Career and College Ready

Queens City Councilman Rory Lancman is upset about college readiness rates in the city. He says that students graduate from high school at twice the rate of college readiness. And if you go strictly by the stats, he's absolutely right. If you read his argument, it's tough to find fault with it.

But if you look a little deeper, there is an issue, and that issue is how we define college readiness. The way we do it is via a combination of test grades. Here's a report from Reformy John King that likens college and career readiness to rating "proficient" on NAEP. Diane Ravitch argues that this is an absurd interpretation, the same one that the Reformy Waiting for Superman film used to berate public schools. Here's a more recent NY Regents report, full of Common Corey stuff.

Who determines who's college and career ready? Well, it's not really a who, but a what. It's based on test scores. Students who get so many points on this test and so many points on that are college and career ready. Students who get fewer points or fail this test are not. So if we want to make our students college and career ready, how can we do that?

It's pretty simple, actually. We test prep them. And as we all know, there's nothing more inspiring to teenagers than sitting around prepping for some test. That will certainly inspire them. They'll look forward to college and career, because they got to sit for hours in some classroom endlessly practicing exercises designed to show them how to pass one test.

Actually there are studies that show teacher grades are a better indication of college readiness. Unsurprisingly, students who do well with high school teachers tend to also do well with college teachers. Rory Lancman hasn't considered that, since he read somewhere that too many city students aren't college ready. In fact, a whole lot of people read articles like these and assume that students aren't college ready. And honestly, how many people follow closely enough to understand that college and career readiness are just a bunch of arbitrary test scores that some overpaid educrat dreamed up in some cozy office in Albany?

A problem with state exam scores is that they are wholly inconsistent and unreliable. One year it's the English Regents exam and the next it's the Common Core English exam. Which one is better and how do you prove it? Unfortunately, standardized tests are not really standardized as they're subject to whatever trendy nonsense comes into vogue. Next year maybe they'll drop the name Common Core and give the same test under a new name, pretending it's different. Or maybe they'll change a few things and say it's the same. Who knows?

Also the grades don't really mean a whole lot either. They are forever raising and lowering lines. One year they want everyone to pass so as to conclusively establish the genius of Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The next they want everyone to fail so as to prove every teacher in New York sucks and needs to be fired. Who knows where the lines are this year? Who knows what they mean, particularly when coupled with the ever-evolving test, which Rory Lancman and readers of New York newspapers assume to be perfect no matter what?

There are issues with teacher grades now, too, unfortunately. I myself have attended meetings, the themes of which have largely revolved around how we could pass every student in every subject no matter what. I'm afraid I'm far from alone in this. Teachers understand messages, and not only subtle ones. We get when we're being hit over the head with a sledge hammer. We understand what it means when schools are closed for alleged failure.

If you consider the entire situation, it's very hard to say who is college and career ready. If anyone really cared, or really wanted to know, they'd empower teachers to do what's right and use their professional discretion. Of course, in New York State, that's out of the question. You see, the folks in Albany set cut scores up and down to make them appear any way they wish. That's fundamentally dishonest.

The thing about people who are fundamentally dishonest is they tend to believe the same is true of everyone. That's why they think we teachers are all too crooked to grade the state exams of our own students. As long as the crooks in Albany assume us to be pathological liars, no one's likely to attach any validity to the predictive nature of our grades.

But if anyone really wants to know how kids are doing, and how ready they are, they will empower teachers. The whole vilification thing really doesn't work for anyone at all.

What Is a Regent?

A Regent is a person.  I'm capitalizing it because when I use it, I'm referring the the Regents from NY State. The word itself may have other meanings. From the dictionary:

re·gent

ˈrējənt/

noun

noun: regent; plural noun: regents

1. 1.

   a person appointed to administer a country because the monarch is a minor or is absent or incapacitated.
2. 2.

   North American

   a member of the governing body of a university or other academic institution.

