'Burque Babble

Moving the Casket

2009-12-26T19:53:00.000-07:00

or maybe just buying a new suit of internet clothes. Time will tell.

I've decided to move from good 'ol (and sometimes less than good) Blogger over to Wordpress. I've never been much of a Net Design Maven (NDM), but I finally got fed up with Blogger over the "jump break" feature that it took years to get...then turns out to not work very well.

Besides, nobody (including me) understood or liked the whole "frannyzoo" thing.

So one thing is sure...Burque Babble is now here at burquebabble.wordpress.com.

And another thing is looking pretty sure as well. I'm probably not done blogging, and I'd like some help this time. Lots of it. Send me an email if you have questions or answers along these lines.

Have a Very Dada Christmas and Other Confusions

2009-12-24T12:34:00.008-07:00

Virtually killing yourself isn't as easy as one might think.

Despite my last post, some six weeks ago, knelling the blogging death bell (is "knelling" a word?), the link to "Burque Babble" has yet to have been removed by every single New Mexico website which links to every other NM website. I know because I am such a loser that I have actually looked around and noticed this.

This is hard to believe.

Most unbelievably, it might mean that the folks linking to Burque Babble never actually read this silly blog. Impossible, of course. Obviously the people running these other sites have simply been too overcome with grief at my passing to get around to removing the link. The link could also be a memento of sorts, a reminder of a better world, a happier time...one in which Burque Babble vibrantly thrived. At least as much as an inorganic blogging entity can be said to "vibrantly thrive".

Regardless of the true reason, the fact remains that this pitiful molecule on the flea butt on the mangy dog on the shag carpet of the Internet universe still exists. And like nature (and mangy dogs), I abhor both vacuum cleaners and a vacuum.

So instead of vacuuming and other household chores this sunny but cold windy day, I'm addressing you, the obsessive person who obsessively clicks on NM website blog roll entries.

And while I have you, obsessive clicking person, let me first say: Hello!

Hello obsessive person! Hold on! Before you move on to another obsessive click to another site on the NM blogroll ask yourself this question:

Does Albuquerque and New Mexico need another source for K-12 education news?

What's that you say...no? We don't? Oh, I kinda expected you to answer yes to that one. Hmmm... I thought you'd feel we need good sources for education news, especially as NM is particularly craptastic in this area. Well, how about this one?

Does Albuquerque need an Ethiopian restaurant?

Okay, I admit it..that was fish in a barrel. But I needed an easy "yes" question in order to get you ready for the next one:

Could Albuquerque and New Mexico use an online humor "magazine"?

Dear Obsessively Clicking Person (DOCP): Do you feel there are hundreds, if not millions, of Manny Aragon and Robert Vigil jokes that went publicly untold because there is no real venue for venomous, but somewhat articulate, lampooning of local authorities?

Perhaps, instead of a simple answer "yes", these questions lead to some of your own, dear DOCP, including "Why is Scot asking these questions, and why would he bother posting such blather when he could be vacuuming his dog hair-infested house? Not to mention that his blog is 'dead' and like the dead he is largely talking to himself here?"

And to anticipate your follow-up question: No, drinking is not involved here, nor psychotropic drugs nor sheer vacuum cleaner avoidance.

What is involved here, I just don't rightly know...other than some thoughts on death, blogging death, life after death, both blogging and otherwise...you know, the same Holiday Season thought pattern almost all of us have, especially those in the K-12 teaching profession.

There's more, but I think I've confused everybody enough, especially me, for now. And maybe that's the best way to leave things permanently here, with everyone perfectly confused in some Dadaesque reverie.

But I don't know. We might not be done. There's still one or two Manny Aragon jokes that desperately need to be told. Not to mention the Richard Berry, Darren White, et. al. opportunities.

Why do I feel like Walter Huston in the flophouse talking to Fred C. Dobbs about gold in "the Treasure of the Sierra Madre"? Or more specifically like Walter Huston talking to himself?

I know what blogging does to men's souls.

Have a Merry Break, everyone...Dada as you wanna be.

Gone Writin'

2009-11-04T05:57:00.005-07:00

Well, I've thought and pondered, considered and reflected, assessed and reassessed. I've posited, asserted and gone back to positing. I've covered a few mental chalkboards with arrows, Greek letters and those big three dot triangles meaning...probably meaning not much of anything.

Okay, this is overstating the case. To be honest, I've been busy and haven't had time to do more than twirl an idea around for a minute or two in the last few days. I also had some good counsel both here and in my "real" life on the subject. Thanks for that.

Meanwhile, my twirling has led, as twirling will do, back to my original thought.

I think it's time to go on hiatus here and do something else for a while. And yes, that something else might be a book. Or something. Else. But probably a book, using State-of-the-15th Century-Art technology for a while.

Which means little or no blogging here, as I want to spend the same "free" time on this other thing.

So the doctor is "out", the sign on the shingle has been taken down, the front door sign has been reversed from "open" to "closed".

No real advice as I leave for a while, other than be nice when you can, feisty when you have to be, and smart enough to know which of the two options best suits a particular moment. Hmm...maybe that's some advice better suited to myself, than to the prudent, thoughtful folks who have constituted my readership here.

Goodbye for now, prudent, thoughtful folks.

Return of the Book Dragon

2009-11-01T16:55:00.006-07:00

So you're writing this blog read by seven or eight people on a good day, and you've been doing it for months, or even years, and everything has been fine and dandy in that unobtrusive and meaningless way that you prefer, when out of the blue it all turns to Hell one afternoon because the thought crosses your mind...

"I should write a book."

And one thought leads to another, and another and another and another, and pretty soon you're staring out the window saying things out loud like "You've wasted all this time and energy on this stupid blog and why haven't you already written a book, and what should the book be about and should it be fiction or non-fiction and how long should the book be and asdgaqbeopng bqnoboinqoiernboin qboin oianeroin blkan nionqareoin bsnl..."

And your brain spins these questions, doubts, and self-criticisms faster and faster until they achieve a high megahertz whine inside the brain (literally) that requires, absolutely requires, the drinking of a very strong beverage, preferably with an outrageous hops to malt ratio.

Thankfully, 99% of the time the beer, serotonin, or whatever kicks in well enough and the hi-speed whine goes away along with the insane drive to write the goddamn book.

And then there's the other 1% of the time. Folks, I think I might be stuck inside that one percent right now.

I've tried everything: reading really good books that should prove beyond any doubt that: 1. No one should bother writing another book because it's already been perfected, and 2. I sure as Hell shouldn't bother; listening to Velvet Underground "Live 1969" at remarkably high volumes as I am doing right this second; going through Amazon to see the veritable mountain of books that have been slaved over by obsessed folks for thousands and thousands of hours only to see the book achieve Amazon sales ranks of #2,458,935, and reviews from pissant Amazon reviewers saying things like "this book sucks because there's a typo on page 47, and the author is obviously an idiot".

And I will continue to pursue these remedies this evening in an attempt to get this whine out of my head and move back to the placid, blogging meaninglessness you (all six or seven of you) and I have come to expect here at Burque Babble.

It's always eventually passed before. But these 1% situations can be intense. I might be away for a few days fighting this book dragon. Or I might be posting again like a madman within hours, a sign that the dragon has, once again, been slain or at least firmly stuffed into the semi-locked recesses of the mental closet.

"I'm beginning to see the light...I'm beginning to see the light. Some people work very hard, but still they never get it right...I'm beginning to see the light...here we go again, playing the fool again..."

A Disaster Ranking Scale For Public School Teachers

2009-10-29T18:17:00.006-06:00

Tornadoes have the Fujita Scale. Earthquakes the Richter. Hurricanes the Saffir-Simpson. I guess we still have that Homeland Security color-coded thing, although I think we've all pretty much stopped paying attention to it. But what about Teachers? What scale for ranking educational disasters exists?

Obviously, this is a shortcoming that must be rectified, and Burque Babble is just the entity to do it. But as "Burque Babble Scale" doesn't sound nearly as cool as "Fujita" or "Richter", we need a super-sexy name...hmmm...let's see. How about "Allison Scale" as in ex-APS Superintendent Brad Allison, who was basically a walking, talking, emailing, vodka and sleeping pills mixing disaster?

Sounds good.

Below is the official Allison Scale for disasters within the teaching day. Educators should post the information below in their rooms, preferably next to that "Fire Exit" poster that nobody has looked at in years and years (and perhaps actually fell down back in 2003 and you just haven't noticed).

ALLISON SCALE FOR EDUCATIONAL DISASTERS

Allison 1: Trying to listen to cringe-worthy 6th Grade student candidate speeches for Student Council over the intercom, while keeping a straight face before your classroom of 7th Graders.

Allison 2: Any lockdown drill, especially one that involves discussion of how students might go to the bathroom during a real lockdown (and includes the teacher sheepishly pointing to a trash can).

Allison 2.5: "Award Assemblies" in which a long list of "Honor Roll" students are, incomprehensibly, read while non-"Honor Roll" students disrupt things and act like bad Jerry Lewis impersonators. Having 341 bad Jerry Lewis impersonators sitting on those bouncy gym bleachers is like watching "The Nutty Professor" on 341 different screens simultaneously with all the screens showing different parts of the movie.

Allison 3: Having a Fire Drill during a test perfectly calculated to be completed within one class period.

Allison 3.5: Teaching next to the Nurse's Office when a particularly virulent strain of gastro-intestinal distress has hit campus. The smell of projectile vomit and teaching doesn't go together very well, I've learned.

Allison 4: Experiencing a thirty-minute lock down while police pursue "suspects in the area".

Allison 4.5: Any classtime that develops because an end-of-semester band concert has ended too early. You're in the gym, sitting through "O Tannenbaum" played on squeaky violins at the metronomic pace of "meandering", when suddenly the tune ends and the principal comes on and tells students to "go back to your 7th Period class" fifteen minutes before the final bell. That is one long, long walk back to the classroom. Teachers should definitely be provided lion taming chairs and whips for situations like this.

Allison 5: Trying to have middle school in-class debates on the day before Halloween while a Jackie Chan movie is being made so close to your classroom door that everyone, debaters wearing "pirate" costumes included, can hear the director saying "Action!". Not that I would know anything about this.

Allison 5.5: Professional Development Day. Nothing makes a teacher value kids and the classroom like a "PD Day". The weirdest part of it is that you have these former classroom teachers who evidently have gone through some Manchurian Candidate program that washes all their memories of the classroom away and replaces it with Maoist pedagogic malarkey. Okay, it's not Maoist. But you get the idea. You want to hold your hand up to these "facilitators" faces and wave it briskly up and down before their eyes. What do these PD automatons "see"? Are they still human?

Allison 6: Staff "training" sessions that involve the use of the same "teaching" techniques we are told to NEVER use in the classroom. This means ALL staff "training" sessions, as they ALL consist of lectures, bad PowerPoints being read slide after slide in toto by "trainers" and excruciatingly bad videos featuring Public Access-level production values and cheesy music usually reserved for elevators and those late night movies on Cinemax.

Allison 7: Experiencing a lockdown during after-school activities (and/or just as you're headed out the door to go home), like the one at Carlos Rey Elementary yesterday. I can just imagine the teachers spinning car keys in their hands as they impatiently wait for the "all clear". This may seem high on the scale, what with no students in most of the rooms, but just roll that scenario around in your teacher noggin a while.

Allison 8: ANY discussion during ANY staff meeting. Staff meetings are like Thanksgiving dinner for dysfunctional families, but with 100 people. "Dinner conversation" is a short-fuse time bomb, and usually by the third or fourth comment even the best-facilitated discussion has devolved into, "I can't do this anymore, and nobody will help me!" with the same flailing of arms and other melodramatic histrionics associated with bad community theater productions of Eugene O'Neill plays. One only wonders what level of verbal dysfunction could be reached if staff meetings included alcoholic beverages. It would surely make "Long Day's Journey Into Night" look like "Home Alone 4".

Allison 9: Any trip to APS Central Office (aka, the "Twin Towers"). I don't personally believe in spirits and such, but the vibe at that place makes Jonestown seem like Cliff's Amusement Park. It's REALLY creepy. To make extra money in these tough budgetary times, The District should turn Central Office into one of those Halloween Haunted Houses every year. The great thing is they wouldn't have to put up decorations, black lights or anything...it's just fine for scaring the crap out of folks exactly as it already is.

Allison 10: Experiencing a three-hour lockdown at Rio Grande HS that runs well into the late afternoon. Widespread destruction. Homes swept off their foundations. In a sick, rubbernecking the car crash way, I kinda wish there was video of this recent event. From a teacher perspective this must have been quite, quite awful.

Problems in Education: Inadequately Informed Drug Dealers

2009-10-29T06:45:00.005-06:00

I could go in a bunch of education "news" directions this morning. Middle school teacher having sex with student. NM School districts given"flexibility" with class sizes in the Special Session. ABQ charter school has been involved in 43 police calls since October 2008.

Enough right there for a teacher to give up reading the newspaper forever.

But my favorite: Drug dealer caught near elementary school gets lighter sentence, because dealer didn't know about the nearby school.

Which brings up an important job of our principals and other school employees, properly informing drug dealers about the location of our schools. While we do a pretty good job of informing parents and students about school events through newsletters and almost daily notes/letters to be sent home, we do a lousy job of making sure drug dealers are kept informed.

There can be no denying that better outreach to our drug dealing community is needed. Perhaps newsletters could be distributed by school personnel on street corners knows for drug activity. Maybe school principals could rent cars with loudspeakers and drive around announcing the presence of schools in high-drug areas.

Better yet, school business cards could be distributed to drug dealers and users, including maps outlining the 1,000 foot "drug-free" area surrounding the school. Suggestions could be included on the cards and other outreach documents recommending nearby good drug-selling locations that are NOT within the 1,000 foot zone.

It's pretty damn clear APS and its employees are, once again, creating another public relations disaster. Without better communication and outreach with our drug dealing/buying population, we're simply exacerbating an already-present information gap, one that mirrors a long-term problem here.

APS has historically done a lousy job of communicating with local businesses. The drug business is no exception. Every APS employee from Superintendent Brooks on down should be embarrassed by our failure to better inform the drug dealing community. Embarrassed.

But perhaps not quite as embarrassed as by the "middle school teacher fired for having sex with student" story. That one has me groaning and shaking my head quite a bit this morning.

Better Educational Living Through Judicial Chemistry (Alchemy)

2009-10-27T22:19:00.004-06:00

A long-deliberated case on whether No Child Left Behind is an "unfunded mandate" ends, for now:

"In a rare 8-8 tie, the 6th Circuit upheld the dismissal of a lawsuit questioning whether state school officials must comply with the portions of the federal No Child Left Behind Act for which Congress refuses to pay."
--Courthouse News Service. 10.21.09

A teacher licensing test in Massachusetts is upheld despite wildly disparate score results based on race and language...

"A federal court judge dismissed a lawsuit yesterday that challenged the state’s controversial licensing test for teachers, sidestepping concerns that the test discriminates against members of minority groups and instead spelling out what he called minimal standards for teachers, namely 'the clear and accurate use of language.’'"
--Boston Globe. 10.13.09

And a bunch of fired principals in Washington D.C. are still suing D.C. School Chancellor Michelle Rhee for firing them...

"District teachers are not the only ex-school employees turning to the courts for redress. Last week a group of principals and assistant principals dismissed by Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee in 2008 refiled an $84 million lawsuit alleging, among other things, age and race discrimination, defamation and civil conspiracy."
--Washington Post. 10.27.09

(Note apropos of nothing: I like the term "civil conspiracy" very much)

It's great to see education providing such an explosive amount of job creation around the country. The number of lawyers kept employed by these suits must be sizable. It's also wonderful to consider all the education money being redistributed into the legal community via these various cases. It's a sort of "stimulus" plan for "shovel ready" litigation. How might our education dollars help you, firm of Dewey, Cheatham and Howe?

Reviewing APS Middle School Websites: Epilogue

2009-10-27T21:00:00.003-06:00

I would like to report that my scathing exposé on the dark, uninformative underbelly (i.e., websites) slithering beneath the hulking lizard (i.e., APS middle schools) has resulted in massive changes to both the underbelly and the entire lizard.

Such, I must report in a cold-blooded manner, has not been the case.

The websites still generally suck.

Cleveland's home page was last updated in October, 2008. Grant has a staff page featuring links to "online classes" that don't exist. The scourge that is "Professional Innovations" still shrouds Eisenhower and other "Heights" school sites that can afford to do much better. And yes, Harrison's page is still a blank, white screen of nothing, perhaps echoing the existential views of Sartre, or indicating the influence of Soto Zen thinking on being and nothingness. One can only hope.

And speaking of hope, there isn't much resulting from my quickie revisit to these websites.

They are not painful to revisit. Not really. It more like when you're from North Central Texas and you go back to North Central Texas after many, many years of avoiding the place, and you get there, and you go to some restaurant or bar or some such social gathering spot, and you hear the locals talk in that loud, Texas accent about this and that, and you immediately say to yourself, "Yup these are the same racist losers I remember being here 20 years ago". And you leave, and try to get back on I-20 West to get the Hell out of there as soon as humanly possible.

Revisiting these websites was kinda like that. Just a confirmation of what I'd remembered.

But there are lights at the end of the North Central Texas, lizard (armadillo if you're in Texas), APS website tunnel. Not every individual APS webpage is awful. There are pages like this, and this, and I'm sure there are many others that I'm simply not willing to drudge through internet muck to find.

And, in a shameless plug, there's also little online school newspapers that seem to be taking off a bit. We're not "winning teh Interwebs" or anything, but getting about 100 hits a day and putting out a steady diet of student written/edited stuff, and getting quite a few comments (darn nice ones without the usual "you suck, no you suck, Hitler" progression found in most internet comment threads.

It really can be done. It's really quite easy. Students want to do it. Their faces kinda light up when we "publish" something they wrote, even if we can't use their full names (privacy issues or something). Plus, it don't cost nothing.

Yeah, it really can be done. It just isn't. Scathing exposé or no scathing exposé.

Best evidence of this nothingness: the APS website itself. Still right up there with the ABQ Journal in the running for Worst Website Ever. Some time back APS posted new jobs for web developers to come in and move aps.edu into the 21st Century, but nothing's happened yet. Why? How long can it possibly take to come out with a website better than aps.edu? Sixty seconds? Thirty?

I guess a "glass half-full" person might say that it's good to know you can depend on some things in life. Racist Texans for one. Really bad APS websites for another. Strangely, I'm not seeing the glass half-full on either of those points. I must be one of those "glass half-empty" people.

P.S.: No, I am not equating having a bad website with being a racist. People/schools with bad websites are not inherently bad or evil. They are not equal to racists. Or even Texans. I'm just saying the feeling of revisiting had overtones of similarity.

Teacher Demands That Everyone Get Off His Scheduling Lawn

2009-10-27T05:43:00.003-06:00

High Whine Warning

Warning: Your humble blogger seems to have contracted a very slight, non-flu head cold that has no relation to swine flu whatsoever. Although in no way related to the swine flu, really, the author's "whine flu, which isn't a flu at all" will have an impact on the level of grumpiness in today's post. As grumpiness levels are almost always at flood stage here at Burque Babble, readers are encouraged to seek shelter by clicking elsewhere and remaining tuned to your emotional weather report radios for additional updates.
______________

Damn we have too many meetings and special schedules!

