wrong with praising a child for what he does well and criticizing what he does not do well, but that's not what I'm referring to here. Somehow we've bought into the idea that every child must be smart and talented, so if that is true and they nonetheless do poorly in school, then there must either be something wrong with the assignment, something wrong with the instruction, or something wrong with how we assess their performance. This, inevitably, leads us into <span style="font-style: italic;">subjective standards</span>, which I discussed at length in <a href="http://educationsanity.blogspot.com/2007/05/raising-grades-not-achievement.html">Raising Grades, Not Achievement</a>.<br />
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Let me be as clear and straightforward as I can possibly be: A lot of kids are very, very stupid. Many of them don't know anything, can't do anything, are not interested in anything, and have no desire to do, or to be, anything. There are a lot of kids out there who have no intellectual assets whatsoever. I'm sorry, but it's true.<br />
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<span style="font-style: italic;">- Some children are smarter than others.</span><span style="font-style: italic;"><br />
- Some children are better than others at certain activities and skills.</span><br />
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It might seem that these two belong with the first two, but collectively they express a separate concept. There's a difference between the idea that "All children are smart and talented" and that "Every child is just as smart and talented as every other; no one is 'better' than anyone else." This is another driving force behind the subjectivizing of academic standards. We cannot allow any child to perceive that we, as adults and as educators, think that some other child is "better" than she is in any respect. This is why, as Carlin pointed out, there is no more dodgeball in elementary school playgrounds, and why there are Little Leagues in this country where every game ends in a tie (by virtue of the trailing team being summarily awarded the difference in the score).<br />
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It's ironic, really (some would say hypocritical), that we go so far as to subjectivize academic standards and instruction in order to promote the uniqueness and individuality of every child, yet simultaneously enforce this contrived and phony "equality" to make sure not that everyone is <span style="font-style: italic;">treated </span>equally, but that everyone is <span style="font-style: italic;">made equal</span> by fiat. My favorite literary exploration of this phenomenon is Kurt Vonnegut's <a href="http://instruct.westvalley.edu/lafave/hb.html">"Harrison Bergeron."</a> It has also been satirized on <span style="font-style: italic;">The Simpsons</span> and was the main undercurrent of the animated film <span style="font-style: italic;">The Incredibles</span>.<br />
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Here are the facts: Some kids <span style="font-style: italic;">are </span>better than others. Different people have different degrees of brain power, different abilities and different degrees of skill within those abilities. That's simply how life works. Human beings are the most diverse creatures on the planet. Even if it weren't hypocritical to enforce this egalitarianism and promote individuality at the same time, it would still be absurd to pretend that all kids are "equal" in this way, to remove competition from their lives and thereby remove any and all incentive they may have to improve themselves and learn.<br />
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<span style="font-style: italic;">- Very few children are legitimate "A" students.</span><br />
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Kids I know from Camp Pontiac, who go to school on Long Island and other suburbs, tell me that most or nearly all of their classmates get A's or A+'s in any given class, or straight-A's in all their classes. Take a look at <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2006/11/18/national/a092834S22.DTL">this article</a> from 2006: ". . . <span class="georgia md" id="bodytext">of the 47,317 applications [UCLA] received for this fall's freshman class, nearly 21,000 had GPAs of 4.0 or above. . . </span><span class="georgia md" id="bodytext">The average high school GPA increased from 2.68 to 2.94 between 1990 and 2000. . . Almost 23 percent of college freshmen in 2005 reported their average grade in high school was an A or better. . . In 1975, the percentage was about half that."<br />
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Some of this has to do with the self-esteem movement and some of it has to do with competition over college admissions and related parental lobbying, and teachers and administrators caving in thereto. One Long Island high school junior told me, "There's a lot of pressure on kids to get A's, and there's a lot of pressure on teachers to give A's." So now we are at the point where A's are being <span style="font-style: italic;">given </span>because of <span style="font-style: italic;">pressure</span>, not <span style="font-style: italic;">earned </span>because of <span style="font-style: italic;">merit.<br />
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<span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;"></span></span></span>I've been saying for years that an A is not an achievement if everyone in the class gets one. An A should be the highest grade in the class; whoever produces the best work should get an A. Everyone else should get something less than that, on a sliding scale. Of course, if you have an objective test and everyone gets all the answers right, that's one thing. But on performance-based assessments, not every product will meet the standard of excellence. That <span style="font-style: italic;">cannot happen. </span>This is one reason why teachers and administrators like to either <span style="font-style: italic;">avoid </span>performance-based assessments, or avoid actually assessing them objectively, which I discussed in detail </span>in <a href="http://educationsanity.blogspot.com/2007/05/raising-grades-not-achievement.html">Raising Grades, Not Achievement</a>.<br />
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Regardless of the type of assessment used, I find it impossible to believe that such a high percentage of any random selection of youths of any background can actually, seriously be called high achievers. The whole point of having a grading system which distinguishes an A from a B, a B from a C, and so on, is to distinguish excellence from mere competence; to distinguish those with exceptional skills who produce exceptional work from those who are merely adequate. One cannot <span style="font-style: italic;">strive </span>for excellence if whatever he does will be labeled as excellent regardless of its objective quality.<br />
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Whether we want to believe this or not, most people are merely average. Very few people are exceptional, otherwise the word would have no meaning. Students whose work is merely average or adequate should get a C, not an A. Above-average work should get a B. Those who meet the bare-minimum requirement and nothing more should get a D. Only truly exceptional work, and nothing less, should get an A.<span class="georgia md" id="bodytext"><span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>The only alternative is to abolish the A-B-C-D-F and numerical grading paradigms altogether in favor of one which allows everyone to be labeled as excellent without the system defeating its own purpose.</span><br />
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<span style="font-style: italic;">- Smarter children should get better grades.</span><br />
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A few years ago while I was coaching baseball, I had a conversation with my players at the batting cage about the difference between objective and subjective grading standards, arguing as I always do that a C paper is a C paper no matter what the student's individual ability or intelligence. One of the boys, a ninth-grader, said to me honestly and sincerely, and not at all in an obnoxious manner, that this "would give an unfair advantage to the smart kids."<br />
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My response was simple: You're darned right. Except for the "unfair" part. Smart kids <span style="font-style: italic;">should </span>have an advantage in school. Why? Because they're smarter, that's why. They can remember more information, solve problems more efficiently and intuitively, make connections more readily, express themselves more clearly and accurately, and generally produce higher-quality work. There is no logical reason why students who have these abilities should not get higher grades than those who don't. Smarter kids who produce work which meets a higher standard than that of their peers should have that higher standard reflected by higher grades.<br />
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What about the kids who are not so smart? Well, obviously, they have to work harder to keep up, and endeavor to improve themselves so they, too, can eventually meet those higher standards. There's nothing wrong or unfair about that. And they may not ever get straight-A's. I'm sorry, but that's how it goes. That's not unfair; that's life. To use a baseball analogy, if a child can only hit the ball 150 feet, and the fence is 250 feet away, they will not move the fence 100 feet closer when he comes up to bat, nor award him a home run if he hits it 151 feet into the outfielder's glove. That would be absurd; absurd to do it, and absurd for the child or parent to expect it. The child has either got to get stronger and improve his swing so he <span style="font-style: italic;">can </span>hit it that far, or learn to hit line drives to the gap, bunt his way on, steal bases, etc.<br />
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I'll tell you something else: It <span style="font-style: italic;">is </span>possible for a person to actually <span style="font-style: italic;">become <span style="font-style: italic;">smarter</span></span>. There are things people can do to exercise and develop their intelligence and <span style="font-style: italic;">learn </span>how to solve problems, process and retain information, and express themselves with precision. And here's a hint: giving them A's in school regardless of the quality of their work is not the way to do it.<br />
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<span style="font-style: italic;">- A child's grade should be an objective measurement of his actual ability and performance.</span><br />
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I have often found myself wondering where children and parents think their grades come from; what they think that number or letter <span style="font-style: italic;">means</span>. Just as they decide for themselves what the rules and standards are, as discussed previously, students often decide for themselves what grade they should get and what it will be based upon, and jump to inductive conclusions when the grade they actually receive is less than that. Usually they complain as if they believe the grade is or should be based on only one single thing. For example, a student will indignantly wonder out loud how she could possibly have received a lower grade than the boy sitting next to her, when he comes to class late every other day. Another will point to his most recent notebook or essay grade and demand to know how his report card grade could possibly be lower than that. Others will assume that they failed because of a single missed assignment or minor behavioral infraction, or that the grade reflects nothing more than the teacher's subjective personal dislike of them.<br />
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(Do I really need to explain these?)<br />
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What's basically going on here is that the child and/or parent decides in advance what grade the child should get, and then, when the grade turns out to be lower, works backward from there in deciding what it must have been based on. This is inevitably followed by an indignant claim that the teacher "can't" base the grade on that alone, and a demand that the grade be based on something else and increased.<br />
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Another phenomenon I've been seeing is the determination of grades (or, more to the point, passing or failing status) based on administrative or procedural anomalies. One example, discussed at length in <a href="http://educationsanity.blogspot.com/2007/06/hypothetical.html">Hypothetical</a>, is the idea that if a teacher does not inform the parent in advance that the child is in danger of failing, then he cannot fail and his failing grade must be overturned. A colleague told me recently about a policy in his former school, where if a teacher's course differed even slightly from the contract given to students at the beginning of the year (for example, if he gives four quizzes when the contract said there would be five), then the student had to pass.<br />
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Between all this and the ubiquitous entitlement grading model (discussed at length in <a href="http://educationsanity.blogspot.com/2007/06/fish-story.html">Fish Story</a>), it seems that parents and educators have sought and found every possible factor on which to base a student's grade other than the one thing that it should be based on: <span style="font-weight: bold;">the student's performance</span><span style="font-weight: bold;">, in its entirety</span><span style="font-weight: bold;">.</span> Nothing more, nothing less. <br />
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<span style="font-style: italic;">- Children who cannot do the course work or who cannot understand the course material should fail the course.</span><br />
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Today's students actually believe that they should <span style="font-style: italic;">pass </span>if they can't do the work or understand the material. They can't fathom why they would receive a failing grade on a reader-response notebook in which they wrote no responses because they "didn't understand the book." I've discussed this tortured logic in previous posts, and again it essentially traces back to the subjective-standard argument: the <span style="font-style: italic;">standard</span>, i.e. the starting point for assessment, should reflect the individual child's ability, as opposed to the <span style="font-style: italic;">grade </span>reflecting the child's ability in relation to an established, universal, objective standard. As I've pointed out repeatedly, the former leaves the child with no incentive to learn or improve.<br />
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The idea that a student should <span style="font-style: italic;">pass </span>a course whose requirements he <span style="font-style: italic;">cannot </span>meet, <span style="font-style: italic;">because </span>he cannot meet them, may be one of the most absurd and counter-intuitive notions I've ever heard. It's mind-boggling that so many people actually believe it.<br />
