It’s often said that the best three reasons for being a teacher are June, July, and August. That may be true, but December isn’t too bad either. Hello winter break!
Hello Winter Break!
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Category Archives: public education
Suspiciously Blocked Site
I was searching for a few education sites on the web this week when I found a site that was blocked. This particular site was “Science Misconceptions in the Classroom”. It showcased, so the description said, errors in the science curriculum that can be found being taught in schools today. I though this might be a valuable resource, but as I say, it was blocked by our web watchdog software. Now, we have many sites blocked for many reasons and usually the reason is plastered across the screen: Porn, Social Networking, Anonymizer Utilities, Chat, Criminal Activities, Gambling, Violence, Hacking, Historical Revision, Illegal Software, Nudity, Malicious Sites, Marketing, Media Sharing, Mobile Phones, Peer to Peer, Personal Pages, Phishing, Ideology, School Cheating, Violence, Weapons, and an outrageously long list of other categories. This site doesn’t list one though. It just says it has specifically been blocked by the school district. Hmmm.
Attendance
Attendance is one of those areas in schools where technology has left the law and common sense behind. According to Nevada state law, the official record of attendance is the teacher’s roll book. It has been years however since teachers have used a roll book. Attendance is done by computer and it is recorded at the district office. At my school district, teachers don’t even have the ability to print a hard copy of attendance in their rooms. Consequently the school district sends us a copy at the end of each month. This leads to the ridiculous result of having the “OFFICIAL” attendance record being just a printed copy of the school district’s computer records.
No Child Left Behind
The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 plays a big part in my life and in the lives of teachers around the country. So what is it? There is a very good page that covers is quite well on Wikipedia here.
Here is a brief description of the law from that article.
NCLB is the latest federal legislation (another was Goals 2000) which enacts the theories of standards-based education reform, formerly known as outcome-based education, which is based on the belief that setting high expectations and establishing measurable goals can improve individual outcomes in education.
In other words, No Child Left Behind provides for testing students, in the hopes that this will make them achieve more and hopefully learn more. This is the same philosophy that imagines that if you simply step on the scales every day, you will lose weight.
The other big part of NCLB, is the increasing levels of expected performance. In order to meet NCLB a school must show that 50% of its students are proficient in Math and Language Arts. Then the next year, students must be 60% proficient. And the levels increase each year until at some point schools are to have all students testing proficiency. This moving target is called AYP, or Adequate Yearly Progress. If I had a dollar for every time I heard someone say AYP, I could retire and hire a private tutor for each of my 165 students.
School Budget Cuts
Times are rough all over. That being said however, the budget crisis faced by schools around the country is mind boggling. We are being asked to help come up with ideas for saving money on top of losing more than 50% of the school operations budget. Already on the chopping block are classroom supplies, textbooks, paper for photocopiers, school building maintenance. I don’t know where this is going to end, but I do know that this will have long-term consequences for all of us.
City of Amathar 