This morning I have a 7:30 meeting to be informed on ways the District has, once again, changed how "gifted" kids are "reevaluated". My high snot/brain cell ratio at present prevents me from fully describing how imbecilic this all is. Put disjointedly, let's just say that the terms "gifted" and "reevaluation" are oxymoronic, and that the District changes how Special Education meetings are run every year (and sometimes more than once per year) in the vain attempt to satisfy all the legal challenges it has on the subject AND to cover up for the fact that the terms "gifted" and "meaningful IEP meeting" are also oxymoronic.

So before I add significantly to the veritable mountain of used tissues looming over my laptop this morning, let me quickly go through my schedule:

Last Friday we had an Advisory schedule to prepare for the upcoming Student-led Parent/Teacher Conferences. I am on record as one of the very few teachers at my school who likes the idea of having students lead these conferences. At least that is my sense from the amount of colleague eye-rolling I see whenever the subject comes up. Maybe it's because the idea is from the District and the dominant mindset is "if it comes from the District it must be stupid". Anyway, we had a special schedule because very few teachers trust the students enough to actually run a conference, or even put stuff in their "advisory folders" to present at the conference.
Oh, while I'm thinking of it, a digression (the head cold is demanding digressions this morning). We've had about four advisory meetings with special advisory schedules at this point over the past month. For the first two or three class meetings we waited for SPECIAL ADVISORY FOLDERS from the administration. These SPECIAL ADVISORY FOLDERS were designed to keep student work in to present at the conference. Many announcements and emails were generated over these SPECIAL ADVISORY FOLDERS. In the mean time, as the SPECIAL ADVISORY FOLDERS were inexplicably delayed, my co-teacher and I muddled along with simple manila folders which we gave to students. Then, suddenly one morning, one of the 160 student aides we have at our school walked into our room carrying a stack of manila folders wrapped with a rubber band. These were the SPECIAL ADVISORY FOLDERS! These SPECIAL ADVISORY FOLDERS had nothing on them, no bar codes of Student ID numbers, or labels of any kind. They were simply manila folders, straight out of a box from Office Depot.
Where was I, oh yeah, so last Friday we had one of those Advisory Schedules. Then yesterday, Monday, we were also on Advisory Schedule, this time to go over a pamphlet on Sexual Harassment. With 30 middle school students. As we've already had plenty of Advisory Meetings, we really had nothing to cover...except for this pamphlet. With middle school students. On sexual harassment. Needless to say, this was not my favorite 30 minutes of the school year to this point.
Today we have this stupid 7:30 meeting for gifted teachers to be told what the District wants us to do. Until they change their mind. Again.
Tomorrow, we have our annual Halloween Costume Contest, and that requires a special schedule. Party pooper that I am, I was kinda hoping Halloween would just kinda go away this year at middle school. I mean the actual day is on a Saturday, and we have Student-led Parent/Teacher Conferences both this Thursday and Friday. Wednesday is three days removed from Halloween. That's 72 hours or so, even more if you consider that Halloween is an evening holiday. But NOOOOOOOOOOO...we have to have a Halloween Costume Contest on October the 28th. Which means damn little education will be going on Wednesday, unless one considers the higher level critical thinking necessary for students to bring costume-related non-weapons that look as close to weapons as possible without them being incontrovertibly considered weapons to school...as education.
Then Thursday and Friday we have the oft-mentioned Student-led Parent/Teacher Conferences. Which I, as also mentioned above, support and think is a keen idea, in part because they were scheduled right before Halloween, which would seemingly make school a Halloween-free zone this year.

Oh well. The head cold seems to make your humble blogger not only digressive but redundant. Time to move the mountain of used tissues to the Mohammed of the trash can, dip myself from head-to-toe in hand sanitizer and drip my way into the classroom.

Dark Secrets of the Middle School Teacher: No. 1, Grades

2009-10-22T06:35:00.003-06:00

It's the end of the Nine Weeks and time for middle school teachers to act all high school and such, putting little letters into little spreadsheet boxes that will then be collated and sent home to parents.

The entire middle school grading exercise is kinda like kabuki theatre: outdated, stylized and largely incomprehensible.

We teachers use our grading sword as a weapon against middle school....middle schoolosity. Parents perform elaborate dance-drama rituals upon receipt of the grades reflecting a level of importance more along the lines of life v. death rather than middle school "A" v. middle school "F".

Calls are made, uncomfortable meetings convened, doleful looks abound. Or, in other cases, money changes hands, Ipods are purchased and strangely smug feelings of superiority emerge.

All-in-all an elaborate multi-act ritual signifying nothing. The phrase "Middle School Grades" is right up there with "Political Science Degree" in the running for most ultimately pointless expenditure of time, energy and angst. (note: I have two Political Science degrees).

We teachers know it. Parents know it. And like the non-existence of Santa Claus....students have some glimmer of knowing it as well. Some more than others.

What will happen if they "fail"?
What really happens if they "fail" all their classes?
Will they really repeat the 7th Grade? Will they really?
Is it really possible they could end up driving to middle school, spending significant time trimming their moustache on the way, while working nights at Taco Bell to pay for the car insurance?

We readers all know the answer to those questions. Fortunately, zero middle school students read this blog.

The dark secret can remain just hidden enough...if we perform the drama well.

Remember, keep your kabuki mask on and the hideous makeup unblemished. Both will hide your inability to keep a straight face. Be sure the audience continues to look at the sword. Flash the sword menacingly. Catch the light with the sword and blind the audience, if possible. Create the illusion. Cue the unfamiliar discordant music.

The APS 1% "Solution"

2009-10-21T06:16:00.003-06:00

Over the course of a typical school year, teachers sign their name in a number of patently disingenuous situations.

To prove they attended mandated "training" sessions on sexual harassment, "trainings" that center on watching the same video over and over and over. Despite watching this "training" repeatedly over a career, teachers still have to sign their name to "prove" they have been "trained" every single time.
Ditto for meetings about super-duper important "trainings" on standardized test security and "blood-borne pathogens". Every year, same signature requirement.
Then there's the devious principal required sign-in for the post-lunch Professional Development Day meeting on "power standards", "EPSS" or some other blindingly boring and pointless exercise in group wordsmithing and/or "brainstorming". Paranoid that their staffs will extend an 1.5 hour lunch into an afternoon spent at Kelly's being interviewed by Larry Barker while wearing official school product t-shirts and drinking their seventh beer, principals often use the signature method to measure attendance. I used to work for a principal who didn't use sign-ups, but instead placed spies at staff meetings whose job it was to detect late-comers and non-attendees. It's all about the love and trust, people, isn't it?
Then there's the "signing the contract" procedure. I signed my contract for 2009-2010...yesterday, on October the 20th, just as the first nine weeks of school ended. This after the principal had to make seven daily announcements about how important it is for teachers to come in and sign them. Of course everyone knows it's not really important to sign them. That signing them doesn't mean anything. That not signing them is reserved for crackpot whiners who use it as a chance for empty protest. Still, there I was yesterday scribbling my initials to a copy in order that it could be routed back to some remote corner of APS where it will sit with thousands and thousands of other super-duper important contracts never to be seen or touched again.

Now these cases above are beyond surreal in their ability to evoke meaninglessness and a vague appeal to ethical/moral guilt on the part of the signer. But School Year 2009-2010 offers us more. This year we get to sign something so stupid that everyone feels even dumber and more fake than when we sign for having attended the "Blood-Borne Pathogen Training" when we really can't tell a "blood-borne pathogen" from a Bloody Mary.

This year we have the "Sign Your Name for 1% of Your Salary" sheet. You see, back during APS union negotiations teachers were pissed because the Legislature yanked 1.5% of our salary out from under us by making us pay for retirement insurance for retired insurance salesman or something. I don't recall exactly.

Anyway, after deep negotiation, the Union and APS came up with a brilliantly pointless solution. Teachers would be paid an additional lump sum 1% of their salary to defray this Legislative rug pulling job. But how to justify this 1%? Hmmm...how to justify it? And so the great minds of the negotiators spun and spun, and soon moral straw was woven into 1% gold.

Teachers would get the extra pay by attending "trainings" on their own time. The only record-keeping necessary to verify teachers had attended "trainings" would be....you guessed it...signing their initials on a piece of paper with all the staff members names on it, just like at the "Sexual Harassment Training".

Which was smart, using the same signature method, because it avoided the need to have a "training" about how to sign our names. We're used to signing our initials to a little sheet of paper with all the staff names on it. We can do that.

So yesterday, while signing my 2009-2010 contract 47 days into the school year, I signed my initials in order to get this 1% lump sum payment. I have, of course, no intention of attending any "trainings" outside my school-duty day. I saw many other initials on that sheet of paper, and I know every single one those other folks have any intention to do so either.

The real purpose of the signing document is to co-opt teachers into participating in the lie that is "training", "power standards" and this 1% payment. By forcing us to sign for this crap, the District is saying "Yeah, we're without any morals whatsoever, but you are too...look, you signing your initials as part of a big lie for money...you're no better than us!"

And we're not better than them. We sign. I wonder if we feel as bad for signing as they do for creating the disingenuous scenarios that lead us to meekly signing. I wonder if we feel worse.

The Very Special "Committees Committee"

2009-10-19T05:49:00.003-06:00

Steve Terrell at the New Mexican has the best Special Session coverage (and frankly I wish he had more competition). Between his blog and "story" we get a good sense that:

There really is a committee called "The Committees Committee". Really.
Bill Richardson is really both a Special Session rules tyrant and the lamest duck since Daffy.
Jerry Ortiz y Pino is really running for Lt. Governor. Really. Really hard.
It really must be possible to not raise taxes, only cut spending by 1.5 percent here (education) and 3.5 percent there (stage agency spending) and still take care of a $650 million shortfall.
Everyone in Santa Fe really wants oil and gas prices to go back up. Like alot. By yesterday.
Getting back to education cuts, if 1.5 percent equals $40 million in savings, what's the point of that given the $650 million shortfall? As the dollar figure is nearly immaterial is it really more of a "screw you" symbolic kind of thing? Or is it really more of a "I'm Bill Richardson and I'll prove to you that I'm a big, bearded liar by saying I won't cut education and then cut it by some measly amount just to show you how much I can both lie and accomplish nothing at the same time?"
I appreciate Steve Terrell's work, but I sure wish we really had more political coverage in this State. And no, I really don't mean Joe Monahan when I say that.
Reality and a New Mexico Special Session have damn little in common when you come down to it.

The Silliest Hour Must Be Right Before Dawn

2009-10-16T06:12:00.004-06:00

Three days of early morning meetings this week (IEP, Staff meeting including cringe-worthy "sexual harassment" video, Language Arts) have left the blog and psyche incomplete and stumbling this week. I've never been a morning person, and waking up at 5:00 to bike commute has just seemed like too much. So the week from a bike miles ridden perspective is all shot to Hell, too.

So what do you do when the week's shot to Hell, it's "dark thirty" on a Friday morning outside and you still haven't started on your nine week grades or 47 other inane tasks that must be finished before yesterday?

That's when it time to break out the Jonathan Richman circa-1978....

Ah...blissful silliness. And at only 1 minute and 45 seconds I can watch it another 13 times before I have to get ready for work this "dark thirty" morning.

Have a Jonathan Richman Dum-de-dum-de-dum-dum-da-dum-day, everyone. That's an order straight from the Modern Lovers.

NAEP: National Test, State Pissing Contest

2009-10-15T05:48:00.003-06:00

For a nationwide test, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) sure gets lots of state examination by the media. A search of newspaper stories on yesterday's release of NAEP Math scores underscores this fact.

All the newspapers want to know is how State X did versus the national average. The Albuquerque Journal is no different, using the scores as evidence of New Mexico's "achievement gap" between white and students of color.

Same story throughout the nation: "NJ eight graders show math gains", "New curriculum helping Georgia scores", "Despite improvement, DC students' math scores still lagging", "Mass. leads US on test scores", "California math scores still among the lowest", "Math tests: Wash. eighth graders improve", "Fla. scores on math test hold steady", "Hawaii students' math improves but still below US average", etc., etc. etc.

Everybody wants to be on a team (tribe) and beat the other teams (tribes). And the way NAEP is scored, you can't have school-by-school tribes (or at least I've never seen them) like Adequate Yearly Progress, so states are the lowest tribal denominator. Go tribe! Yeah, rather arbitrary invisible geographical demarcation! Fight, team, Fight!

Which is silly and no big deal, EXCEPT when local reporters myopically focus on the tribe, and exclude meaningful examination of the national results of a national test. Take the Journal story, for instance. In addition to some rather silly comments from NM Education Secretary Veronica Garcia, it wastes tons of valuable print inches comparing New Mexico scores to other states and alluding to the "achievement gap" in New Mexico, while omitting any national data on the "gap" situation.

So I looked at the national data, which is actually quite nicely displayed in self-designable graph/tables at the NAEP site. Guess what:

The "achievement gap" is unfortunately alive and well at the national level, not just New Mexico.
The "gap" is just as consistent when comparing "free lunch" and "non-free lunch" students.
Most striking is the national collapse of scores among "English Language Learners". Yikes.

But you don't see/read stuff like this because local reporters want to tribalize it all into "Us v. Them" statistical football games.

That's a mistake. One that is likely to be compounded when the Journal continues its series on the "achievement gap" in New Mexico, and uses the NAEP data only far enough to promulgate the idea that this "gap" is a New Mexico problem. Which it isn't, anymore than it's a Rhode Island problem, or a Wyoming problem.

P.S.: If one is interested in all this, the NAEP site is definitely worth a visit. The ability to make your own graphs is quite lovely in an edu-nerdcore sort of way.

PED Test Score & Graduation Rates: Certified For Your Protection

2009-10-12T20:05:00.005-06:00

In an obvious, and unintentionally hilarious, effort to make itself look more official, the New Mexico Public Education Department (PED) has gone to using little "CERTIFIED" stickers on its test score and graduation reports. The little symbol looks like this:

I can't tell you how much better this makes me feel about the numbers coming from PED. I was worried about trusting any statistics from that outfit, especially after the earlier graduation rate report fiasco. But now that I think about it, those earlier numbers didn't have the little

and without that, how can you trust anything?

Besides, the symbol itself looks so darn official! It's like a tag on a pillow or something. Very official looking. Obviously big bucks were spent on that graphic. Not only does it say "CERTIFIED", but it has two circles, like it's a USDA Choice sticker or something, and the little red circles are made with a branding iron on a big bloody piece of marbled meat. I'd trust anything marked with such an official-looking, high-priced quality graphic like that.

It's like the Union Label, that "NFL" stamped on footballs and the Presidential Seal all rolled up in one little
All other counters of test scores and graduation rates (and yes, I'm talking to you Albuquerque Public Schools and Albuquerque Journal) must be quaking in their statistical boots when faced with the holy symbolic imprimatur coming from

for there is no possible objection to any number, chart, table or graph whenever it appears. One can only wish they had such a powerful graphic at their disposal. I can only hope Burque Babble one day, maybe years and years and years from now, will be recipient of anything close to the power of such graphically seismic "CERTIFIED" status. It is a truly an earthquake of pixelated (and you must admit it's a bit overly pixelated and fuzzy, really, when you look at it) grandiosity.

Really fuzzy now that you mention it.

Oh wait, I just found out where they got it. You mean ANYBODY can get such a powerfully official-looking graphic? You mean I can just go here, make up anything I want and then suggest it's

by just cropping out the little gray stuff at the bottom of the graphic? Wow! If that's the case, Burque Babble would like to OFFICIALLY CERTIFY the following facts:

Everyone who disagrees with me about anything is officially wrong;
The Sun officially revolves around the Earth;
The War of 1812 was officially fought in 1894;
Kanye West is officially buried in Grant's Tomb;
5 - (x +2) = who cares, because algebra is officially stupid.

Anything else you want officially "certified"? This "certifying" is kinda fun.

The Importance of Idiot "Experts" In Journalism

2009-10-11T20:32:00.003-06:00

Where would journalists be without willing "experts" to espouse idiotic positions that constitute the "other side of the story"? Today's ever-so-helpful idiot is Charles P.Ewing, professor of law and psychology at the world-famous University of Buffalo Law School.

Professor Ewing serves the important function of idiot in a NYT story that begins...:

"Finding character witnesses when you are 6 years old is not easy. But there was Zachary Christie last week at a school disciplinary committee hearing with his karate instructor and his mother’s fiancé by his side to vouch for him.

Zachary’s offense? Taking a Cub Scout utensil that can serve as a knife, fork and spoon to school. He was so excited about joining the Scouts that he wanted to use it at lunch. School officials concluded that he had violated their zero-tolerance policy on weapons, and Zachary now faces 45 days in the district’s reform school."

The piece by Ian Urbina goes on to recount other incredibly stupid overreactions to "weapons" at other schools, including a case where a third-grader was expelled for a year because her grandmother sent her to school with a cake and a knife to cut it with.

So fifteen or so paragraphs of this and the only problem is that we haven't heard the "other side of the story". Who can possibly think it's a good idea to expel a student for a year because of a cake knife? Who with any "expertise" outside a good working knowledge of a crack pipe could possibly agree with a decision that suspends a six-year old 45 days for a Cub Scout multi-utensil?

Professor Charles P. Ewing, that's who. He's your man, Times writer Ian Urbina, and one can only imagine how many six-packs of beer Mr. Urbina owes Professor Ewing for:

“'There are still serious threats every day in schools,' Dr. Ewing said, adding that giving school officials discretion holds the potential for discrimination and requires the kind of threat assessments that only law enforcement is equipped to make."

One can only imagine how long journalist Ian Urbina had to dig finding someone stupid enough to say the above (and, notably, the only direct quote is very generic and doesn't say anything about the specific cases mentioned).

So let us this morning salute idiot "expert" Professor Charles P. Ewing. One doesn't need to be a working journalist to see how important the work of idiots like Ewing is to our understanding of the world around us.

Thanks Chuck Ewing. Can I call you Chuck? Trust me, it's better than some other terms I'd like to use.

To A Colleague

2009-10-07T20:14:00.004-06:00

I didn't know her that well, since I sorta took her job. She was a Teacher of the Gifted over at Jefferson MS, and had been for years and years and years. I didn't know it going into my interview for the gig, but she'd decided to become a counselor.

So I got her job, her desk, and she moved down the very busy hall to a even busier counseling office.

We have a pretty stable staff at Jefferson, and while I didn't know her everybody else sure did. And loved her. She was hard not to admire, and I was in awe of her from the get-go. She had built this great program that I just stumbled into, and I felt damn lucky just to be sitting in her chair at her desk, looking over her room everyday. I spent serious time trying real hard not to mess up the great thing.

And like everyone else I loved her too. Nicest person you'd ever want to meet. Unfailingly nice. Mind-alteringly nice. Nice bad counseling day or good, during horrible stretches of "Middle School is Hell" weeks, and even when the person talking to her wasn't that nice.