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<span style="font-style: italic;">- If a child makes a conscious choice not to complete and submit required course work, he should expect to fail the course.</span><br />
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I have had students in the past who, in the same breath, refused to do the work and insisted that they should not and could not fail the course as a result. One girl in particular whom I will never forget, in the most noxious, sneering voice imaginable, said to me, "No, I'm not doing your stupid reading notebook, and you can't fail me, because you're a psycho." (Fortunately this sort of extreme behavior is rare. This individual was one of the five or six most despicable kids I've ever met in all my years of teaching; a true sociopath. She and two others like her were in the same class in the Long Island school where I taught in 2001-02. It makes me ill just to think about them.)<br />
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There are a million reasons why kids don't do their work, but regardless of the reason, they either don't <span style="font-style: italic;">perceive </span>the risk in making that choice or don't care about the consequences. Some kids who don't do their work <span style="font-style: italic;">do</span> expect to fail. The ones who don't have somehow been conditioned to believe that work is <span style="font-style: italic;">optional</span>, that they cannot fail the entire course based on one missed assignment (regardless of the accumulation thereof), or that they will somehow eventually be accommodated as long as they had a "good reason" not to do it (e.g., they "didn't like it" or it was "too hard"). The trouble is, they often turn out to be right. Adults in schools bend over backward to make sure that kids do not suffer for their poor decision-making. Parents and administrators force teachers to make accommodations, reverse their decisions and defy their own policies. Students don't perceive risk because in many cases there is none.<br />
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I had a dispute once with my supervisor at that Long Island school, who insisted that the kids weren't doing their work because "they don't get it," meaning that I must not have adequately explained the requirements. Their forbearance was therefore proper and acceptable, and they certainly should not fail the course because of it. I replied that they didn't "get it" because they knew they didn't have to. It is far easier and less time-consuming to simply say "I don't get it" than to actually undertake and work through the task. If "not getting it" means you don't have to do the assignment, then you have no incentive to "get it;" in fact, you will actively try <span style="font-style: italic;">not</span> to "get it." She disagreed, without explaining why.<br />
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<span style="font-style: italic;">- Children with long-term absences who do not actually attend school, do course work, take and pass exams, etc. should not pass their classes.</span><br />
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In that same Long Island school, I was forced to pass a student whom I had seen maybe twice the entire year. She was out with either a long-term illness, injury or family problem (I can't remember which) and had not done any of the coursework. But I was told to pass her because it was "not her fault" she was out, and she should not be "punished" for it (again, the false perception of academic failure as punitive action; see <a href="http://educationsanity.blogspot.com/2007/06/redefining-failure.html">Redefining Failure</a>). At my current school last year, I actually had a student insist, loudly and with great indignation, that he could not fail the first marking period because, in his words, "I wasn't here!!"<br />
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While I won't go so far as to suggest that this policy encourages kids to injure themselves or become gravely ill, we need to get away from the idea that just because a situation is not the child's "fault," we should pretend it doesn't exist and create an artificial outcome for the child's benefit. This has nothing to do with sensitivity; it's simple logic. There is no rationale for declaring that a child who has not actually taken a course, has not actually completed the coursework and thus not actually demonstrated proficiency in the course materials and skills, has in fact done so, because she was deprived of the opportunity by circumstances beyond her control.<br />
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We want kids to pass their classes, but we also want them to learn. If the latter is not a precondition of the former, if indeed they have nothing to do with one another, then what's the point?<br />
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<span style="font-style: italic;">- If a child receives a low or failing grade on an assignment, project, exam, or overall course, it means that his work is insufficient or substandard and needs to improve.</span><span style="font-style: italic;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">- If a child wants a higher grade, he must produce better work.</span><br />
<span style="font-style: italic;"><br />
</span>It is stunning to me how these have become foreign concepts to kids and parents. The last thing in the world anyone thinks of when a child receives a low grade or fails a course is that his work may not be very good, or that he might have chosen not to do it. Either the standards are too high or insufficiently clear, the assignments are too difficult or too numerous, the weighing of different elements into the average is wrong or unfair or ill-defined, the teacher is either incompetent or is persecuting the student because he doesn't like her . . . the list is endless. I've had many students who do little or no work at all, or who cannot write a single clear, correct sentence in an entire essay, and then are shocked - <span style="font-style: italic;">shocked - </span>to receive a low or failing grade.<br />
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In addition, the last thing anyone ever thinks of in terms of <span style="font-style: italic;">how </span>to get a better grade is to work harder or produce better results. Complaining, arguing, procedural nitpicking, parental or administrative lobbying, transferring to another teacher's class, and in some cases threats and blackmail, seem to be the preferred methods.<br />
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To students who complain about their grades, I always say the same thing: You want a better grade? <span style="font-style: italic;">Do a better job. </span>They have no idea what I'm talking about.<br />
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- If a child wants an "A", his work must be the best in the class.</span><br />
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See above discussion on what an "A" means, or should mean.<br />
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<span style="font-style: italic;"><br />
- Teachers are experts in their respective subject areas, in pedagogy, assessment and measurement, and they should be treated as such.</span><br />
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Here we get into an entirely different area, one which I have touched on earlier and may discuss in greater detail later. A good deal of what I've discussed above concerning grades is also affected by the fact that people in general do not trust teachers anymore. No one seems to believe that teachers know their subject matter, know how to assess and measure student performance against objective standards, or even essentially know how to teach.<br />
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What I'm talking about here goes beyond the simplistic <a href="http://www.nysun.com/article/56557">blame-the-teachers</a> mentality that the public and the media employ to explain the decline in the quality of schools and the academic performance of students. Of course there are incompetent teachers out there, but I would venture to say there are probably not very many. The certification requirements in New York are substantial, not the least of which is an undergraduate major and standardized content exam (i.e., demonstrated expertise) in the certified subject area. Teaching is a demanding profession and those who are not up to the task typically do not last very long. No; what I'm talking about here is what happens <span style="font-style: italic;">after </span>the child under-performs and is dissatisfied with a grade.<br />
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If it was generally understood that teachers are experts in their respective subject areas, as well as in pedagogy, assessment and grading, we would not have all these challenges to grades and all this caving in to parental pressure. We would not essentially allow parents to decide for themselves what grades their children should receive, let alone allow them to pressure and threaten us into giving them what they want. Teachers and administrators who give students the grades their parents demand instead of the ones they have earned are essentially ceding their expertise to the parents. In other words, I can't be considered an expert if the parent and the child know better than I do what grade her paper should get. I'm supposed to be the expert; I'm supposed to know the difference between an A paper and a B paper. And on top of that, I've been doing it for years. I read scores of papers at a time, hundreds of them every semester, many thousands in my career. I think I can tell by now the difference between the A, B, C, D and failing papers.<br />
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It's rather like the 4th Amendment warrant requirement; the police need a <span style="font-style: italic;">neutral magistrate </span>to determine if probable cause exists. The police (and, for that matter, the defendant) have too much of an interest in the outcome to make that determination for themselves. If I'm the judge, I'm supposed to be able to tell the difference between probable cause and mere suspicion, and more importantly, I have no stake in the outcome, which is why I get to make the decision.<br />
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I would argue it is extremely difficult for children to learn if their grades are pre-determined by their parents, who are indisputably interested parties. They are much better off being evaluated by a neutral, expert instructor.<br />
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Of course, students and parents don't believe teachers are "neutral" either...<br />
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<span style="font-style: italic;">- Children who misbehave should be punished.</span><br />
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This goes without saying. Or so one would think. There really is very little that a school or a teacher can do to punish misbehavior, even egregious antisocial behavior. Practically anything one could think of is somehow construed as "corporal punishment" (including a favorite of my elementary-school teachers, writing 25 or 50 times "I must not..."). The only punishment left is suspension from school or in-house detention, which as any student will tell you, is no punishment. Especially when they're absolved for whatever class work or exams they miss; after all, it's "not their fault" they weren't in class that day.<br />
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In early 2003, when I was teaching at that despicably corrupt, fraudulent Queens "Arts" school, a group of students stole hundreds of dollars worth of merchandise from theme-park gift shops while on a school-sponsored performance trip in Florida. The parents of these children insisted that the school should not punish them <span style="font-style: italic;">at all</span>. The principal (vile creature that he was) reluctantly meted out a nominal punishment, which in part excluded these children from Spring performances, but in the end even that relatively minor sanction was lifted.<br />
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I must confess I can't think of a disciplinary and punishment scheme which would be effective at maintaining order in the schools but which would not ultimately rely on the good faith of educators to avoid abusing their authority. I guess the question is, all else being equal, who should get the benefit of the doubt, the adults or the kids?<br />
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<span style="font-style: italic;">- Teachers should be annoyed, and should express that annoyance, when children misbehave.</span><br />
<span style="font-style: italic;"><br />
</span>This obviously refers to something that kids are guilty of more so than anyone else, although again the parents and administrators enable it. Children seem to believe that the teachers owe them "respect" but they do not owe their teachers any sort of deference. I've actually had students <span style="font-style: italic;">tell </span>me that: "You have to respect me, but I don't have to respect you." They do not feel obligated to behave in any particular way nor to treat teachers in any particular way, but the teachers must be careful what they say and how they say it.<br />
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Two years ago I politely asked a student twice to get out of the doorway, where she was standing, holding the door halfway open, having a conversation with someone in the hallway, <span style="font-style: italic;">after</span> the class period began, and take her seat. After being ignored both times, I had to raise my voice and instruct her, rather more forcefully, to comply. This produced a melodramatic, Oscar-worthy tirade from her about how "No one talks to me like that" and "I'm not your child" and "Don't you disrespect me" and on and on and on. (For the record, this was another one of the "five or six..." mentioned above.) <br />
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This is the sort of thing I should not have to explain. No one is entitled to a <span style="font-style: italic;">polite</span> response to an antisocial act, particularly when that act is repeated. Kids need to get over themselves. I'm not going to waste time pondering the adolescent concept of "respect," which is simplistic and one-sided, nor explaining in any great detail the reasons why students <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">do</span></span>, in fact, owe teachers their respect, deference and best behavior. Suffice it to say that it's almost impossible for learning to occur, let alone for the schools to function, otherwise. A teacher has every right to be annoyed when children misbehave or interfere with their teaching, and every right to scold them when they do.<br />
