Reflecting on the year: I

This year was my first year teaching high school after three years of middle school. When I made the level switch I stayed in the district but changed worlds. I went from the vanilla, upper middle class, suburban school to the diverse, working class, older school of a smallish city.

The switch has made for some interesting observations. Naturally my observations are through my eyes with my biases worked in there and I have discussed them, mostly, with non public school teachers (though most of my friends have social science backgrounds). I have not done any proper studies or surveys (I find them less and less valuable as I progress as a “real” teacher anyway), or used any formal methodology, I just kind of paid attention. I thought I’d share some of them a little at a time sprinkled though my end of the school year posts.

Testing V. Achievement:

The schools on my old side of town boasted the top test scores in the district…by a lot. The other schools come close in one subject or another but overall it ain’t even close. And they LOVE to hold that over the rest of our heads, “you may kick our butts at football but look at our test scores” kind of stuff. However when it comes to AP scores, ACT scores number of national merit scholars and most recently number of all state academic team members our side of town blows the other side of town out of the water. When we send kids to foreign language and culture contests in the state we take home record numbers of medals and awards. Most recently when the all state academic teams were announced we had more than twice as many members as the other school. Basically our students do the stuff that gets kids into college, and on to the next level. They work hard and are proud of their academic, social and athletic achievements. And from what I understand those that go to school finish.

On the other side of town they train for the state tests…hard. They use a school wide test format that looks like the state test, they spend class time teaching kids techniques for answering multiple choice questions and how to use verbs that test graders look for in written questions and it works. They do well every year on the state tests. But they do not measure up to our kid’s success in “real” places, those places that you put on college applications and from which one takes valuable experience into the rest of their lives.

I suppose my point is obvious. This may be but one teacher’s limited observation but mandated state tests mean nothing to the main reason we do what we do; the child’s success and ability to move out into the world a little better prepared to take on the world. They stress teachers and students and for what?

[A side concern, or the exclamation point: apparently last year my current school saw a rise in state test scores, ACT scores flat lined…I’m just sayin’… it’s scary.]
Education