I was that not nice person on more than one occasion...and she never stooped to my level. She was a rock in a building full of interpersonal sand.

And then a year of so ago, she found out she had cancer. Really bad cancer. And naturally she handled the news in a way that redefines the word "aplomb". Not showy, "oooh, I have cancer", and not morose and self-pitying. Just herself being her great self.

Not knowing what to say to her in those first few days of diagnosis I stupidly told her I couldn't think of a better person to get cancer. And that looks really bad even typed now, a year or so later..but what I meant was that nobody could possibly be better equipped mentally and psychologically to handle such a horrible thing. She'd proven for years she could handle anything.

The months of chemo this and medical procedure that added up, and took their heavy physical toll. Her very best friends among the staff, including women with which I now co-teach, visited her laughing and crying in equal measure. I'd hear about those meetings, and it was so apparent how important these sessions were for everyone, especially those visiting the "patient". Even sick and getting sicker she was still counseling, still teaching strong as ever.

And then, finally, the physical wear-and-tear just got too much, as it always does at some point, even to the very, very strongest among us.

That was last Sunday. Jeanetta Braziel died last Sunday.

And tomorrow, Thursday, those who knew, love and admired Jeanetta will more than fill a church in Nob Hill. Family of course, but also folks who taught with her for decades. Former students, will also be out in force. Lots of them. And one guy who feels selfishly lucky to have inherited her chair, desk and room, but even more selfishly fortunate to have had spent at least some time around her.

She was the kind of person that makes you count the minutes you're with her, because you want to get as many as you can.

My closing is corny...but you always liked corny, Jeanetta. Besides, you're from the South, just like me.

Happy trails, Jeanetta. Happy trails.

UPDATED...NM Education Cuts Protest: Should We Play or Should We Go?

2009-10-05T19:51:00.005-06:00

Updated 10/9/09, 9:47 a.m.: Hmmm...nice weather this morning. Another possible excuse to not attend...gone. Also, for those of you driving, and, like me, dreading the whole parking in SF thing: What if we park at the 599 Rail Runner stop and ride bikes up to the clustershindig? Physical exercise AND political exercise/exorcise...

Tsk, tsk....not much of an "Update" really. Oh well, on to the previously published drivel....

Taking the idea of a "break" to its shortest meaning possible, public schools (at least in ABQ) have a "Fall Break" this upcoming Friday. It's an interesting choice of days, as the "Break" is not the Federal holiday next Monday ("Columbus Day"), and occurs during Balloon Fiesta, but not on the first weekend of the Fiesta.

Who the Hell cares, one might ask, a "Break" is a "Break" even if it's only an extra day. This is especially true as the rate of student absences skyrockets toward the peak of flu season, when it's only early October. The swirl of viruses combined with state budget shortfalls, wildly fluctuating published graduation rates and the inanity of "short-cycle assessments" has everyone crying out for a three-day weekend. Logic or federal calendar synchronicity be damned.

And while many families will use the extra day to attend the Fiesta, or frantically leave town to avoid it, public school teachers themselves have the opportunity to travel to Santa Fe Friday to attend a Noon - 4 p.m. march/rally/protest/gathering/bitchfest/media event on the subject of State Government budget cuts to K-12 education.

Right now I think I speak for about 93% of all APS teachers when I say "frankly, right this second, I would rather have a hole drilled into my head in slow-motion with a really jagged, unsharpened drill bit than waste my day off attending this march/rally, etc."

Maybe closer to 99%.

At the same time, this is like when the "Animal House" is on trial before the frat board, and Otter is about to make that "Well, you can do whatever you want to us, but we're not going to sit here and listen to you badmouth the United States of America" speech, and Delta House President Hoover says: "Don't screw around, they're serious this time!

Well, they're serious this time.

And yes that is true even if the current real situation truthfully has absolutely zero to do with "Animal House". Although, truthfully...everything has something to do with "Animal House" and vice-versa. If you ask me.

And speaking of asking me, perhaps you, dear reader, are inquiring, either silently or out loud..."Well, Scot, you going on Friday?"

And my answer is: Don't screw around, they're serious this time!

Yeah...I'm going. I could be all post-modern and say I'm really going for the good times of seeing pissed off teachers saying incredibly silly things, or the chance to "cynically blog about it", but really I'm planning on going like any other schmuck teacher who wants to change things for the better, stop a horrible action before it's enacted, yadda------yadda------yadda.

I could say I feel like Rick in "Casablanca", all squishy idealist inside rough, smoking exterior, but I don't smoke and I never had Ingrid Bergman back in Paris.

I'm just a ordinary teacher who's going to this shindig on Friday, and if you go cool, and if you're a teacher who already had vacation plans, or just wants to sleep in Friday and wash away the bad memories of "short cycle assessments", etc., that's cool, too.

Although it would be nice if you were up in Santa Fe, to help me laugh at the incredibly silly things teachers are saying (while secretly agreeing with the silly things).

C'mon, we could all hold hands and signs, while reliving marches way back when, before all the marchers spent the whole march not holding hands and not chanting "What do we want, (insert thing we want)! When do we want it, now!", instead choosing to talk on their cell phones the whole frickin' time ("oooh, honey, we're in front of the Roundhouse now...yes, I will get bread and a gallon of milk before I come home...do you want 2% or 1% milk, hey I'm marching with Marcie, do you want to say 'hi' to Marcie?").

Forget I mentioned the cell phone thing. Sales is just not my field (massive understatement there).

Teachers, just come to the shindig on Friday. Or don't. No big deal either way. Just remember your non-attendance the next time you watch "Animal House", and see/hear Otter make that "Well, you can do whatever you want to us, but we're not going to sit here and listen to you badmouth the United States of America" speech.

Hope that's a real enjoyable experience for you, non-attendees.

Everyone else, see you on Friday.

Elias Barela, Bombs, My Bad Mood and the 2009 "Recovery and Reinvestment Act"

2009-10-04T20:12:00.007-06:00

You ever have a monumentally crappy weekend, so to avoid thinking about it you spend a bunch of Internet time doing research on something having absolutely nothing to do with all the crappy things leading to your crappy weekend? While listening to opera?

Yeah, me too.

So I'm looking at the spiffy government spending sites, recovery.gov and USAspending.gov. Just the sort of nerd brain candy to mentally evade a crappy weekend. And clicking around I come across two interesting things, at least they were to me.

Over at Recovery.gov, I find that some attorney in Valencia County is getting $111,000 of "Recovery and Reinvestment Act" funds from the Small Business Administration "to assist small business concerns by providing long-term financing through the sale of debentures to the private sector". No specifics on whether this means the lawyer is getting the loan money, or is playing some role in facilitating that others get loans. Weird thing is, I look up the recipient firm, and it's run by Elias Barela, who I find just happens to be New Mexico's 8th District Representative, serving as a Democrat since 2007.
Then over at USAspending.gov I do a little database checking and find that the 10 biggest New Mexico recipients of "Recovery Act" contracts so far are in the business of:

#1 ($121 million) "Defense Environmental Cleanup"
#2 ($63 million) "Weapons Activities"
#3 ($51 million) "Weapons Activities"
#4 ($12 million) "Weapons Activities"
#5 ($10 million) "Weapons Activities"
#6 ($4 million) "Defense Environmental Cleanup"
#7 ($2.8 million) "Weapons Activities"
#8 ($2.1 million) "Weapons Activities"
#9 ($1.6 million) "Federal Buildings Fund"
#10 ($1.3 million) "Isotope Production and Distribution"

That's "URS Corporation" getting the $121 million to clean up the Defense and Energy Department's messes, with "Los Alamos National Security LLC" accounting for most of the "weapons activities" (i.e. creating the messes).

Am I surprised that the "Recovery and Reinvestment Act" seems to suffer from the same corruption and moral bankruptcy as every other public and private enterprise in recent memory? No.

I am a bit surprised that having spiffy new websites like recovery.gov and USAspending.gov to quickly catch such questionable and unfortunate expenditures hasn't seem to slow these practices down. Not at all.

Now I'm sure there's somebody out there who can correct me on all this, and convince me that the award to Rep. Barela is not only completely above-board, but constitutes a vital supply of funds to maintain a vitally needed and all-around vital service. I'm also sure there's an explanation about why so much "Recovery and Reinvestment Act" money is going to the same Military/Industrial jokers who have made a fabulous living off the government for decades.

Maybe those well-founded explanations will also help distract me from my monumentally crappy weekend. I look forward to hearing them. Until then, it's back to "Rodelinda" and more crappy thoughts.

P.S.: What Frank Rich said. I know I'm already bugged, but this crap is bugging me. Good to see it's bugging Mr. Rich as well. I wonder if he had a crappy weekend.

Post #800

2009-10-02T06:35:00.003-06:00

This is post number 800 for Burque Babble. Compared to many blogs out there, no big deal (how many does NewMexiKen have at this point, 4.2 million?). But I'm an obsessive counter, so reaching another hundred gets inexplicably "celebrated".

Speaking of counting, one of these days I'm going to copy/paste all the posts, throw them into Word and get a total "word count". I then plan on consuming several beers as I depressingly consider the fact that my "word count" most surely surpasses that of all the Dan Brown books put together.

And Dan Brown has 73 sextillion dollars and I have, less than 73 sextillion dollars.

But is that the point? More to the point, has a single sentence here scaled the literary heights of Mr. Brown and his highly-crafted prose dedicated to entertaining while informing readers about the mysteries of arcane religious organizations and their practices throughout history?

The sad fact is no. For example, I don't think I've used the term "Illuminati" more than three times in all the thousands of words and 800 posts here. I should work on that.

In point of fact, Burque Babble hasn't really changed the face of publishing, hit the New York Times Bestseller List, or even achieved its real purpose of both altering the way children are taught in this country, and the manner in which the "customers" of public education (students, parents, taxpayers) are informed of what is really going on in the process of serving those customers.

I guess there's two ways of looking at that: 1. epic fail; 2. "work in progress".

Burque Babble is a "work in progress". I would say it's "continuously improving", but I can only go so far when it comes to meaningless buzzphrases. So...Burque Babble is a "work in progress". Like cold fusion, or spinning straw into gold.

We'll get there, someday (as sung by Tom Waits)...

Thanks to everyone who has come along for at least part of the ride, so far. Without you, dear readers, Burque Babble would be nothing. Or even more nothing than it currently is. It would be less than nothing. For the only thing worse than "blogging", is "blogging" to an audience of zero.

Thanks for helping me avoid that particular embarrassment, readers. Sorry for all the typos, misspellings, and stupid ideas in the last 800 posts. Sorry in advance for all the mistakes to come.

There will be plenty more of them. I promise.

My Single Favorite AYP-related Newspaper Sentence Ever

2009-10-01T16:38:00.003-06:00

Although both districts generally were high-performing, their grades slipped to “Continuous Improvement” — equal to a “C” rating — because of a single measure called Adequate Yearly Progress.
--from "Limit proposed for how far a school can slip on report card". William Hershey. Dayton (Ohio) Daily News. 10.01.09

This one sentence has it all. Buzzwords, contradictions, and a general feeling of "What the Hell are you talking about here?" It's like every meeting, slide show, and badly made video on standardized testing I've ever seen condensed into a single sentence.

Congrats, Mr. William Hershey of the Dayton Daily News. By explaining nothing you have explained everything. And no, I'm not joking or being sarcastic. The sentence above really does explain it all.

And that's the problem.

P.S.: If a school in Ohio "slips to 'continuous improvement'" can it then rise up to "maintaining mediocrity"? Or would it then need to "continuously unimprove"? What about Ohio schools already getting "A" and "B" grades? Are they already in an official state of "continuous unimprovement"? As in "Thank God we don't have to do this 'Continuous Improvement' bullshit anymore!"? The questions are many.

CSI: Autopsy of an "Assessment"

2009-09-30T05:36:00.003-06:00

As mentioned here on myriad occasions, there are two types of mandated tests given these days in New Mexico schools:

Standards-Based Assessments (SBAs): Federally mandated via "No Child Left Behind". Determines whether a school/district meets "Adequate Yearly Progress". Some states have their own self-created tests and acronyms for these, but New Mexico can't afford its own name/acronym, so it uses a generic alternative. Is administered over roughly two weeks in March/April. Is what people read about in the paper and use as evidence to tell each other whether a school is "good" or "bad". Individual scores unimportant to the point that many folks (student/parents/teachers) don't even know how individual students scored. Widely viewed as villain in the theatrical production known as "standardized testing".
Short-Cycle Assessments (a.k.a. in 2009 "DBA"): Vaguely mandated (State, District, obscure public official who nobody really knows and is no longer at the State/District) Reading and Math test given three times per school year. Unlike SBA is focused on the individual student. Results used to place non-proficient students (cutoff percentages always vague and changing) in "Response to Intervention" classes. "Response to Intervention" (RTI) generally agreed to be the single stupidest public education buzzphrase (in a very, very tough competition). RTI classes vary widely, but often lead to remedial students being deprived of electives. Placement of students via short-cycle assessments is highly contentious, devoid of clear district/state mandates and features no "exit strategy" (i.e., how does the kid get out of the "RTI" class?) component.

The above is included to hopefully make a long autopsy short. As a new-fangled "Language Arts" teacher (after years of teaching "Literature"...another long story, don't ask), I get to administer the short-cycle Reading assessment to my students. Here's how that's going so far:

The District delayed getting the test materials to the schools for quite some time.
Upon delivery of the materials in mid-September, schools were informed they would have to make copies of test materials.
The "testing window" was originally published as September 21 - October 2 (two weeks or ten days of school).
Upon receipt of the test booklets, teachers noticed that this year's assessment was going to take longer than in previous years.
Right as the "testing window" opened, the District altered the "testing window", suddenly shortening it to October 1st.
Teachers, who tend to...like...plan stuff in advance, suddenly had to figure out how administer a longer test in a shorter testing window.
Meanwhile, APS and other schools around the state report higher than normal absenteeism due to an early cold/flu season.

Put it all together and you've got a truly "high-stakes" test for students (unlike the SBA) administered in a fashion usually reserved for "low-stakes" activities like drunken nickle-dime-quarter poker games. No, that's an insult. Drunken poker games are typically planned far, far better than this.

And, as noted above, we get to do this three times this school year, on top of the two weeks or so of SBA testing. Given the longer time devoted to these Short-Cycle Assessments, we're now talking:

Roughly 10 days of SBA testing
At least two days of short-cycle stuff per go-round
Times three
So that's another six days of school, minimum (some students/classes are taking longer)
for a total of 16 days of school
That 16 days out of 180, or about 9 percent of the entire school year devoted to standardized testing (of course, not including the actual classroom quizzes/testing based on what is getting taught in the "we don't teach to the test, honest we don't" classroom).
Added together with all the typical assemblies, parent-teacher conference days, etc., you're talking roughly, what, 150 or so days of actual instruction?

I don't really watch "CSI" or any of those forensics TV shows, so I don't know what they do when the investigators finish their autopsies and stuff. I'm guessing they zip up the body, and tell the highly attractive detectives Suspect X is guilty because of some carpet fibers found in Suspect X's risotto or something.

Well, we don't really carpet fibers to tell who Suspect X is when it comes to the murder of quality teaching here. Just like in those shows where the "helpful" (and attractive) "guest star" character is the actual murderer, the murderer here is viewed by many as both "helpful" and "attractive".

As Mr. Sting (i.e. Sumner) once sang: "Murder by numbers....one, two, three. As easy to learn as your A, B, C".

Ten Reasons I Hate The Balloon Fiesta, Repackaged For Blu-ray 2009 Edition

2009-09-29T06:02:00.006-06:00

Photo purloined from official "Mass Happiness" ABQ Balloon "Fiesta" website.
Given all the aggravation, I figure they owe us a free photo or two.

Looking back over the past four plus years of this blog thing, I think I've only missed pointing out how much I despise the upcoming "Fiesta" once. In 2007, I was evidently too busy complaining about "Columbus Day" and the upcoming City Council elections (remember Joanie Griffin and Paulette de Pascal?) to even mention the damn thing.

But going back to

2008

2006

and the "original gangsta" edition in

2005

there I am making a fool of myself for trying to make a fool of a foolish, yet popular event.

This year, I think I'll just leave it be.

Of course that might change when the inevitable occurs and the "WHAMMMMMMMMMPPPPPPPPP" combo sound of gas releasing and flames shooting directly overhead causes my dogs and farm animals to go into their annual panic. Cause you know nothing means "annual celebration" like colorful pastel objects inducing air-borne panic.

Whatever.

Instead of wasting my time and yours this October, I think I'll use the blogging minutes making some phone calls. Phone calls to bed & breakfasts at least 200 miles from Balloon Fiesta Ground Zero for some reservations sometime in the next two weeks of local Hell.

I hope these places take dogs, cats, horses and goats.

Stay sane "Fiesta" haters out there. Years of experience tell me we'll most likely survive the 2009 "Fiesta" as well, gritting our teeth all the while.

Marty & Bill & Veronica & Winston

2009-09-27T19:40:00.007-06:00

Okay, now that I have your attention through the use of "hot" New Mexico first names, let me first waste your time by giving you what I feel is the single most informative 211-word analysis of standardized testing I've ever read. And I've been wasting lots and lots of time lately reading tons of standardized testing analysis.

I promise I'll get to the Bill, Marty, Veronica, Winston stuff in a minute.

The quoted passage below comes from a NY Times Op/Ed by Todd Farley, former standardized testing grader and author of an upcoming book about his experiences called Making the Grades: My Misadventures in the Standardized Testing Industry. I'll admit it, I'm such a total Standards-Based Assessments (SBA) nerd at this point that this book title appeals to me like "G.I. Joe"-meets "Transformers"-meets-"Anything Featuring Nearly Naked Women" appeals to a 13-year old boy.

Anyway, here's the passage:

A few years later, still a part-time worker, I had a similar experience. For one project our huge group spent weeks scoring ninth-grade movie reviews, each of us reading approximately 30 essays an hour (yes, one every two minutes), for eight hours a day, five days a week. At one point the woman beside me asked my opinion about the essay she was reading, a review of the X-rated movie “Debbie Does Dallas.” The woman thought it deserved a 3 (on a 6-point scale), but she settled on that only after weighing the student’s strong writing skills against the “inappropriate” subject matter. I argued the essay should be given a 6, as the comprehensive analysis of the movie was artfully written and also made me laugh my head off.

All of the 100 or so scorers in the room soon became embroiled in the debate. Eventually we came to the “consensus” that the essay deserved a 6 (“genius”), or 4 (well-written but “naughty”), or a zero (“filth”). The essay was ultimately given a zero.

This kind of arbitrary decision is the rule, not the exception. The years I spent assessing open-ended questions convinced me that large-scale assessment was mostly a mad scramble to score tests, meet deadlines and rake in cash.

There's actually more in the Op/Ed, but I already feel bad for copy/pasting so much of it. Things about "grading" tests while in "happy hour mode" and stuff. And that's just the Op/Ed....the book should be...oooh, I'm so excited.

