Grades part 1

On August first the Times education section ran an article on a math teacher who had had his grades changed by his principal. He had failed a fifth year senior and he was upset that the grades had been changed. Usually I support teachers that do things like this, but I don’t think I support this guy. Of course I do not know the whole story. I do know the principal and she probably handled the situation badly.

The math teacher and the Times made a big deal over the fact that 45 is the lowest grade you can give someone. They should get over it. No one seems to be upset that you get a 200 on the SAT’s for spelling your name correctly. Why should they be upset that 45 is the starting grade? In college you can only get an A, B, C, D and fail. This doesn’t bother anyone. I suspect that the people complaining weren’t complaining about the fact that the average grade in a college is no longer a C. It was when I went to college. 45 is just a number. It has significance in the New York City system only in that it indicates a student who not only failed, but also missed a lot of school. It is not an average. Teachers need to stop thinking of it this way.

The problem is that many teachers feel that they can create an objective way to measure students. Math and science people are particularly susceptible to this kind of thinking, but I have seen English teachers who work that way also. What happens is that a teacher creates an elaborate system of homework, attendance, tests and class participation. Each activity is scored and then weighted. The numbers are then added up and a concise numerical grade is given. This allows for the possibility that a student could have an average of 30 or 10 or 87. This would seem like science, but in truth it is bad science.

You need to answer the basic question about grades. What do they mean? What do they measure? On a very basic level when an institution gives a student a grade it is saying that the student has achieved a certain intellectual level. At this moment I am on my way to Albany to help write the Regents Exams. Students take a Regents and get a precise grade. I remember that I received a 98 on the Algebra Regents. It is amazing that I remember this because it was 46 years ago. Does my 98 means that I was not as smart as someone who got a 100 but smarter than someone who received a 95. Of course not. It does mean that. I forgot to check one problem and my teacher took off 2 points. This is not a precise measure of my intellect. Certainly I knew more algebra than someone who received a 65, but the student who receives a 95 was at least my equal and may have actually known more of the whole curriculum than I did.

I think that New York City might be better served if we switched to a straight letter grade system. I would encourage teachers to think of student in a more holistic way. Putting a number on something does not make it a measurement of anything significant. Numbers are just numbers.

Candy Bars

I was on the train yesterday and a kid gets on and announces that he is selling candy bars. He says that he could be robbing people but he thought selling candy bars was better. Of course the implication was that if selling candy bars didn't go well he would start robbing people. If I asked you to identify this kids race do you think you could?

Of course you could, only a black kid would use this line. Do black kids actually feel this way or are they just using a public perception. Either way this is a bad thing. We need to move beyond this. I didn't buy any candy.

I got a comment about my last blog that was interesting. First of all Macinac is in Michigan, not upstate New York. I suspect the folks in Michigan hate New Yorkers almost as much as those in upstate NY, but I find it hard to believe that someone would know I was a New Yorker and purposely have their dog take a dump in front of me. It wouldn't work anyways because like all New Yorkers I walk around looking at my feet.

Dogs will be dogs

I went Macinac Island last week. Two things happened that I found strange and disturbing. (My wife thinks I’m getting crazy.) The first happened before we got to the island. We were waiting in line for the ferry and the line was kind of long. It went up one side of the dock and then it turned. We were standing right past where it made a U and there were about 20 people behind us. One of the ferry company employees asked us to move the line and make it straight instead of a U. A request that has happened to me in the past. No big deal.

Most of us started moving in an orderly fashion, keeping the integrity and order of the line. The 3 people behind me decided to cut the corner and end up in front of me. I told them that I thought it was not nice to cut in front of us. One of them looked at me and smiled and didn’t move. I repeated that it seemed that they were being selfish by cutting in front of us. They ignored me. I then did nothing. I did not pull out my gun because I do not own a gun. Actually as a city person I expect people to respect lines.

Many country folks (these guys looked like country folk) probably feel that lines are kept in order in New York City by an unwritten threat of violence. I do not think that this is really true. I think that people in New York have learned how to live with other people. This means how to stand in a line.

