Like a Song
The Scene. Specialist talking to classroom Teacher regarding testing.
Best I can tell a specialist in the machine of public education is there to help classroom teachers on a specific subject so the kids (thus the school,) performs better on testing which rewards (or penalizes) schools with status listing. By status listing I mean Exemplary (the highest possible ranking), Recognized, Academically Acceptable, and Academically Unacceptable (the lowest possible ranking).
These rankings are important. Not only because tax-paying parents pay attention to them and make decisions on where they reside, etc. They are also about accountability.
Thus the machine pushes, hard, and gives their foot soldiers, the administrators and specialist incentives (either money and/or promotions) to push, hard, anything that will make the end result (good test scores) positive.
Back to the scene.
Specialist talking to classroom Teacher regarding testing. Classroom teacher is helping a New Kid. New Kid being new, started school after a pre-determined cut-off date, thus New Kid's test scores, good or bad, won't count for the school. After classroom Teacher stops helping New Kid, Specialist says, "Why are you helping New Kid?"
Classroom Teacher beat down by the nature of the machine, looks at Specialist in a curious way, so Specialist adds, "New Kid doesn't count. Don't waste your time on New Kid."
The irony here is that New Kid would actually count twice if New Kid had been enrolled in the school prior to the cut-off date. Why. Because New Kid is a certain ethnicity that often, sadly enough, precludes a lower socioeconomic status. And if the machine is anything, it is politically correct.
And that BLOG reader is the essence, the very core, of how fucked up the machine of public education is.
It's not about the kids. Maybe in the beginning it is, or was.
But in the end, it is nothing but a self perpetuating circle jerk that chews up classroom teachers and spits them out on the other side, bitter and disillusioned.
Until I BLOG again...Oh God, make it bleed.
Best I can tell a specialist in the machine of public education is there to help classroom teachers on a specific subject so the kids (thus the school,) performs better on testing which rewards (or penalizes) schools with status listing. By status listing I mean Exemplary (the highest possible ranking), Recognized, Academically Acceptable, and Academically Unacceptable (the lowest possible ranking).
These rankings are important. Not only because tax-paying parents pay attention to them and make decisions on where they reside, etc. They are also about accountability.
Thus the machine pushes, hard, and gives their foot soldiers, the administrators and specialist incentives (either money and/or promotions) to push, hard, anything that will make the end result (good test scores) positive.
Back to the scene.
Specialist talking to classroom Teacher regarding testing. Classroom teacher is helping a New Kid. New Kid being new, started school after a pre-determined cut-off date, thus New Kid's test scores, good or bad, won't count for the school. After classroom Teacher stops helping New Kid, Specialist says, "Why are you helping New Kid?"
Classroom Teacher beat down by the nature of the machine, looks at Specialist in a curious way, so Specialist adds, "New Kid doesn't count. Don't waste your time on New Kid."
The irony here is that New Kid would actually count twice if New Kid had been enrolled in the school prior to the cut-off date. Why. Because New Kid is a certain ethnicity that often, sadly enough, precludes a lower socioeconomic status. And if the machine is anything, it is politically correct.
And that BLOG reader is the essence, the very core, of how fucked up the machine of public education is.
It's not about the kids. Maybe in the beginning it is, or was.
But in the end, it is nothing but a self perpetuating circle jerk that chews up classroom teachers and spits them out on the other side, bitter and disillusioned.
Until I BLOG again...Oh God, make it bleed.
Good god. This story makes me sick. Doesn't count, huh? I'd have gotten well up into specialist's face in that instance. That machine is why I'm teaching in community college rather than in the regular classroom.
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