But not too excited to forget my promise to provide a thought or two about Marty, Bill, Veronica & Winston.

What do these four people have in common, besides being the sort of political "celebrities" that make simple use of their first name enough in that Cher, Madonna, Manny sort of way? Actually, I'm thinking of them as two couples: Marty & Bill, and now Veronica & Winston.

I've never read a 1,500 word newspaper article headlined "Marty and Bill Hate Each Other's Guts", but we've all read plenty of sly references and such that can pretty much be boiled down to the fake headline above. I could be wrong, but I doubt these two guys regularly meet at Spectators to watch Monday Night Football together. Probably no exchange of Christmas cards or "Secret Santa" stuff.

Well, reading all the recent stories concerning the State Public Education Department (PED) and Albuquerque Public Schools (APS) has me wondering if perhaps Veronica and Winston have quickly developed a Marty/Bill level of shared revulsion already.

Take the graduation rate SNAFU. The PED announces figures that everyone thinks are too low, the District comes out with new, higher, figures, the PED "blasts APS" (annoying outdated Sports Desk video-promo or $ required) for having lousy record-keeping, and the District fires back saying the PED numbers "had been harmful to the District's morale and reputation".

Whoa.

And this is all well and good in providing needed levity to school teachers around the State of New Mexico. Trust me...this stuff is seen by teachers as high comedy nearly equal to reading NYT Op/Eds about people grading standardized tests while smashed. The spat also provides insights into "my world". Again, trust me...it's like this all the time. It really is. Honest.

So far, so good. Entertainment and insight into dysfunction, all in one sloppy statistical package.

But there's a problem here. I hesitate to rain on this hilarious Edu-Reality Show ("Real Educational Officials of New Mexico", "Are You Able To Count Graduates Better Than An Educational Official?", "The Biggest Statistical Loser"), but there's one VERY BIG REASON why Veronica and Winston (PED and APS) need to get over themselves. A big financial reason.

We're currently smack dab in the middle of the proposal-writing process for all the unprecedented and unprecedentedly cash-rich federal grants flowing from the Obama Administration. Millions and even billions of dollars. Money I've been boring regular readers here about for months.

Given this situation, it is imperative that we NM education types are all on the same page, working together to create well-coordinated grant proposals likely to win federal approval, while also putting our absolutely best, most professional face forward to help that process be as successful as possible.

But here's Veronica and Winston sniping at each other like Kate and Jon Gosselin** about a bunch of graduation rate statistics we ALL know are bogus to begin with.

Not good, people.

Not terribly professional, regardless of how funny it is. I may be wrong, and Veronica and Winston may actually be getting along like a house a' fire, sending each other Twitter messages and emailing each other five times a day. APS' "Research, Development and Accountability" (RDA) Department and the State PED Accountability office might be meeting for drinks every Friday for "Happy Hour", but it sure as Hell doesn't look like it.

And as a state desperately in need of getting its hands on all the Obama edu-cash it can, it would be a shame if any animosity or lingering resentment from our District/State educational officials resulted in weaker, unfunded proposals. Just imagine the finger-pointing then.

Just think of the Reality Show depths possible then.

So stop it, you two, and that goes for everyone at both PED and APS. Stop your bitching, and go get us some money. We need laughs, sure, but we need cold, hard cash even more.

*It occurs to me that non-Edunerd New Mexicans may not know that "Veronica" is Veronica Garcia, Secretary of the NM Public Education Department and "Winston" is Winston Brooks, Albuquerque Public Schools Superintendent. I apologize for making the assumption everybody would just know that.

**I truly have no idea who Kate and Jon Gosselin are outside of my students mentioning them. I apologize if the Veronica/Winston, Kate/Jon analogy is unfair, doesn't make sense and, most importantly, isn't funny. Maybe I should have used other reality show pairings, but I must admit I don't know any reality show pairings.

Dear New Republican Friends of Public Education

2009-09-24T06:09:00.005-06:00

Dear Republicans and Republican Party:

I know we haven't hung out much recently. I've been real bad about returning phone calls, getting together with you or even acknowledging you exist. I know I've had the tendency, pretty much ever since I was old enough to know there was a difference between "Democrat" and "Republican", to shriek in horror whenever I run into a position of yours.

I don't want to dwell on the past, or thinking/logic and all that stuff, but your positions on things like health care, immigration, abortion, foreign policy, "marriage", religion, global warming, gun control abstinence-only education, and U.S.A! U.S.A.! U.S.A.! all make me want to barf. Truth be told, they still do.

There...I said it. And I said it not only because it's still true, but because as new friends we need to understand each other. We need to communicate.

And I'm here today to talk to you, dear Republicans, about a way we can start a beautiful friendship. Admittedly, it probably will never turn into one of those friendships where I call you up and we go out and have a beer. I doubt it will lead to us going bowling together. I really can't see us emailing each other about "our day", and how we "feel" about events going on in our lives.

But that's not to say these things are impossible.

In the next year or so Congress is finally going to get around to reauthorizing No Child Left Behind (NCLB). You know, that thing sponsored back in the early aughts by two people you despise: Ted Kennedy and George W. Bush. Well, it's going to come up again after this health care fiasco gets settled and NCLB reauthorization offers us a chance to get together, so to speak.

You see, NCLB has things about it I hate, and you hate. And nothing brings folks together like hate. Now you're probably thinking at this point, "hey, if Scot hates something it must be a damn good idea and I need to support it 100%!". Trust me, that's my default reaction too.

But listen for a second. NCLB is a federal program that mandates educational policy to states and local school districts.

Let me say that again, slower for those Republicans who aren't the brightest star in the political constellation. NCLB gives.... power... to the FEDERAL (evil, sinister, enemy) government over state and local (good 'ol boys, drinking buddies, folks that look the same as you) governments. Need I say it...it's SOCIALISM. NCLB IS SOCIALISM.

Okay, that was a cheap card to play, and I apologize to any of my heretofore "lefty" friends who just read the above paragraph and are freaking out.

But to reiterate, dear Republicans, all you need to know about this NCLB thing is socialism, anti-States' Rights, Ted Kennedy and George W. Bush. I won't bore you with the problems I find in NCLB, as it would just raise suspicions and muddy the simple waters. Just keep repeating the mantra, "Ted Kennedy, socialism, States' Rights, and that traitor Bush who ended up yanking up the deficit like he was some commie FDR or something...Ted Kennedy, socialism...and that..."

Alright, I admit that's a pretty lousy mantra. Hard to start foaming at the mouth "teabagger style" with phrases like "yanking up the deficit"...I tell ya what, you make up your own mantra. You're good at that simplistic, illogical slogan thing better than us Lefty types anyway.

Just make sure you have "States' Rights" in there. Over and over. Think about it. And I'm not making this up or trying to fool you. For a change. I'm telling you the truth here. NCLB is anti-States' Rights. I'll swear it on a stack of Communist Manifestos.

Dear new friends, consider the above a small, humble olive branch offered to you from a poor soul just trying to find common ground in a minefield of divisive rancor. A simple gift of political thought that might lead, maybe, to the best kind of bi-partisanship there is: Destroying stuff.

You and me, Republicans, we can blow up NCLB. Blow it up real good. Just like you like it. Just like on "Dukes of Hazzard", or in those Terminator movies you guys love so much. You and I, hand in hand in a concerted act of well-intentioned demolition.

This might be the only chance we ever get to hold political hands, Repub friends. Take my hand. Just don't squeeze too hard....we might want to go bowling later.

Nothing Like Some Coltrane (and Elvin Jones) After a Hard Day at Work

2009-09-22T19:20:00.003-06:00

Some days are harder than others, and some days are bad enough to require some John Coltrane (preferably with Elvin Jones on drums). Finding video from my favorite period (the not quite so screechy late 50's) is pretty darn hard, but here's a section of "Impressions" from 1963, I believe....

Dig Jones in that (flannel?) shirt as part of a wonderful Coltrane/Jones two-shot about four minutes in. Beautiful...

There...the day is now officially survived. We move on.

P.S.: And if you prefer your Coltrane a bit more melodic, may I suggest an immediate listen to "Traneing In" from 1957? Not as famous as some, and with only the perfectly acceptable Art Taylor on drums instead of the outtasight Elvin Jones, but sublime nonetheless. Paul Chambers on bass....yum. Work..what work?

It's Fall, It's Cooler and I Still Don't Have My Damn Test Scores

2009-09-22T05:32:00.002-06:00

Today gets us to Day 23 of School Year 2009-2010. Classes have been going on just over a calendar month now. The Autumnal Equinox has come and gone, and the deliciously cooler weather means I'll need another layer on my bike commute this morning.

And I still don't have my damn scores from the standardized tests administered back in March.

We were told the individualized results would be in our ultra-modern web-based database by September 20th. Well, it's September 22nd now, and where the Hell are they?

We are constantly told about how "high-stakes" these tests are, how pivotal they are to school improvement, how their disaggregation is essential to understanding what works and doesn't work with our students.

But that's quite obviously bullshit, because if these tests were really "high stakes" we'd have the results by now. We would have had them months ago, or at least well before the 23rd day of the next school year. We would quite certainly not have a system with an ultra-modern web-based database dependent on what must be two lowly-paid folks data entering thousands of results by hand into a 1983 Commodore 64 computer.

So the next time someone appears at my school to tell my staff how "high stakes" these tests are, I will join the multitudes who roll their eyes and grumble into their coffee. I give up trying to tell any of my colleagues that there is some usefulness to this madness. You've convinced me, District/NM PED: it just doesn't matter.

So I've officially stopped caring one iota about this testing charade. Keep the same unethical system of testing identified "learning disabled" kids with the same test as those not identified as "learning disabled". I don't care. Keep the scores coming over six months late. Hell, don't give them to us at all. Nobody really cares anyway.

Still, I feel such a chump because it's very, very obvious you guys stopped caring quite some time ago. What a sucker I've been. Writing all this crap about AYP this and confidence interval that. Researching the differing testing rules and regulations between the States...what a pointless exercise.

We're really just going through some half-ass motions until this "standardized testing" fad passes, and we all move on to another shiny pedagogical object to waste our inadequate funding and attention upon.

Honestly, I just wish I wasn't the single stupidest teacher out there. The idealistic one who just now woke up on a deliciously cool morning in Fall, both literally and figuratively.

P.S.: I realize two things: 1. 99.999999% of all possible readers to this post don't care about its subject matter, because, A: They aren't teachers; B: They are teachers who already wisely stopped caring about this stuff years ago; 2. The scores might hit our ultra-modern web-based database later this morning, or tomorrow, or the next day. So this post might have a May Fly's lifespan...but still, does getting the scores today, tomorrow or the next day really alter the well-known fact (obvious to all but me for years) that none of this really matters to anybody?

''I try to be smart when I'm using my phone when I'm driving.''

2009-09-19T10:51:00.005-06:00

Great quote in today's NYT continuing series on the idiocy of cell phoning/texting/tweeting while behind the wheel.

The 25 year-old who made the quote headlined above is also heard to have made the following statements:

"I try to be smart when I'm cleaning my loaded gun with the barrel pointed at my chest."

"I try to be smart when I'm cooking up and shooting heroin while flying an single-engine airplane in a snowstorm."

"I try to be smart when I'm holding a lightning rod during a thunderstorm while climbing a 14er in Colorado."

"I try to be smart when I'm at the zoo streaking through the lion and grizzly bear enclosures with slabs of bloody raw meat attached to my naked body."

"I try to be smart when I smother my sleeping bag with fish guts before going to sleep in my tent at Denali National Park."

"I try to be smart while taking a United States Citizenship Test while going to high school in Oklahoma."*

Okay I'll stop now. Continue having a fine weekend, everybody and remember...the ocean just off the U.S. East Coast is NOT the Indian Ocean. Although it would be very, very cool if that were the case (except for the tsunamis).

*Acknowledgments to Wonkette for the "borrowed" graphic above, but they actually "borrowed" it from some outfit called the "Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs", which was pretty cool in pointing out how d-u-m-b your average Oklahoman ~~person~~ high school student is. Although we must really be fair and admit that students in every other state of the Union would probably do just about as poorly. Well, maybe not quite that bad.

AYP: Down the Rabbit Hole Edition

2009-09-18T06:24:00.003-06:00

Dateline: Pennsylvania

The Keystone State will be giving its Special Education students a different standardized test starting in 2010. As this story inelegantly puts it, this is being done because "Special Education students generally perform below their biological grade level, officials said."

First time I've seen the word "biological" used in this manner. Not quite sure that word works, but then again "chronological" doesn't have much of a useful ring to it either.

Anyway, the Alice in Wonderland aspect of the plan isn't biological but, as per normal with all things AYP, statistical. It is this (sorry, long quote ahead...blogger emphasis in bold):

Once the modified PSSA tests are used beginning in 2010, there will be no limit on the number of special education students who can take the exams in each school. However, only 2 percent of the satisfactory scores from the modified tests will count toward the school's proficiency rating when AYP status is being determined, state education officials said.

The remaining results, regardless of how well the special education students performed, will be factored in with the scores of mainstream students who scored in the below basic range, officials said. Below basic suggests a student is performing below his or her grade level.

Given the limitations on how results from the modified exam will be used, local educators wonder if the changes will really make a difference.

"At this point, it's more of a gesture than a solution," Council Rock Superintendent Mark Klein said. "I don't know if it goes far enough and takes into consideration the significant difficulties the special education students face."

So to recap: Pennsylvania Special Ed kids will take an easier test more realistically designed for their identified abilities, but 98% of the Special Ed. kids who get this test will be marked as failing for AYP purposes the second these students receive the easier/shorter/more appropriate test.

And you know you're truly in a Through A Looking Glass situation with White Rabbits and Cheshire Cats when you read the paragraphs above and think...."hey, that kinda makes sense".

Hey, that Pennsylvania solution kinda makes sense.

It makes sense to give Special Education students a more appropriate test, even if you have to count them all as "failing" for even taking the damn thing, because the whole standardized testing thing is itself a surrealistic sham. It's full of Fish-Footman and Frog-Footman, tea parties and Mad Hatters.

What's one more tab of nonsensical acid in a giant punchbowl of spiked insanity?

Or something like that.

Meanwhile, speaking of Theatre of the Absurd, I'll close with reference to another Pennsylvania school situation. A school district is trying to close down a charter school. Lawyers for both the district and the charter are using AYP results as argumentation. Think of the possibilities:

Vast Amount of Statistical Interpretation Possibilities + Attorneys = Endless Costly Fun For the Whole Taxpaying Family!

And speaking of family fun, have a good weekend everybody. Remember, avoid the giant punchbowl of spiked insanity. Especially the brown punch. Avoid the brown punch. In fact, it's probably best to always avoid brown punch, now that I think about it.

That Baldrige "Continuous Improvement" Stuff Is Working Wonders I Tell Ya!

2009-09-16T22:03:00.004-06:00

Back in May I posted a little something about the Long Beach (California) Unified School District receiving a grant in 2004 to...well, I'll just repost the same story snippet I used back then:

The Broad Foundation recently awarded $1.14 million to the Long Beach Unified School District to expand the district’s award-winning use of Baldrige strategies for continuous improvement at schools and central offices.

The three-year grant will help to increase use of the techniques throughout the district, including elementary, middle, K-8 and high school classrooms.

I recalled that grant as I ran across a story today on how Long Beach Unified did on their 2009 AYPs:

In the Long Beach Unified School District, 44 percent of schools met federal standards this year, down from about 50 percent last year.

Statewide, about half of California schools this year met federal targets set as part of the No Child Left Behind Act.

Now that's Continuous Improvement folks! California schools not using sophisticated, state-of-the-art, fantabulous Baldrige strategies... "about half" pass. Long Beach, with its double-secret Baldrige ninja throwing stars of Continuous Improvement...."44 percent".

Yowza! With eye-popping results like that I can hardly wait to experience 300,000 hours of externally mandated Baldrige-filled staff meetings at my school! Continuously Improve me baby!

Baldrige Fever: Catch It!

Standardized Testing Research In Progress

2009-09-16T06:08:00.002-06:00

While mired in my recent look at APS middle school websites (a task now, finally, finished) I took breaks by looking into what is, I think, a little-known fact.

Back in 2008, The N.M. Public Education Department made a proposal to the U.S. Department of Education. The proposal centered on inclusion of an "Individual Student Academic Change" (ISAC) growth model calculation (proposal documentation here), instead of the "let's just look at schools year by year and see how many kids are proficient" model that's been in place since No Child Left Behind was created.

Now the proposal was rejected, for reasons outlined in this massively bureaucratic "decision letter", but I find intriguing both the proposal, and the fact that 99.9% percent of those in NM K-12 education field have no idea this proposal ever existed.

In one of my typical half-assed research occurrences, I can't even tell you exactly how I ran across this thing. I think it started when I went to the U.S. Department of Ed. site looking to hook my financial teeth into some of the billions of new dollars the DoEd is filling everybody's wheelbarrow with these days. One thing led to another and pretty soon I'm finding an obscure remark buried by NM PED Secretary Veronica Garcia in her AYP 2008 "Why Our Scores Suck" (WOSS) report:

In 2008, the PED submitted a growth model proposal. Unfortunately, under proposal guidelines,
New Mexico had a difficult time making the growth-based model fair for our small schools and our proposal was not accepted.

Now I know it's very possible every single person in New Mexico already knows all this, and that I've basically uncovering the patently obvious here. That happens all the time. But if so I sure haven't heard anybody talking about it in the last 18 months.

And that's a bit strange because just about every single K-12 education colleague I've spoken to in the last 18 months hasn't taken more than four seconds from our intitial greeting before apoplectically gryating into a long tirade about how much "standardized testing is Satan" and "it's all a sham" and "I swear I'm going to quit and become a tax attorney or night manager at Wendy's because of this standardized testing crap".

Yet here's a proposal from our good 'ol Public Education Department that would have, at least on the surface, gone quite a ways toward making the whole AYP/standardized testing thing make sense.

In fact, it's the kind of proposal (and rejection) that if I was PED Secretary I'd want every single teacher, school adminstrator and janitor to know about every second of every working day. I would make constant references to it as proof the PED was doing something about an unfair system and would most certainly do so again the very next chance we get. In fact, if I were PED Secretary I'd put the following message on my voice mail and make sure everyone who called me got to hear:

"Hi, I'm the Secretary of the New Mexico Public Education Department. And yes the term 'Secretary' is antiquated and sort of bothers me, but I'm in charge here and that's what counts. Did you know we made a proposal to blow up the stupid way AYP is calculated and replace it with a system that actually addresses individual student needs? Well we did. And don't you forget it. Meanwhile, I'm gone right now trying to actually blow up a federal building because they turned us down. Bastards. So leave a message."

I've sent out a few emails to folks in the past few weeks trying to get more information, but, to be honest, haven't heard much of anything back. I also sent an email to Senator Cynthia Nava, guru of all things education in the NM Legislature, but she hasn't written me back either. I wrote to her in particular about...

