Duane Swacker, teacher and loyal blog discussant, redponds to a comment with a suggestion:
“I teach in SC and we have the same pressure.”
Can we get 50 states chiming in???
I teach in MO and we have the same pressure.
I teach in ____ and we have the same pressure.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I teach in New York, and we have the same pressure.
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I second that, for NY!
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I can confirm that for NY.
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Also in NY. Receivership school, talk about pressure!!!
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Forty One Superintendents in southwestern Ohio feel the pressure
“School Leaders Unload on State” by Hannah Sparling, Cincinnati Enquirer, August, 4, 2015.
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I teach in Florida and we have the same pressure.
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Florida has had this pressure for over a decade.
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I have taught in Florida for 13 years, after moving here from NYC. The pressure is something that I will be escaping in a few months as I retire and start my own business. I can’t wait!
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I teach in MN and we feel the strongest pressure to lower suspensions (keep very disruptive students in the classroom) while simultaneously raising test scores.
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Good for you Chris. Good luck in your future business endeavors. I know what teaching 13 years in Florida feels like it’s almost like a 30 year career anywhere else.
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I teach in HL and we have the same pressure.
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Where’s that?
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LOL
Hawaii, I suspect.
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Mathvale,
Where is HL?
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Diane, because you have a WordPress Blog, you have access to the IP address of the comment and could ping that IP address to find the location within about 25 miles of where it originated even if it was sent from a Starbucks.
Here a link to an IP Lookup Site.
http://ip-lookup.net/
I’ve read that the results from pinging an IP address are at least 80% accurate.
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Definitely the same in NC. The latest method of keeping disruptive kids in school is simply to switch their classes every couple of months to keep them from getting written up by the same teachers.
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The musical chairs game of switching teachers for disruptive children to find the teacher who wouldn’t write them up on a referral and throw them out of the classroom was going on in California back in the 20th century. In fact, every semester, many of the students I wrote up the most would be gone and I’d get a new crop of disruptive kids from the other teachers who were getting mine. The teachers were not doing this. Administration was doing it because of parent complaints that the teachers were picking on their children.
Most of these parents would claim the teacher was the only one and demand a transfer for their poor, victimized son or daughter—-that is until a teacher went into the cumulative file and checked to almost always discover the kid was getting referrals from almost every teacher they have ever had going back as far as there were records.
Some parents would claim my class was the only one their son or daughter was failing, but often that was not the case and low grades with comments about poor behavior seemed to follow these children like their shadow starting in kindergarten.
I think it is arguable that in some of these cases the parents enabled the child to continue behaving the way they did by denying it was the child and blaming it on the teacher scapegoat.
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Lloyd, yes that parenting style is very hard on the teachers but I always cringe when I think of how ill prepared for adult life these kids will be.
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True, but there is little a teacher can do when the child, parents and administrators refuse to cooperate with the teachers. It takes a community to educate a child. I think the RheeFormers know this too, but don’t care because their agenda is wealth acquisition—not educating children—and if creating a dysfunctional public education system leads to the RheeFormers achieving their greedy goals, they will do all they can to make the teachers job more difficult every step of the way by supporting dysfunction in education. I think this is why we are seeing public education funding being cut drastically in state after state. It’s all part of the RheeForm plan.
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I always “loved” how the parents would make you think that you were the only one having a problem with their child. That is, until you spoke with the other teachers and found out the truth.
Nice try, but no cigar!
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When I had conferences scheduled with the parents of disruptive children, I always went to the cumulative file and did my homework first.
After I started teaching, it didn’t take long to learn that when children were disruptive in my classroom, they always had a history of this behavior that was well documented because teachers in the United States, to survive, must document, document, document.
Gee, the paperwork we had to do to protect ourselves from allegations of prejudice, favoritism, losing the child’s homework, etc. was endless in triplicate. Always keep a copy of everything on every child and especially the disruptive children with unssportive parents who have swallowed the RheeFormer’s propaganda that U.S. teachers are all incompetent/lazy and the public schools are all flailing.
