Stupid Stupid Stupid

This week I’ve been examining the new DOE grading protocols, which insist everything be fair and transparent. I’ve written about their notions about homework, which I deemed borderline clueless, but I’m learning even more about them.

In our school, we are semi-annualized. This means that most classes last a year, though they get one credit for each half. We have an understanding that if a student gets a 55 in January, it will be reversed if the teacher grants a 65 at year’s end. This, since it’s understood by staff, makes sense to me. But it doesn’t make sense to the geniuses at Tweed. You see, the average of 55 and 65 is 60, and if things aren’t properly averaged, it’s likely the world will stop turning. We can’t have that, can we?

So teacher discretion is a thing of the past because it’s all about the numbers. To me, that’s ironic because our esteemed chancellor made her bones by running a school. She was legendary. She turned the whole thing around. And she did so by turning down 6 out of 7 applicants, according to the New York Times. If that’s not juking the stats I don’t know what is.

In any case, God forbid some kid should rehabilitate herself, start attending, and actually learn what I have to teach. If her average does not rise to 65, screw her. Let her take the whole course over for no reason because fairness. After all, there should be no discretion whatsoever on the part of the teacher to help a child. Who the hell do these teachers think they are anyway? Why on earth should their individual subjective judgment or desire to help a child trump an average?

It’s funny how people in NYSED and the DOE who regularly mess with figures have no trust whatsoever for working teachers. People who aren’t trustworthy, for some reason. seem to assume other people aren’t trustworthy either. Now I have my bad qualities, and I could line up a lot of people who would characterize me as a pain in the ass, but my word is my bond.

Nonetheless, that’s not actually the stupidest thing I’ve seen this week. While I’d actually planned on saying it was, something happened this morning that made me reconsider. This morning, after a test, a girl in my class almost passed out. I called for a wheelchair. I was told that there was a directive that they not be used. It seems people have not been sufficiently trained in their usage and maintenance, and are therefore not only unqualified, but also liable in the case of anything untoward occurring.

I’m supposing that someone got hurt while using a wheelchair somewhere. What the geniuses at Tweed fail to consider is the number of people who will be hurt by not using wheelchairs. It must be good to sit around an office all day, come up with stupid ideas, force schools to use them, and blame the people who actually teach children for everything and anything that goes wrong.

Sure beats working.

Correction--Actually the document gives as an example that a student with a minimum grade of 75 in June will have her  January grade adjusted to 75 as well. I'm not sure this is minimum policy. 

Homework--Threat or Menace?

I've recently become privy to a DOE directive about grading policies (and I'm sorry, but I haven't got a link). It says that homework may be used as a tool to measure mastery. It seems to place less value on teachers walking around the room and giving simple credit for homework, or giving a grade of 100% for completion. On this astral plane, that's more than a little disappointing.

Homework is routinely copied, and anyone who doesn't think so is either a fool, in some proverbial ivory tower, or composing directives at Tweed. Most homework I give is relatively easy. While I don't want to make kids miserable, I have no problem giving them a few minutes of review at home. Were I to always grade homework I gave, I'd have to not only penalize students who honestly entered incorrect answers (which they could review and correct the next day in class), but also grant higher grades to those who copied from someone more capable. I'd rather just give everyone 100%.

In my sordid past, I did not give number grades to homework. I simply entered check marks in a book. But I now grade via a program that likes numbers, hence the 100. It's certainly true that students who copy homework get undeserved credit, but I can see who does and does not understand in other ways. For one thing, I'm in the classroom every day and I can see who does and does not complete and understand the work. I have a pretty good idea of who will and will not pass actual tests, which happen to be another indicator of who has mastered the material. Homework alone will not make anyone pass my class.

Another advantage of electronic grading is the chance to assign weight to various assignments. A homework assignment that I grade up or down has a value of one. If I simply walk around and look, it's 100 for completed homework, 50 for incomplete homework, and zero for nothing. My program enables this by allowing me to give a grade of 100 to everyone, and alter only those who vary via icons I set in advance.

I don't do that for all homework, though. if I assign, for example, a paragraph, I'll grade each one individually, and assign a value of two, so that it counts double what a short-answer homework assignment does. If I assign a multi-paragraph assignment, I'll grade that individually, and assign it triple value. On assignments like those, copying is quite a bad idea, as I notice pretty much all of it.

Unfortunately, if I were to expect my students to do homework assignments like that on a daily basis, they'd likely as not hate me and everything I stand for. That would make me sad, particularly as there's no need for it. Also, some kids do not do homework alone, or at all. Some families employ tutors who simply do homework for students. Some kids hand assignments to these tutors, or friends and/ or family who complete them. Often kids, perceiving nothing wrong with this, just tell me.

For a few years, I taught ESL students how to pass the English Regents, which of course they should never have had to take in the first place. At that time, it was a marathon writing test. I showed students how to complete formulaic four-paragraph essays that I would never dream of using for anything but that test. At first, I had students complete a lot of writing at home. That didn't work well.

I'd get papers that clearly had nothing whatsoever to do with what students were writing in class. Sometimes they were not even on topic. Sometimes I could find sources from which students had plagiarized, but often I could not. To stop wasting my time, I utterly eliminated homework in these classes. Absolutely every piece of writing was done in class, before my eyes. It gave me a much better idea of what my students could and could not do.