S 156a ALTERNATIVE SCHOOL ACCOUNTABILITY PILOT (PASSED/S)(PASSED/H),
Sen. Nava — creates a six-year voluntary school accountability pilot project based on a
student growth model for grades 4 through 8 that is separate from but complementary to the
existing school accountability system; and phases in the project over two years. (For the
LESC)

that I found looking through "Bill Finder" at the NM Legislative site. Hmm..."growth model....pilot project..grades 4 through 8...." Hmmm....

The bottom line is that I'm just like Dylan's "Mr. Jones" (as per normal). Something is most definitely happening and I don't know what it is.

Which is fine and normal...but it does strike me that it would seem to be in quite a few people's best interest for myself and my K-12 educational colleagues to be informed about this stuff. It would seem that, if properly educated on the issue, that my colleagues and I would be enthused and inspired that something was being done/attempted. It would seem to be quite the Public Relations bonanza for a Department woefully short of PR success.

But what do I know. Truth be told, not a Hell of a lot. Sure would like to know more though.

P.S.: Attention middle school teachers: Did you know that neither the State nor Feds absolutely require any sort of assessments for grades 3-8. Well, that's what this long, long document (look at Attachment 1) from the NM Legislative Study Committee appears to indicate. I say we pile up all the Gates, A2L/DBA and SBA tests for middle schoolers on the school soccer field and set them on fire. Today.

APS and Facebook: The Uncool Meets the Perhaps Even Less Cool

2009-09-15T17:26:00.002-06:00

Friends are giving me unmitigated, and wholly deserved, grief about "joining" Facebook. Yes, I'm "on" Facebook. Yes, I for quite some time railed against this service only to recently, hypocritically, "join" it.

I offer no defense for this lapse in judgment, and only ask: can someone tell me what the big deal is with this "service"? After about a month I still don't get it, or why it was supposedly worth a billion dollars at one point.

Meanwhile, I see now that the Albuquerque Public Schools has a Facebook "presence".

Like I said...I don't get Facebook. If both I and APS are joining this thing it must be very, VERY uncool to join.

Meanwhile, one can easily speculate that this Facebook thing is part of the "new look" for APS and that "social networking" will be a big part of APS.edu Version 2.0 (Emergence From 1993).

Which is surely another sign that both "social networking" and Facebook have jumped the shark, if, in fact, it is possible for things that were never very good to, indeed, "jump the shark".

APS is to technology as Chris Kattan was to "Saturday Night Live", as killing Adriana was to "The Sopranos". Who knows if Facebook will even survive this.

Reviewing APS Middle School Websites: Volume VIII, Let's All Hum Europe's "The Final Countdown"

2009-09-15T05:36:00.002-06:00

If all good things must come to an end, really bad things must really come to an end. Like immediately.

And so it is with our reviewing of APS middle school websites. What began as a simple, and simplistic, attempt to make a point has taken on a rather dark and lengthy life of its own. Yes, I knew there were 27 APS middle schools going into this thing. But little did I know that going to these 27 sites would be so psychologically damaging. So soul-crushing.

Long distance runners speak of "hitting the wall". Well, I hit the wall here about 20 schools ago. Ever since roughly John Adams MS it's been a slog of ultra-marathon proportions. I need a website PowerBar....I need some fluids....I need to see a finish line.

And there it is, shimmering before us. The end. Let's "break the tape" on this thing. Let's "kick", go slam some oranges and get a massage.

For those who haven't paced me during this shindig, it's a simple 1 - 10 rating scale, with:

1 = bonking to the point of bodily evacuations and collapse upon the roadway

10 = overtaking the Kenyan contingent and winning the NYC Marathon

26. Washington Middle School. Rating: 1.5

I seriously feel like Krusty the Clown at this point. "Oh buddy. This I don't need." Yes, at this point in the reviewing process I feel like a misanthropic clown with a heart condition. But we move past this first "gut" reaction to the WMS homepage and move onward.

The Washington MS site has some stuff on the homepage. A declaration about its "Dual Language" school status, which is cool. A link to the "Dress Code" and a "Supply List". Fine. An announcement about a flamenco program. Interesting.

And then you have some links to some other internal pages, and that's where things go wrong. Just as is the case at pretty much all the other middle school websites. A few links ("teacher resources" for instance) have at least some information on them, but others, like the faculty and class pages, are almost entirely bereft.

Sitting lonely as the world's last passenger pigeon perches the class webpage for a Mr. Mulder, 7th Grade Science teacher. I would personally like to applaud Mr. Mulder for being the ONLY teacher with a class webpage at WMS. I acknowledge him for several reasons, not the least of which is the almost certain fact somebody (or more than one somebody) at his school has asked him "why would you want to have a class webpage?"

Mr. Mulder, I humbly and sincerely honor you as someone willing to stand alone on the frozen field of website notoriety. I looked at your website, Mr. Mulder, learned your first name is Don and that you served in the Air Force and Navy. Learning such things reminded me that it would be nice to know a little more about your many colleagues at WMS. Like their names. Or their email addresses. Anything.

27. Wilson Middle School. Rating: 1

Only fitting we end up at another "Professional Innovations" website. Other than noting that the few staff members who have webpages at Wilson have bizarre non-functioning links to MSN and Yahoo pages, I think I'll just dispense with the usual tirade against "Professional Innovations" and make a few closing comments.

Closing (Finally...Yeah!!!!!) Comments:

By the way, Wilson's website is lousy, too.
Readers will have noticed I tend to focus on the class/faculty/staff pages at these websites. Why? Well, it's not because I'm trying for a "gotcha", making fun of these places in a vulnerable area. I know staff turnover is high, and that keeping up-to-date with the many changes is difficult. But not EVERY SINGLE STAFFMEMBER is replaced every school year. Plenty of middle school teachers stay at the same place for 15, 20, 25 years. Yet, still nothing or a frustratingly close next-to-nothing from many of them. Why?
And don't give me that "well, our kids and their parents are poor and can't afford the Internet". That act is tired. I don't have a number in front of me, but the percentage of internet-connected homes is much, much higher than when many of these websites were last updated.
And I know the demands of teaching and administration make little things like updating a webpage seem inconsequential. I know. I'm a teacher.
And I know school "technology coordinators" are very busy people, with little time for website update.
But those are poor reasons to have websites last updated in 2007.
And yes, having an updated website IS important. Really. I know it wasn't that important in the days of Geocities vanity webpages and Mosaic 2.0.
But...well...you, dear reader, are on the Internet...you know.
But somehow these schools DON'T KNOW. And one thing they don't know is that they have all these 8th grade kids just sitting around as "classroom aides" who would LOVE to update some webpages. That some geeky staffmembers would be thrilled to have updated pages if only someone would tell them how to connect to the school website. That there are millions of website creation tools infinitely better than "Professional Innovations" that wouldn't cost anybody anything to use.

Alright. I'm finally done. Time to go to school 90 seconds early and update my class webpage. Thanks for sticking this ultra-marathon out, dear reader. I don't know if all of this has/will have a pimple on a butt's worth of impact on anything, but perhaps a point has been made. And remade and remade and remade and....

Reviewing APS Middle School Websites: Volume VII, A Nerd's Birthday Bash

2009-09-12T09:35:00.003-06:00

Some people celebrate a birthday with a party. Others take a long hike celebrating the glory that is a life well-lived.

I'm spending this morning slamming coffee, sprinting between Euro soccer games on ESPN360 and looking at a few more APS middle school websites.

And they say I don't know how to party....

To recap, over the last two ~~centuries~~ weeks we've examined in brief, yet highly divergent, detail the up and downs of these websites in alphabetical order. We've laughed, we've cried...we've mostly cried. The websites have generally been ~~projectile-vomit inducing~~ not so great.

Given the birthday morning, we'll evaluate our sites today on the following 1 - 10 scale:

1 = an Arsenal "own goal" that bounces off the post and hits the goalie in the back of the head, ending up in his own net

10 = Franc Ribéry and Bayern Munich today versus Dortmund (5-1). I realize I'm speaking to a very, very small audience of those in ABQ who care about this...but Ribéry is pretty darn good.

School 23. Tony Hillerman Middle School. Rating: 5 (actually an Incomplete at present)

Aaaahh..that new school smell. It's like taking that new IBook out of the box and spending 10 minutes just sniffing a 3-D rectangle of white plastic (as my classroom aides did the other day). Times infinity.

The THMS site is truly in a "honeymoon period" of smells and site. Actually I just made up the smell part, but everything is so squeaky new on these Google Sites-created pages you can almost catch the aroma.

One aspect of this newness is that the rancid stench of outdated stuff has yet to appear. Ancient information from 2006 can't show up on a site/school that wasn't created until last week. Well, that's not entirely true...the volleyball tryout info is a couple of weeks old now, and many of the staff pages have a syllabus link and that's about it.

Special Parent Informational Digression: Just so you know (although almost all of you have probably already figured it out): middle school syllabus is to what goes on in a middle school classroom as Bill Richardson press release is to Bill Richardson boat crashing into other boats on a piss-poor lake. Just so you know.

As a teacher at an "old" school, I envy THMS and its website a bit. The promise of both is so great. For instance, my guess is that the classrooms at THMS have more than three electrical outlets, unlike my classroom. I'm guessing the ceilings aren't painted dung-brown with expanding circles of invading rain and rust. I'm guessing more than just one classroom at THMS has a mounted computer projector and screen.

And I'm also guessing, although it's a bit too early to tell, that the squeaky-clean THMS website will fill up with timely, topical information...at least this school year. My rating above reflects this speculation. It also reflects the sentiment that THMS staff and its "webmaster" will be able to maintain a burst of "honeymoon" energy for at least one school year, before plummeting in enervating brown-dung circles of hopeless despair. You know...like all the other middle schools.

24. Truman Middle School. Rating: Argh!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sorry Truman. It's my birthday. And for my birthday I'm giving myself a present. That present is: I refuse to look at another "Professional Innovations" school website. Happy Birthday to me!

For those just dropping by, I've spent much time on these reviews railing against "Professional Innovations". I'm tired of it...(insert deity/probability of choice) only knows how sick you folks are of reading about it. But let's think of the parents, etc. who actually go to these sites to "find things out" about a school. What's the line from that movie: "dumb luck bastards"? Something like that. We move on.

But wait...even though it's my birthday present to myself, I felt bad and spent a minute or two at the TMS website. That's a minute or two of my life irreplaceably wasted. Argh is right. The site indicates it's had over 52,000 hits since February 2008. How? Why? Are those other 51,999 people also stabbing themselves in the eye with knitting needles right now?

25. Van Buren Middle School. Rating: 1.000001

Oh for the love of toasters! Another "Professional Innovations" website? I think I'll go watch an hour of Livorno v. AC Milan over at ESPN360 before I can stand looking at the VBMS website for a single second.

Okay, now I'm back...let's explore! Here's what we find:

Time period late 20th Century javascript crawl with hyper-slow information that is already outdated ("Open House" on September 8th!!!!!): check.
Faculty section with almost zero teacher webpages or contacts, and with a high percentage of that dinky number of sites failing to include any useful information whatsoever: check.
Left sidebar with completely dead link to "photo gallery" and utterly worthless "school info" page: check.
Bizarre homepage link to another "School Information" page with the following on it (and I quote):

School begins at 8:17.
School ends at 3:05.
School lunch is free.
We are an uniform school.
We are a no gum school.
We are a no touch school.
Students are expected to arrive and leave on time.
Students are expected to be ready to learn.
We are a PBS(Positive Support School) school
All students are to have a Student Agenda at all times

CHECK.

That's right. The school is a "no touch" school, and pledges to be an acronym, "PBS", that doesn't even correspond with what the first letters of the stupid, mission statement-esque, slogan are....

Oh buddy.

I first considered expanding my birthday present to that of a "Professional Innovations"-free world forever in which I would never, ever look at one of these sites again. But I had a commenter in a previous review post mentioned s/he was looking forward to a review of a school that "began with a V".

Well "V" commenter, "V" is not for "Vendetta". "V" is for "Vomit". "V" makes me want, now more than ever, to blow up the entire APS middle school web architecture (English Parliament-style) and start again from scratch.

All I need is a virtual subway car full of explosives. Anybody gotta a spare ton or two of html fertilizer?

Have a good weekend, everybody. Enjoy my birthday. And if you're not reading this until the new week...have a good one of those, too.

Reviewing APS Middle School Websites: Volume VI, The Neverending Movie Sequel Edition

2009-09-11T06:03:00.005-06:00

Another in a continuing, zombie-like in its difficulty to kill, series reviewing APS Middle School Websites. Today we will compare each site to a famous film in an inadequate attempt to lend some cohesion to what has been an inchoate reviewing process.

Can you tell from reading the previous paragraph I've been working on some grant-writing lately? And to keep up the spirit-less spirit of your typical grant, let's also remind readers of our "grading rubric" for these things.

Rating of 1-10, with 1 = to "Pauly Shore Movie" and 10 = "John Cazale Movie"

School 21. Taft Middle School: Rating: 2 "The Shining"

Here the rating of 2 doesn't correspond with Kubrick's film in quality. It's not the greatest Kubrick ever, but for a horror movie, "The Shining" does alright. I use the movie here because of the famous "redrum....redrum....redrum" incantation scene.

Think back to creepy kid who talks to his finger. Now instead of him gutterally bellowing "redrum....redrum...redrum..." imagine him saying to his finger "snoitavonnI lanoisseforP....snoitavonnI lanoisseforP...snoitavonnI lanoisseforP". Picture the words "snoitavonnI lanoisseforP" scrawled in blood red on a, in this case extremely large, wall. The camera swings violently to an equally gigantic mirror and after ten minutes of creepy kid intoning "snoitavonnI lanoisseforP" we see it....

Professional Innovations

The shrieking music climaxes, flash edits show dismembered little girls and blood-stained hotel walls. We cut to Jack Nicholson at a typewriter and know that all is lost.

The Taft Middle School website, like all the Professional Innovations sites I've seen so far, is just like Jack Nicholson in "The Shining": crazy, holding an axe and about to die from hypothermia in a frozen maze.

Okay, maybe that analogy is a bit over the top (like Nicholson's acting in "The Shining"). Suffice to say APS schools have not really utilized the "Professional Innovations" web template concept very well. Taft is an example of such under-utilization. It is no stretch to say the Taft website is like a frozen maze. One gets lost there. It is empty and foreboding. It is very cold. One may very well end up left icily glued to an axe if one visits this website.

Well, it could happen.

22. Taylor Middle School: Rating 5.5 "The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou"

I am a big Wes Anderson fan. "Rushmore" is one of my favorite movies (maybe it's the whole school thing). At the same time, "Life Aquatic" isn't really that great of a film. It meanders, tries to do too much and is a bit of a mess, really. Still, there are certain small aspects that are so great.

The Portuguese folk stylings of David Bowie songs...great! The line where Angelica Huston tells Steve, the rest of the observation vessel and the audience "It is beautiful Steve"...fantastic! The obligatory Anderson slo-mo walkaway end credit roll while "Queen Bitch" wails...inspiring!

The Taylor MS website is like that. Overall it has some of the same problems we've seen at all APS websites: out-of-date information, long confusing linking patterns, dead links. But amid the dross are some really good things. I like that the Principal has a blog. In a sea of linkless staff, one teacher (who I do not know, btw) has a great, ambitious set of pages around literature and video.

And, in a very quirky, Wes Anderson sort of gesture, the main page has a link to the entire 2008-2009 Taylor MS budget. It's so divergent from the entire rest of the site in its thoroughness, the budget link is, if time is spent reading it, a maybe-too-personal peek into a school. It's like that nude scene thrown into the middle of another Wes Anderson mess/epic, "The Royal Tennebaums".

There are worse things, in my view, than being compared with Wes Anderson. Taylor MS...I think you have the highest rating I've given yet.

More reviews, eventually, to come next week. Have a good weekend, everybody.

A Terrific Idea From A Writing Teacher (Note: This Is Not An Oxymoron)

2009-09-09T20:54:00.004-06:00

Hello all:

Right now your humble blogger is up to his adenoids in essays to grade.

Here's an idea that will help free up not only my adenoids, but my ability to post more rant-filled inanity on the subject of public school education. I have about 80 papers left at this point. If I could get 80 of you to take just one paper each we could knock these puppies out in about four minutes. Five on the outside.

Without your help, the flow of priceless blogging inanity will stop. Consider this like one of those obnoxious PBS pledge drives, but with grading instead of money. Oh, and without the obnoxiousness, unless you count plenty of student misspellings, run-on sentences and poorly constructed arguments to be obnoxious. Which, frankly, I do.

So who's with me? Raise your hand if you'll take one of these papers! Keep those hands nice and high so I can see you!

If we all pledge now I promise we'll all get to bed by 10 p.m. tonight. Otherwise, at least one of us won't be asleep for quite some time.

P.S.: I've always felt sorry for those PBS Pledge Drive people. So sorry, so empathetically angst-ridden that I madly hit the channel changer to move past the scene o' grovel as quickly as possible. I'd seriously rather grade 80 7th grade essays anyday than watch 60 seconds of PBS Pledge Drive (with the Beach Boys DVD if you pledge $120 right now). Just thinking about it makes my pile of ungraded work so much more pleasant in contrast.

Reviewing APS Middle School Websites: Volume V, The Politburo's Fifth Five-Year Plan

2009-09-08T05:40:00.007-06:00

Hail comrades!

You might not know this, but the Obama Socialist Indoctrination for Innocent Schoolchildren Speech (OBSIISS) today has a mention of school websites. In between all the talk about the next "five year plan", demands for greater millet production and denouncement of anti-socialist forces bent on enslaving the world's workers, the speech has this short passage:

"And a word to your teachers and school administrators watching this alongside you this morning. What's up with the lousy school websites?"

Listen carefully or you might miss this important inquiry. What is up with "lousy school websites"? And are all the APS middle school websites really "lousy"? And is your humble blogger really putting quotation marks around words/phrases that he, himself, wrote only pretending they came from the President of the United States?

School 19. Polk Middle School: Rating "The Day The Earth Stood Still" (i.e., 1)

The date is August 17, 2007. Unbeknownst to many of us, the world as we know it actually ended on August 17, 2007. Truth be told, we as a species do have some small memory of the horrible events of 8/17/2007, but part of our transformation into our current state, that of radioactive zombies incapable of anything other than eating the brains of the living and screaming at health care town hall meetings, has been the near elimination of any memories of that day.

August 17, 2007. Do you remember? Do you remember the space ship? What about the aliens who looked so much like former "Tonight Show" sidekick Ed McMahon? C'mon think...think hard! We do remember.

Polk Middle School remembers. It remembers that final day before alien-enforced zombiehood by refusing to update its school webpage since that horrible, nearly forgotten, day.

Nothing new exist except for a few messages in code frantically typed while the alien zombie overlords weren't watching. One says:

"Polk MS has a new principal, Ms. Eva Vigil. Please welcome her."

Perhaps this coded message, which properly translated of course means "Prepare the lasers for final attack against the alien spaceship!" will successfully alert the remaining "humans" to do what is necessary to overthrow their extraterrestrial slave masters.

We can only hope.