That way if one of the parents claimed I was the only teacher failing their precious child, I would respond by calmly lining up all the copies of the report cards I had made sometimes going back to grade school that revealed how many poor grades the child was earned from other teachers.
If I was accused of picking on their child and the parent claimed the child had no problems with the other teachers,I had already done my homework there too and had called all of those teachers who then provided me with copies of the referrals or statements that described the unacceptable behavior of the child in their classes. For most of these children, there would be comments mentioning disruptive behavior on previous report cards in the cumulative file going back to grade school.
Eventually, most of these same parents claimed in the meeting that included a counselor or VP that I had never called them, but we were required to keep detailed records of every phone call. After that accusation, I handed out a copy of the transcripts of every phone call made to them and started to read the dates and times of every phone call or attempted phone call I had made. And when I reached the parents by phone, I kept notes of what I said and what they said and in the face-to face conference I read those notes back to them word for word.
In fact, if I couldn’t reach a parent by phone, I mailed a detailed report of the child’s behavior and grades to them and sent it by registered mail that included a return card as proof of delivery, because without that evidence, the parents allegations could not be proven wrong.
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Wow Lloyd – you really covered your bases.
And so – there is a definite need for that “permanent record” we were always threatened with (and still are, but now as teachers instead of students).
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I don’t remember what they were called, but they were the kind of forms that when you wrote on the top, you created five copies without carbon paper. You had to press hard and take your time so the bottom copy was legible. The district where I worked, had these forms for documenting phone calls, parent conferences, student behavior, etc. The teacher kept a copy, the counselor of the student got one, and one went to an administrator/office file.
When we sent students to BIC (the Behavior Improvement Center) that was a classroom on campus run by a certified teacher who had an administrative credential too, he kept a copy of each referral, and the BIC teacher was known as Mr. D because his last name was so long. About once a year, Mr. D put together a report by going through his copies of the behavior referrals so we’d know how many were written and that number was about the same every year: 20,000 referrals written by a staff of one hundred teachers with 2,500 -3,000 students, and Mr. D said that 5% of the students earned 90% of the referrals. Some of the worst offenders ended up in BIC five and six times a day every day, and Mr. D would end up with invitations to birthday parties and marriages from some off these kids because he saw them so much over the four years of high school.
And Mr. D didn’t believe in the kids doing nothing when they were sent to BIC. He kept worksheets in his class for English, history, and math and if the kids didn’t do that work and turn it in, he’d assign them Saturday school or detention after school M – F. I think these worksheets were probably 5th or 6th grade level but most of the kids who ended up in BIC were working way below grade level anyway.
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I love this story, Lloyd.
We had the ICE room (It was always cold) and a Mrs B who was similar to your Mrs D. Whenever Mrs B would have to go somewhere the students would follow her like ducklings carrying a big pile of their text books. (This was at one of the elementary schools I worked at). She too kept them busy and was loved by all, but nobody dared mess with her.
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I am pretty sure that non-profit charters are created to get around this issue.
I think most administrators do not really seek the best placement for behavior problems. They expect the teachers to have the skill to deal with these students anf there was a time when I was pretty good at doing so.
After I became a special educator and gained quite a bit more knowledge about how the system worked , it became apparent that administrators either did not know their options or were afraid to use them, as many choices cost money. Knowing which buttons to push helped, and I was able to get some students placed in alternatve settings or accommodated in special eduacation. However,the board made it extremely difficult to place even the children who behaved most egregiously. This was a disservice to the child, the parents, and especially to all the other students.
If education is to be right rather than a priviledge, there are many neighborhoods where the charter that chooses is the best choice for gaining an education.
I recall that as a teacher in the East Bronx from 1968-1971, I kept wishing I could offer such a school for many of my students.
I feel a public school can serve all, but at what cost? Americans are not willing to pay and the way things are going will not be able to do so. We may have to face the fact that no amount of education will support a middle class. That only worked when the tax code meant that the 1%
actually supported the country’s infrastructure. Now they have little wish to do so and are still given the benefit of operating here.