In fact, there is another potential value to checking homework, one of which the DOE never dreamed (what with their not being real teachers and all). If teachers check homework immediately upon student arrival, it's a great tool to discourage lateness. Oops! You're late and I already checked the homework? Gee, that's too bad. Not doing it again. Hope you're quicker tomorrow.

DOE also wants to make sure there is a policy explaining how late homework can come in, and they're much more patient than I am. When can students make up homework? Should it be a week after it is due? Should it be up to the end of the semester? I'd argue that it ought to be made up only if the student were legitimately absent, and only within a day or two after said student's return. Are teachers seriously expected to monitor whether or not students copied late homework weeks after it was assigned? How long does it take a kid to copy thirty homework assignments and why the hell should I give credit for such dubious effort?

The DOE is obsessed with making everyone college-ready. I taught in colleges for twenty years and I was never handed a policy instructing me to grade like this or like that. The DOE thinks everything can be measured on a rubric. The DOE is wrong. We are routinely subjective in many things, but our opinions are crafted on observations of who is and is not doing the work, or at least trying to, when we spend time with our classes each and every day. There needs to be a balance, and in fact there needs to be trust. Of course people whose careers revolve around manipulating data to make themselves look better have trust issues.

Nonetheless, teachers, as professionals, ought to be able to exercise discretion. If not, why are we even here?

The Great Homework Debate

The Atlantic seems to be running a series on how "experts" feel about various facets of education. One of their experts is fertilizer salesperson Michelle Rhee and another wrote a book called Substitute. I have a lot of respect for people who sub. It's a very tough job and I don't like doing it. When I don't know the kids and I know I won't be seeing them tomorrow, I take shortcuts. Kid is misbehaving? Who has time to find out why? Have the kid removed and let the regular teacher worry about it. I hate having my own students removed.

The problem, though, is that a substitute probably doesn't have to worry so much about things like homework. I'd never assign homework as a sub. Most of the time I'm not even competent in the subject I'm covering. What should I tell the physics or Chinese class? Hello, your teacher left this work. Please do it. Or hello, your teacher didn't leave any work. Please work or talk quietly at your desk. It's nice that this person wrote a book, and it's nice that a lot of one-year wonders write them too, but I'm not entirely persuaded that makes them authorities.

I am guilty of giving homework fairly regularly. Usually I will give ten minutes or so of review. I don't want to make kids miserable. Like Carol Burris, I am not persuaded that kids didn't copy. I make it a point to check homework if I give it, but I usually don't grade it per se. I will give 100% for any kid who took the time to do it, 50% for incomplete, and zero, of course, for nothing. In my department, homework counts for 25% of a grade. It's an easy way for a motivated kid to get a few points. Anyone who needs to copy homework I give won't be helped by those points anyway.

Sometimes I do writing in class. I will usually go through a few drafts with the kids, and then I will send them home to revise and rewrite it. I read, correct, and grade those assignments, and count them double or triple, depending upon length. There's no issue with copying because I notice when I'm reading the same thing twice. And while I don't like to brag, I can tell the difference between the writing of an ESL student and something copied from some hack writer on the internet. Sometimes I will find the kid's source. Other times I will point out a word, ask the student what it means, and then ask how the kid managed to use a word he or she could not define.

I'd be happy to dispense altogether with homework, but in my case I don't think it's a good idea. My newcomers, more often than not, live in homes where no English is spoken. If they watch television, it's often with their families in the native language. They usually select friends who speak their first language and share their culture. I understand that. If I were in China today, I'd be very happy to meet with people who speak my language, and I'm not even a teenager.

It's my job, though, to drag these kids into English. I'd rather not do it while they're kicking and screaming, but it that's the way it's gotta be, I'll take it. My class is fundamental to absolutely everything these kids are gonna do. Apologies in advance to teachers of different subjects, but I believe my class is the most important class they're taking.

I think it's important that my students bring English into their homes and lives. I'd love to dispense with homework and have them hate me just a little less, but I can't do that right now. At more advanced levels, I'd ask them to do short reading assignments at home. I don't really see the point of having us all sit in class and read silently, especially if we're doing something as time-consuming as a novel. People read at different speeds, and process differently, and while there are activities where we share readings and interpretations,  I think it's primarily a solitary activity.

So until some directive comes from some genius on high, I'll be assigning my kids homework. Just not that much.

What about you?

Yippee!!!

No homework! That's a growing mantra that seems to be gaining momentum. Sure, some sourpusses disagree:

The perceived failures of creative spelling and "there-is-no-right-or-wrong-answer" math have made Americans wary of any newfangled educational fad that seems to encourage slacking. No homework, indeed.

I understand that completely. The idea of creative spelling, for example, leaves me colder than a landlord's heart.

But in certain classes, I've given up altogether on homework. Having received hundreds of papers off the net (many with the addresses still on them), I no longer assign compositions to be done at home. My students are supremely confident I can't tell the difference between their writing and that of professional writers. Sad to say, that confidence can only have come from much experience handing in plagiarized papers.

When I teach ESL kids how to pass the English Regents, I need to force them to write, and I don't trust most of them to do so on their own. I need to see what they can do by themselves. To ensure a maximum passing rate, I need to compel maximum writing.

However, when I teach ESL (which is what I really like to do), I give homework daily--usually 15-20 minutes worth to reinforce whatever I covered that day. If they can do my homework, they can pass my tests (and also, hopefully, get out there and speak English). If they need to copy, they can't (and won't).

I don't think I'd help anyone by dropping my homework requirements.

What's your opinion?

Thanks to Schoolgal
Related: Check out smart and funny April May.