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How can so many people be so wrong about so many things that are so important when it comes to school? How did we reach this nadir? Make no mistake: <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">This </span></span>is why our school system is failing. It's not a lack of funding or the influence of teacher's unions or the absence of Christian prayer in the classroom. It is a <span style="font-style: italic;">fundamental misunderstanding</span> on nearly everyone's part of what teachers, students, parents and administrators are supposed to do with respect to the education of children; what their respective roles are supposed to be. And the schools will <span style="font-style: italic;">never </span>be fixed as long as people think this way. Never.Jason O. Braiman, Esq.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13127952576066942139noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4698774596246611749.post-22891881172196428682010-03-13T10:16:00.001-05:002010-03-13T10:17:16.382-05:00Bill Maher's New Rule: Don't Blame the Teachers<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-maher/new-rule-dont-fire-the-te_b_497554.html">Bill Maher: "New Rule: Let's Not Fire the Teachers When Students Don't Learn, Let's Fire the Parents."</a><br />
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I've been waiting for education to become a topic on my favorite sociopolitical talk show, HBO's <i>Real Time with Bill Maher</i> (I'm a big fan of Maher even though I strongly disagree with him on some topics, like marijuana and animal rights, to name two), and last night we got this "New Rule," which you can read in its entirety at the link above. He was responding largely to the recent wholesale firing of the entire faculty of a "failing" Rhode Island school. Now, the piece isn't entirely satisfactory; it is, after all, only a brief segment and played mostly for laughs, which explains the too-many jokes about recent teacher-student sex scandals. There are a few lines I want to highlight, though:<br />
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<blockquote><i>Yes, America has found its new boogeyman to blame for our crumbling educational system. It's just too easy to blame the teachers ... We all remember high school - canning the entire faculty is a nationwide revenge fantasy.</i><br />
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<i><b>But isn't it convenient that once again it turns out that the problem isn't us, and the fix is something that doesn't require us to change our behavior or spend any money.</b> It's so simple: Fire the bad teachers, hire good ones from some undisclosed location, and hey, while we're at it let's cut taxes more. It's the kind of comprehensive educational solution that could only come from a completely ignorant people.</i><br />
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<i> Firing all the teachers may feel good - we're Americans, kicking people when they're down is what we do - but it's not really their fault.</i></blockquote><br />
Maher's commentary touches on a number of themes.<br />
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First, the idea of firing teachers as a "revenge fantasy" makes perfect sense to me, and is in line with what I've observed in the past about how students view their teachers as arbitrarily evil, cardboard Bond villains, which is how they always portray them in fiction writing. Especially today, where schools have gone from being institutions of learning to institutions of validation, when parents send their kids to school not to learn but to be praised and lauded for what they already know, teachers are an easy, convenient and frequent target.<br />
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Second, it <i>is </i>convenient to blame and/or fire the teacher because, as appears to be the main point of the commentary, it absolves the parent, the student and society of any responsibility for the actual occurrence of learning. People seem to think that teaching is the equivalent of casting a magic spell; if you do it right, the spell will work and learning will magically occur, and if not, it won't. Further, the idea that it's so easy to identify a "good teacher" or a "bad teacher" is absurd. When I ask people to describe either of these, the answer is always couched in vague outcome-based platitudes; "...makes it interesting...," "...gets the kids to learn...," etc. Getting rid of "bad teachers" is not only easy and cost-free, it's completely subjective and arbitrary.<br />
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Third, Maher makes a good point by implicitly asking the question, Where do we think we're going to find all these "good teachers" after we fire all the "bad" ones?<br />
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Finally, it's about time the schools turned to parents, and especially to students, and asked them "What are <i><b>you </b></i>doing to make sure you learn?" I can't count how many times I've sat with a student and a parent at Open School, where the student has done no work so far and is failing the course, but has never raised her hand, asked a question, come for extra help, etc. The parent or the child will say she is "completely lost," and "has no idea what's going on in class," and "doesn't understand the literature," and "doesn't know what she's supposed to do," and on and on and on. Complete and utter helplessness. And my question is always the same: "What have you done about it?" <i> </i><br />
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<i>That's </i>the question we need to be asking. The issue is not what the teacher is doing, as Maher points out in his commentary. If you're a student and you're "lost" or "not understanding" the material or "don't know" what you're supposed to do, <i><b>What do you DO about it?</b></i> If you don't know what you're supposed to do, what steps have you taken to find out? If you "don't understand" the material (a lie, but I've been over that repeatedly), what steps have you taken to generate and increase your understanding? In most situations, the answer is: Nothing. Why? Because they don't think they have to <i>do </i>anything, and because they know that someone, whether a parent or an administrator, will absolve them of responsibility and place the burden on the teacher, to either un-do the outcome or give the child "another chance," because after all, she "deserves" it. <br />
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The point is that neither students nor parents feel that they have any responsibility at all to their own learning, nor for making that learning happen. They still cling to the idea that if the teacher "makes it interesting" and showers the child with praise, that somehow learning will occur on its own. It's foolish, intellectually lazy and counter-educational. And "firing all the bad teachers" won't fix it.Jason O. Braiman, Esq.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13127952576066942139noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4698774596246611749.post-48153353244444836232010-03-07T09:32:00.001-05:002010-03-07T09:32:44.522-05:00Repost: The Great Failure (April 7, 2008)<span style="font-weight: bold;">"The persistent weakness of American liberalism is its fixation with rights and procedures at any cost to efficiency and common sense."</span> - Jonathan Chait, <span style="font-style: italic;">The New Republic</span><br />
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</span></span>This is not a political blog, and I don't like to think of education as a political issue because, as any of the two or three people who have read this blog can attest, I don't think politics or politicians can fix it. In fact, I don't think it has anything to do with which political party is in power, or whose candidates we vote for, and nothing written here should be construed to advocate the support or denouncement of one party or the other. But when I read this quotation in <span style="font-style: italic;">TNR </span>I immediately thought of the schools. Replace the phrase "American liberalism" with "American public education" and the statement would still hold true.<br />
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I really believe that public secondary education, as I have described it throughout this blog, is <span style="font-style: italic;">the</span> great failure of modern American liberalism. I discussed this idea in some detail in an earlier post: <span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://educationsanity.blogspot.com/2007/05/conservative-pedagogy-liberal.html">Conservative Pedagogy, Liberal Assessment.</a> Subjective standards, entitlement grading, the ceding of teacher authority and expertise to parents, the bending-over-backward to absolve students of the consequences of their poor choices, the emphasis on self-esteem over actual learning, the suffocating limitations on permissible school-based discipline; these are all the product of abstract liberal ideas and ideals.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: 100%;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-size: 100%;">"...fixation with rights and procedures..." Look at the scenario outlined in <a href="http://educationsanity.blogspot.com/2007/06/hypothetical.html">Hypothetical</a>. The idea that a child's failing grade can and must be overturned because of a procedural dispute with a teacher is a perfect example of this. It presumes (wrongly, in my view) that a student has a <span style="font-style: italic;">right </span>to a passing grade, and that right cannot be infringed without "due process." </span><span style="font-size: 100%;">Parents today seem singularly obsessed with rights and procedures. Administrators are therefore required to share that obsession in their policies and directives to teachers. </span><span style="font-size: 100%;">Again, as I pointed out previously, procedural formalities become more important than the student's performance; the grade can be based on the former as well as, or instead of, the latter. This of course creates inefficiency; the more different factors that can be used to determine a child's grade or passing/failing status, the more resources are expended upon those factors and, necessarily, diverted away from actual instruction and assessment. And it defies common sense, in that a child's grade should reflect <span style="font-style: italic;">her </span>performance, and the teacher's assessment thereof, with respect to standards and expectations.<br />
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In our pre-Open School departmental conference last week, our principal emphasized the importance of procedure and "due process," and having evidence thereof, because as he put it, that's what parents always insist upon knowing and, inevitably, will try to challenge. I would wager that the majority of parent complaints and challenges with respect to student grades are <span style="font-style: italic;">procedural </span>rather than <span style="font-style: italic;">substanti</span><span style="font-style: italic;">ve</span>. In other words, a parent is far more likely to insist that a child's grade should be raised or overturned because the teacher supposedly neglected some arcane procedural step, rather than because the student's work was actually better than the teacher's evaluation and he had actually <span style="font-style: italic;">earned </span>a higher grade.</span><br />
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Students have a right to competent instruction, they have a right to know what the rules, regulations, requirements, standards and expectations are, they have a right to have their legitimate questions answered, they have a right to receive extra academic help when they ask for it and it is available, they have a right to be treated fairly, equitably, reasonably and honestly by teachers and other school officials. They do <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">NOT </span></span>have a right to pass their classes and advance to the next grade, nor to receive high grades, nor to be praised for their performance regardless of whether it is praiseworthy. They have a right to the <span style="font-style: italic;">opportunity</span>, not the <span style="font-style: italic;">outcome</span>.<br />
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The presumption that a student <span style="font-style: italic;">must </span>be given a passing grade based on alleged procedural inadequacies requires a presumption that the student <span style="font-style: italic;">would </span>have passed had the procedures been followed; again, that the student is <span style="font-style: italic;">entitled </span>to a passing grade. In other words, we are willing to presume, absent any evidence, that the student <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;">knows </span></span>the material and <span style="font-style: italic;">can </span>do the work. We are not, however, willing to presume that the <span style="font-style: italic;">teacher </span>followed procedure and provided the student with all of what is listed in the above paragraph. The teacher must prove that she provided adequate information, instruction and notice, and must overcome the presumption that she did not, but the student does not need to prove that he has learned, or done, anything.<br />
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This defies common sense. The whole point of a student taking an exam or doing an assignment is for him to demonstrate what he has learned. The grotesque inversion of logic described above goes back to the idea of not trusting teachers and giving <span style="font-style: italic;">students</span> the benefit of the doubt in disputes of this nature. All a student has to do is claim that he did not know about an assignment or did not know how to do it, and automatically it is presumed that he <span style="font-style: italic;">could </span>have done it and <span style="font-style: italic;">would </span>have done it had the teacher told him about it and explained it to him. The parent therefore demands that the child be given the grade that he<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>would have gotten under those circumstances, and that imaginary outcome be substituted for what actually happened (or, in less extreme cases, that the student be given "another chance" to do the work). In the end, the child does not have to actually <span style="font-style: italic;">do </span>the assignment, let alone do it well or demonstrate actual learning. The parent demands a passing grade, the system obliges, and the child learns nothing.<br />
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It has, in fact, become <span style="font-style: italic;">so </span>easy for a student to evade responsibility for assignments by claiming ignorance that teachers are compelled to take extraordinary measures to make sure students know about assignments, test dates, and the like. A teacher is practically required to tell the students about it in class, write it on the board, give them a printed handout, put it on the internet, e-mail every student personally, call every parent personally, then directly ask each child individually if he knows about the assignment and intends to complete it, and keep doing all this <span style="font-style: italic;">every day </span>until the assignment is due. Anything less, and a child can claim that she "didn't know" and the parent will demand restitution. Is this really an efficient or reasonable way for teachers to expend their time and resources?<br />