So unless public institutions have the funds, they are not likely to be the choice in the future, especially in larger urban areas.
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Private sector, for profit corporate Charters are also not going to spend the money. There is no magic formula where a wand is passed over the head of child to erase all the damage that can be caused by poverty.
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West Coast Teacher
In Buffalo there were so Many suspensions that the principals were STRONGLY encouraged to reduce this form of discipline. Teachers are advised to call the union if they are physically assaulted (after they call the police). At the schools with the worst behaviors, there is the least support. What Buffalo needs is multiple Alternative Schools with small
Class sizes, counseling, and individualized instruction. Of course, the so called experts don’t ever talk to the ones in the trenches to discover the real solutions to the problems of urban education.
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West Coast Teacher
One story
At one of the “better” high schools, my husband (5’8″ 130 pounds) was on hall duty prior to home room when a larger student from a different room attempted to enter his class room and harass a student. My husband blocked the door and reached for the phone to call security, then the student picked him up and threw him On the floor.
The principal was absent and when she returned she did not believe this event occurred. Eventually the student was suspended (plus the student was charged with assault), but it took some doing.
Violence in the schools in Buffalo is not uncommon (even in the lower grades). This was a minor incident compared to most.
How does this factor into Common Core and VAM? Does one get extra points for survival?
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We had several rival gangs on campus, and shootings and killings between gangs were common in the community around the campus.
I was threatened at least once every year, but I was 6’4″ and weighed 183 pounds. And I’d been in the district long enough that the kids knew I was a Vietnam Vet and former U.S. Marine. That helped. When a gangbanger would ask/threaten me, “What would you do, Mr. Lofthouse, if we jumped you?”
“Well,” I’d reply rather slowly in a soft, soothing voice while smiling, “The Marines didn’t train me to fight. They trained me to kill, and I’d do my best to kill the first fool that reached me.”
“You can’t do that,” the gangbanger would say. “You’d lose your job. You’d end up in prison.”
“I don’t care. If I’m still alive to be fired or go to prison that means I lived and the fools who jumped me didn’t. If anyone tries to physically attack me, I’m going to do all I can to kill as many as possible before I go down.”
Some of the kids would even mention that I looked evil with that smile and sometimes the gangbanger and/or disrupter would look away and say, “Don’t stare at me like that, Mr. Lofthouse. It gives me the creeps. I’ll stop. I’ll stop.” And they did but that doesn’t mean they did any of the work that led to learning.
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I love your story.
I survived in some very bad places, and I often wondered how I could succeed with such students when others failed, why they tolerated my ‘straight talk’ and no nonsense attitude.. Ok, I was an attractive woman, and that helped, but in the end, it was because the kids came to respect me, too… not for my strength, but because they came to grasp that I offered something that they needed, and that I cared that they learned and improved their lot in life. I never had to defend myself. When aggressive crazies came at me, the other kids stepped up and told them to cut it out… because I was one of the good guys.
They just knew.
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I had a few of my students stand up for me too. What really feels good is when one of the children who isn’t working that hard does it—I remember one girl who was struggling to earn a C after keeping a solid F for half of the first semester, who told the complainers to shut up and just do the work. She said if they worked, they’d be passing the class and learning something too.
She was one of the tough ones who was always getting into fights at lunch or after school and then getting herself suspended for a few days. After she spoke up, all the so-called tough guys and girls who were complaining about all the work, stopped complaining, not because they took her advice, but I think it was because they feared her more than failing the class. Failing the class was easy to do—all they had to do is no work.
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Lloyd, I was teaching in South Central LA many years ago and was also asked once in class” What would you do if we decided to jump you?. I was in my twenties and was 5 foot 7 weighing 140. I said, “I am not sure but you better decide right now since we already do not have time to go through all I have planned for today. I certainly did not leave time to be threatened in my own classroom.” As I said this I was slowing waling toward the door in case I had to run . . . 🙂 Luckily, they did nothing.
