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.

Staff Development

Well, we’ve just had another staff development day, and since I teach at an N5 school (listed as needing improvement for five years under the federal NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND Act) we spent most of our time trying to figure out how to improve our students’ performance on the standardized tests. Unfortunately, we are spending a great deal of time trying to figure out how to fix a problem that we can’t even touch. The students have no motivation to pass the tests. Most of them don’t even try to answer the questions. They sit and randomly bubble answers. What happens to them if they don’t pass? Nothing. The school fails, but it doesn’t affect them at all.