Under definition two, there is a Board of Regents in Albany, and they deal with education. Betty Rosa, for example, is a Regent. In fact, she's the Chancellor of the Regents. Take a look at her. You see? She has eyes. She has a nose and a mouth. And though they are somewhat veiled by hair (which she also has), she has ears as well. I've actually spoken to her, and she's responded. For me, that's proof enough she has ears, whether or not they are actually visible.

A test, approved by the Regents, is a Regents exam. It is not a Regent. If it were, it would talk. Perhaps it would even make sense. A Regents exam may or may not do the latter, but as far as I know, it cannot do the former. For one thing, a Regents exam does not have a mouth, or ears, or any of that other stuff I've attributed to Betty Rosa.

I first heard the word regent used to describe a test from an administrator whose knowledge of standard English is questionable at best. As he was not in my beginning ESL class, his usage was not my immediate concern. I therefore thought it best to ignore it. But then an administrator who seems perfectly lucid used it. When I presented her with the issue, she  told me this usage emanated from DOE, which used it regularly in correspondence I'm grateful I need not read.

The English language is not dead, and therefore it evolves. It changes as people use it. But when people misuse it out of sheer laziness or an overarching assumption that rules do not apply to them it's kind of disconcerting. It's especially disconcerting when it's misused by people who ought to know better, like educators for example.

Don't misunderstand me. I have very low expectations for members of the New York City Department of Education. I can't say I'm surprised when they misuse language. After all, logic has been an object they've uniformly reviled every since they changed their name and became the embodiment of reforminess.

They're certainly entitled to think lazily and dishonestly. They can certainly close schools and decimate neighborhoods. They can take good teachers and make them long-term ATRs. They can stand up, in front of God and everybody, and declare, "It's a beautiful day," when there are five feet on the ground and it takes five hours to drive twenty miles. They can endorse programs called "fair student funding," that prevent veteran teachers from teaching, and they can award less than 100% of the funding they deem "fair" to a whole lot of schools.

But they don't get to alter the English language, not deliberately, and not out of sheer lazy thinking either, unless of course we let them. I say we don't.

What say you?

On Marking and Marginalizing

I'm getting field reports from my friends in exile. They're off grading Regents exams in schools that are Far, Far Away. They keep asking me how things are on the home planet. I've been proctoring and sitting in the reserve room. I even got to go out to lunch, once, but I can't count on lightning striking twice in the same place.

Of course they're away because here in Fun City, teachers are assumed to be worthless layabouts who sit in classrooms reading the New York Times all year. Toward the end of the semester, they try to make it look like they're actually doing something, so what they do is falsify results on Regents exams, instruments so precise they are the only valid measurements of how kids perform. For example, as a teacher of beginning ELLs, it's assumed I'd give each and every incoherent scribble an excellent grade because the students draw breath.

That's not an offensive assumption, is it?

In most of the state, they deal with the perfidy of teachers by swapping exams, i.e., you grade my class and I'll grade yours. But in New York City, we're scrupulous about ethics. That's why we insist on perfect leadership and you never, ever read about administrators being arrested for drug possession or having sex on official DOE property. It's those filthy, cheating, unscrupulous teachers to blame for it all.

So we don't swap exams. We're so scrupulous that we don't let teachers even grade tests from their home schools. We either send them packing to other buildings or pay them hourly to grade tests. After all, why shouldn't we pay people extra to do what they've always done as a matter of course? That's a worthwhile expenditure, isn't it?

In fact, we've taken it one step further. My colleague reports that she and another teacher at our school are not permitted to grade together. This, of course, is because they would surely conspire to pass everyone. Or fail everyone. Maybe they'd conspire to pass some and fail others. It's tough to say. The only thing of which we can be certain is that each and every element of this plot is diabolical. Thank goodness the great minds of our city have come together to prevent such an outrage.

The takeaway, though, is that teachers are cunning and ruthless, utterly self-serving, and must not be permitted to get together and hatch their evil plans. No doubt that's why the powers that be are so intent on crushing our unions over at SCOTUS.

Surely that will teach us a valuable lesson.