The second thing happened while we were on the Island. Macinac is this cool place that has no cars. Everyone travels by bike or horse and buggy as well as walking. The downtown is kind of crowded and very touristy. I was walking down the sidewalk and this nice middle class white lady with grey hair was walking her small poodle down the middle of the sidewalk. The poodle decided that it was time to take a dump, and so it did in the middle of the sidewalk. The woman tugged the dog’s collar and continued to walk, leaving behind a small pile of dog feces.

All of us New Yorkers have seen this type of behavior in tourists in our city. People stand in front of subway doors; they block intersections and many other behaviors that break the public order. I think that this is part of the split that has happened in America. There are people who can live with others and there are those who do not know how to do this. I don’t think this is a moral failing on their part. I think they have just not evolved. They think that cities are moral cesspools. We are actually much better at living with other and not doing unto others than the country folk.

Rock and Roll

R and I went to Cleveland the other day. We went to see the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. This is a really cool museum. Once again we are faced with the concept of people in their 50's confronting their rock and roll past. Rock has always been raunchy and sexual. People who went to rock concerts did not wear pinafores. So how does one approach the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

What we saw was families of tourists dressed in tourist clothes walking around looking at the exhibits like it was Cooperstown. Except it wasn't. Here is my imaginary overheard conversation. Mom, Dad, Bud and Kitten are walking around the museum. Dad and Kitten wander over to the Madonna costume exhibit. Dad says: "Look Kitten, that's the exact same bra that Madonna wore on her 'Like a Virgin' tour. The one with the pointy tits. It's amazing to be in the presence of such history." Meanwhile mom and Bud are walking down the history of rock and roll display cases. They pass the Beatles, Van Halen and then they finally get to CBGB's exhibit. Mom turns to Bud: "You know Bud, I used to go to CBGB's all the time when I was young. My favorite group was the 'Sex Pistols"'. One night Sid Vicious invited my back stage. What an amazing night. Boy was I sore the next day."

You see the problem. The museum is a legitimate museum of the history or Rock. The problem is how can you make it work for the family group. You can't.

Cleveland is a cute city. They are trying really hard to re-make the downtown area. They are converting some great old buildings into condos, and opening clubs and upscale restaurants. Of all the mid size cities I have been in Cleveland seems to be doing the best. I don't know it it will work. If it doesn't work in Cleveland, if the young keep leaving, then it may not work anywhere.

Can't We All Just Get Along

I worked in the building I am currently in about 10 years ago.I was fed up with teaching and I saw a job in a foundation doing technology education. I applied and got the job. It started on July 1 so I could start and then decide latter if I wanted to go back to teaching or not.

This job had some strange draw backs right from the start. These guys were outside staff developers with almost no classroom experience. This meant that they felt they knew more about teaching than any teacher did.

I am kind of a local merchant booster, the first day I stopped at this funky coffee shop near the school and bought a cup of coffee. The coffee sucked, so the next day I went across the street to Starbucks and bought my coffee. (I love good coffee.) When I got into the office I could see that everyone looked at me askance. I was trafficking with the mega-enemy.

The foundation mostly ran on Mac's with one PC. I had never used a Mac. This was OK with everyone because they found PC's difficult to use and the fact that I wasn't good on a Mac did make them all feel good. The problem was that after about three days I had figured out how the Mac worked and was having no problems. This did not make people feel good.

By the beginning of August it was obvious that this gig was not going to work. I went to the director and told her that I thought things weren't going well and that I felt I should leave in two weeks. She told me that she was so unhappy with me that she was willing to pay me for two weeks if I would just leave. I have to say I was sort of shocked. I had never had anyone dislike me that much. I never saw myself as polarizing like that.

I guess I'm wrong.

Customer Service

I read two interesting articles lately. They both came from Washington, DC. The first one was an announcement that the mayor had taken over the school system, fired the chancellor and installed a woman who had years of business experience but essentially no experience in education. This woman was recommended by Joel Klein.

The second article was on research done on the voucher program that exists to some extent in D.C. The researchers had discovered that the parents of students who had received vouchers reported that they were very satisfied with their children's school. They felt their child was safer and was learning more. The children according to the researcher were not in fact learning more, and the kids themselves did not feel safer.