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Claiming ignorance and accusing the teacher of incompetence is certainly easier than actually studying, paying attention in class, asking meaningful questions, and completing assigned work. The trouble is that this is essentially what today's kids are being taught to do. Not only do they have no incentive to pay attention to instructions, keep track of assignments and seek help, they have an incentive to <span style="font-style: italic;">ignore </span>instructions, <span style="font-style: italic;">disregard </span>assignments and <span style="font-style: italic;">not know</span> what is going on in class; they <span style="font-style: italic;">actively try </span>to<span style="font-style: italic;"> not know. </span>In a way, they're trying to create plausible deniability for themselves, but it only becomes plausible when adults accept and enable it. We should not. Students <span style="font-style: italic;">must </span>have a duty to know what their responsibilities are; to know what is expected of them, to know what assignments are and when they are due, to listen to and follow instructions, to know what is going on in each of their classes. Teachers should not have to bear the <span style="font-style: italic;">entire</span> burden of maintaining students' awareness of assignments and requirements.<br />
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How can the school system function efficiently, let alone generate actual learning, when it gives kids all these perverse incentives? For how long will we be willing to cast reason and common sense out the window, making the educational process far more complicated and less efficient than it needs to be, just to make kids feel good about themselves, while producing a population filled with self-esteem and empowerment but bereft of knowledge and skills?<br />
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<span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;"></span></span>"The persistent weakness of American public education is its fixation with rights and procedures at any cost to efficiency and common sense."<br />
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Sounds about right.Jason O. Braiman, Esq.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13127952576066942139noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4698774596246611749.post-77346597055408047012010-02-26T09:22:00.000-05:002010-02-26T09:22:49.607-05:00God Hates Me.Between the fall of 1997 and January 8, 2010, I spent the better part of 12 school years as a New York City teacher. In all that time, if memory serves me correctly, I think the City public schools were given a grand total of two (2) snow days. It was always frustrating when City schools were open while all the suburban schools were closed, and indeed, during the brief and nightmarish time I spent teaching in the suburbs, there were no snow days. The schools were closed the day after 9/11, were pre-emptively closed in anticipation of an impending Nor'easter (which turned out to be nothing) in 1998 or 99, and there may have been one other snow day in all those years. Meanwhile, we had at least a half-dozen major snowstorms during that time that fell either on a Saturday or during the February break.<br />
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I suppose you know where this is going. <br />
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Since leaving the City school system seven weeks ago, there have been two snow days. Two in seven weeks, after two in 13 years.<br />
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Not that I miss working for the DOE, mind you. And I certainly don't miss the children. And I'm certainly very happy in my new job and career. Just having a little fun in my office, watching out a 29th-story window as the city gets whitewashed. Again.<br />
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Enjoy the snow day.Jason O. Braiman, Esq.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13127952576066942139noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4698774596246611749.post-12277810025904097322010-02-05T11:53:00.004-05:002014-09-17T15:26:15.132-04:00Over the TopTwo articles in the <i>Daily News</i> in the last couple of days caught my attention:<br />
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_1265379121154"><br />
</a><br />
<a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/education/2010/02/04/2010-02-04_big_trouble_over_this_tiny_toy_mom_fuming_at_a_lack_of_common_sense_as_son_buste.html">Mom Fumes After Son, 9, Is Busted for Bringing 2-Inch Long Toy Gun to School</a> (follow-up <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/education/2010/02/05/2010-02-05_si_principal_i_blew_toy_gun_flap.html">here</a>).<br />
<a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/education/2010/02/05/2010-02-05_cuffed_for_doodling_on_a_desk.html">Queens Girl Hauled out of School in Handcuffs After Getting Caught Doodling on Desk</a>.<br />
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Allright, what's going on here? Reading through the comments attached to these articles, I see two schools of thought emerging (not counting this-is-all-liberal-socialist-Marxist-PC-commie-leftist-Obama's-fault):<br />
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1. Rules are rules, the kid broke them, zero tolerance, parents need to get over themselves;<br />
2. It was just a toy, it's no big deal, kids will be kids, how dare the principal punish the child so harshly.<br />
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What I'm seeing here is an awful lot of overreaction, on just about everyone's part, including the aforementioned commenters. The school officials overreacted to the children' s inappropriate behavior, the parents overreacted to the overreaction, and the public is now overreacting to both. In the case of the boy with the little toy gun, the child probably shouldn't have brought any toys to school, let alone a toy gun no matter what size it was. To hear the boy and the parent tell of it, though, the principal completely wigged out over it and treated the boy as if he had actually shot someone. I should note here that I don't entirely believe this; she probably did overreact, but not to the degree the boy and mother are claiming. We all know how children tend to exaggerate and distort things in order to cast themselves as innocent victims of arbitrary meanness, and parents nowadays are no help in that they take these distortions as gospel truth and then double-down on the distortion to pump up the outrage. <br />
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We can dispense with the lawsuit talk right now; it's an empty threat, and everyone knows it. Neither the parent nor the child has any cause of action here, against either the principal or the school/DOE, let alone one that would justify the expense of litigation. Bunch of nonsense, this. Even as an attorney, it annoys me to no end whenever something like this happens and everyone's first thought is of a lawsuit. The reality is that no parent, no matter how outraged, is going to go through the time, expense and effort of pursuing a cause of action in court that has <i>no chance </i>of succeeding, let alone of producing a large recovery. <br />
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I think that in this case we're just looking at a lot of bad behavior on everyone's part, most of which could have been avoided if anyone along the line just did the proper, reasonable thing in the first place. And as always, the important things get lost: the need for schools to have and enforce reasonable rules, the need for them to enforce such rules in a reasonable and effective way, and the need for parents to stop teaching their children that they are the center of the universe and that anything and everything they do is just wonderful.<br />
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Which brings me to the second case, the girl who was handcuffed for doodling on her desk. Now, in this case the child actually <i>was </i>punished for her behavior (the boy in the other case just got a stern talking-to and was made to sign an acknowledgment form), and in this case the behavior actually was, in a technical sense, criminal. Vandalism is still a crime in New York, as far as I know, whether the perpetrator intends to "undo" the damage or not (or, perhaps more to the point, whether or not it is possible for the victim to undo it). What's interesting to me is that the child is quoted as saying, "It could be easily erased." Note the use of passive language here, reflecting the complete lack of acknowledgment that someone would actually have to do the work of erasing it. And how does she know whether such work is "easy?" More importantly, why does she feel entitled to impose such work on someone else? The article says the marker was "erasable," but I don't buy it. I've seen plenty of desk graffiti over the years, but I've never seen a child using a dry-erase whiteboard marker on a desk. <br />
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Now, all that said, I think the whole arrest and handcuffing thing was over the top. I'd be lying if I said I never thought about having a student arrested and cuffed for vandalizing a desk; in fact, this past semester, I had a student who was a serial desk vandal (among other things) and I had that thought often. The tension here, I think, is between a proportional response to an isolated incident of inappropriate behavior on the one hand, and on the other the idea that we cannot let students think they can behave in an antisocial way and not have to pay a price for it, even if the harm appears to be minor. In this particular case, without knowing more about this girl and other surrounding circumstances, the response was probably disproportionate. If this girl was a serial desk vandal and had been repeatedly warned to stop doing it, that's another story. <br />
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There is a risk in letting students get away with "minor" infractions, in the sense that they eventually come to decide for themselves what the magnitude of the harm is, and therefore feel empowered to commit even greater harms while convincing themselves that the harms are not so great. One of the things that bothers me most about kids is that they tend to proclaim themselves the arbiters of the value of other people's property. The classic example of this is two boys playing "keep-away" with a third boy's baseball cap, throwing it back and forth, until it falls in a mud puddle and is permanently ruined. The owner of the cap will react strongly, and the cap-throwers will admonish him that it's "just a baseball cap" and only worth $30, or whatever such caps go for at Modell's. What they might not know, for example, is that the cap was the last thing given to the boy by his uncle, who died last month. Yes, that's an extreme example, but the point is that the taunters in this scenario have no right to tell the owner of the property which they destroyed that it was not worth preserving. No one has the right to determine the value to its owner of any property which does not belong to him. (That includes the value of labor, re: the girl's claim that undoing the damage she caused would be "easily" accomplished.)<br />
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I realize I'm taking the reader down a bit of a slippery slope here, but I believe the risk is genuine. I've said time and time again, and made it the thesis of my Law Review Note, that teenagers do a very poor job of evaluating risk and considering their actions carefully, to the point of being unable to even perceive risk. While they don't always need to be handcuffed and "taken downtown" every time they step out of line, they do need to understand that sometimes their actions <i>do </i>cause harm, and they cannot escape the consequences by unilaterally declaring that the harm is insignificant.<br />
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The worst aspect of this may be that these parents, particularly the mother of the boy with the Lego gun, are teaching their children that it is normal, proper, acceptable, even preferable, to feel and act outraged and victimized whenever they get in trouble in school; that the proper way to respond to what may or may not have been a lapse in judgment resulting in what may or may not have been unfair treatment, is to attack, threaten and actively try to destroy the life of that person. They will do this even when they are in the wrong. <br />
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People should enforce their rights, yes. People should be wary of unfair treatment, yes. Punishments should be proportional, yes. But no one is helped when everyone loses their minds.Jason O. Braiman, Esq.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13127952576066942139noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4698774596246611749.post-18439218116583211892010-01-28T14:19:00.002-05:002010-01-28T14:19:55.493-05:00J.D. Salinger, 1919-2010J.D. Salinger, author of <i>The Catcher in the Rye </i>and a main character in the novel <i>Shoeless Joe</i> by W.P. Kinsella, <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2010/SHOWBIZ/books/01/28/salinger.obit/index.html?hpt=T1">has died at the age of 91</a>. <br />
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Will check back later with thoughts. A sad day today, indeed.Jason O. Braiman, Esq.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13127952576066942139noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4698774596246611749.post-9825143774009589232010-01-24T13:54:00.008-05:002010-02-04T17:09:25.297-05:00Jay - Ee - Tee - Ess ...No, I'm not going to pontificate here about if/how/why my perennially heartbreaking, soul-crushing New York Jets are going to beat the mighty, awesome Indianapolis Colts in the AFC championship game this afternoon. To be honest, I don't think they have a chance; they simply can't score enough points to keep up with Peyton Manning and the Colts offense, who don't play a lot of 17-14 games. Some of my friends will surely get on my case for being "negative" or "pessimistic," but they make the same mistake that all blind partisans make in failing to see the difference between what one wishes or hopes will happen, and what one actually honestly believes will happen. I can want and hope for outcome A but nonetheless predict and expect outcome B, all at the same time. The two thoughts are not incompatible.<br />
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No, I post today because of something I read in today's <i>NY Post</i>, in an interview with Jets safety Jim Leonhard. When asked if he and his teammates would "run through a brick wall" for coach Rex Ryan, Leonhard replied, "Everyone’s been lied to, everyone’s been told something that really isn’t true. Your parents tell you you’re great your whole life, and sometimes it’s not true. I watch "American Idol" every once in a while, you see all the people that go on the show and they think they’re the best singers in the world because no one ever told them that they’re not. Rex is gonna tell you the truth."<br />