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Early in my career as a teacher, I had to stop a discussion of a story the class had just read to stop a discussion between two students in the back row. One was in one corner and across the room was the other one. They were talkign so loud, no one could hear what anyone else was saying about the story we’d just read.
I told the instigator to stop talking and he argued that he wasn’t talking. This was taking place in a 7th grade English Lit class and the boy was probably age 12.
It looked like the 12 year old had stopped so I let the issue go and returned to the class discussion. But the boy started up his louder conversation immediately and when I called him on it again, he stood up, balled his hands into fists and challenged me with “Make me stop, you faggot!”
I lost my cool and started across the room. Becasue desks with students sitting in them were in my way, I started to move them out of my straight path to the obvious want-to-be gangbanger with his shaved head, baggy pants, web belt with long tongue hanging down over his crotch and pure white baggy t-shirt.
Halfway there, I stopped myself thinking that if I reached this child and did what I was thinking, I’d lose my job and end up in court and on my way to prison with my life ruined. I turned around, went to the intercom phone, called the office and had our one campus police officer come and escort him out.
The next day, that 12 year old was back in class and he never did any work the entire school year. When I attempted to engage him, it could take 30 minutes of repeated efforts just to get him to write his name at the top of the paper for the assignment we were working on and when the bell rang, he left that paper with only his name at the top and some gang graffiti scrawled BIG across its surface on the desk.
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Yes. Pressure in NC.
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I am in Utah in a non-tested subject, so the test scores aren’t as much pressure, but the pressure to raise the graduation rate is constant.
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I teach in Oregon and we have the same pressure.
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I teach in Ohio and we have the same ridiculous pressure here (three different ELA/Math tests in three years…..VAM state….no worries, tho, right?)
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I taught high school in Texas and the pressure was enormous. I moved into higher education.
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I teach in GA and we have the same pressure. Test scores are mandated to be 50% of our ‘effectiveness’ ranking, regardless of the low validity or reliability of the ‘assessments’ or the absurdity of the ‘growth formula’.
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Another teacher from Georgia… The pressure is tremendous! And, the “validity” of testing!!…outside of core classes, the test doesn’t even match the established curriculum standards of the class! Try that unbearable pressure for the mandated 50% “effectiveness” ranking on your Georgia “TKES” annual evaluation! Then, you pile on all the other issues mentioned here–student discipline, unsupportive and aggressive parents, and NON-supportive administrators! Oh, yes, the pressure is alive and well in Georgia! And, oh yes, ask the state education officials if all the required online forms have been working for the past couple of weeks for teachers to complete for TKES evaluation. More pressure…sadly, teachers spent more time trying to fill out required online forms than being able to plan their lessons for their students. Sad and enraging indeed!
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And don’t forget that the scores they use have a one year lag on them. Plus, they compare one year’s scores to the next, instead of measuring actual student growth.
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I teach in SC and I feel the same pressure,
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I teach in PA and we have the same pressure.
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Absolutely we feel the pressure in Missouri. All this testing sounds to the uninitiated like accountability. It is really just a system to control behavior and actually prevents education. I wish I could believe it was just ignorance that has led to this system, but I have read too much John Gatto for that. But if teachers start speaking up…we can change this. This blog is wonderful vehicle for waking people up.
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I tach in Indiana and there is constant pressure to get higher scores because our schools are graded on those scores.
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Teach!
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I agree for Indiana. I would just add that teachers as well as schools are graded on test scores.
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I, too, teach in IN, and our school and teachers are under this pressure.
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I teach in CT and we all feel the pressure!
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Title one elementary, definite pressure.
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Sorry, Utah
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And starting this year Utah demands that 20% of our evaluation be on test scores. For those of us in non-tested subjects, we will be given a score based on the school average in something. My subject (I teach social studies) will be English.
Not news to all of you, I know, but I expect teachers in Utah will freak as this gets out.
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I teach in Massachusetts, and we have the same pressure.
(I am a school librarian who has to do state test prep with kids and give other standardized tests. On library skills.)