If Reforminess Worked, NYC Would Be a Utopia

I read with interest a Daily News editorial rating Bill de Blasio on education. They say the graduation rate is inching up, and paint that as a legacy of Bloomberg. But Bloomberg controlled the city schools for twelve long, long years and despite his uber-reforminess they are not perfect. Of course it's hard to achieve perfection when people are not perfect. Bloomberg was certainly not perfect, or he wouldn't have bought himself a third term. But as a self-serving, self-important megalomaniac with billions of dollars, he had little choice.

The problem is, under Bloomberg and the geniuses who reside in the Ivory Towers of Albany, our students had little choice too. I remember when special education students could take RCT exams instead of Regents exams. I remember when ESL students were exempt from taking an English Regents exam specifically designed for English speakers. In fact, I'm so old that I remember an English Regents exam that expected me not only to have a knowledge of English and American literature, but also to understand English spelling. Spelling is incredibly illogical in English, but fortunately so am I. Personally, I've found the newer versions of the Regents exams to be not only more and more tedious, but also less and less challenging.

The Daily News looks at the graduation rate as something important, and I don't disagree. But now that we fail to differentiate (funny how teachers are expected to differentiate in classes but there's no such thing in assessment), it's tough for a lot of kids to pass required tests. I teach newcomers, and any reasonable educator would give them an alternate mode of graduation. The state's notion that we can replace English instruction with Common Core-laced subject classes via Part 154 is blatantly idiotic, and will result in even fewer ELLs graduating on time. Of course, this is the price you pay for stacking the Regents with people who are utterly ignorant of language acquisition. I'm sure that they don't bother making allowances for other special needs either.

The News, like most Americans, doesn't bother to question the one-size-fits-all reformy agenda. Most politicians are right there agreeing with them. Now here's the thing. There is nothing wrong with our schools. There is nothing wrong with our teachers. Sure, they aren't perfect. But the fact is every so-called failing school, without exception, has a high percentage of high-needs kids. To assume, because these schools get lower test grades, that they are not as good as schools full of affluent students is simply idiotic. And when I read editorials (not the one to which I linked) saying that poor-scoring schools have poor teachers, I'm also amazed. It doesn't take a genius to know that some kids score higher on standardized tests than others, or that income is among the best predictors of who those kids will be.

That, of course, is why the Moskowitz Academies need a "got to go" list. That is why Geoffrey Canada had to dismiss entire cohorts from his charter school. That's why the charters who boast of their 100% college enrollment rates forget to tell us that they've managed to lose 30-60% of the kids with which they started. Where are the ones that left? Surely in the same public schools being vilified for being so miserable.

Here's an idea. Instead of going on about how the schools suck, why don't we do something about the fact that 23% of our children live in poverty? Why don't we raise taxes on folks like Michael Bloomberg and actually help these kids? Because I'll tell you something--when you're hungry, when your house is cold,  when your parents can't afford to take time off from their multiple jobs, when parents have no time for their kids, when you have no health benefits or care, standardized tests become a whole hell of a lot less important.

That's why Bloomberg made no difference (though I don't recall the News or any paper holding him to task over that), and that's why, as long as de Blasio accepts reformy premises, he won't make a whole lot of difference either.

The Magical Twelve ESL Credits

In New York, children from other countries are supposed to learn English via magic. That's about all I can conclude from the mandates that have been issued by Merryl Tisch and her gang of geniuses up there. Since I started teaching ESL, beginning students have been entitled to three periods a day of instruction in English language. Because Merryl knows better, now they only need one period per day.

The other two periods can be math, social studies, chemistry, or pretty much whatever. The teacher of those classes will pick up the magical 12 credits of ESL cheap via NYSUT or UFT, and then magically teach not only chemistry, but also English! And this magic teacher will do both those things in the same time it takes all the other teachers to teach the American kids! Because it doesn't matter whether the kids know a lick of English, whether we teach them a lick of English, or even whether they want to learn English. Once that magic teacher gets those 12 magic credits, all those problems will simply disappear.

