I saw this terrible incident on the television news the day it happened, but I heard no mention of the fact that the event was a pep rally to get students “fired up” for the Florida state tests.
The student body of 2,000 was assembled in the gymnasium of the Atlantic Community High School for a pep rally, whose purpose was to “jazz up students in advance of the Florida Standards Assessment test.”
“Students were quizzed on sample test questions during the rally. When they answered correctly, they were rewarded with showy slam-dunks on the basketball court.”
After the questions and answers, a professional stuntman who performed fire-breathing tricks started his act. However, the stunt went wrong, and he caught on fire. The fire-breather was severely burned, and 20 students required medical treatment afterwards.
The principal had approved the stunt, which was contrary to district rules about indoor fires.
But no one asked what the high school was having a pep rally to “jazz up” preparations for the state tests.
One was a dangerous stunt, the other was just a stupid stunt on behalf of a dumb policy.
When I was a teacher, I was very sad about testing pep rallies. and furthermore, in a western NC public school pep rally just two years ago they let a recruiter for “Christian sports leagues” (whatever that means), who wore a tee shirt that read “Choose Jesus” lead the pep rally.
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Not at a public school. Bad idea all the way around.
IMHO, the most important thing is the health and welfare of the people involved, and I wish complete and speedy recoveries for all affected.
However, this ill-conceived idea that had such terrible consequences was based on something just as ill-conceived and with even more predictable terrible consequences: high-stakes standardized tests-to-punish that label, sort and rank students, teachers, and schools in order to produce a few “winners” and many many “losers.”
Here’s a thought for the self-styled cage busting 21st century rheephormers: howzabout leaving no time for such destructive foolishness and replace it with a “better education for all” that admits time for only those activities that contribute to genuine teaching and learning?
Or perhaps the last suggestion is not creatively disruptive enough…
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Maybe these flames were a preliminary to the hell that students – and teachers – were about to embark on.
I do not mean to be flippant when such an occurrence as the above happens but nonetheless, the hell that is and has been encountered with the political interference in the “educational” process is abominable, counterproductive and many other adjectives too descriptive to be written in polite company.
They should have just set the TESTS on FIRE.
This is a headline story, but only one among many absurd and tragic consequences of making scores on tests the end-all and be-all of education. Recall the child who was forced to take a test even though nearly comatose in a hospital bed.
The more typical hype before testing is a matter of enlisting teachers and students as cheerleaders at a perp rally, as if testing events are no different from competitive sports. I think these staged events show how screwed up the values of policy-makers are–the policy makers and shapers who insist on ratings of students, teachers, schools. Many seem to think there are no downsides to competition, league tables, the equivalent of batting averages, serial testing K-12, and so on.
Your comparison to sports pep rallies is very appropriate.
Sports events, especially of the high-stakes variety, are a good example of the mindset behind the numerical accountability measures of the self-proclaimed “education reform” movement.
Riffing off an example by the late Gerald Bracey, consider the men’s finals of the 100-meter dash at the Olympics. Consider the last man to cross the finish line. #8 of 8.
So on that day, by the kinds of verifiable numbers that rheephormsters love, out of over 7 billion human beings he was one of the fastest people on planet Earth—and a LOSERLOSERLOSER by rheephorm standards.
Hoisted, then, by their own misleading numerical petard.
Thank you for your comments.
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Too bad they didn’t spend the money on more books for the library or music teachers. Then, it would be money well spent, and it wouldn’t cost the district the price of various lawsuits that I am sure will be filed.
It’s so heartening to see this full-on rebellion forming in Ohio:
In a recent letter to the leaders of the Ohio Department of Education and the president of the State Board of Education, Olmsted Falls City Schools Superintendent Jim Lloyd wrote that his school system will be taking full advantage of “safe harbor” enabling districts to exclude student progress as part of teacher evaluations. Dr. Lloyd’s letter was blunt and to the point:
“While we did our very best to provide an online testing environment for our students that would not yield confounding results, the online testing experience for our students in 2014-15 represented an epic fail due to the online platform that was utilized by the testing company.
As a result, we firmly believe that our students’ performances do not fairly represent their achievement or growth…Therefore, as the leader of the Olmsted Falls City School District, I cannot in good conscience require my building principals to use student test results to evaluate our teachers in any form or fashion.
Moreover, we will not waste our teachers’ time by creating last minute district or building level student learning objectives in order to retro-fit a growth measure into a teacher evaluation computer programming system that we did not create nor do we want to use.”
I’m sure they will be smeared as dodging accountability or some such nonsense slogan, but there is a need for public school advocates and I’m grateful they’re filling that hole. Their schools are political orphans. If they don’t do it, no one else will.
http://www.jointhefuture.org/join-the-future/olmsted-falls-superintendent-to-ode-we-will-not-waste-our-teachers-time
Best news from Ohio in a long time. I hope this gets traction. The ODE categories for data entry into a computer actually contort, mutilate, spindle ideas about education. Hardly anyone other than bean-counters even care about the entries. The ODE cannot muster sensible answers to the issues on the FAQs for data entry. The student learning objectives are a total farce. They are useless for any purpose other than micromanaging teaches and playing “gotcha” games to lower their evaluations and skew teaching toward easy to measure trivia.
“Fire” the principal for poor judgment and placing all students at risk for physical and emotional abuse.
If this is what is valued to get students fired up about a test, then I think we’re in desperate times. I guess it will make for a great anecdote to include in your next book.
As a Florida teacher, I can tell you that this type of activity has been outlawed in Florida. We are not even suppose to give out free FSA pencils as rewards. Maybe this was a charter high school that did not need to follow the laws..imagine that.
What do you expect when you constantly talk about student performance or teacher performance? Sooner or later people will start feeling, they perform in a circus and will act accordingly.
It’s time to take out powerful words from the description of the gentle and friendly act of teaching and learning.
Two good friends of mine live in that school district which is about an hour and a half drive from my home. We see each other about once a month. Both are retired junior college teachers from Maryland. They were very upset by the incident and even more upset by the pep rally for a test – a high stakes state mandated test that determines which principals get bonuses and little gold stars on their foreheads. Tests with vast amounts of tax money for private profits attached. Tests that have no validity or reliability or purpose for students. Their grandchildren attend grade schools in that area.
Yes, we must continue to spread the word to everyone in the general public. Children are getting burned – some physically and others metaphorically.
“Children are getting burned – some physically and others metaphorically, CERTAINLY ALL PSYCHOLOGICALLY IN ONE WAY OR ANOTHER.
Fixed it Ken!
Reblogged this on Politicians Are Poody Heads and commented:
This really is a horrible “joke,” and maybe we shouldn’t be surprised that something like this happens, when the school itself, the principal, and the teachers will face dire consequences if their school fails to “perform” up to expectations in the high-stakes standardized tests. 😦
Yes! Ravitch quote: One was a dangerous stunt, the other was just a stupid stunt on behalf of a dumb policy.