Wednesday, March 16 2011

Worked:  5:30 - 2:30, 6:30 - 7:30
Spent:  $15 on binders to start setting up for AP World History next year, $2 to donate to a fund to buy a thank you gift for the school's awesome librarian/AP coordinator/WASC chair

Today I learned that three of my best honors students are not going to be at school for the next nine to ten school days.  For a variety of reasons (one is going on a cruise, the other is visiting family in the Philippines, and the other is going to a family reunion in Alabama), their parents have decided the best option is to excuse the students from school for two school weeks instead of scheduling these trips during other school breaks.  When students and parents generally have their shit together, they can apply to go on these extended vacations with approval from the school and the state.  It's called "Short Term Independent Study" (STIS). The students' other teachers and I are supposed to send the students on these trips with homework and classwork that would be assigned while they are away.  When the students return, they'll turn this work in, I'll grade it and I'll submit it to the school, which will then submit paperwork to the state that will allow the school to get paid as if the student actually were in class.  Basically, the school gets financial credit and the student gets academic credit as if the student was actually present at school.

All in all, the STIS program has good intentions and can have good results. It makes the most of a bad situation: if parents are going to voluntarily take their kids out of school for an extended period of time (which they do), it still provides the school and the students an opportunity to make up for it.  But, there are still two fundamental problems with this:

1. Most high school classes are not correspondence courses. No matter how smart the student, how prepared the teacher and how much work is assigned (and completed), the student still will simply not learn the material as well as he or she would learn it from being present in the classroom, where we explain and discuss and analyze and question and do stuff with the material.  Unless the parents do this, the kid almost inevitably comes back to school, turns in the work, and then proceeds to do poorly on any future tests, quizzes and other assessments because they never fully learned the freaking material.  Then it becomes my problem:  the kid (and parents) demand an explanation from me as to why his or her grade dropped.  You weren't at school.  Can they get extra credit?  Can they re-take the test? Can I just give them an A, because they did all the work?  Do I really have to answer these questions?
2. As a teacher, I am informally evaluated by how my students perform on their STAR tests (both subjects that I teach are tested), and students who are absent from class on a regular basis or for extended periods of time will lower MY test scores.  While this hurts me only indirectly right now (in most CA districts, hiring, firing and lay-offs and pay increases are based only on seniority and additional education or credentials, not on test scores), in the event that I move to a school or a state that formally evaluates teachers based on student test scores it becomes a huge problem.  I would like someone to explain to me how I am responsible for the scores of these kids:
• the 3 honors kids who will be absent for the two weeks leading up to STAR testing?
• the kid with straight Fs and a 25% in my class, whose parents refuse to answer their phone when I call to find out what's gong on?
• the kid who transferred to my U.S. history class two weeks ago from a school where she was not enrolled in U.S. history, and has since been absent from 3 of my classes?
• the kid who is suspended for 5 days for bringing a huge bag of pot to campus and leaving it visible in the car his parents bought for him?

The fact is that most students and parents do not care because they are not held accountable.  Instead, society heaps the responsibility and the accountability completely upon the teachers. We forgo vacations, sleeping in on the weekends, seeing our friends and families, and simple freaking relaxation because we are held accountable for these test scores, regardless of how flawed these evaluations actually are.  Why not hold students and parents accountable, too?