And even better news--once the kids become high beginners, they only need to study English half of the time. And once they hit intermediate, they don't need to study English anymore at all! Do you see the beauty of that? The magic teachers, with no extra time, will teach them not only how to pass that troublesome Global Regents exam, but also basic conversation, listening skills, and reading and writing. And they will do this while covering the same textbook and giving them the same assessments that kids who've lived here all their lives take.

Not only that, but in New York, we've overcome a basic tenet of language acquisition, i.e., the older you are the harder it is to acquire a language. In fact, after puberty, the ability to acquire language drops precipitously. But that doesn't matter in New York, because anyone with the magic twelve credits can squeeze English out of the most reluctant individuals. It won't matter if they've been dragged here from China kicking and screaming. It won't matter if they've left their families and friends behind. It won't matter if they've missed years of formal education. It will make no difference if they are illiterate in their first languages.

Once people take those magic twelve credits, they will overcome these and all other obstacles via sheer grit. They will impose rigor on these kids, and with rigor and grit the English language will be no obstacle whatsoever. Sure, when they go to college and know little or nothing about English structure or usage they will have to take costly remedial courses to learn what they could have learned in high school. Sure, they will be unable to actually pass tests that are wildly inappropriate. Sure, they will spend extra years trying to graduate, and schools will be penalized, closed, put into receivership, and whatever.

But the important thing is we'll have all those magic teachers, and all those magic credits, and New York will be a magical place to learn English. Because if you can't learn English via magic, you just haven't got any grit. Just ask Merryl Tisch. She's just full of grit.

Or something like that. 

What Would Happen if You Gave Tests Like NYSED Does?

I've been reading that the Common Core math tests will be a rousing success, because their passing percentages will be the same as the Regents math tests were. That way, no one will say, "Gee, Common Core is failing everyone, and therefore it sucks." Thus, there will be no torches and pitchforks over at the gubernatorial palace, or wherever  Andrew Cuomo keeps his coffin, or his oversized ego, or whatever it is that motivates him to behave as he does.

On the other hand, imagine if you were to give tests on such a basis. You'd have to say to your students, "I can't tell you now how much each question is worth. I'll have to see how many people get it right or wrong first. What I can tell you is this--70% of you will pass, and 30% will fail." What would your students say to that? And what if your plan, as was John King's, was to pass 30% and fail 70? Would Arne Duncan give you an award and make some idiotic remark about how wrong the soccer moms are? Would he say this proves the kids aren't as smart as the moms think they are?

Because if he didn't, you'd be facing a world of problems, especially if some parent called to complain about your grading policies. I don't know about you, but one of the things my AP looks for on tests is point values for questions. In my school, it's unacceptable to write a test, decide which percentage of kids I want to pass, and then grade accordingly. After all, were I to do that, I wouldn't actually be writing a test. A test is supposed to measure what my students have learned, not memorialize a decision I'd made beforehand.

In fact, if I just want 70% of kids to pass my test, why does it even need to cover the subject I teach? Maybe I won't bother to write an English test. I'll photocopy an old Earth Science Regents exam and make everyone take that. What the difference? 70% of the kids will pass, just like I wanted. Who cares if the overall scores are low? When I give tests like those, I'm not actually measuring anything. I'm just using a useless document as quasi-tangible evidence that my prediction, which will come true regardless, is actually based on something.

Since it doesn't matter what the test covers, and since 70% are going to pass no matter what, why should we even bother with this school stuff at all? Isn't it expensive to send kids to school, even those charter schools I keep reading about? Couldn't we convert all that unprofitable public school real estate into condos for gazillionaires? Since everything is based on tests, and since the tests are basically meaningless, why don't we stop making kids wake up early in the morning and just let them take tests on their home computers? Who cares if they cheat? It doesn't matter because 70% of them are still gonna pass.

That's the NYSED model and Andrew Cuomo wants half of teacher ratings to depend on it. And our union leader thanked the Heavy Hearts in the Assembly for passing it. There's a Chinese saying, "I've eaten more salt than you've eaten rice." It kind of means you have a whole lot more experience than another person. You don't need to have eaten much salt to assess the quality of program Andrew Cuomo and his Heavy Hearts Club envision for our public school students. 