20. Roosevelt Middle School: Rating 3

Holy Twittering Gadzooks, Batman! Roosevelt MS has blogs! Really! Blogs! There's a Technology blog and a Library one. I'll take off the "alien zombiehood" hat now and somberly report that RMS having these blogs is probably a good sign the page will be updated more frequently than the APS average.

The RMS site also has a fairly updated homepage, and an easy to navigate through design. On the not-so-great side it evidently does not include any teacher web pages, and only about a third of the teachers even have email contact links.

Why do these places even have websites if it's going to be basically impossible for users to know what's going on in the classrooms from looking at them? Oh, you mean there's a reason why they don't have teacher pages, and it has nothing to do with webmastering laziness? You mean these pages deliberately don't exist so there is no easy-to-access accountability for what the Hell goes on in these classrooms?

Is that what you mean imaginary person imaginarily talking to your humble blogger as he pretends to type down what you say?

Oh. Never mind. The RMS website, as do almost all APS school websites, does a great job of doing its intended job. Speaking of Socialism, five year plans for millet and such, the editors of the Soviet-era Pravda would be mighty proud to see the RMS website.

Heck, it even has a a nice deep red as its primary color. Hail comrades! Here is all the news fit for you to be permitted to read!

Meanwhile, До свидания!. It is now time for me to go to school and further promulgate the socialist indoctrination of our young people! Sorry I only got to two website reviews today, but the millet production and agit-prop destruction and reeducation of young minds cannot wait!

Seriously, more reviews to come as the week unfolds. I promise to finish this damn thing before the next Five-Year Plan, or at the very least the one after that.

AYP: Nope, Haven't Forgotten About That

2009-09-06T09:01:00.002-06:00

While New Mexico students/parents/teachers already experienced their annual media flogging over this year's standardized test scores (scores that are STILL not available on our fancy schmanzy web-based database, btw), other states are just now getting around to the flogging.

But as noted here earlier this summer, sometimes the news on the scores goes beyond simplistic beatings (brow, public, dead horse) and actually explains something about the process.

For instance, look at this story in the little old Allentown Daily Call, in Allentown, PA. Really! Look at it, New Mexicans! The writer, Steve Esack, not only goes over the scores, but:

Fully, yet concisely, explains "growth models" and how PA schools can now "pass" AYP;
Has quotes from a variety of local & national folks on issues ranging from merit pay based on scores to the idea of using test scores to do anything;
and, has a tricky, and very illuminating paraphrased quote::

State Education Secretary Gerald L. Zahorchak said Thursday the growth model helped the numbers. He said it is a fairer assessment of student performance. Teachers and administrations should have ''no excuses'' for not moving all students toward (my emphasis) proficiency in math and reading by 2014 as the federal law mandates, he said.

''The growth model is a statistical way to show progress that is for real,'' he said.

Gotta love the use of the word "toward" there.

See! It can be done! A truly informative newspaper account of standardized testing and all in just over 1,000 words. I might be the only person in the whole state who is enthused to see a story like this, but my feeling, my deeply romantic and quite possibly naïve feeling, about this is that if every New Mexican involved in the process read, understood and thought about this single article we'd have a different SBA situation here by next Spring.

P.S.: Hey, I admitted it was quite possibly naïve. Just call me the John Lennon of Standardized Testing (you know, "You may say I'm a dreamer...."). No wait, the name John Lennon should in no way be juxtaposed anywhere near the term "standardized testing". That's just not right. And I don't even really like the Beatles. Sorry for the digression...just wash the expression "John Lennon of Standardized Testing" out of your brain right now...

“I don’t want our schools turned over to some socialist movement.”

2009-09-05T11:50:00.004-06:00

The above quote comes from a "concerned parent" in Pearland, Texas about President Obama's upcoming streaming education address.

Any willing volunteers to let concerned parent guy in on the well-known secret that the public school is inherently "socialist"? Along with our law enforcement, firefighting and road system?

Not to mention the military.

Man, the insidious socialist conspiracy is so...so....insidious! Turns out that Col. Ripper was right about the Flouridation, after all.

Has ABQJournal.com Given Up On Paid Content?

2009-09-05T09:09:00.003-06:00

The extremely frugal among us have almost certainly noticed that ABQJournal.com has been totally "free" the last three days or so. Most probably the result of that Tamaya ad contract expiring, but in the past the site would revert to house ads like the unwatchably irritating Journal Sports Desk Shows Up At Your House While You're Eating Cheerios At 6:45 In The Morning Ad.

Personally, outside of John Fleck's stuff the Journal could go away virtually and otherwise and I wouldn't miss it anymore than I'd miss the cancellation of "Big Brother" or any other "Reality Show".

Still, it's the "Paper of Record" (by default at this point), and even the extremely frugal among us find ourselves there to feel the feeble pulse of what's "news" in this remarkably news-free town. And in a statement of faint praise right up there with "well, he is the smartest Dallas Cowboy fan in the world", the Journal certainly outperforms the local TV stations (and their websites).

Damn that's some faint praise there.

Enjoy the free ABQJournal.com while it lasts folks. Maybe "enjoy" is too strong a word.

Reviewing APS MIddle School Websites: Volume IV, When Will This Damn Thing Be Over?

2009-09-04T05:56:00.006-06:00

Alright! I'm rested up and psychologically ready to handle the trauma of looking at more bad websites. But who knows? Maybe there's a hidden Ninth Wonder of the World out there. Join me as we machete our way through the thicket of dross on the off chance a "Lost Horizon" of Internet Nirvana can be found.

Oh, and one more thing. I've made an executive decision and we're speeding this thing up. No more long, long digression into "what Scot thinks" about various APS middle schools. I promise! Strictly the website from here on, objectively rated in terse, concise prose.

Well at least that's the idea. Otherwise this series will go on past the next U.S. presidential election.

School 13. Jimmy Carter Middle School: Rating 2.00001 (but possibly going up)

JCMS looks like they're ramping up a new web look. Unfortunately it appears to have made up about 3 inches up the ramp. I like the clean look, with easy to read pages/text. At the same time, a clean, easily read list of JCMS teachers indicating:

Click teacher name in BLUE to send an email message.

should probably have more than one teacher in BLUE. Just thought I would throw that out there.

I will say this though: the JCMS Athletics page is off to a rousing start. Six or seven stories already this year. You might not know what the Hell any teacher at JCMS is doing or when the homework is due, but you sure as shooting knowing that JCMS had a flag football team from 2000-2005. Why? Because those were the good old days. No word/page on the MathCounts or Chess Club teams way back in the Golden Era of 1993.

14. John Adams Middle School: Rating 2.5

Opinions differ on website development. Some folks still like frames. Others like long single pages (I fall in this category). Another popular variant is the use of left side links. The JAMS website is perhaps the strongest proponent of the left side links method in the Universe. Link upon link upon link here. As you may suspect, however, about 90% of the links go to essentially empty pages with titles like "Principal's Novel".

On the plus side, there is a nascent "Homework Page" with classroom information. On the negative side, many/most of those teacher's pages are blank. This could be a good page/idea if JAMS teachers populate it well. Anybody wanna bet me a few bucks on whether the teachers will "populate it well"?

Amid the 917,439 different links on the left side, one goes to "Textbooks". On this page is a strange little statement:

Most students will not be using textbooks for homework, so they will not be required to checkout textbooks.

My terse, concise response to this statement: What the Hell? I'm no fan of textbooks, but why won't most students be taking them home for homework? Is this because the school has some avant-garde, progressive post-textbook homework regimen? Is JAMS kicking out the 21st Century homework JAMS with Internet-based homework assignments? My guess is, sadly, no.

15. Kennedy Middle School: Rating Kind of Blue, Very, Very Blue, Emptily Blue (i.e. .00003)

Like Jackson MS reviewed earlier, KMS relies on the sterile, horrible "Manzano Cluster Family Connection" (Suggestion: do not put the word "Cluster" on a very bad, complex website...you're just asking for nickname trouble when you do). The funny thing here is that KMS first has a deep blue page with only the name of the school on it for about ten seconds before forwarding to this Cluster(insert monosyllabic word of your choice here) of a "Family Connection". I honestly clicked on the KMS site twice before even seeing anything but the Blue Screen of KMS Death. And it was still better than the "Manzano Cluster Family Connection".

16. Lyndon Baines Johnson Middle School: Rating 2

LBJMS seems to prefer the long, single page method of website design. In this I feel solidarity. And, like many of these middle school sites, you get the feeling a new webmaster was "hired/volunteered" to maintain the site, and this new person has an energy that's been missing from the website for some time. Evidence of this is that a thin surface of links/updates exist, but with nothing archival going on.

In addition to this thin veneer of website energy, the school also has a new principal. Outside of that I pretty much can't tell you ANYTHING about LBJ Middle School. I don't even SEE a teacher page, now that I think about it. Maybe I just couldn't find it. Maybe long, single webpages are a really bad idea...or maybe THIS long, single webpage is a really bad idea. At the same time, I have some uncertain, solidarity-inspired expectation that this site might be updated fairly often. Just a hunch...a naive, quite possibly wrong hunch.

17. Madison Middle School: Rating Disney (i.e. Less Than Zero)

The MMS homepage utilizes state-of-the-1992-art mouse trails. Really. Mouse Trails. *#)*^$# Mouse Trails. And all the page has is a logo with the word "Magic" on it. Oh, and the word "Enter", which one can mouse trail their way to in order to enter the site.

Sorry, I'm not entering a site via Mouse Trails and Magic. This page gave me an immediate headache. If I wanted Disney I'd go to DisneyWorld or DisneyMarvel Comics or something. Middle schools who want to evoke a feeling of Disney should be closed down immediately and their physical plants razed and sown with rock salt.

I realize this opinion may not be shared by everyone.

P.S.: Mouse Trails? Really?

18. McKinley Middle School: Rating 2.75

McKinley truly has the barebones makings of a decent website. It just needs to fill out the information on each of its left side link pages. The faculty page, for example, pretty much just has a bunch of names/departments on it. This is the Internet, not the phone book. There should be like, linky things.....you know? And worse than the phone book you don't even get phone numbers without going back to other pages on the site.

Still, I think with significant cultivation the McKinley site could be much better. Wasn't this one of the better maintained APS websites way back when (i.e., 2000 or so)? Did somebody retire, get a better job, lose the energy to keep updating the site as the soul-crushing District exerted its inexorable weight of ennui on the poor, formerly energetic webmaster?

Okay, I took one more look at the site. It's pretty damn uninformative.

Conclusion: The Story So Far

I came into today's blogpost fully expecting a closing burst of energy resulting in finishing this damn reviewing thing. And I end up only in the "Ms". This realization is almost as deflating as visiting these various websites. Speaking of realizations, I also know pretty much nobody is still reading these reviews, and that nothing substantive will result from this "startling expose (accent missing)".

But none of those easily ascertainable facts are stopping me, folks. Come next week I'll have even more unread, unreadable reviews of unreadable sites. Join me if you dare as we dare to venture into the 2nd half of the alphabet.

In the meantime, have a good three-day weekend. We'll need all the rest and mind/body reconnection we can get before once again diving into this virtual muck.

Intermission II: Can New Mexico Race To The Top In a Broken Down Car?

2009-09-03T06:12:00.006-06:00

(Caution: the extent of acronym use below gets way, way out of hand)

If we're going to take a short break from looking at all the APS middle school websites, I want to bend your ear briefly on a thing or two regarding the Obama Administration's dumpster dive for educational cash known as "Race To the Top" (aka: RrrT or RTT or "Grab that cash with both hands and make a stash").

In sum, I'm somewhat to very concerned that our little sun-drenched piece of "Enchantment" ain't gonna be getting any/much of the Race To the Top pie. As the wonkfest at the blog Eduflack puts it:

We all know that not every state will become an RttT state. In fact, no one seems to expect that half of the states will receive the designation. That leaves a lot of states on the outside looking in, particularly for those seeking to make some real change but currently lacking some of the intangibles.

And given the dearth of innovation, "intangibles" and chutzpah from the New Mexico Public Education Department on issues like standardized testing and school reform it's real easy to see NM as one of the "states on the outside looking in" when it comes to grabbing some of that $4.35 billion in RTT cash.

Moreover, missing out on this cash lines up to be even more of a bummer in the context of an upcoming special session already featuring threats of 3 to 5 percent cuts in the state K-12 education budget.

Quite obviously I could be wrong and folks at the PED are both frantically and skillfully putting together a RTT proposal that could knock the socks off a...uh, person with really, really tight socks. I'd love to be wrong and will be more than happy to eat a crow, or shoe, or crow-filled shoe if we end up with $500 million in RTT money.

And maybe I should begin considering what condiments best go with crow, as New Mexico is one of 15 states the Gates Foundation is funding with consulting dollars to help create RTT proposals.

Still...consider me skeptical. Which I know might be the best way to consider/describe me 24/7/365, but seems especially apt when it comes to expecting much from the PED.

My Skeptometer on this issue is really pegged when I read that the impoverished country of California just finished its own special session, a session hand-tailored to get RTT and other U.S. Department of Education money.

This bears repeating....California just had a special session in which everybody from the Governator on down just legislatively groveled before the Obama Administration, crafting "laws" to specifically correspond with RTT and other new grant language. Groveled.

And look at that..and look at our NM Legislature...and look at California...and look at us. In honor of the impending "High Holidays" I can only respond with a hearty "Oy! Vey!"

Prove me wrong New Mexico, New Mexico Legislature and New Mexico Public Education Department. Prove me wrong to the tune of $150-200 million or so. I'll sing any song you want if you can grab that kind of federal cash, while pouring Sriracha on my tough old crow and leather.

Intermission: Taking a Break from Reviewing APS Websites With Van Morrison and Lester Bangs

2009-09-02T21:06:00.006-06:00

After three-days spent mired in the stinky mud of APS middle school websites, your humble blogger needs a short respite. How about we consider, very briefly, Van Morrison and the album Astral Weeks? (Blogger puts needle down on old, scratchy record, Side A, "Astral Weeks", and sits back in an eternally comfortable thrift store arm chair)

Ahhhhh...I feel better already.

And to help us refocus on what's real and what really constitutes art, love, music and redemption, let's go to that critic ne plus ultra Lester Bangs, and his words on this album.

I think I'll shut up now. For now. (Blogger reads Bangs and listens to the rest of Side One, especially "Cyprus Avenue" while staring at empty wall as he sits back in the ultra-comfortable arm chair)

P.S.: My all-time favorite piece by L. Bangs is on New Year's Eve. Its opening sentence is:

“On New Year’s Eve of 1972 I attended a great party thrown by someone I didn’t know and inadvertently fell into a protracted conversation with this nearsighted social worker about 20 or 25 who kept babbling about his Volkswagen until I finally had to say: ‘Wait a minute. Are you telling me that the owning of a Volkswagen is a social, or a political act?’”

Way back, back in the late 80s, I was browsing through the deep, deep discount bin at the University Bookstore in Seattle and ran smack dab into a pile of Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung remainders going for about 20% of the cover price.

My life hasn't been quite the same since.

The New Year's Eve piece is in there along with the Astral Weeks bit and many others. If you haven't read it, please flee your computer this very second and procure a copy. I'll wait while you're gone before delving back into the Hell of middle school websites 24 hours or so from now.

Meanwhile, I'm flipping the scratchy record over to Side B..."Young Lovers Do"...(Blogger sits further back in eternally comfortable thrift store arm chair, puts feet up on vaguely smelly thrift store footrest)

Reviewing the APS Middle School Websites: Volume III, The "Js"

2009-09-02T05:31:00.004-06:00

Another in a continuing series as we search for an Albuquerque Public School website that doesn't induce migraines and/or soul-crushing depression.

10. Jackson Middle School: Rating .000001

I've been getting to almost all the middle school sites by going to the schools section of the APS site. When I clicked on "Jackson Middle School" there I was directed to this "Manzano Cluster Family Connection" webpage. Then I just stared at the page for about a minute. Then I decided this must be a bad link because despite knowing that "Manzano" is a high school here, and that Jackson is in the Manzano cluster (back when we had clusters) I saw no reference to Jackson anywhere.

So I went to Google and just searched for Jackson. I found a site, but the site had a bad "certificate" and my Firefox didn't want me going there.

So I went back to the "Manzano Cluster Family Connection" and finally saw a list of schools about halfway down the long page and a link to Jackson MS.

I clicked on that...and it asked me to register.

Folks, we're trying to access a middle school website here, not NORAD, not somebody's bank balance, not the cheat codes for Resident Evil IV. A middle school website. Yet this "Manzano Cluster Family Connection" is all about NOT GETTING CONNECTED. "Connection" has, quite obviously, become one of those Orwellian/GWBushian APS words like "Ministry of Love" or "PATRIOT Act".

I did wander around the Jackson section of this eminently unfeeling and sterile site, and saw a few announcements from a few teachers. Tellingly, the only pictures/graphics on the site are of the same round-headed character with no facial features wearing a tie. Exactly. The whole site is faceless.

Jackson gets the lowest rating yet, because not only is it utterly lacking in information but also pretends it is offering the visitor something new and advanced. I wish George Orwell was alive so I could show him this site and we could both silently nod our head in joined understanding. Then we'd get some crisps at the pub and smother them with vinegar. Then we would nod some more in shared understanding.

11. James Monroe Middle School: Rating Beyond Exasperating (i.e., 2)

Despite the impression that might have been given by earlier reviews, I really prefer simple websites to the complex. James Monroe has a simple homepage (in dramatic contrast to Jackson's), readily leading the reader to a few things. And those things are updated today, including some volleyball tryouts.

After the Orwellian nightmare of Jackson, this site is refreshing in its humanity. There's not a ton of information, in fact there might not be twenty ounces of information here, but at least it's easily found.

At the same time, the most important page/link is the "EPSS Staff List", and that's where we run into bigtime problems. First, nobody outside of teachers knows what the Hell "EPSS" stands for. I am a teacher and right this second I can't remember what it stands for. I know it doesn't stand for this, but whenever I see the acronym "EPSS" I immediately think it must be Swedish for "boring meeting".

Non-teachers must look at "EPSS staff list" and think "is this a mention of a school that has nothing to do with James Monroe Middle School (JMMS)?" "Where is the JMMS staff list?" "How do you say 'EPSS'?" "Eeeps!...like Eek! only with a "ps" instead of a "k" sound?"

The average website visitor has probably gone on to Internet search for the text of the Monroe Doctrine or pictures of Marilyn Monroe by this point, but your brave website reviewer ventured forth and clicked onto the actual JMMS staff page. And your brave reviewer was direly disappointed. The teachers have email links (yeah!), but very, very few have their own web page. And the first staff page I clicked upon went to a dreadful little traffic cone graphic

and the following:

Sorry, the Class Homepage you are trying to access is not configured for direct access.

To sign in to your Class Homepage, click here.

And if you click above you go to a Scholastic Inc. login screen. I swear...if I read many more of these school webpages I might have to blind myself. With a paper clip or the corner of my writing desk. Man...this is a tough slog, I tell ya.