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I teach in California in a regular public options school and am not under pressure for test scores. In fact I have ignored the test score mandate in my entire 12 year career, the first seven of which were in a Los Angeles urban high school. I teach in two tested subject areas but in schools with such high transiency rates that the one year they did send me VAM scores they couldn’t score me!! I just laughed. One huge area said “could not determine” and other other said “average.” The LA Times only published the scores once but then a miracle happened- the CST faded away and the new Common Core test was so problematic due to the IPADS not working right.
My principal never looked at our VAM scores and the new evaluation system is so time consuming that this year we got what we like to call “drive by” evaluations. The principal comes in a couple of times and gives us high ratings. We all strive to do a great job and our principal supports us by purchasing any curriculum we need and want.
Lucky to be in California with Governor Brown, probably the last governor to support public ed. Working three jobs because I know it won’t last. Thinking of making a switch to a small rural district in about 5 years.
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I urge many of you to find out how to transfer your credentials and come to California
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I live in New York and they have our privates in a vise – how’s that for pressure?
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I teach in MA and I’ve been told by the superintendent and the principal to focus only on the kids “on the cusp” of moving to the next score level on the test. UNETHICAL.
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Chiming in from Maryland here with our hard-core privatizing governor, Broadie superintendent, PARCC Test worshiping legislature and total embrace of Student Learning Objectives by our state operatives. Yes we feel intense pressure here.
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I teach in NY and I have the same pressure. It got really bad under NY city’s mayor, Michael Bloomberg and his chancellors, especially Joel Klein, but it has gotten even worse since the new evaluation system pushed by our governor, Andrew Cuomo, kicked in.
Unfortunately, all of this has backing from both Republicans and many Democrats in power, including President Obama and his education secretary, Arne Duncan, who have tied federal aid to “stricter” teacher evaluations.
But it isn’t just the overemphasis on tests and the high stakes these carry for students and teachers. It’s also the other half of the evaluation system here, based on the Danielson framework (perhaps misapplied) which makes the usual mistake of taking what might be good ideas worth considering in certain situations and makes them into dogma, now enforced in a punitive fashion.
Between the tests and the “teaching methods” strictures, the classrooms, teaching and learning and a large part of the lives of students and teachers are increasingly stripped of creativity, meaning and enjoyment.
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Good thread ,Duane. Rob Kall does that at OEn…asks for a poll.
I cannot participate. I taught before VAM and wrote my entire curriculum, gave no tests, but did portfolio instead…wit criteria of remission objectives that no one could argue with,and which Harvard matched to the principles of learning.
But then, they shot me down an killed me.
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Definitely pressure in Virginia. My school is either accredited with warning or in school improvement – I cannot keep them straight – because our pass rates on the 8th grade math and reading tests are too low. That means we have to jump through all kinds of hoops for the state – filing lesson plans, collecting data, “unpacking” our standards (don’t ask) – that will do nothing to improve instruction.
And yet almost every administrator – and absolutely everyone at the top of our division – says, this is the world we live in now. Doesn’t matter how bad or harmful that world is for our students.
Cowards.
Yeah, I’m frustrated.
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I taught in TX and I will teach in MA . Same pressure.
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We are just beginning to feel the pressure in Montana, with increasing emphasis on standardized tests and, in my district, standardizing the curriculum by using approved Common Core textbooks. However, Montana has been the Last Best Place in more ways than one, with no charters allowed, to my knowledge; no vouchers; no VAM; and decent class sizes in my district. Our state superintendent of schools Denise Juneau (a member of the Blackfeet tribe, by the way) has made some courageous decisions to protect education, although she supports the Common Core. But signs show that some districts are facing decreasing teacher autonomy due to administrative responses to testing pressures, which will result in less creativity in the classroom and student disengagement.