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I only noticed and posted this because it reflects the thinking that has been driving my teaching for years. I've always told people that I have some students who love me, and some who hate me; some who think I'm a great teacher, and some who think I'm a terrible teacher. And <b>both for the same reason.</b> The reason is precisely what Leonhard says about Ryan here. A lot of students come to my class having only ever been told how wonderful and fabulous they are at everything they've ever done, throughout their entire childhood. Their teachers may have even been taught, trained and instructed to do that; to never tell a student that his answer is wrong or her work is inadequate, because doing so would be "psychologically damaging." (This is what a student-teacher I supervised a few years back told me she had been taught.) They get to my class and can't handle my brutal honesty. I challenge them to do better, and they take it as an insult.<br />
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Now, I've had a number of students over the years who initially resented me for this, but who realized over time what I was doing for them and came to appreciate it. Sometimes that only happens <i>after </i>the student is not in my class anymore. But I believe, have always believed and will always believe, that we do kids no favors by praising everything they do without giving them any honest appraisals of their ability and performance. The kind of obsequious self-esteem boosting we see in schools does nothing but produce a lot of narcissistic, peevish kids who cannot and do not learn because they can neither take constructive criticism nor distinguish it from arbitrary meanness.<br />
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This is actually related, peripherally, to the sports topic I brought up at the beginning of this post. I have an acquaintance with whom I used to be very close, but we've drifted apart in recent years because, among other things, we don't see eye to eye on how to properly root for one's favorite teams, nor on how important such behavior is to one's life or how reflective it is of one's character. (He's a Yankee fan, of course, and thus knows little of the bitter anguish and wrenching disappointment suffered annually for decades by fans of the other New York teams. He's also quite a bit younger than I am.) Specifically, he doesn't like it when I predict or expect that one of my teams will lose a game, or fail to make the playoffs, or blow a 7-game division lead with 17 games to play. He gets very upset when I do that, and thinks I should be more positive and supportive of these teams.<br />
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This is not necessarily an unusual or unreasonable position to take. The problem with this individual is (1) he can't distinguish blind support and unthinking advocacy from honest, measured analysis and reasoned, fact-based prognostication; (2) he seems to think that somehow my "attitude" actually has an impact on the outcome of those events (i.e., that my saying or believing they will lose actually causes them to lose), and (3), most disturbingly, he thinks I should do this for <i>their </i>sake, not mine. I could understand it if he thought that it would be beneficial to <i>me </i>if I were less cynical; that <i><b>I </b></i>would be happier and less stressed if I <strike>always believe, expect and say that my team will win every game, even if logic, reality and history suggest otherwise</strike> was more optimistic. There is something to that, even though the obvious counter-argument is that you're setting yourself up for disappointment when you do that, a lesson I learned a very long time ago. That's part of the reason why I try to be realistic, if not overtly cynical, about the future fortunes of my favorite teams.<br />
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But this individual makes a very strange argument; that somehow it would be better for <i>them</i>, for the teams themselves, if I was more "positive." Whether he thinks they're actually, in reality, more likely to win if <i>I</i> predict/think/say that they will win, or whether he thinks that <i>I</i> am actually hurting the players' and coaches' fragile feelings by not thinking they'll win every game, it's a completely absurd and irrational argument. The fact that he seems to care more about <i>them </i>than he does about me is doubly disturbing. (UPDATE: He's also a hypocrite; after admonishing me before the game for my "pessimism" in predicting the Jets would lose, he updated his Facebook status after the game to mock and ridicule Jets fans for being stupid enough to believe they could win.)<br />
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In a way, it's not all that different from the idea that if we inundate kids with nothing but praise and compliments and "encouragement," that they will somehow actually learn, improve and succeed academically without ever hearing an honest, objective appraisal of their abilities and performance. Of course it's not the same as the sports-fan context, in that there is no actual contact between me and the team so the way I choose to root for them cannot and does not affect them (a fact which my acquaintance nonetheless seems unable to grasp). But the idea that positive thinking and positive "encouragement" or cheerleading always leads <i>directly </i>to positive results is foolish, no less so than assuming one's wishes will all come true if one simply wishes hard enough. <br />
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Of course Rex Ryan is not going to try to motivate his team to win by telling them he thinks they're going to lose. In fact, his public statements suggest the opposite, but what he's done is challenged his players to back up those statements. He has challenged his players to succeed by telling them the truth about themselves; that they are not as great as they think they are, and they have to prove it to him first. They're not going to win today, but these Jets are already more successful than any Jets team since the one that won Super Bowl III all those <strike>years</strike> decades ago. They have a coach who "gets it."Jason O. Braiman, Esq.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13127952576066942139noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4698774596246611749.post-30643616255160923892010-01-03T09:47:00.013-05:002010-01-04T12:49:02.890-05:00The Gathering StormOne more week and it will be over. As my last Christmas/holiday break comes to an end, and I prepare to go into my final week of teaching, I've been thinking more and more about the abyss into which public education in New York City, and perhaps all across the United States, is about to fall, and the precipice upon which teachers are about to hang.<br /><br />The abyss is called <a href="http://educationsanity.blogspot.com/2009/03/its-official-education-is-dead.html">"differentiated instruction,"</a> which I've <a href="http://educationsanity.blogspot.com/2009/03/race-to-bottom.html">written about at length</a> over the past year and a half. This completely counter-intuitive, anti-educational, ideologically-driven, pragmatically impossible concept, completely unsupported by any research or clinical study, and quite possibly <a href="http://educationsanity.blogspot.com/2009/03/differentiation-vs-discrimination.html">illegal and unconstitutional</a>, is about to become the end-all of every public school. The pleasant-sounding abstraction that "every child learns differently," and the resulting rhetorical dogma that "we need to tailor our instruction to each individual child in order to maximize his individual potential," not only has no practical application in the real world (i.e., cannot actually be done by a single teacher in single classroom with 34 students, 5 times per day, 180 days per year); it has the potential to drive thousands of teachers out of the profession over the next several years.<br /><br />Under the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) of 2004, public schools are required to provide Special Education students with an Individualized Education Program, or IEP, in order to give each child what the law describes as a "free and appropriate public education" (FAPE). A student's IEP may include:<br /><br />- Specially-designed instruction;<br />- Program modifications, including "lowered success criteria";<br />- Classroom accommodations, e.g., preferential seating, extended time for tests, read-aloud of instructions and questions, copies of teachers' lesson notes, etc.<br /><br />Differentiation essentially takes these elements of Special Education and applies them to general education. In other words, "differentiation" means creating an IEP for <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">every student in the system.</span></span> It will require every teacher to create and implement an IEP for every student in his/her classes, every day of every school year.<br /><br />Let's examine the logistics of this for a moment. Teachers in public high schools typically have five classes, with approximately 30 students in each class; sometimes more, sometimes less, but let's place the total at 150 for the typical teacher. 5 classes, 150 students. Now, those five classes will usually consist of two, maybe three, "preps," meaning there will be two or more sections of the same course or grade level, and one or more of a different course or grade level, and perhaps a third in addition to those, meaning the teacher will have to prepare two or three lessons per day for her five classes. Sometimes a teacher will have only one prep. Occasionally he will have four preps, but that is very unusual.<br /><br />Having one prep is great, for both the teacher and the students. Two preps is fairly typical; much more common, and quite manageable. Three preps, however, can be very difficult, especially for inexperienced teachers. (Or those joining a new school with a radically different philosophy; when I taught on Long Island, lost in the unbearable philosophical and personality clashes I suffered was the fact that I was teaching 3 preps, and was actually the only teacher in the department with more than 2.) Lesson planning can be challenging, tedious and time-consuming; preparing 3 different lessons per day on top of actual instruction, marking, administrative tasks, &c. is about all most high school teachers can handle. Experienced teachers can recycle lessons and units, and find other ways to manage multiple preps, but the point is that preparing multiple lessons on a day-to-day basis can be grueling. The more different preps a teacher has, the more time he needs to spend planning, and the less effort and attention can be devoted to each one.<br /><br />Now take the typical teacher with 5 classes of 30 students and add "differentiation" to the mix. No matter how many preps the teacher has, she must now multiply that number by a factor of ... well, it's not clear, exactly. How "differentiated" do they want it? Do they want "differentiation" for each individual student, or do they want small groups of multiple students? If it's groups, how many groups? How many students in each group? What are the groupings to be based on? "Learning style," "ability level," or something else? How many "learning styles" are we supposed to identify, and what exactly are they? How do we define and identify each one? How many "ability levels" are we supposed to identify, and what exactly are they? Are we supposed to differentiate instruction by "learning style," by "ability level," or some combination of both? And if it's some combination of both, then what combination, specifically? Only one combination, or several? If several, what exactly are they? Or do they want us to differentiate by "learning style" some of the time, by "ability level" some of the time, and combine them some of the time? How much of each?<br /><br />[Side note: It has even been suggested to me by administrators that we should differentiate by race, gender and ethnicity, which is even more dangerously close to being illegal discrimination. Doesn't anyone realize this?]<br /><br />Before I get lost in the sea of unanswerable questions that arise under this vague and ill-defined concept, my point here is that the teacher who had been preparing at most three lessons per day now must prepare a minimum of 5 or 6 lessons per day (that's if she has one prep, dividing each class into groups of five or six students), 10 to 20 lessons per day (2-3 preps, similarly divided), 30 to 90 lessons per day (1-3 preps, differentiated by individual student) and perhaps even as many as <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">150 lessons per day</span></span><span style="font-weight: bold;"> </span>(fully differentiated, IEP-for-all). Instead of having one curriculum/syllabus and one set of classroom rules, procedures and assessment criteria for each prep, the teacher must now develop up to 150 separate curricula/syllabi, and up to 150 sets of rules, procedures and assessment criteria<span style="font-weight: bold;">, </span>each year.<br /><br />This is not only unreasonable, it's untenable. There are not enough hours in the day for any teacher to be preparing dozens of lessons every single day for an entire school year.<br /><br />But back to that sea of unanswerable questions, adding to those posed above... If I'm supposed to "differentiate" from day one, how am I to know what the "learning style" of each of my 150 new students is on that first day? How, when, by whom, and how often will these determinations be made? How will they be recorded? How will they be communicated to me at the beginning of a new school year? In the context of high school English, by what <span style="font-style: italic;">objective </span>criteria does one distinguish literature titles by "learning style?" What <span style="font-style: italic;">objective</span> criteria would make any particular title appropriate for one "learning style" and not for another? Are English teachers expected to teach multiple literature titles simultaneously, and if so, how many? By what <span style="font-style: italic;">objective </span>criteria does one distinguish a literary essay assignment given to a student with one "learning style," from a literary essay assignment given to a student with a different "learning style?" How does one mark and correct an essay written by a student who has one "learning style," compared to another?<br /><br />I could go on and on and on. The pleasant-sounding rhetorical ideology of "differentiation" quickly falls apart when it arrives in the realm of concrete, practical, real-world time and resource considerations. "Tailoring our instruction to meet student's' individual needs" sounds fine when it's floating in the air, but when I actually sit across from you, holding an actual book in each hand (say, <span style="font-style: italic;">The Natural</span> in one and <span style="font-style: italic;">Lord of the Flies</span> in the other) and ask you to explain to me why <span style="font-style: italic;">this </span>book is appropriate for student X, and <span style="font-style: italic;">that </span>one is appropriate for student Y, based on their different "learning styles," <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">you can't. </span></span>If I ask you to describe exactly what I should do and say, and what should be going on in my classroom, minute-to-minute, over a whole 47-minute period, today, tomorrow, the next day, and the next day, you can't. If I ask you to actually produce an actual curriculum-based writing assignment for student X and a "differentiated" one for student Y, you can't, and neither can you explain the objective differences between the two assignments, nor exactly how, day-by-day or minute-by-minute, I am supposed to work each student through the assignment.