And yes, dear Scholastic Inc. people, I stole your traffic cone graphic and brazenly put it on my blog. Come arrest me. Take me to Associated Press copy/paste Court. For Criminy sake.

Why are we commercializing the public school experience by using POS outfits like Scholastic Inc.? Why can't people just make some webpages with community, parent, geeky 8th graders who like to mess around on the computer help?

On a bigger front, why can't schools/districts/state departments of education just create "open source" standardized tests, instead of buying them, at incredible markup, from companies like Pearson. Why doesn't the U.S. Dept. of Ed. just use its new funding to create these tests and give them to states/districts/schools for free? Why must we "Blackwater" public education?

P.S.: Not every one of the five staff webpages at JMMS were "Scholastic/Blackwaterized". Which is nice. But there were only about five staffpages in the whole school, which is very double plus not nice.

12. Jefferson Middle School: No Rating Because I Work There

I'm recusing myself from judging JMS. I wouldn't be impartial, and what would be the fun in pointing out the "fact" that the JMS site isn't half bad for an APS website? Instead I'll just throw out a link or two:

Here's my school page again
Here's my classroom webpage (as those Landmark Forum types say..."It is what it is")
And here's a little secret that everybody knows about getting folks to actually go to your classroom webpage...you might have heard of it, it's called "Google"

Meanwhile, committing to this website reviewing thing has become a millstone for both your humble blogger and the two or three people who actually might read this post all the way to here. I applaud those who have heroically wasted enough of their time to make it to this point, and it is for them that I will continue wading through the leech-infested waters tomorrow, pulling the leaky boat that is APS "technology" as I/we go. All aboard, baby!

P.S.: And I didn't even make it out of the "Js" today!!! Oh man, can somebody help me with these leeches?

Reviewing the APS Middle School Websites: Volume II

2009-09-01T05:27:00.004-06:00

Continuing our series as we evaluate the Albuquerque Public Schools middle school websites, using a 1-10 scale, with:

1 = fruitcake with extra "fruit"
10 = fudge turtles with extra caramel

School #6. Grant Middle School: Rating 4

The GMS page is a bit of a shocker: it's actually updated! And generally not just here and there, but throughout. Just as relatively unusual, the main page has a message from the new principal that includes his email address. APS principals are generally renowned for their Luddite status. A principal who knows his/her email address and willingly puts it into any public communication stands out. You know, like a real person in the real work world or something.

Oh wait. I take that back about the updatedness. I knew it was too good to be true.

While several pages do appear to be from this year, the teacher's page has a stamp date of "July 19, 2006" on it. This is a shame because the list of teachers is comprehensive and includes email links. So either the webmaster forgot to update the 2006 date or this list of teachers is from 93 staff changes ago. At least 93 changes, as APS middle schools tend to have a higher turnover rate than your local crack house.

More unimpressively, a deeper look reveals two things: 1. The teacher's page link to actual teacher's pages is full of "online class" links that go to basically blank pages. Sad. 2. The site is only "live" in many parts because of links to corporations like "Channel One" (Channel One is still around? Really?) and Scholastic.

Still, relative to some other APS websites GMS has a few good things. It has the weather and an embedded video. In the context of APS those things are like the invention of Google and YouTube combined.

That teacher page is positively painful, however.

7. Harrison Middle School: Rating Zero

Harrison's web page is as blank as a white-out snowstorm on a brightly electronic morning. This is the year 2009. I tried both the link from the APS page and a Google search and the designated HMS page both "works" and has nothing on it.

Ergo, rating HMS's website becomes difficult. Is having a blank site worse than having a nightmarish site, like Ernie Pyle MS? Is a blank white page worth fewer "points" than a deeply disturbing one? A deep philosophical conundrum. A koan, if you will, of complexity that shows how important APS websites are to the development of minds young and old here in ABQ.

In a meager attempt to answer this almost metaphysical puzzler, I decided that creating a domain and then putting nothing in it is less work than creating a domain and putting a ton of awful text and images in it. As we are Westerners who deeply value that "Judeo-Christian work ethic" (as it's called), work beats laziness. Hence....Ernie Pyle gets a One and Harrison gets a Zero.

The saddest thing here is that Harrison is the middle school closest to my South Valley home. I would honestly LOVE if it Harrison's website was a "10" and the school an oasis of academics and love of learning. As I said...sad.

8. Hayes Middle School: Rating 1.5

In further full disclosure, I used to work at Hayes. In the "Technology Department". I still see one or two folks I know as I navigate through the "Professional Innovations" Hell that is the HMS site. And in seeing those old colleagues I note they have updated webpages.

The 98% of the staff I don't remember...not so much. The principal's (since my time) page consists of only an email link. There are no "Newsletters" to display. The calendar is blank. To be honest, the website is the virtual equivalent of the old movie "The Omega Man" where Charlton Heston is (or thinks he is) the only human left alive after a massive epidemic. The "Professional Innovations" infrastructure is there, but no humans populate this website.

And maybe that says more about Hayes Middle School in 2009 than I, a former resident, want to admit. Sorry HMS: You may still be alive in my heart, but to the rest of the world you're dead. Very dead.

9. Hoover Middle School: Rating 2.5

Like the Hayes page, the Hoover MS site begins with a splash screen from circa-1998:

This website has been designed to be used with Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0 or later with Javascript enabled, with a screen resolution of 1024 X 768 or greater. Viewing this website with any other combination WILL result in decreased functionality, visibilty, speed and overall performance. Your system is using Netscape with the screen resolution set to 1280 x 1024.

Remember "Windows for Workgroups"? How about "Windows 3.1"? How about Kaypro "portable" computers with little 3.5" diagonal green screens?

I know I've harped too much on the antiquated nature of these APS pages, but c'mon folks! Putting a "warning" about not using IE 5.0 to see a website is like trying to sell a menthol cigarette in 2009 because it's "safer".

I was tempted to just blow past the Hoover site after seeing that splash screen, but my commitment to you, the dedicated reader, is so great I continued my investigation.

And after about 20 seconds I stopped my investigation because this website is full of the same empty, dated "Professional Innovations" crap as all the other "Professional Innovations" websites.

Visiting this site is like going to the dentist with a talkative dental hygienist. Full of worthless information and pain. I have a headache after going to this site. Maybe it's the tiny font on the main page with arcane details about "accelerated Language Arts". Maybe it's the control characters for "bullets" on that page. Most probably it's the simple fact 95% of the website has absolutely nothing on it. Nothing.

No club links. No pictures in the photo gallery. Little or nothing else.

And what is there is hidden behind all the "Professional Innovations" template crap. I did see some teacher pages with actual content, but you have to click through about five times to get to those pages. It's like "Get Smart" with all those doors closing, and your nose just ends up getting hurt.

Okay, I apologize...that last pop culture reference was so old and so old that, maybe, one person in the entire world understood it. And that one person, me, thought it was lame.

Maybe it's time to stop these website reviews...And we're only about halfway through? Whose stupid idea was this?

Nevertheless, I will continue to plunge forth through the APS alphabet in my next report....

Rating the APS Middle School Websites: Part I

2009-08-30T20:12:00.011-06:00

A few weeks back I looked through all the APS middle school websites. I was doing this research in order to kickstart some communication between teachers in my little neck of the academic woods. Those not in K-12 teaching may be surprised to find out that little, if any, contact occurs between teachers.

For instance, I can't tell you exactly what in going on in any other 8th Grade Language Arts classroom anywhere in the District. Including my own school. And I "teach" 8th Grade "Language Arts".

But let us put aside that tasty factoid, for now, and instead focus on the websites of my fellow uncommunicative middle schools. Having been scarred through that earlier exposure to Internet APS Style, I decided another plunge might spare those out there lacking in the necessary bravery (not to mention inclination and time on their hands) to venture forth into this bewildering and largely uninformative virtual world.

And to have some fun, we'll do a little rating thing. So...proceeding in alphabetical order, let's go through the middle school sites using a 1-10 scale where:

1 = A 404 page error

&

10 = The information-filled, yet easily navigable website of your dreams

1. Cleveland Middle School: Rating 2.5

CMS suffers from the almost universal malady of APS websites: recently, or not so recently, deceased webmasters. Evidently there has been an nasty outbreak of "Instant Webmaster Death (IMD)" throughout the Albuquerque Public Schools. IMD must have struck the CMS webmaster on 10/27/08, because that's the indicated last "update".

CMS also suffers from the shared inexplicable tendency of most APS websites to put the phrase "Best Viewed With Internet Explorer" on their site. Why the Hell this is supposedly so, and why anybody after, say, 1998 would put such a statement on their site is mystifying.

Specific to the CMS site, I see we have some redeeming qualities (especially if one were to go into a time machine back to 10/27/08). Most of the internal links work. Almost all staffmembers have listed email addresses (which, unfortunately, are not links). There is quite a bit of information, albeit in a 10-point font with little irritating dots everywhere. If the CMS website was in the "real world", it would be deservedly laughed at. Heartily. As it resides within the APS milieu, however, a rating of 2.5 is "earned".

2. Desert Ridge Middle School: Rating 4

DRMS is one of those schools using a website template from "Professional Innovations, Inc". I don't know exactly when "Professional Innovations" was last innovative, but it must have been sometime in the previous century. DRMS has some useful stuff on its site, and it is updated. The "links" page actually has decent links on it.

At the same time, navigating through the website is nauseatingly reminiscent of sitting through every lousy PowerPoint you've ever had to sit through. The problem: clip art. You know...that clip art. Swinging email doors and stuff. Awful stuff.

And then there's the fact many of the links don't work. And the "Principal's Place" page has black text with a partially dark background. And the short "Principal's Place" message is kinda creepy, and way out of date. And why does this school get three principals, anyway?

3. Eisenhower Middle School: Rating 4.5

Eisenhower's site is slightly better than Desert Ridge's. Still the lousy "Professional Innovations" layout. Still has links that don't work, including one that would go to a really cool "courses" course description page...if the link worked. But there are more choices that DO work on the Eisenhower page.

Most of the EMS staff have their own web pages, and I clicked on a few. I found somewhat decent information on some. The biggest limitation of these staff pages is the unwieldy, outdated and visually nauseating "Professional Innovations" layout. Clicking through these pages is a chore worse than cleaning up dog poop in the backyard. Little fun exists here.

Oh, and another thing. The top of EMS webpages have that little 1996 scrolling announcement thing. Now that I think about it, going to just about any APS school website is like going into an Internet Museum. You start to remember what you were doing the last time you saw ancient crap like little 1996-era scrolling announcements on webpages. Personally, I recall things like using "Hyperstudio"for presentations and "Pine" for my email, while sitting in uncomfortable chairs at the UNM computer lab dungeon.

Oh, the memories.

4. Ernie Pyle Middle School: Rating 1

The EPMS website reflects the school it serves very, very well. It is a scary-ass website for a scary-ass school. The reasons are numerous, but I'll start with the "mission/vision statement thingie" prominent on the Teachers page:

EVERY PERSON MUST SUCCEED

That is some scary shit there. Pardon my inability to be less profane and more profound, but the simple imperative "MUST" just screams out Orwell and/or Nazis, doesn't it? Who cares that the main page was last updated in 2007, or that the soccer schedule is from early 2008? It's not the dated information here that offends, it's the combination of "Every Person Must Succeed" with the comic sans font and psycho layout.

This website is like an episode of "Night Gallery". One involving clowns, terribly distorted photos, and scary hyper-speed clip art. If online dictionaries carried definitions of phrases like "bad acid trip", the link for the entry would go straight to this website.

5. Garfield Middle School: Rating 1.25

A friend of mine was opining a few days back that Garfield is the single worst middle school in APS. Now that's a bold statement, because, well, we've got some very strong candidates for this honor. Achieving single worst status isn't something that can be done without some serious dedication to some serious bad practices.

I cannot report as to whether Garfield is the worst/best or most absolutely average middle school in APS. I've never been there, except for this soccer game about 10 years ago, and all I remember is that the school/team I was "coaching" tried to leave the Garfield premises as quickly as humanly possible, owing to some perceived threat or threats. But back in the late 90s this was common at APS middle school soccer games, and Garfield did not stand out in this regard. Compared to Truman or Van Buren, I recall Garfield as a veritable vacation hot spot when it came to this sort of thing.

But I digress. I'm here to report on websites, not harms to personal safety present at various middle schools in the late 90s. So...finally getting to the GMS website I can safely report that it sucks. It is awful.

In some ways it stands out as the worst one I've yet investigated. For instance, its teacher page has links to TWO teacher's pages. TWO. And only one of those has any information on it, and that information is from 2007. Everything else is outdated, but anybody who checks these APS pages quickly gets over the expectation that any information will be from this school year. But the teacher's page truly excels as the single worst I've yet seen.

Oh, and another thing. I admit I'm a bit cynical when it comes to "mission statements", "vision statements" and such. I believe the time spent creating such statements would be better spent doing ANYTHING, including spending that time hitting large, pointy rocks against one's head repeatedly at high speed.

So I'm a bit biased.

But the Garfield "mission statement" stands out. Let me retype it here (because I can't copy/paste it from the website, as it is obviously too fine and valuable a sentiment to allow for copy/pasting):

"The mission of Garfield Middle School is to achieve excellence and prepare our students to succeed in the challenging world of tomorrow, through continuous improvement."

There's much to like here, but my favorite is the unnecessary comma addition of the boilerplate "continuous improvement" phrase. I can't claim to be anything close to a perfect grammarian, but you'd think a room full of people at some Godforsaken six-hour "mission statement" brainstorming would be able to figure out where to put the commas.

An ugly, ugly website.

Okay, that's a wrap for Part I. I'll start with Grant Middle School in my next report.

Friendly Folks In Oklahoma Doing Their Best To Make New Mexico Look Smart In Comparison

2009-08-28T17:33:00.011-06:00

"One of our targets is to get kids reading on grade level three. So they don't have as many problems and struggles in their education career beyond third grade, because beyond third grade, you have to be able to read to learn," said Kathleen Kennedy, Oklahoma City Public Schools Spokesperson.

Kennedy said that the districk has gotten a head start on improving schools by having full-day kindergarten classes, which give kids a jump start on reading. However, a big focus on secondary schools is making sure students are attending class and graduating.
--from "42 Oklahoma Schools on '09 Needs Improvement List", KSBI-TV "Family Television", Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

One can only imagine the writer of this TV news story probably "needed improvement" during his/her own high school career.

Not to mention his/her current career.

One Down, Thirty-Five To Go

2009-08-28T06:21:00.004-06:00

To Be Stuck Inside of Christmas With The Chanukah Blues Again

2009-08-26T17:13:00.004-06:00

Bob Dylan is releasing a Christmas album.

It will include a version of "Here Comes Santa Claus".

No...this isn't from The Onion.

The album will benefit a charity called "Feeding America".

Can we all just pledge money, lots of it, to prevent Bob Dylan from releasing a Christmas album? I'm sure we can raise much more money for Feeding America if we absolutely promise to all who pledge that Bob Dylan Will Never Release a Christmas Album...EVER.

C'mon folks...you can certainly spare a dollar or two for this very worthy cause. Remember...Only You Can Prevent Bob Dylan Christmas Albums.

P.S.: "I'm pledging my time, to you, never putting out a Christmas album too".....

Just One of Those Comments That Got Out of Hand

2009-08-25T21:10:00.005-06:00

A reader replied to my last, rather negative, post asking if there was anything I actually liked about the Albuquerque Public Schools. One word led to another, and I might as well just largely reprint it here.
_______________________

The honest truth is that there at least one million things I love about APS. Perhaps a small hyperbole, but the number of great things is much larger than a parent might think going into this thing.

In fact, if one were to observe "the District" only at its teacher/student interface, the observer might not understand what all the negative press is about.

There are great teachers at all levels (elementary/middle/high), fantastic innovative programs, well-funded classrooms with lots of amenities (my classroom would be an example), and hard-working folks in all aspects of the educational process.

And then there's the not so great of all of the above. A parent and son/daughter need to realize that and work accordingly. Contacting trusted teachers and other school folks can pay big dividends there, as well as keeping communication up with parents who avoid blanket "APS sucks" statements, and can focus on that teacher/student relationship.

On top of that there's the experience beyond that teacher/student classroom situation. I can't speak to exactly why, but something just seems lost outside/beyond the classroom here. A disconnect of some sort exists.

And the great thing is that there are plenty of teachers who ignore that disconnect, kids who ignore it as well and press on despite what folks may say about their schools, and supporting players (parents, etc.) who help make the individual educational experience for many APS students truly remarkable.

My small piece of advice to you would be to focus on the individual classroom(s). Ignore the outside noise and if the teacher and classroom are good, the rest just doesn't matter. Not really. Regardless of how many times I complain about it here.

At times of talking big, I catch myself saying to my classes "we offer private school service at public school prices". But the truth is I believe that. Really.

P.S.: The APS middle school lunch today was little convenience store burritos in that convenience store plastic wrap...and pizza. We're four for four this year on the pizza. Pizza's batting 1.000.

What Were Once Lawsuits Are Now Habits

2009-08-24T20:58:00.003-06:00

Proving once again there is no problem
in 70s rock music that can't be solved
through the use of dry ice

As we go into Day Four of the new APS school year, the following is true:

We have a spiffy, state-of-the-nerd online stat database designed to help us track all the "accountability" (i.e. testing) scores for our students. But the student data isn't loaded yet for this year, and the latest guesstimate I was given for doing so is September 20th.
So we teachers will get to access state-of-the-nerd information on your son or daughter for the first time roughly six weeks into Fall Semester. About 1/6th of the way into the school year.
Students all over the District are being deprived of electives due to poor performance, and instead are taking classes developed to utilize spiffy programs like "READ 180". But the District isn't getting "READ 180" because it's too expensive (about $500 a head from what I hear) and it requires computers and stuff. So specially created classes exist to replace electives without the specially created curriculum for those classes.
All the electives at my school are packed to the point of overflowing because of the specially designed classes noted in bullet two above. All the students who don't need the specially created curriculum are packed together in "electives" they often do not want. Part of the problem is that much of our staff is teaching the specially created classes with the specially created curriculum that we don't have.
Meanwhile, the APS website still looks like....the APS website. This fact, alone, should be grounds for action against the District due to violations of the Geneva Conventions. I think the latest international agreements specifically call for an end to poorly designed javascript.
The APS line lunch for the first three days of school has been: Day One, Pizza; Day Two, Pizza; Day Three, Pizza. And not pizza from some place in Brooklyn, Queens or Corrales. Pizza that tastes exactly like those Chefboyardee (sic?) pizza-in-a-can pizzas we made in 1971. In fact, this APS pizza tastes like it was made in 1971.
One day the pizza was augmented with, and I'm not making this up, macaroni and cheese and a roll. Yes, for those playing at home, that's a starch, a starch and a....starch. Oh, and two "cheeses" (quotation marks quite necessary). There were little clear plastic containers of iceberg lettuce chunks and a single cherry tomato on a counter, but, unsurprisingly, no students (or adults) took a container.

Now in the areas listed above I can report that APS employees are doing the best we can with what we have. I can also report that whenever somebody sues us our best very often gets just a little bit better.

