PTA: Parent, Teacher, Asshole

An Announcement from the Future Secretary of Education

My fellow Americans...my fellow teachers, I am here to announce a radical shift in the nature of our educational system.

In years past, we have used grade levels as a measure of educational achievement with standardized tests used to assess our level of success in educating our youth. However, this system allowed for disproportionate educational achievement. Natural human bias and teaching styles have allowed some students to proceed through the grades without learning the standards which they were supposed to learn. Schools have started taking short cuts to make it appear as if more academic success is being met than is actually the case...schools that do not have "on-grade level" classes, but only advanced and honors classes. Students moving through the grades despite scoring regularly below grade level on standardized tests. How have we been able to justify teaching a student ninth grade material when the student failed to demonstrate mastery of 8th grade standards? Social advancement has been practiced nationwide to move students up who never passed a class but were becoming too old for the grade in which they stagnated. How can we justify giving diplomas to students who graduated simply due to our frustration with their unwillingness to take school work seriously?

Those days are over.

Starting with select pilot districts and spreading to every public school district in the nation, the grade level system will be abolished. Age will no longer be a driving force in student advancement.

Students will take a computerized standardized test. The nature of the test will be adaptive to the test taker. Age will not be factored into the scored response. You will be able to clearly see how much more a 15 year old knows than a 5 year old by looking at the scores. The test will largely be skill based. The score a student makes will show administrators where the student's skill level is and classes will be assigned based on that score. This will insure students will not be taught something of which they already have mastery.

There will still be elementary, middle, and high schools where students will be sent to based on age, but classes within the schools will range based on the needs of the students' abilities. Thus, in theory, the same skills, the same basic class, may be taught in both a high school and an elementary school.

Diplomas will have on them the skill levels in the four core courses that they achieved at graduation. Students will begin to be responsible for their education. The value of their diploma will be in their hands, their dedication.

No longer will an 18 year old be forced to leave school because of success. They will now have the option to remain in school until the age of 21 to reach a skill level they desire.

Personal responsibility for one's education, a diploma that actually means something, and a focus on skills rather than age will lead to an education system that works and a stronger society.

Thank you.

posted by Bodog @ 6:03 PM 0 comments

Big Badaboom in the Community

School's underway and everything's running smoothly. This year we have a new system. The idea is that our students get in trouble and get sent to us because they don't know how to behave at school. That seems a strange concept, I know, because we're talking about middle school students, so my instinct is to ask, "How could they not learn how to behave at school in 6-8 years of going to school? It's not submarine warfare with precise calculations and in some respects shooting into the dark. It's thermo-nuclear warfare. All you have to do is get close!"

But if you look at their history, it seems apparent many just never learned, so we're teaching how to behave at school. We have an intake class where new students go into and they have to show a reasonable ability to follow classroom etiquette before they move on to a more academically driven class with more priveledges. In some cases it's working quite well. But there are some who just seem...stuck.

So now I'm stuck between feeling proud of my students that got it, have moved to the regular classes, and where there's a noticable change in attitude...and frustrated by those few students that just can't get their head in the game. But we're trying to show them that we're not just teaching proper school behavior...we're teaching proper life behavior. Because if you don't learn it, your life will be one struggle after another.

Like the local man...adult...who got called to a party by his son because there was some "trouble". The adult man shot and killed a teenage boy...a former student of mine in fact. That, really, should be enough tragedy for one story...but no. Friends of the teen pulled a drive-by at the guy's house...He shot back. They missed, he didn't...luckily no one got killed that time. Another gormer student of mine is now in jail for his part in that incident.

And yet it still gets worse...The adult is white...the teen was black...So then racial tension charged the area. The first two days of school, local schools were on alert status due to what was deemed reasonable information that retaliation was planned from friends of the killed teen. Nothing happened, though.

Then there were rumors of KKK rallies and neo-Nazis coming to town for a demonstration.

All because of one man who didn't know how to behave. A man of no worth has become the fulcrum to a disharmonious community.

Man...This was a downer...so I leave you with some cats.

posted by Bodog @ 10:44 AM 1 comments