Fools Carnival

        I just read yet another article explaining how conservatives are "forcing" the College Board to "soften" (whatever that may eventually mean ) the APUS History course  outline  in areas referencing racial issues, slavery, Imperialism, etc.  I am  someone with a real advantage in this matter, first because I am  an experienced and  highly successful  classroom teacher in the discipline  and second because I have no political axe to grind here. The sub plot here is that what Conservatives really want runs counter to the educational process. The focus of a well designed course should be to present facts as well as they can be determined from primary and secondary sources, explain the attitudes and concerns of the major players , thereby giving students the opportunity to use critical thinking to draw their own conclusions. 

      As an instructor and based on my dialogues with those who have graded  the national exam numerous times, the subjective portions (essays) of the exam are graded on the basis of scope and utilization of information and structure of the writing.  The writer's conclusions on the same essay topic  may be diametrically opposite, and both receive equally high scores.

        What conservatives object , apparently,  is the even handed presentation of facts and source materials from both sides of some issues. An example might be (would be) if an instructor referred to the internment of  Americans of Japanese descent during WWII as the "single greatest denial of civil rights of American citizens since Reconstruction,"  even though the discussion that follows is an analysis of the conditions and attitudes which led to it. This is the same mindset which holds that George Armstrong Custer was a hero who died in the service of his nation, while Crazy Horse, Little Elk, Joseph White Bull, and many others were simply savages.   It's the same mindset which believes that McKinley did a great thing when he forcibly annexed the Philippines post Sp/Am. War, with the resultant 200,000 deaths of Filipino men, women and children.  Asking students to arrive at informed and considered opinions when presented with only one side of an issue is reminiscent of the old Zen koan about the sound of one hand clapping.

        Apparently, many Conservatives have never really considered Santayana's "Those who will not learn from history are doomed to repeat it." Viet Nam and  Iraq would make it seem that they have not.   

        All that aside, the local news this morning also included something so stunningly illogical that I momentarily forgot it while producing the day's rant. However, it is worthy of a Special Edition.

        In the Florida state edition of  "Legislators Gone Wild", the state has decided to solve an ongoing issue in a manner which defies any and all logic. Background first: for quite a while boards of education across the nation have struggled with the issue of  merit pay for teachers. Simply put- "How do we compensate the best teachers commensurate with their ability?"   The concern here is the problem of determining which metric (eduspeak alert!) to use in determining teacher performance.  The Union I belonged to had little issue with the concept, but took issue with  the local school board's  numerous proposals, almost all of which involved some form of  "my students against your students."  This took the form of using a (repeatedly and almost fatally) flawed state wide exam, and awarding more money to those teachers whose students performed the best. Of course the teacher has no control over which students he or she might be assigned, which profoundly influences outcomes. It also effectively reduces "teaching the subject" to "teaching the test."  Predictably, many teachers who taught in affluent schools with college bound kids got the bonus .....duh! Another proposed variation on this stultifying scheme was to grade Social Studies teachers (subjects not covered on the  Florida Comprehensive Achievement  Test or FCAT)  based on how they performed on the Language arts section, essentially ignoring how the teacher performed as a Social Studies teacher. Now for the latest and most insane proposal.

        This year. per current legislation, In last-minute budget horse-trading during the Legislature’s first Special Session this summer, Rep. Erik Fresen’s bill to tie teacher bonuses to SAT or ACT scores became law. Lawmakers appropriated $44 million to make it so. But wait: We’re not talking about judging teachers on their students’ scores. The law refers, instead, to tests the teachers took themselves — when they were schoolchildren!

      Let's make sure we understand each other, here. I began teaching in 1989, at 47 years of age after 12 years as a staff instructor at Naval Nuclear Power School.  By 1989 it had been 40 years since I took the SAT. In the meantime, the SAT  has been largely rewritten due to gender and cultural bias. Also in the meantime I completed 2 BAs  and a Master's. My GRE score (didn't study, just showed up) was a moderately high 1390. None of this would matter under the new law. The very first year I taught APUS my students had the highest success rate on the national APUS test in our district. So what?

       Veteran teachers have been frantically unpacking dusty storage boxes in hopes of finding those decades-old test results. Other teachers have been on the phone with the College Board to get their scores, however records only go back to 1988!

        There’s a reason Fresen’s bill crashed and burned on arrival in the Senate during the Regular Session. It’s fundamentally unfair — if not illegal — to tie years-old test scores to performance bonuses for teachers. But - lawyers say the Florida Legislature can do what they want with their special grants, as long as it’s not discriminatory. But college entrance tests, like most standardized tests, have been roundly criticized as biased against minorities and women.

        Other lawyers wonder if the bonus — up to $10,000 for a state whose average teacher pay is $47,700 — (over  a 20% bonus!) was designed specifically to benefit Teach for America recruits. TFA teachers are controversial in Florida because the recent college graduates often stay only long enough to fulfill their two-year commitment. Then they head for the profession’s infamous revolving door, worsening our already abysmal teacher-attrition rate.

        Due process demands advanced notice. The right way to issue performance incentives is to give notice about the terms for earning the bonuses going forward. “If you do this, then you’ll earn that.”  It's pretty hard to go back 20 or more years and retake the SAT. It's equally ridiculous to expect a career Language Arts (what we used to call "English")  teacher to retake an exam which is heavy in math after perhaps 25 years with no math interface.

        No business in the world would dream of basing an employee's  performance assessment on  something he or she did five, 10, or 20+  years ago. A test that a professional took when they were in high school is something they have absolutely no control over now, like skin color, eye color, or gender. Lawmakers may as well be issuing bonuses for teachers who have brown eyes or twelve toes.

        As stupidly incepted as this is, again proving that letting politicians run educational policy from afar is a bad thing, there is one even more salient factor. Academic brilliance is absolutely no guarantee of classroom efficacy. We all had the college professor who was brilliant, published, and a buffoon as a teacher because they  simply couldn't impart knowledge as a communicator. The gift of being able to become a highly  effective teacher (yeah, I said gift!) is a far more important tool in the teacher's toolbox than ACT, SAT, DDT, or any three letter acronym. Those who are so fortunate love the job, those who know only the mechanics (as Mark Twain said "the words but not the melody") either leave the profession or (in some, not all  cases) become administrators.