Hi Norm,
Once again, I find one of your blog posts totally relevant to my day. In this case, it's the past 3 days. Here's the story of 2 bogus cases.
Case 1 - This is a sixth grade girl who has recently been removed from a class because she threatened to follow the teacher out of the building with friends on the last day of school and "kick [her] ass until [she] dies in the fucking street!" She failed the ELA and math this year. Her ELA teacher, a lovely person was told to go into her portfolio and find ONE piece of work where she got a 2 or 3. Her portfolio was basically empty; what was in there was crap. So the teacher goes to admin and says there ARE no pieces where this child has scored a 2 or 3, and that there is almost no work done at all. She is then told to give the child (along with the 7 others who failed both tests and had no decent portfolio work) a "special" writing assignment, and tell them that if they do a good job and turn it in, they can go to 7th grade. Well, this one child did not turn the assignment in. My friend goes to admin and shows them the crap that WAS turned in by the other 6 and explains that Screaming Banshee did not turn it in. She was told to give Screaming Banshee the assignment again, and sit with her on her prep to get her to write it. So she does and the kid writes about three lines of crap. Again, my friend brings this to admin and is told to take the assignments back and "edit" them, so the final becomes the "rough" draft and a new, "edited" piece becomes the final, and to "edit" so that the finished piece is up to standards. Screaming Banshee still refuses to write another paper, even when all she has to do is copy what my friend wrote on the original piece (which will be tossed because the old final copy will now become the rough draft.) She was then told to sit with the child as they write the final to make "suggestions" along the way, "to ensure that the work is at grade level". So she basically sat with the kid and told her what to write as the kid bitched and moaned about it being a pain in the ass.
Case 2 - Just today, a teacher is leaving to bring a batch of docs to the Dist office. The testing coordinator said to wait - something else needed to go that would be ready in a few minutes. So I sit and wait. About 45' later, the coordinator comes in and said that there was a hold up and she'll have to make the trip later. She went on to say that one of the APs was with a student who also failed the ELA/math and had an empty portfolio, meaning he had to do a "special" assignment. He had flat out refused to do it, so the AP was sitting with him in the conference room until he produced something. He finally did something, but it was crap, so the kid's ELA teacher was called down to "edit" his work and "assist" him in writing his final copy to ensure that it would be the level 3 he needs to pass. The teacher basically wrote the piece for him and at 3:00, the kid was still refusing to copy what the teacher essentially wrote FOR him. And the teacher was told to backdate the work to April or May.
Love it.
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2 comments:
Norm, At the end of the year I had to give my failing kids a Promotional Evaluation Test. If they got a 2, they were promoted. One year our school had a set of twins that somehow made it to 5th grade, and still failed. My principal wanted them out of the school and promoted to middle school. She told the twins teachers to make sure they passed that evaluation. And they followed orders.
Not surprising Schoolgal.
I remember when I first became politically active it was over a middle school principal at the school we fed into where parents and communuity were trying to get rid of the principal - a teacher whistle blower was a key guy. Despite all kinds of abuses they actually got him on the same issue - he promoted kids who were problems out of the school into high school.
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