<br /><br />While skiing last week in Massachusetts, I met a school principal from that state on the chairlift and we talked about differentiation. He essentially agreed with me that NO ONE understands or can explain exactly what it's supposed to look like. He told me that his teachers don't understand it, and when his supervisors complain that the teachers don't understand it, the supervisors reveal that they don't understand it either. My post from last March, <a href="http://educationsanity.blogspot.com/2009/03/race-to-bottom.html">"Race to the Bottom,"</a> shows that even those in the educational establishment who are advocating and imposing this concept on the schools, don't understand it. It's nothing but a lot of vague, abstract, pleasant-sounding rhetoric. No one understands it, no one can explain it, and no one can put it to any real, concrete, practical use, because it <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">makes no sense.</span></span><br /><br />I've had enough experience, thank you very much, with rhetorical, ideologically-driven educational dogma which is completely unsupported by any objective criteria (let alone actual educational research), and I know very well what the dangers are. At the phony, corrupt "Arts" school in Queens, the dogma were "Humanities" (i.e., the exclusive and exclusionary teaching of Social Studies content in English classes) and "student-centered instruction" (i.e., no whole-class instruction or teacher-directed activity of any kind, ever). When dogma like this are unsupported by any practical, real-world, hands-on, day-to-day, minute-to-minute considerations, or any real objective criteria, they become an ideology to which supervisors will cling with an almost religious fervor.<br /><br />This brings us to the real danger. When supervisors become religiously fixated on dogmatic ideologies like these, they tend to ignore all of the positive things that teachers accomplish and focus instead on the <span style="font-style: italic;">absence </span>of these ideologies, or any "evidence" thereof, in the teacher's classroom. In other words, the dogma become so important to the supervisor that every time he walks into a teacher's classroom, he <span style="font-style: italic;">will try very, very hard NOT to see</span> whatever it is he thinks he's looking for. The fact that there are essentially no objective criteria supporting the ideology makes it very, very easy for a supervisor to characterize a lesson or a classroom environment as "not [insert ideology here]", even where the teacher is actively trying to teach in a way that is consistent with the ideology. In other words, a teacher may design and teach a lesson that she thinks is "differentiated", but her supervisor may observe the same lesson and decide that it is "<span style="font-style: italic;">not</span> differentiated." For everything the teacher can point to that <span style="font-style: italic;">is </span>"differentiated," the supervisor can point to something that <span style="font-style: italic;">isn't. </span>Neither of them can be proven right or wrong, because they may have different ideas about what "differentiation" is, and again, there are essentially <span style="font-style: italic;">no objective defining criteria.</span> And what's more, any positive things the teacher is doing, let alone whether the students are actually learning anything, are ignored and become entirely irrelevant. All that matters is whether the teacher is or is not practicing the named ideology, a determination which is, in the final analysis, completely subjective and arbitrary.<br /><br />This is how unscrupulous supervisors, like the sick, demented gargoyle of a principal I had at the phony, corrupt "Arts" school, will target teachers in the years to come. All they have to do to drive away a teacher they don't like is to keep raising the bar for "differentiation" by telling that teacher, time and time again, that her lessons are "not differentiated" and that she is not adequately "on board" with the ideology. Eventually there will be nothing the teacher can do to prove to the supervisor that she is differentiating her instruction, and the supervisor will always have a plausible argument that she isn't, no matter how tenuous that argument may be. It's very easy to accuse a teacher of not doing something that, in a practical sense, cannot actually be done. There is nothing more dangerous to a teacher than a supervisor who comes into a class "wanting to see" something that the supervisor himself does not truly understand.<br /><br />Eventually the powers that be will realize that this can't work, for teachers or for students, but only after thousands of teachers are driven away from the profession and millions more students advance from grade to grade while learning nothing. Whatever "differentiated instruction" is, it is not education. It is designed to drastically increase the burden on teachers while simultaneously drastically <span style="font-style: italic;">decreasing </span>the burden on students. It is designed to promote the patently false notion that every student is an "A" student by default. It is designed to <span style="font-style: italic;">prevent </span>students who are less intelligent and less capable from actually increasing their intelligence and capabilities, which I always thought was supposed to be the goal of education.<br /><br />One more week and I'm done.<br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"></span></span>Jason O. Braiman, Esq.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13127952576066942139noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4698774596246611749.post-38733885169527124542009-12-21T16:12:00.004-05:002009-12-21T21:27:02.432-05:00A Paragraph About NothingI feel compelled today to cross-post this exercise from my website. The purpose of the exercise is to read the paragraph, a Discussion paragraph about one book from a "critical lens" essay, and determine what score it should receive based on the Regents rubrics:<br /><br /><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:times new roman;">The novel </span><u style="font-family: times new roman;">Prognosis Negative</u><span style="font-family:times new roman;"> by Art Vandelay expresses protest against many different things. The story covers a great deal of time and takes the reader through many different places and events, as the author uses several different techniques to really make the reader think. By using a certain type of narrative structure, Vandelay is able to grab the reader’s attention and make the piece much more effective and meaningful, showing how everything happened. The story moves from the beginning to the end as the protagonist struggles to resolve the central conflict, while a number of unusual and unexpected things occur along the way. Characterization is used throughout the novel, as each of the characters is described in a different way, making them seem more real and allowing the reader to better relate to them. Each character has a unique personality, with several important characteristics described in the text. This allows the reader to understand who these people are, why they do what they do, and how they end up where they are in the end. The characters represent how the author feels about the issues he is protesting, and in the end, the reader understands exactly what Vandelay is trying to say. </span><u style="font-family: times new roman;">Prognosis Negative</u><span style="font-family:times new roman;"> is an example of how authors use their works to express their opposition to various things.</span></span><br /><br />I created this back in 2002 when I was teaching on Long Island. It's a pretty fair representation of how the students at that school tended to write literary essays, with the language streamlined. I created this for two reasons. One was because I noticed an overwhelming <span style="font-style: italic;">vagueness</span> in the students' writing about the literature they had read and about the literary elements of those texts. The other was because when my supervisor saw a paragraph like this, she would heap praise on it and tell me I was wrong to not score it a 5 or a 6.<br /><br />I think a lot of teachers, when they read this, would agree with her; that this is lucid, errorless, sophisticated writing, the writer clearly knows what he's talking about, and it proves its thesis by discussing literary elements. But read it again and pay close attention to <span style="font-style: italic;">what </span>the writer is saying, not <span style="font-style: italic;">how </span>he's saying it. If you're paying attention, you'll realize almost immediately that what the writer is saying is ...<br /><br />... <span style="font-style: italic;">ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"></span></span>Forget for a moment that there is, of course, no such book; it's a combination of two not-so-obscure <span style="font-style: italic;">Seinfeld</span> references (show about nothing, paragraph about nothing). The paragraph is a combination of boilerplate clichés ("really make the reader think", "make the piece much more effective and meaningful," "allowing the reader to better relate to [the characters]", etc.), comparative words like "better," "various" and "different" used as descriptors by themselves, interrogative conjunctions like "who," "what," and "how" setting off clauses without providing any specific answers or examples, and to the extent that literary elements are mentioned, their terms are used only to define themselves. No character is named, no event from the story is presented or described, nothing whatsoever is presented that would be unique to <span style="font-style: italic;">Prognosis Negative </span>among all literary works.<br /><br />Even if the book did exist, this would obviously not be an adequate analysis thereof. Why, then, would a teacher give this a 5 or 6 (mastery-level) score on the Regents? It's easy to suggest that a teacher might be fooled by the writer's language skill into thinking that such a fluent writer must certainly know what he's talking about. It is more likely, however, that the teacher simply presumes that the writer knows what he's talking about because they've just finished studying the text. In other words, the teacher gives the student the benefit of the doubt.<br /><br />As anyone who reads this blog knows, I never do that. A student has to prove to me that he read and understood the text, and knows it well enough to discuss it intelligently. A paragraph like this doesn't do that, not by a long shot. A lot of the problems I had on Long Island stemmed from the fact that from the students' perspective, this paragraph had always been good enough for their teachers; when it wasn't good enough for me, they felt I was being unreasonable. It didn't help that the Department chairwoman agreed with them.<br /><br />I never stooped to the level of showing her this, telling her a student wrote it, and asking her to score it. I'm sure it wouldn't have done any good. I sometimes wonder how many English teachers would actually spot it, assuming they didn't get the <span style="font-style: italic;">Seinfeld </span>reference.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /><br /></span></span></span>Jason O. Braiman, Esq.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13127952576066942139noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4698774596246611749.post-76774755020191656142009-12-21T08:57:00.007-05:002009-12-21T10:25:47.731-05:00Deep, Abiding FrustrationI'm almost through grading the third of five classes' worth of "critical lens" essays that the students wrote last week after 7 days of class instruction on the task, which included 2 days of sentence construction and correction activities. During the last essay project in November, we spent a whole week on sentence construction. Yet as I slowly and painstakingly work my way through these essays, I realize that what's making it so slow and painstaking is a troubling fact.<br /><br />I don't think there's been a single sentence in a single essay that I haven't had to correct or mark up in one way or another, for one reason or another. I'm sure if I go back and read them again I'll find one here or there, but it seems that essay after essay, I find myself marking up and correcting <span style="font-style: italic;">every single sentence</span>. Whether it's spelling, grammar, punctuation, capitalization, word usage, verb conjugation, vagueness, awkwardness, imprecision, subjectivity, inaccuracy, or some combination of any or all of these, every sentence in every essay seems to have something wrong with it. There are even transcription errors (i.e., copying the critical lens or the book's title incorrectly), and violations of specific rules and forms that were deliberately, expressly and directly emphasized in class.<br /><br />This is why it takes <span style="font-style: italic;">so freaking long </span>to get through a set of essays, why I stopped requiring multiple drafts years ago, why I can only assign four essays per semester, why I can't do much more than provide general comments and rubric evaluation for notebooks and homework, and why I only <span style="font-style: italic;">score </span>the students' final exam essays and don't <span style="font-style: italic;">mark </span>them. These students' inability to form a coherent thought in words, either on paper, out loud or even in their own minds, is staggering.<br /><br />Of course, one of the reasons for this is that no one seems to care anymore whether children can write with any precision or basic grammatical correctness. My supervisor on Long Island used to tell me that "if it's close, if you can pretty much understand what they mean, then it's fine." No, I had to reply, it's not fine. Language needs to be <span style="font-style: italic;">precise</span>. What you write should say <span style="font-style: italic;">exactly, precisely </span>what you mean, leaving no room for ambiguity or misinterpretation. Yet many of these children have been taught that it's OK to <span style="font-style: italic;">approximate </span>meaning when they write, and that's not even considering the fact that they've also been taught that no matter what they write or how they write, the end product is just wonderful and deserving of an A+++++, because they "did their best" and it would be unreasonable and wrong to expect mere children to write actual proper English sentences.<br /><br />I'm afraid I can't fathom what it must be like to be 16 and have so little awareness and understanding of the world around me because I can neither read, write, listen, speak nor understand <span style="font-style: italic;">any </span>language, at least not with any competence or precision. Language is the key to understanding <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">absolutely everything</span></span>, including oneself and one's own thoughts and perceptions. George Orwell understood this when he wrote <span style="font-style: italic;">1984</span>, and described the Party's means of keeping the population virtually unconscious by reducing the language to merely a very few basic expressions. It's frightening to think that so much of the population 10, 20 years from now will be as unconscious as Orwell's proles.Jason O. Braiman, Esq.