Tim Slekar: A Survey of Teachers

5 Comments Post your own

1. LG says:

   March 25, 2021 at 12:09 pm

   Happy to help.

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2. Joe Prichard says:

   March 26, 2021 at 8:26 am

   I was a teacher from 1968 to 1991, missing 1969 and part of 1970 for draft to vietnam, and a sabbatical in 1988….I remember Ashcroft being governor, and an unaccustomed emphasis on testing…….I was a sixth grade teacher….I remember 1971 and 1972 as being so proud of the results of the stanford achievement tests….some of my 6th graders in the rural school scored averages of the 11th grade, and the overall average of more than 30 students was in the 8th grade……but what began during ashcroft’s governorship was different…..in retrospect, I can remember them as something being marketed—I had another five years to reach minimal participation in retirement benefits…..I had to settle for the money I had put in each year to be matched by the district….no interest that it earned….Missouri teachers had about 15 percent of what was spent to be paid for retirement….I received less than half for failure to go 25 years. The Stanford tests in the early 70’s were not unpleasant…..they took about 3 days….kind of a break from making lesson plans…..and I enjoyed several years looking at the individual scores. What started under Ashcroft was some sort of administrative tool….That was John Ashcroft, governor from 1985-1993…..we have another one now, his son Jay, who told me when we were talking about voting 4 or 5 years ago, that large turnouts were not necessarily a good thing. He was not kidding…..and since he is a republican, I cannot say he was being stupid.

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3. Joe Prichard says:

   March 26, 2021 at 8:42 am

   Maybe I did not know any better back in 1972…I doubt any of my students—now nearing 60—were popping bennies to get higher scores…..The Stanford 10 is one of the few tests in the United States which continues to use stanines to report scores.

   In Florida public schools, the SAT-10 was at one point mandatory, but this requirement was dropped in 2009 as a cost-cutting measure.[8] Some Floridian school administrators provoked controversy in 2016 by refusing to allow a third-grade student to advance to the fourth grade, despite the student’s classroom performance, because the student had opted out of the SAT-10 and refused to take the state’s own standardized test, the Florida Standards Assessment.

   The SAT-10 is used in educational research to evaluate the effectiveness of policies, such as tying teacher salaries to students’ test results.

   A 1937 study found that the performance of male teenage delinquents on the then-current edition of the Stanford Achievement Test improved under the influence of benzedrine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_Achievement_Test_Series

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   • John Ogozalek says:

     March 27, 2021 at 6:30 am

     Joe, it sounds like you’ve forgotten more about testing than I’ll ever know.

     One thing I will NEVER miss when I retire is tests. Making them, grading them, thinking about them.

     A few years ago, I took a picture of myself with a classroom full of 12th graders who were absorbed in the depths of taking a college final exam I’d put together. I used my old man, point and shoot camera set on timer.

     I took the photo as a sort of historical artifact. To remind my future self, maybe. Yeah, I actually did this with a group of fellow human beings in room 219 on a beautiful afternoon, as sunlight filtered across the desks and their young hands.

     To soak up the concentration and creativity and worry of such wonderful minds. And, then to squeeze it all back out like a sponge, wringing out a roster of numbers…data.

     It stills strikes me as somewhat unreal, decades into teaching.. And, it’s something I look forward to soon never having to do ever, ever again.

     Take care.

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4. John Ogozalek says:

   March 27, 2021 at 6:56 am

   Survey done. Thanks for asking.

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