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I teach in Tennessee and we have the same pressure. I teach English II, so my scores along with Algebra I determine whether our entire school makes AYP. I teach in a large urban school. This year only 29% of English II students were projected to pass the End of Course Exam (EOC). Our AMO (Annual Measurable Objective) was 60%! What other job would have this kind of expectation? We four English II teachers just barely hit the mark, but we wonder what it would be like to teach a class without the pressure of an EOC- such as social studies, foreign language, PE, etc. Every year the percentage gets higher, but we get no additional resources. This year the team has to create common summative and formative assessments and deliver data to our AP and a data coach on a weekly basis. This does not encourage a love of learning or teaching! We spent at least 2 full days in meetings prior to the start of school. It was dedicated to testing. All we heard was how much harder the tests were going to be.
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I teach in Mississippi and I have the same pressure.
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As a parent in MA in a “high performing district”, we have pressure too. I am becoming increasingly suspicious of preschool teachers and public school admin suggesting parents hold their kids out of kindergarten until they are 6. I was told by our principal that a very large number of parents are “waiting” this year and I felt some pressure because my son just turned 5 and talking w some parents in town, they are feeling the same way. I no longer feel that the decision is initiated by parents but by schools who want older kindergarteners and in concert w preschools that want another year of tuition. In communities where people can afford to pay for their 5 year olds to be in preschool another year, the test result gap will grow as compared to those that don’t have that ability and have to send kids to k on time. Of course most 6 year olds will “perform” better on academic tests than a 5 year old, have you seen how much they grow and change in a year at this age? I am disturbed by the academic nature of kindergarten, starting right off the bat with the K screening process, can a teacher in MA please fill me in on how this works? And how much “weight” is given to the screening and preschool teacher’s recommendation? As I mentioned, my son has just turned 5 plus he has the double whammy of being home with me instead of in preschool! I think there may be the fear at our public school that he won’t be able to sit, conform, and perform (some of us are currently working w teachers to help bring back more play based experiences).
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Mamajj,
Your district should start opting out of state testing. That sends a message and protects your child.
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Unfortunately, MA has bought (literally) into the obnoxious TS Gold testing for kindergartners.
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Thanks for the reply and the encouragement, Diane. My oldest son will be in third grade this year and will without a doubt be opting out of the state test (be it MCAS or Parcc). I am trying to help other parents understand what is going on but many don’t want to rock the boat with me yet!
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Mamajj,
A movement starts with just a few people. I posted a video about “how to start a movement,” and it begins with one person doing something that looks silly. But then he gets a follower. The follower is the key. Soon there are more followers, and what you do becomes the norm. Margaret Mead said it best, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
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Didn’t Gandhi start his movement alone at first?
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If you can do it find your child a good Montessori school. You are only a child once and no child deserves the pressures of the rigor-bound testing culture. I have been a primary teacher for twenty years and I am leaving at the end of this year becuase it is becoming impossible to protect my little ones from themreform borg’s worst abuses.
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I am right behind you Chris in Florida.
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Chris, I have 4 kids who will all be in elementary school at the same time. I did look at other options besides public school when my oldest was only 6 and passionately did not want to go to school anymore (my favorite being a progressive school even over Montessori), but over time I came to the conclusion that I truly believe in the public school system, behind the scenes several local teachers are on board with me, and so our family stayed, working from within our own school for our kids and their friends. I have seen changes for the better but there is much more to be done, especially getting the worksheets out of kindergarten, getting the kids outside and up and moving more, and increasing open-ended hands on learning. All the while I am also involved statewide for the opt out movement and the proposed testing moratorium here in MA.
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I teach in CO and we have the same pressure!
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ALL this testing is INSANE, but there’s $$$$$ for the few! Our young are FOR SALE to the highest bidder. Gross.
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From my quick count that’s 23 states heard from! Wonder how many more!!
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I teach in California and we have the same pressure.
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I teach in Austin, TX and we have the same pressure. I teach children with special needs and instead of teaching them to read or learn math facts at their level and at their pace, we teach them ‘tricks’ (strategies) to pass multiple choice tests. Insane! These kids don’t deserve it and neither do we as tax-paying citizens who will rely on these kids in 20 years to run the country.
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