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13127952576066942139noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4698774596246611749.post-45963163160905318982009-12-17T16:58:00.006-05:002009-12-21T12:11:43.754-05:00Single DigitsI have nine teaching days left.<br /><br />At some point I'm going to take the essays on this blog and attempt to compile them into a book, which I'm sure no one will want to publish. I have to figure out what my overall thesis and large-scale organization will be, but I imagine I'll concentrate on the following items:<br /><br />- The fundamental mistake that educators and parents make from which nearly all of our problems ultimately stem: The idea that every child is an "A" student by default. Everyone's a winner, everyone gets a trophy, and no one is ever "better than" anyone else at anything. If you're a student, anything and everything you do is just fabulous. From this notion springs most of the counter-intuitive and counter-educational policies I've seen in schools that actually prevent kids from learning: entitlement grading, subjective standards, differentiated instruction, to name a few. Not to mention the irrational ideas this puts in kids' heads, e.g., that daily work is optional, due dates are just a suggestion, and they should pass any class in which they <span style="font-style: italic;">cannot </span>do the work.<br /><br />- The desire to forgive kids for actions, decisions and behaviors that are at best irrational and inappropriate, and at worst deplorable and sociopathic, because they're "just kids," thereby enabling even more, and even worse, such behaviors.<br /><br />- The idea that we "can't expect kids to" do this or that, or to know this or that.<br /><br />- The refusal to teach kids manners, empathy or even basic decency.<br /><br />- Teaching kids that their feelings matter, but their choices don't.<br /><br />- Preventing kids from becoming better readers by focusing on <span style="font-style: italic;">what </span>they read, instead of <span style="font-style: italic;">how </span>they read.<br /><br />I'm sure I'll think of more. Most of the material, I'm sure, will come from my experiences on Long Island and at the phony, corrupt so-called "School of the Arts" in Queens between 2001 and 2003. These ideas all basically revolve around the same theme: That we've spent so much time wrangling over the roles of teachers and parents, we've completely lost sight of what the <span style="font-style: italic;">student's </span>obligations are with respect to his own learning. To phrase it as "blame the students" is to over-simplify and miss the point; this is not about blame. This is about action. What does the student need to <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">do</span></span> in order to make sure that he learns? I think we need to ask, and answer, this question. We need to realize that the student has a role to play in making learning happen.Jason O. Braiman, Esq.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13127952576066942139noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4698774596246611749.post-17956266646540388522009-12-01T19:18:00.005-05:002009-12-01T19:36:46.654-05:00It's gold, Jerry. Gold.Today in class we were discussing the passage in <span style="font-style: italic;">Shoeless Joe </span>when Ray Kinsella and J.D. Salinger arrive at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. Ray introduces Salinger to the cashier:<br /><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;"></span><blockquote><span style="font-family:times new roman;">"This is J.D. Salinger," I say, pointing to Jerry as if he were a trophy I was delivering.<br /><br />"Yeah?" says the clerk, her face coming alive. "Really?" She looks at both of us for the first time, smiling.<br /><br />"It's a pleasure to meet you." She extends her hand to Jerry. "You used to work for Kennedy, right?"<br /><br />"Indeed I did," says Jerry, his eyes plashing across mine, mischief rearranging the kindly lines of his face. To keep from laughing, he turns away.<br /><br />"Did I say something wrong? says the cashier.<br /><br />"He was very fond of Jack," I reply.</span></blockquote><br />Of course, none of the students got the joke, so I had to explain that the cashier had confused Jerry (as he prefers to be called, at least in the novel) for Pierre Salinger, JFK's press secretary. I explained that this was a literary technique called <span style="font-style: italic;">allusion</span>, a reference made, usually indirectly, to a fact outside the text which the reader is simply expected to know. I gave another example, which I usually use; a line from the film <span style="font-style: italic;">A Few Good Men:</span><span style="font-family:georgia;"><br /><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;"> </span></span><blockquote><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-family:times new roman;">"Three cases in two years?! Who's she handling, the Rosenbergs?!"</span></span></blockquote><br />I pointed out that if you don't know who the Rosenbergs are, you won't get the joke.<br /><br />Inevitably, someone asked, "Who are the Rosenbergs?" I replied, "Look it up; Julius and Ethel Rosenberg." The next question ... wait for it ...<br /><br />"Weren't they on <span style="font-style: italic;">I Love Lucy</span>?"Jason O. Braiman, Esq.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13127952576066942139noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4698774596246611749.post-69558175464814645522009-11-19T11:23:00.006-05:002009-11-19T12:19:13.986-05:00Narcissistic Personality DisorderI am always amused by students who actually still believe that they are somehow hurting <span style="font-style: italic;">me </span>by refusing to do their work. Some of them are simply five years old psychologically and emotionally, the equivalent of a toddler holding his breath until his face turns blue or until he gets his way. Others, indeed a great many others, suffer from narcissistic personality disorder, a condition that seems to afflict a great many teenagers nowadays, particularly girls.<br /><br />From Google Health:<br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Narcissistic personality disorder is a condition in which there is an inflated sense of self-importance and an extreme preoccupation with one's self.<br /><br />A person with narcissistic personality disorder:<br /><br /></span><ul><li style="font-family: arial;font-family:arial;" ><span style="font-weight: bold;">Reacts to criticism with rage, shame, or humiliation.</span></li><li style="font-family: arial;font-family:arial;" ><span style="font-weight: bold;"></span>Takes advantage of other people to achieve his/her own goals.</li><li style="font-family: arial;" face="arial">Has feelings of self-importance.</li><li style="font-family: arial; font-weight: bold;" face="arial">Exaggerates achievements and talents.</li><li style="font-family: arial;">Is preoccupied with fantasies of success, power, beauty, intelligence, or ideal love.</li><li style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Has unreasonable expectations of favorable treatment.</span></li><li style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"></span></span></span>Requires constant attention and admiration.</li><li style="font-family: arial; font-weight: bold;">Disregards the feelings of others; lacks empathy.</li><li style="font-family: arial;">Has obsessive self-interest.</li><li><span style="font-family:arial;">Pursues mainly selfish goals.</span><br /></li></ul><br />This describes a great many of my students fairly well; they exhibit at least four or five of these symptoms, the most common of which are <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;"></span></span></span>highlighted in <span style="font-weight: bold;">bold</span>. I'm told all the time that this is a normal, natural state for teenagers but I don't buy it. Not all teenagers are narcissists; if they were, there'd be no point in bringing attention to the disorder, and what's more, no one would notice it.<br /><br />There are certain specific behaviors in the school context that emerge from narcissistic children. One is the belief that they are somehow hurting their teachers (or, indeed, anyone but themselves) by refusing to do their academic work. Another is that they actually think they're helping themselves and are <span style="font-style: italic;">more </span>likely to get their way by being peevish and reflexively hostile. Another is the incredible belief, which I've discussed previously, that they should receive passing grades on assignments and report cards <span style="font-style: italic;">because </span>they <span style="font-style: italic;">cannot </span>do the work or understand the material.<br /><br />I actually had a conversation with a student yesterday that illustrates another symptom of this disorder. I was covering another teacher's class, and as usual, the students were noisy and would not do the work the teacher had left for them. I am generally disinclined to give room passes during coverages, so as to minimize students' taking advantage of their regular teacher's absence, and I specifically told this group that I would <span style="font-style: italic;">not </span>do so if they persisted in making noise and refusing to do their work and behave in a civilized and appropriate manner. I must have said no to at least four or five different students asking for passes.<br /><br />Finally, toward the end of the period, another student asked for a pass and I said no. It would not be fair, I told her, for me to say yes to you after I said no to everyone else. (Also, school rules bar room passes in the first and last ten minutes of class.) She persisted. I said, I understand where you're coming from, but you must understand that fairness requires me to say no. Then I asked, do you agree that it would not be fair for me to say yes to you after I said no to everyone else? She replied, No. I asked why and she had no answer. She either could not or would not say what I think we both knew: that she believes her needs are more important than others', or that her needs matter and other people's don't. That she is entitled to get what she wants irrespective of objective fairness; that <span style="font-style: italic;">not </span>getting what she wants is automatically, inherently <span style="font-style: italic;">unfair.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"></span></span>I also get tired of hearing adults (and students) tell me that I should not be annoyed by this sort of behavior<span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;"></span></span></span>, that I should not be concerned about it, that I should expect it and that i should not try to correct it. Nonsense. When someone tells me, "You can't expect kids to" do this or that, know this or that, understand this or that, or appreciate this or that, my response is always the same: Yes I can. I can, I do, and I will. I don't have to "accept" appalling, deplorable, antisocial behavior no matter how old the actor is. No person is reasonable and civilized by default; they have to be taught. One way to teach them is to not enable them by "accepting" such behavior because "they're just kids."<br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;"></span><br /></span>Jason O. Braiman, Esq.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13127952576066942139noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4698774596246611749.post-41535744226003383562009-11-10T10:05:00.004-05:002009-11-10T12:43:20.921-05:00RevealingIt amazes me sometimes how much some of these children reveal about themselves without intending or realizing it. Here is last night's homework question:<br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">Judges in the Kingsborough Student Essay Contest disqualified Sam's entry because it broke one of the contest rules. The rules specified that students should place their name ONLY on the cover page of the essay, which the judges would not see, to make sure they judged it fairly and without bias against the individual student. Sam, however, put his name on each and every page of his essay. Nevertheless, Sam's entry should be allowed to qualify, because Sam's parents recently got divorced, and it's been very hard for him.</span><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /><br /></span><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" >Which one of the following explains why this is a flawed response to the judges' decision?</span><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">A. It presents a conclusion without providing supporting evidence.</span><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">B. It treats a factor that may cause a particular outcome as the only possible cause of that outcome.</span><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">C. It focuses on a trivial, unimportant aspect of the judges' argument.</span><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">D. It incorrectly states the facts that formed the basis of the judges' decision.</span><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">E. It appeals to the judges' emotions instead of addressing their reason for disqualifying the essay. </span><br /><br />Here is one student's answer, technical errors included:<br /><br /><span style="font-family:courier new;">Choice "A" is correct because first the explanation only says that Sam's parents were divorced as the only reason he did disobey the rule, however it doesn't say other resons such as Sam's age if he was a little boy or young student he may have emotional reasons why he did such a thing. He probably feels he didnt want to lose his name after losing a parent, and doesnt wanna except the change, and doesnt want to. No one can judge nor tell him what to do with his name.</span><br /><br />Need I say more?Jason O. Braiman, Esq.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13127952576066942139noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4698774596246611749.post-58595434591195430722009-11-01T17:19:00.005-05:002009-11-01T18:38:17.362-05:00Reflections on My Last Open SchoolOpen School evening and afternoon passed without any over-the-top melodrama and no unreasonable complaints. Other than a few encores from parents I've heard from already, whose antics I've written about in the last few entries, there really were no unpleasant confrontations at all. This was a relief, obviously, as was the fact that the parent I wrote about in <a href="http://educationsanity.blogspot.com/2009/10/silly-season.html">Silly Season</a> did not show up at all. One parent complained bitterly about the fact that I put the homework online and require the students to get it even if they don't have easy or convenient access to a computer, then the very next parent who came in had high praise and appreciation for the exact same practice. Any confrontations I have with parents from here on out will have to be by appointment.