what makes me angry

Okay, here’s what makes me mad. We have these district-wide tests that we take at regular intervals. For example, in my subject area, we have three per year. They are written by this consulting company that gets millions of dollars from the district for their contract. They’re a lot like the CSTs—the state standardized test the kids take in the spring. So the CSTs are high stakes, but apparently these district benchmark tests are becoming high stakes also. My principal seems to be getting pressure about our scores being low, so she comes to us and tells us that our scores are low and we need to do something. We get a list of the standards that are on the test and she asks us to reflect (individually and then with a group) on two questions:
1) Am I teaching these standards?
2) Am I assessing these standards in the same way that they’re being assessed on the benchmark/CSTs?

I am sitting here, trying to plan for tomorrow, and basically feeling like I am banging my head against a wall, looking at these standards. (The benchmark is next week and I feel like I’m being asked to drop what I’m doing and review for that.)

So, Reading Comprehension standard 2.6 will be tested in three separate questions on the benchmark. This is the text of the standard: “Comprehension and Analysis of Grade-Level-Appropriate Text: use information from a variety of consumer, workplace, and public documents to explain a situation or decision and to solve a problem.”

Okay, that sounds like a really cool standard. Have I taught it? Yes. Have I assessed it using multiple choice questions? No way! I assessed it in an essay and on a worksheet. It is so, so hard to write these multiple choice questions.

So the thing that I’m feeling angry about is that I am handing these standards, a textbook (which has tests that already exist but often suck), and the sample questions from old CST tests, and I’m told to teach something engaging (not the textbook), challenging/at grade level, AND to write assessment questions that are really difficult to phrase and to answer. Maybe they should give ME a millions of dollar contract for all of that work. Yes, teaching is extra work, but when it becomes stupid, brain-numbing extra work that is only creating boring teaching materials for students, it’s really hard to convince myself that I should put in the time. I like to spend my extra time creating interesting, challenging, engaging stuff for my kids to do. But engaging multiple choice practice is a total oxymoron—there is no such thing!

coordination

my district is in deep doo-doo, right? low achievement scores, high dropout rates, high teacher attrition rates, lots of discipline problems, etc etc.
in response to this, they constantly give teachers new strategies we're supposed to use (via mandates to the principals). often they are good strategies. often we don't get enough time to try them before we go on to the next thing.

this time, it's a combination of two things:
1) student engagement via cooperative learning
2) daily achievable learning targets (objectives)

these are both things i believe in deeply. in fact, i really feel like they are important instructional strategies. i really hope that my district lets us stay focused on these for the whole rest of the semester instead of changing tack midway through. as i said, i agree with the district folks who say that kids need to know where they're supposed to be going (metaphorically) to be successful, and that in order to get there, they need to be engaged in their learning and held accountable. okay, awesome.

but wow. i am planning a my lessons for the week, in the context of a unit i'm doing on nutrition/fast food/junk food/persuasive writing/reading informational materials. (this is a combination of standards i'm required to teach and content that is interesting to my students.) so i'm working on learning targets that reflect the standards that i am teaching, put into a logical order and leading kids to higher-order thinking, all while using some new cooperative learning strategies that i've learned recently. each of those things is doable. all of them together is very challenging. and that's part of why i hate it when people imply that teachers aren't very smart. you don't have to think very much to be a teacher, but you have to think really critically and creatively to be a good teacher.