The Genius of Merryl Tisch

Thank goodness we have a visionary leader like Merryl Tisch in charge of our Regents. After all, if she weren't highly qualified, why would she have all that money? And then, of course there are her brilliant tactical moves to attack the corruption that pervaded our lowly and unexamined profession.

First, she determined that no teacher was trustworthy enough to grade her precious tests, because God forbid some corrupted pedagogue should change some kid's grade from 64 to 65. It would surely be the end of Western Civilization. After all, those tests are so precisely engineered that there is no room for error.

My kids, of course, shouldn't even be taking a test like the English Regents exam, because, well, they don't actually speak English yet, but why fritter away our time dwelling on technicalities? The point is, the decision has been made, and the tests must go on. As long as I'm grading total strangers in whom I have no interest, everything should be fine.

And what's more, I can get paid for it. I got multiple invites to do so. Every time I deleted one message, another appeared. YOU MUST ANSWER BY THIS DATE OR YOU"RE SCREWED FOR ALL ETERNITY! Wow. That's a little harsh. But then, a reprieve. WE'VE EXTENDED THE DATE, LUCKY YOU! PLEASE PLEASE SIGN UP TO DO THIS THING!!!

I didn't, of course. I have no interest in grading tests of strangers, for love or money. But holy crap, it must cost a lot of money to pay all these teachers to grade these tests. But it's money well-spent. After all, there was that time where they put all the tests on a truck to Connecticut or someplace where they were gonna do this super-duper scanning to make everything fair, but a bunch of tests fell off the truck.

How many dollars are they now spending to get teachers to do what they used to do for free? Who knows? Who cares? The important thing is people like me no longer get to grade their own students. What a disaster that is. Of course I do it every day, all year, but on this particular day the only thing I care about is that they pass, for any reason, no reason, and by any means possible. Because the only way I can validate my worth as a teacher is to make my kids get a good grade on a test that measures nothing whatsoever that I actually teach.

And to prove to Merryl Tisch that my kids can pass a test that measures nothing I teach, I will cheat. I will change grades. I will ignore errors. Hell, I'll sit in the classroom and write 30 papers myself and grade them all. Because that is the sort of corruption that pervades my profession. Not like the upstanding paradigms in Albany, where only two of the three prime powerbrokers have been indicted, to date.

Thank goodness Merryl Tisch has caused NYC to spend tens, hundreds of thousands, who knows how many dollars to pay teachers to do something that used to be part of their jobs. The only thing that will top that is when she shuffles around thousands of administrators to evaluate teachers they neither know nor care about, so as to make sure that home administrators don't give their teachers good ratings.

Maybe, since no one will be around to actually administrate schools, things will run better. Or maybe they can just pay more people to do that stuff. After all, there's nothing more efficient than spending taxpayer money for no good reason. She may not know doodly-squat about public education, but Merryl Tisch is an unparalleled expert in spending our money.

Why NYSED Doesn't Trust Us to Grade Our Students' Tests

Looks like the geniuses at NYSED have done it again. Even after they field test the questions, they still don't work, so they get to erase them. These, of course, are the tests written by Pearson, which are much better than tests you or I could write. After all, the folks at Pearson have never met any of your students, don't know them from a hole in the wall, and are therefore the only people on earth who are qualified to judge them, or you, or whether your schools stay open.

One of the coolest things about the state tests is that they set the cut scores after they grade them. So if John King says 70% of our kids are gonna fail, well, that's just the way it is. If they say you need to answer 50 questions to pass, and too many kids do it, they can say they need 55. Or if not enough kids pass, they can say they need 45, and so on. Nice work if you can get it, and when you can toss out any questions that skew your results the wrong way, your success is fairly assured.

Here's the thing--that's exactly why head ed. Merryl Tisch decided we couldn't grade our students' Regents exams. Some teachers, horror of horrors, were finding kids who scored 64, and finding ways to bump the scores up to 65. What an awful thing to do, when the kid who scored 64 could simply spend another year studying whatever it was he or she missed by one point. Spending an entire year agonizing over one stinking point builds grit, or rigor, or whatever the hell it is that we're supposed to want for our kids.