I think that these two articles are related. First of all they tap into a great deal of dissatisfaction with the educational system. Politicians have been saying that the solution to education is to privatize it or at least use private techniques to gain control. What they have realized is that there are large numbers of people who are not satisfied with the schools. This is particularly true in cities. The voucher research generally proved that parents who perceived they had a choice were more satisfied.

The school I am currently in has a very vocal, very active PA. Students need to apply to the school to attend. My guess is that parents are generally satisfied with the school because they feel they have a voice. They are the kind of people who are used to being listened to and the principals need to listen even when it is not pleasant. This school has good customer relations.

My last school probably falls into the category of schools in which parents are not satisfied. I am actually not completely blaming them for this. For one thing the parents come in with the feeling that no one will listen to them so they don't really try. The system has spent years essentially telling them that they don't matter. In general the school system has treated them badly. The schools have done a bad job of explaining what was going on in the schools. When we change how we teach kids we rarely talk to parents about it. Most of our contact with parents is to tell them how bad their kid is. We rarely have an honest conversation with them about the issues surrounding their children. Open school night is filled with discussions about how much homework a kid did, or how they did on tests. It is not a discussion on what there kids need to work on, what there deficits are, what their strengths are.

I sat in a meeting once in which the mother of a student accused of some offense was defending her daughter. After the meeting the teacher mentioned to me that she was surprised that the mother would defend her kid. I told her that I thought that that was the mother's job. NYC teachers are not used to dealing with middle class parents with middle class attitudes. We are very poor at customer relations. If we were running a business we would no longer be in business. It would not matter if we had a good or a bad product. Our perception is so bad no one would believe us if we were doing a good job. Ford recently did a survey in which it discovered that people thought the Ford Focus was a great car. Those who compared felt it was better than a Toyota. The same people also said they wouldn't but the Ford. Ford knows it has years of doing badly to make up before people will trust it. Educators have the same problem.

Todays Quiz: What shirt am I wearing in the above picture?

Astrology is good enough for Me.

Principals are not really held accountable for science scores in their schools. It sort of counts, but not as much as math and English. If they personally don't think much of science then basically the science department is screwed. The only thing that saves it is the state mandates. I received a call from one of my old science teachers who is no longer at my old school. She seemed very dissatisfied because her principal had eliminated labs and gone to a 5 day a week science schedule. This is of course borderline illegal.

I think science pisses off principals for a number of reasons. 1)It costs money for supplies, some of the supplies are even icky. 2)Science teachers laugh at people throwing around terms such as "reptilian behavior" that have almost no basis in research. 3)Science students often fail because they do not have enough lab minutes and are therefore banned from the Regents. 4)Science is perceived as being hard. 5)High school science meets 6 times a week, this messes up the nice neat boxes that make principals and programmers happy.

The part of all of this that I find the most disturbing is the elimination of lab periods. The state says that all students need 1200 minutes of labs before they take the regents. The separate lab period provided our students with more than 1200 minutes. Those students who were absent on a few lab days could still pass lab. The motivation for eliminating these labs is programming. The idea that programs should fit into these nice square boxes is the product of people who are not good with numbers or patterns. Exactly the same people who were probably never good at science. Decisions about programs are made for administrative purposes and not student needs. This is sad.

The other thing about labs is that science needs to be hands on. Teaching theory without doing experiments short changes students. In my last school we had 43 minute lab periods. Most of the time the labs were far away from the class, the students were often not the same as those in the class. This was devastating to the science program. Teachers often did cookbook labs, not discovery labs. The past few years it was hard to get anyone to listen to my complaints about this. Bad scheduling changed from being the exception to being the norm.

When you think of it, the idea that knowledge can be divided into little discreet units of 43 or 45 minutes is absurd. The idea that if teaching math five days a week is a good idea than teaching Spanish five days a week must also be a good idea is equally as absurd. Some principals just want the programming to be easy so they can concentrate on instruction. This is a bad idea. Programming often defines instruction. To think otherwise is wrong. You can not ignore programming in a high school.

Good teachers are always number one, but they are followed by good programming. Programming is the way you support teachers and students.