<br /><br />I really used to enjoy open school. I won't go so far as to say I've come to dread it, but there's almost always one or two whack jobs who manage to ruin the whole experience. <a href="http://educationsanity.blogspot.com/2008/10/trousers-in-conflagration.html">Here's</a> what I wrote at this time last year, when I thought I would only have one more Open School to deal with. The last two were busy, but generally uneventful. There are a few things I've noticed, however, that I wanted to put down.<br /><br />One is that it helps tremendously to have a principal who "gets it." With all due respect to the first high school principal I worked under, who was an excellent administrator but interacted less directly with teachers because the school was so large, I think my current principal may be the best in the city. Certainly the best I've seen since I left that first high school in 2001. She is more than willing to hold students, and parents, accountable and does not automatically assume that the teacher is wrong, like <span style="font-style: italic;">some </span>principals I've encountered. She does not accept wild accusations against teachers at face value and does not bend over backwards to appease unreasonable people, like <span style="font-style: italic;">some </span>principals I've encountered. While some principals are ultimately concerned only with making parents happy, her primary concern is getting at the truth, and the reality of the situation. "Your problem is not with my teachers," she said to one parent last year. "Your problem is your kid not doing her work." This approach is certainly better for teachers, parents and students in the long run. What's more, knowing this makes it easier for me to be more frank and honest with parents, and avoid some of the silly, patronizing games we sometimes have to play.<br /><br />Another is thing I noticed is that students seem to feel a great deal more comfortable and confident lying to their parents than they have in years past. At least three parents told me specifically that when they had received correspondence from me informing them of either the child's misbehavior or academic failure, their children told them that I was lying. Fortunately, at least for now, more parents are willing to believe me than the children in these situations. I doubt that this behavior by students is anything new; I just found it curious that it came up so often. And, of course, there is a correlation between parents who act as enablers and dishonest, self-serving behavior by children.<br /><br />The only truly negative experience to come out of Open School this year actually happened after everyone had gone home on Friday. After meeting with a student and her mother during conferences, at which the student hemmed and hawed and evaded and equivocated and sat completely silent when her mother asked her to explain the evidence I showed her of the child's non-performance, it was time to actually grade the child's notebook. Long story short, much of it was copied from another student, an Honors student who sits in the same seat in a different class period. The latter told me a few weeks ago that her notebook had gone missing, but it turned up shortly thereafter. Apparently the former actually took the latter's notebook out of the room and brought it home to copy it.<br /><br />The amazing thing about this is that it's not the least bit surprising, but it still makes me so angry every time I see it happen. It never takes long before at least one student, and usually more, reveals him/herself to be a liar, cheater and/or thief. And kids wonder why I never give them the benefit of the doubt.<br /><br />All in all, I'm glad Open School passed without incident. 2½ more months and I'm done.Jason O. Braiman, Esq.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13127952576066942139noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4698774596246611749.post-2243888955634668822009-10-23T09:59:00.006-04:002009-10-25T09:39:34.393-04:00Silly SeasonOnce again, for emphasis, from Merriam-Webster's Medical Dictionary:<br /><br /><b style="font-family: arial;">en·abler</b> (<span style="font-family:arial;"> i-'nA-b(&-)l&r)</span><span style="font-family:arial;"> </span><i style="font-family: arial;">noun</i> <b style="font-family: arial;">:</b><span style="font-family:arial;"> one who enables another to persist in self-destructive behavior ... by providing excuses or by helping that individual avoid the consequences of such behavior.<br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">We're now in what politicians call "silly season," or what I have called "crazy parent season" here at school. The first marking period is ending, report cards are coming out, and since kids never take September academic work seriously (and only care about their grades <span style="font-style: italic;">after </span>they see their report cards), a lot of them are failing. I'm in the process of sending out notifications to parents of kids who will fail the marking period, after already notifying the parents of those who did not show up for the essay exam on October 15.<br /><br />I have to say I feel a little bad about burdening my Assistant Principal and the 10th grade Guidance Counselor with stacks upon stacks of letters which I've sent home to parents so far this term. Since I'm giving homework for the first time in years, and the children are (predictably) not doing it, I've had to notify parents of that. I've had to notify them of every failing notebook grade and every chronic behavior or attendance problem; anything at all that the child does or neglects to do that might cause the child's grade to be lower than it otherwise would. Reams of paper and scores of dollars in postage. And why? Because the first words out of the mouths of most parents when they discover that their child failed are, "No one told me!"<br /><br />This is the typical high school parent's favorite logical fallacy. I wasn't aware that my child was failing, was in danger of failing or was going to fail, therefore he cannot fail and must be given a passing mark. You didn't tell me about it at the time it happened, therefore it didn't happen and any consequences of it must be rendered null and void. It doesn't matter whether or not informing the parent at the time would have made any difference. The first argument a parent will make when they don't like the outcome is that they were not informed of it or its causes in advance.<br /><br />I've written about this extensively, and I've also repeatedly referenced a story about a parent who insisted, based on the child's word alone, that the child had been in class on the day of an essay exam despite my showing her four separate items of objective proof to the contrary. "If my daughter says she was here, then she was here." Now, apparently, I have another one of these. "My daughter doesn't <span style="font-style: italic;">miss</span> class," was what this one said to me on the phone, demanding "proof" that the child had been absent. Among other grievances, she objected to the fact that I require students to do their work at the time it is assigned, the fact that I write answers and explanations for the homework questions on the blog instead of on each individual student's paper, that they need to read those explanations on their own (which, when I was in school, was called "studying"), that I had made a minor exception to the rule about late homework since she was initially notified, and that I had not given her child the direct personal attention that she deserves. Repeating her child's absurd fabrications as if they were gospel truth, she accused me of being disorganized, sloppy and careless with student work, when the truth and my reputation in this school is the precise opposite. It was one of the most insulting and offensive parent phone calls I've ever received.<br /><br />It should be noted here that this child not only does very little work; she is one of the most nasty, peevish, reflexively hostile, unpleasant children I've ever had as a student. It's obviously not hard to see why. Narcissism breeds narcissism. Her mother is the worst kind of enabler, one I've rarely seen in New York City but which seem to be growing increasingly commonplace. To paraphrase Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), talking to a parent like this, trying to explain academic policy and the rationale behind it, is like talking to a dining room table. This parent is only interested in an outcome, and won't accept anything other than that outcome or that doesn't lead to that outcome, logic and reason be damned.<br /><br />Thinking about this parent and some of the things she said has led me to realize something else. As a teacher, I am a <span style="font-style: italic;">public servant. </span>I work for the City of New York and have responsibilities to my employer, my school, my supervisors and my students. This parent, however, and others like her, see me as their <span style="font-style: italic;">personal servant. </span>As a public servant my job is to serve the public, and the best way to do that is to set objective standards and rules by which everyone must abide, treat everyone fairly and honestly, provide the instruction, materials and expertise that <span style="font-style: italic;">all </span>of my students need to succeed, and use impartial, independent judgment to determine whether and how to make exceptions in individual cases. I think I have done that.<br /><br />This parent, on the other hand, and perhaps understandably, is only concerned about her own child. However, that concern on her part does not create responsibilities on my part. Either this woman sees me as her personal servant, or does not understand the difference between a public servant and a personal servant. I work for the <span style="font-style: italic;">city</span>, but this parent thinks I work for <span style="font-style: italic;">her </span>and her child. She is unable to distinguish the two because, again, she is only interested in an outcome.<br /><br />I have one more Open School to get through before I'm done with this nonsense for good. Hopefully it'll go smoothly. We'll see.<br /></span></span>Jason O. Braiman, Esq.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13127952576066942139noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4698774596246611749.post-5740837899827455312009-10-17T16:30:00.010-04:002009-10-18T22:31:17.842-04:00Stupid Is as Stupid Does, Part IIWell, here's a new one.<br /><br />Thursday I gave my first final-essay exam of the semester. Naturally, a lot of students did not show up to take it, and therefore received zeros for the essay, which is worth 40% of their grade. I was very emphatic in the days leading up to it that they would have a very tough hill to climb if they did not show up; they would have to produce the essay and have it in-hand the next time they came to class, <span style="font-style: italic;">AND, </span>provide proof to my satisfaction that their absence was unforeseen, unavoidable, and occurred for reasons much, much more important than their grade in English. If they were absent by choice or negligence, then I would not accept their essays.<br /><br />About half of the 40 or so kids who did not show up to take the exam were in first period. One of these showed up just after the period ended, essay in hand, and I asked her why she had not come to class. "Because I was late," she said.<br /><br />"Because..." I replied.<br /><br />Again she said, "I was late."<br /><br />"Because..."<br /><br />Shrug. "I was late."<br /><br />"Because..."<br /><br />Silence.<br /><br />"Why were you late?"<br /><br />Shrug again. "I overslept."<br /><br />I shook my head. "Negligence. No good." I did not accept her essay.<br /><br />Like everyone else who didn't show up, her parents got a letter from me to notify them that she would be receiving a zero and would fail the first marking period. Today, I got an e-mail from her father. In it, he claimed that her absence on Thursday "<span style="font-size:100%;">was due to car trouble that I had that morning, causing her to be late."<br /><br />OK. So the child comes into school late, missing an important essay exam, with no explanation other than that she "was late" because she "overslept." Then two days later the parent contacts me and claims to have had "car trouble...that morning." Usually this happens in reverse, you see. Usually the child will claim some insurmountable obstacle to her arriving on time, and the parent will blow the whistle on it later. This time the child shows up late with no explanation, then the parent comes up with one <span style="font-style: italic;">two days later.<br /><br /></span>Is it possible that this <span style="font-style: italic;">parent </span>is now lying to me, to cover for his child's negligence? Is that what it's come to? I now have <span style="font-style: italic;">parents</span> who lie and make up phony excuses for their kids after the fact? Really?<span style="font-style: italic;"><br /><br /></span>Three more months... Three more months ...<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">UPDATE: </span>After I responded to the parent by telling him that the reason he gave me was "not the same reason [the student] gave me," without specifying, I received the following message:<br /><br /><span style="font-family:courier new;">[Name]'s </span></span><span style="font-family:courier new;">over sleeping is an everyday thing due to the anti-seizure medication that she is currently using.[Name] get dropped off and picked-up everyday by me. I felt bad,because she was up the entire night before preparing her assignment and studying for your class.</span><br /><br />Not sure what to make of this, whether it is a subtle <span style="font-style: italic;">mea culpa</span> for lying about "car trouble," or an unsubtle plea for sympathy. Never mind the fact that the students had almost two weeks to work on the assignment, which amounts to reading two short passages and writing a four-paragraph essay, which would seem to obviate the need to be "up the entire night before preparing" for the final draft. They'll have about two hours to do the same task on the ELA Regents next year.<br /><br />Of course, the parent immediately attempted to shift the blame to me with his next sentence:<br /><br /><span style="font-family:courier new;">I thought that it was made clear in our last meeting, that if you had any problems with [Name], you were more than welcome to give me a telephone call. </span><br /><br />I've <a href="http://educationsanity.blogspot.com/2007/06/hypothetical.html">written before</a> about this bizarre obsession parents seem to have about being telephoned every time their child breathes the wrong way, as if the lack of such notification nullifies any and all misbehavior. In this case, I have no idea what he is complaining about. I notified him earlier in the term of the child's chronic lateness. I notified him that she was not doing her homework. I notified him that she missed the final-essay exam. I don't know what other "problems" he thinks I should have phoned him about. His previous message also included something about this. I'm going to wait until tomorrow to e-mail him back with the exact dates of all previous correspondence.Jason O. Braiman, Esq.http://www.blogger.com/profile/13127952576066942139noreply@blogger.com0