Now NY State doesn't go scrimping around for one stinking point. NY State determines what results it wants, and manipulates the scores so they prove whatever. Want all the kids to pass so you look like geniuses? Want all the kids to fail so you can give more schools to Moskowitz? Want to have a sudden improvement? Want a crisis? You can get anything you want in Merryl Tisch's restaurant.

Now, since NYSED blatantly twists the scores to do whatever, they kind of assume we will too. I mean, have you known people who lie and cheat and say any damn thing to suit their purposes? In my experience, people like that tend to suspect the worst of others. They're very free with accusations, usually angry ones, that other people behave as they do. So don't take it personally if NYSED doesn't trust you.

They don't trust anyone, since they can't trust themselves. Because they are a bunch of lying manipulative weasels, they assume we are too. The only bad thing is how many people believe it.

We're gonna have to do something about that.

The Day 127 Tests Up and Walked Away

Last June, my eyes popped wide and I snapped this picture outside my Regents' grading site.  Students' regents exams were sitting exposed to all in an open vehicle.  It struck me as odd and unsafe at the time.  I didn't think and I still don't think that anyone would steal exams.  It would have to be one desperate criminal.  First, there's no money to be made in it; two, the boxes are very heavy and, three, it surely, in some ways, constitutes a crime against humanity.  I suppose some unschooled crook might have supposed the box to be filled by unmarked bills, but I think it is far more likely that the boxes were lost through carelessness, rather than crime.  My vague sense of foreboding about the situation, unfortunately, turned out to be correct.

The New York Post recently published a piece entitled, "127 students must retake Regents after city loses their exams."  One could not help but feel for the kids at Thomas Edison Career and Technical Education HS, Community Leadership, Hillside Arts and Letters Academy and Jamaica Gateway, all in Jamaica, Queens.  I suppose some people view these students as statistics, but each has his or her own story of hardship.  And, I feel like anyone of them could be my student or my child someday.

Tests have been lost before, but only recently has the situation worsened.   In 2012, seventeen exams from FDR HS in Brooklyn were lost.  Last year, seventy-five tests from Chelsea Career and Technical Education HS supposedly fell off a truck and vaporized.  I have no idea of the statistics before that date, but I would bet the number of lost tests was very low.

It's sad that as "reformers" try to punish teachers, they also punish students.  "Reformers" tie NY teachers evaluations to student test scores.  Then, they craft impossible tests with devilish cutscores.  They observe academic chicanery--which I suspect comes top-down in schools that experience desperate situations, fear of closure under Mayor Bloomberg, and  administrators with sub-standard morals.  So, now, no teacher can be trusted to grade any exams from his or her own school.  Teachers must shuttle themselves around the City as their students' tests are shuttled in an opposite direction.  Teachers often wait in the beginning at their grading sites for tests to catch up with them.  Precious time is lost.

For the twenty years or so that tests were graded in my school, to the best of my recollection, only one exam was lost.  We ran down the hall to the proctors' room.  We searched the garbage cans.  We searched the bathrooms.  We interviewed the proctor.  We called the student, realizing if she had taken the test with her, it must be invalidated, but we could call off our search.  We turned everything upside down again and again.  In those days, teachers often stayed late to help their school community in a time of need.  (Now, we grade on foreign turf and there is a clear division of labor between those who do the official sorting and those who are trusted only to grade exams from schools other than their own).  The poor girl had to retake the Regents.  Happily, she passed.

The test had not vaporized, however.  Months later, it resurfaced.  While checking a class set of scantrons, a teacher jammed the machine.  The screwdriver was brought in and the lid removed.  Lo and behold, there was the missing Regents scantron crumpled up and buried in the recesses of the machine.  The necessary paperwork was completed.  The mystery was solved.  The case was closed.

So, how can we prevent more tests from being lost in the future?  In my mind, the solution would be to give students reasonable tests and detach student scores from teacher evaluations.   But, alas, that solution would show too much respect for teachers and make too much sense in an era when the teacher has a necessary role to play in educational "reform," that of the scapegoat.  

Ms. Tisch and the Fabulous Idea

Thank goodness we have great thinkers like Merryl Tisch working for us. If it weren't for her, teachers would still be grading Regents exams of their own students. Back in the bad old days, that would translate into rampant corruption. Sometimes, in fact, a bunch of evil teachers would look at a grade of 64 and try to find ways to make it a 65.

Obviously that's unacceptable. It's vital that any kid with a grade of 64 be forced to go to summer school, or take another year of that course, or whatever it takes to learn that this is a rigorous world. Because this world is not about curiosity or joy, but rather rigor and grit (unless your father is Andrew Cuomo, Bill Gates, Barack Obama or John King, but that's another story). In public schools, we let kids know life is filled with tedium and unnecessary nonsense. Otherwise, how will we persuade people to make careers at Walmart?

Since Merryl Tisch has determined that public school teachers are a bunch of lowlife animals, unworthy of the public trust, we can't allow their favoritism to sully our practice of giving kids grades of 64. We've placed incredible pressure on teachers to have their kids pass tests, and it's important that we preclude their giving any comfort or aid to the kids they work with. Again, it's kibbles and bits. Or rigor and grit. Or something we need to teach the kids who don't go to Montessori schools, like John King's kids.

In NYC, we've taken this thinking to a whole new level. One year, we took all the papers to Connecticut or someplace, and teachers couldn't even touch the physical papers. Unfortunately, some of them fell off the truck or something before we could scan them. I guess that meant more rigor and bits for the kids who just had to take the test again.

Now it's different. Before, city teachers would sit and grade papers. Now, they travel to other schools and do it. But for some reason, it just doesn't get done on school time. Therefore we now pay teachers to grade the papers of kids from other schools. How much? Who knows? But friends tell me they're offered all sorts of extra hours to do what used to get done on school time.

I get emails from the DOE offering me hours if I'll go grade English Regents exams. I don't do it because I'm not at all interested in reading papers of strangers. But a lot of people need the money and they have no problem getting enough people to do it. Is that a good use of taxpayer money?

I'm a taxpayer, and I don't think so. Why should we pay extra just to make sure more kids fail?

I'm really curious why not one education writer has even noticed this. It would make a great story if some enterprising writer could find out how much extra money the city pays in per-session in order to maintain this idiotic policy.

But I guess with Campbell Brown out attacking tenure as the civil rights issue of our time, there just isn't enough space.

In Which the DOE Shows Its Appreciation

I spent several days over at Bayside High School reading English Regents exams. I was entrusted with this task because I knew none of the kids whose papers I graded, and therefore was not prejudiced. I was "disinterested," which is apparently a desirable quality in a teacher nowadays. Because I did not care one way or another about the kids whose papers I read, my keen eye was somehow more accurate.

Thank you for your time and effort in serving as a scorer for Regents Distributed Scoring. Your commitment contributed to the scoring of approximately 220,000 exams across this city.

If you have any feedback about the process, please let your principal know.


Thank you.

Office of Assessment

New York City Department of Education

I'm particularly interested in that last sentence. They appreciate my commitment, but they're letting me know they don't want to hear from me. And what can I tell my principal? What difference would it make to him if the kids from school X wrote great essays, or if the kids from school Y wrote poor ones? He's probably concerned with the kids from our school.

Here's what I would tell him---the kids I know best attend our school. I've been reading their papers since the day they arrived here. I know them better than the strangers on the other side of town and I can assess their work better than any "disinterested" party ever could. If I can't make decisions about them because, yes, I care about them, then it's time to take children away from their parents.

Clearly parents care about their kids and want the best for them. By the preposterous logic of NY State, kids ought to be shuttled off to strangers who are "disinterested." And that's what I'd like to tell the DOE.

But they've clearly told me they don't want to hear about it. They're far too busy putting "Children First, Always," to bother listening to the voices of their teachers.