Funny how that works out.

Charter Schools: A Call For Papers

2009-08-22T09:34:00.002-06:00

I'll forego the typical "I write stuff here and maybe you make a comment" process and instead invert it. I'm looking for ideas, concepts, little notes written on restaurant napkins with arrows and stuff, etc. on the subject of a new charter school here in Albuquerque.

Any readers out there ever thought of what their own Private Idaho Charter School (PICS) would look like? What PICS would your son/daughter attend? What would make your PICS different than the 5.4 million charter schools already in Albuquerque?

You can comment below, or send me an email if you're shy. Maybe nobody will send me either, but I just want to tap a vein here to see if any blood might be flowing through it. Nurse, syringe please.

Writing About Education: Is it Worth It?

2009-08-21T06:07:00.004-06:00

As this blog has evolved (devolved?) into more of a single-issue entity, there are little things I miss. Like illogically criticizing Mayor Marty, unconvincingly lampooning those running against Mayor Marty, and putting up photos like this:

I really do miss it. But since 98% of the world's non-porn websites are devoted to snark about politicians and "morans", maybe it's better to stick to tilting at educational windmills instead. Maybe that's what the Internet is supposed to be for across the issue spectrum, and we've simply lost our way (as we always do).

I don't know. I do know that sticking almost exclusively to issues in public education that piss me off doesn't get near the "page views" that a post saying Mayor Marty is a "moran" gets. But is that the point?

Is popularity ever a truly good thing?

Over the last 20/30 years there has been a dramatic shift in the news focus toward films and the film industry. In olden times, much discussion took place on the controversial trails blazed by risk-taking directors, censorship issues and film's ability to impact social mores and public policy.

Now, about 95% of news stories on movies talk about the box office. How much money did the film make? Receipts trump whether the film is good or bad. Discussions of advancing ideas and/or art through cinema almost never happen.

There are many reasons for this, pandering to a youth market infused with guilty parents' cash prime among them. But another reason is the fact we all want simple answers to complex questions. I, for instance, love the "Youth in Asia" sign as a simplistic distillation of the idiocy rampant in the complicated health care "debate".

Writing and reading things like "Marty is a poopy-head" is pleasant. Reading 1,500 about exactly why Marty is a poopy-head...not quite so pleasant.

And then there's public education. It is certainly more popular to stick to simple phrases like "public education sucks" or "won't somebody think about the children?!?", instead of reading/writing 2,500 polysyllabic words about how AYP scores are manipulated.

Yet, something beyond my own egocentrism tells me the 2,500 polysyllabic words need to happen. Of course my egocentrism tells me this as well, although I think my ego could handle passing the "work" off to someone else. My ego would quite like writing "Feudal Prince Marty Is a Poopy-Head" posts, actually.

Have a good, polysyllabic weekend, everybody.

Coach Winston Brooks Inspires Teachers With Rousing Opening Day of School Communique

2009-08-19T20:37:00.004-06:00

"I am writing to inform you that the APS Board of Education this evening approved a 5 percent increase in the cost of medical insurance for Albuquerque Public Schools employees. The district’s health care costs will in fact increase by 10 percent this year, but the Board of Education voted to use district reserve funds to cover the other half of the increase. The increase, which will go into effect Dec. 1, will cost about $5 a paycheck for APS employees who make less than $29,000 a year and have insurance for their entire family. The increase will cost about $11 a paycheck for employees who make $29,000 or more a year and have health insurance for their entire family."
--APS Superintendent Winston Brooks, employee email blast, 8.19.09

Move over Knute Rockne! Winston, and the Board, are inspiring teachers at exactly the right time..the night before school begins. Rah. Rah.

Yes I know things are tough all over, particularly in the area of medical costs. But tied together with:

No raise;
A vague one-time payment to balance a vague 1.5% tax increase;
And, a Keystone Cops-meets-Cheech & Chong series of flips, flops and reflips in tardily putting together a "failing school" remediation schema

and your average APS teacher is not exactly ready to "win one for the Gipper", or anybody else for that matter.

Superintendent Brooks hasn't been around Albuquerque long enough to show us much in the way of pep talks. Right now might be a good time to start breaking out some well-needed locker room inspiration.

Personally, I don't need a pat on the back, virtual or otherwise, but an announced reduction in the number of "short cycle assessments" from three to two this school year might be just the ticket to our putting up with lower pay and half-assed remediation implementations.

A move like that might even make me go buy some thrift-store pom-poms and lead a cheer or two. Maybe.

Here's Hoping the Logic Gives You a Headache Instead of the Blogger

2009-08-18T20:13:00.005-06:00

A reader (frequent?, occasional?, almost never?) of this blog informed me today (and I paraphrase):

"I read your blog sometimes, but you get so deep it gives me a headache".

I doubt this quote will appear on the dust jacket of my upcoming best-selling compilation of blogposts entitled Wading Through A Morass of Pointless Words. Look for that on Amazon....uh never.

I may be a jerk, but I really am not interested in giving people headaches. So let me simplify today's AYP/NCLB follies from New Jersey, and then just link to a migraine inducing morass of a pdf from the state where half the previous political officeholders are on their way to jail.

After a big hullabaloo about "raising academic standards", New Jersey made their NCLB standardized test harder in 2008. Then they just revised downward the percentage of proficiency required for schools to "meet AYP".

The end. Period. No more headache-inducing depth. They "raised standards" while "lowering standards". What's that hip acronym for this sort of thing...FTW?

And speaking of hip, hips and weight. Let's simply look at this another simple way. New Jersey basically said they really needed to lose weight. So they set an admirable goal of losing 15 lbs. And then they set the weight scale to -10 lbs. before weighing themselves. Or maybe -20 lbs. You can't really tell. But you can trust New Jersey...they really are losing weight! Honest! (just like the politicians)

They also changed the "safe harbor" provision rules because they realized no schools were going to be able to achieve "safe harbor" on a harder test. But explaining that would take us straight to the deep end of the pool, and we ain't going there tonight.

I do feel bad about the headaches. If there's anything I can do...get you an ibuprofen or something, just let me know.

Dear Teachers: Everything You Know Is Wrong

2009-08-17T06:02:00.004-06:00

...the director of teacher education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Katherine Merseth, told a conference in March that of the nation’s 1,300 graduate teacher training programs, only about 100 were doing a competent job and “the others could be shut down tomorrow.”
--New York Times, "Do Teachers Need Education Degrees?", 8.16.09

Always fun to see folks who agree with you come from Harvard and get quoted in the New York Times. I didn't go to Harvard myself, only the University of New Mexico for my "teacher training", and I feel pretty comfortable that UNM would fit squarely in the 1,200 educator training graduate schools that "could be shut down tomorrow" category.

The NYT "Room For Debate" discussion on the subject of teacher training is a good read, one I imagine would shock many teachers used to the company paradigm of:

More Education = More Better

I guess it makes sense that anything less than a 100% direct relationship between education and teacher quality would rock the world of teachers. I mean, we're in the business of selling education. Telling people there's a diminishing return to our product, or that some brands of our product aren't worth buying, is antithetical to the business and the sales pitch. The time-share that is "learning" won't be much in demand if we admit that many of the intellectual properties are situated next to a sewage treatment plant.

But is learning education? Is education learning? Are educator training programs either of those two things?

Meanwhile it's time to forget about the theoretical for another year, and time to actually figure out what the heck my classroom is doing on the 1st Period of Day One, Thursday of this week.
About 72 hours from right now.

P.S.: And speaking of 72 hours from now, a meeting is being held today to inform schools on how we are to implement the "America's Choice™" remediation program in Math. I've written a thing or two on "America's Choice™", and it is so beautifully apropos that we are being informed how to teach a massively intrusive (with impacts on everything from entire school "master schedules" to availability of student electives) curriculum-in-a-box three days before the beginning the school year.

You know, AFTER the schedules have already been made, and AFTER the student's registered and got their schedules, and AFTER all that. You know. Just like they train us in those educator preparation graduate programs.

NM Educators: The Grass Is Just As Brown and Dying On The Other Side of the Testing Fence

2009-08-15T09:43:00.005-06:00

There are differences between public education/testing in Washington State and New Mexico:

Washington has a test called the "WASL" which was intended to be the Beatles White Album of standardized testing, but....
Washington "SAT scores have been consistently among the best in the nation"
Washington elects its state education leader (the poorly worded "Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction")

But when you come down to it, things are every bit as screwed up in Olympia as they are in Santa Fe. Hmmm...that's saying a lot. That's a pretty bold statement. Just how screwed up would an organization have to be to equal the amount of screw up at the NM Public Education Department? If that amount of screw up could be harnessed somehow, could it possibly provide enough energy to completely replace the use of fossil fuels in this country?

Something to ponder while reading this editorial from the Spokane Spokesman-Review.

The Enemy Without Unites Within...Otherwise Screw Off, Loser!

2009-08-13T06:02:00.002-06:00

Quiz Time: Remember use only a Number Two Pencil...

Patriotism is:

A. Rallying together when someone from outside the tribe attacks the tribe
B. Making sure everyone inside the tribe is taken care of as well as possible
C. Threatening the life of the tribe leader when in opposition to an idea or policy
D. All of the above
E. A and C, but not B
F. A and B, but not C
G. It depends on how much my taxes go up
H. This quiz was designed by a "liberal" and therefore is invalid as "liberals" are not allowed to use the word Patriotism, you can look it up, it's in the Constitution, and the Founding Fathers...
I. Hitler
J. Socialism
K. Death Panel
L. The hypotenuse
M. None of the Above

AYP: Woe Is Lake Wobegone, Minnesota, Well Not Really

2009-08-11T20:55:00.003-06:00

Unlike New Mexico, public education in Minnesota has an excellent reputation.

And yet 46% of the schools in the Land of 10,000 Lakes failed to make AYP this year. Not quite as high as the percentage of New Mexico schools, but still enough to make you think the citizens of Minnesota would be clutching their hearts and choking on their lutefisk. You'd think the outcry over this fact would be massive.

But it's not.

Taking a look at Minnesotan news coverage of the test reports, you get a far different perspective than the one presented down here in the Land of The Sky Is Falling. For one thing, unlike Albuquerque Journal stories where Superintendents get one, maybe two quotes explaining things, the Minnesota stories allow school officials to stretch their mental legs a bit. Consider this lengthy look at the other side of the NCLB coin from a TV station in Austin, MN:

The grades are in when it comes to No Child Left Behind and one local superintendent says things really aren't as bad as they look. New figures from the state show that nearly half of the schools in Minnesota are not making their annual progress goals. As parents, should we be concerned about that? It's been said, "the numbers don't lie".

But maybe they don't tell the whole story.

"The district was labeled essentially not making adequate yearly progress," says (Austin School Official) John Alberts. AYP came out of the no child left behind law, which says that all students must be proficient in math and reading by the year 2014. Student demographics were different when the standards were put in place 8 years ago. "Maybe someone needs to take a look at it and adjust it to meet the needs that are different than the intention," says (Austin) Superintendent David Krenz.

But along the way, there are benchmarks beyond the adequate yearly progress figures to measure their progress. "So districts can also show growth in different areas, while at the same time not meeting the AYP mark," Alberts says. But along the way, there are benchmarks beyond the adequate yearly progress figures to measure their progress. So districts can also show growth in different areas, while at the same time not meeting the AYP mark," Alberts says.
And the Austin school district showed that growth. "Three percent progress, as a matter of fact," Alberts says. "If you look at research into what 21st century schools need to look like, it goes well beyond a test," says Krenz.

And that's a TV station report.

Then there's this story Minnesota Public Radio that I would like to frame and send to every public school teacher in New Mexico. The entire tone of the piece is paradigmatically unlike anything you see/read here. An excerpt:

There were, however, a few dozen schools that improved enough this year to be taken off the list, including Mankato West High. Even so, principal Brian Gersich isn't celebrating too much.

"We're not on the list, but it might not be by much," he said. "And we have to continue to focus our time and energy in those areas. We're not setting up the ticker tape parade because we're not on it this year. We could very well be on it next year."

Gersich says he hopes parents remember that plenty of schools on the list are of the highest caliber. In fact, he thinks every single school in the state is doomed to a spot on the list if the No Child Left Behind law doesn't changed.

That change might be on the way. NCLB is up for renewal and Congress is expected to take up that debate later this year.

David Heistad, the head data analyst for Minneapolis schools, says he thinks the law will change to increase emphasis on how much each student improves each year, even if that student started with very low proficiency.

It's a change Heistad says would save many schools in his district from the label of "failing."

"We'll still have tests and they'll still be given every year, as far as I can tell, so you can measure growth from one year to another," said Heistad. "But I think the dynamic around labeling schools as 'failing schools' is going to change."

I'm not joking or exaggerating when I say if I read a passage like the above from a New Mexico media outlet I would both fall out of my chair and have a heart attack. It's like these Minnesotans are from a different planet or something. It's like all those lakes are full of drinking water than chills one out, so to speak.

And I'll spare further gigantor quotes, but here's another Minnesota story from the small town of Morris. And here's a TV report from Mankato. And so on (note the long quote slamming NCLB). And so on.

For a place quite obviously beginning the horrific collapse of its public education system, Minnesotans seem both calm about the scores and optimistic about positive changes to No Child Left Behind. If only they could share some of that serenity with us down here in New Mexico.

AYP: Okay, What Are We Going To Do? (Warning: highly teacher-centric)

2009-08-10T20:13:00.004-06:00

In the wake of this year's report on standardized test scores, and the oncoming tsunami of the upcoming school year, I've had more than one teacher-type person ask me: alright Scot, what are we gonna do?

Damn good question. In part it's a good question because the question isn't the same for all of us. Some want testing done away with altogether ("blow it up, blow it to Hell"). Some want it tweaked a little, others a lot. Then there's the area to tweak, and whether that tweaking focus should be at the federal or state level.

Those who've at least tried to put up with my verbosity here know that I definitely stand on the tweak side of the blow up-tweak continuum, both in terms of what's realistic (in my mind) and actually good for our students. Given my slant, and realizing that it's a position and course of action that doesn't address the "blow it all to Hell" folks, I'll just roll a few ideas and see if we can start a discussion that goes beyond verbose bitching/bastarding (I'm trying this new word out to take the gender aspect out of bitching), moaning, etc., and gets us to some real action.

Here goes:

Federal

At the federal level we should bother in a loving and supportive way Senators Bingaman and Udall. Senator Bingaman is on the Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee, and on that outfit's Subcommittee on Children and Families, which deals directly with No Child Behind. Senator Udall is a good guy who knows Washington far better than all our newbie Congresspeople. Both Senators need to know more about how NCLB is being implemented in New Mexico, how it differs in implementation here from other states and that is unfair, uninformative and unhelpful in its current implementation both here and everywhere. I think we should be both specific with our personal tales of horror (e.g., watching Special Education kids take the tests) and general in offering useful solutions nationwide, not just in New Mexico.
Attention should especially be paid to these fine folks immediately after the health care debacle ends. Various guesstimates have put discussion of NCLB Reauthorization as coming after health care is dealt, or not dealt, with.

State

One little side note on the State situation. Notice how 99 percent of the attention in the last score report news cycle went to the graduation rate? That's a good thing (the attention, not the lousy graduation rate). Kinda like the steroids "debate" in baseball, the whole AYP thing has grown stale to many folks. Of course, we as teachers (and students) still have to deal with it. But now's the perfect time to tweak it at the state level and make it better. And who says I'm a naysaying, cynical curmudgeon?

I urge as many folks as possible to contact the NM Public Education Department, especially Secretary Veronica Garcia's office and the Assessment and Accountability Division. Get to know what both the Secretary's office and the "accountability" division do. Find out how decisions are made on testing procedures and rules. Offer to work on developing new rules. Use your experiences as evidence for why these rules and procedures must be changed.
Press the Governor. Bill Richardson has made it clear: legacy = education. And he doesn't have much time left. Regardless of what you may think of him or his "graduation initiative" the 2010 session promises to be the perfect time to strike on new initiatives across the spectrum of K-12. Go for it.
Talk to your legislator. Ask him or her what they know about these issues and offer to both help them better understand and "help them" decide how to act in next year's session. The education budget is a huge part of the State's finances. Teachers and other participants in education have, to this point, done far too little to both help and cajole decision-making that applies to us.

The Union

Believe it or not, I think the Union is as much the problem here as a solution. And that's outside the performance of the Union itself. A big problem, in my mind, is that the Union is relied on far, far, far too much to "solve" things. This is especially strange as just about no one really expects the Union to be able to solve much of anything. We teachers tend to use the Union as a place to clean our mental plates of issues too complicated to bother really thinking about ourselves. And that's bullshit. A teacher's union might be sufficient to work out a collective bargaining agreement with a district, but enacting real change requires more from individual members of both the Union and the workforce. Quit waiting for the Union to do something. Let's do it ourselves.

The District

I could be wrong here, but my sense of Superintendent Brooks is that he doesn't give a rat's ass about the NCLB requirement that "100% of students be proficient by 2014". And that's good. He talks about meaningful, but realistic academic growth as the goal, and what we have to do is make him (and the District) follow through on that goal versus the stupid NCLB goal. Pressure needs to be exerted to point out all the stupid things we have to do based on the stupid goal. These include having three short-cycle assessments every year, the whole idiotic "continuous improvement" crap "failing" schools have to endure, and the use of curriculum-in-a-box solutions that involve radical schedule changes that help gut non-"testing" academic programs (music, etc.). Why should we do these things if we don't believe in the NCLB goal? If we're making realistic growth goals why can't we just continue to do the successful things we're doing?

The School (now comes the scary part)

Another short note: Teachers are some of the nicest folks you'd ever want to meet. And that's a damn shame. We tend to be more malleable than gold and more easy to manipulate than Gumby. That's gotta stop. Please make it stop. To that end, here's a suggestion or two:

We should fight having all these "short-cycle assessments" at every turn. Three is too damn many assessments, especially given that's on top of the standardized test itself. We need to argue with our administrators, head teachers and whoever else has any line of communication with "central office" on this point. We need to complain about how these assessments result in schedules for kids that leave them with no elective, and urge parents to better understand both the assessments and the result they have on their children.
We should avoid participating in the curriculum-in-a-box solution foisted upon us whenever possible. We should not sit idly and let this get dumped in our laps. I know administrators are desperately trying to find teachers to teach "Math Navigator", etc. Sorry, find somebody else.
We need to get better informed on what all this testing means. Naturally, my suggestion is that every APS teacher spend 1500 hours reading this stupid blog. But maybe that's too draconian. How about I merely suggest teachers get to know the ins and outs of the testing rules, the statistics behind it all and the methodologies employed. I know, I know...there's a whole bunch of math-phobe teachers out there. And yes, I'm looking at you, dear Language Arts/Social Studies colleagues. But Hell, if a Mathematically deficient Political Science major like me can learn a thing or two, ANYBODY can. We need to stop that ostrich-head-sand tendency and get to know what we're really dealing with here. When you do, you realize this system is even stupider than we originally thought and that knowledge can give us the power to change it.
Most important of all, we need to communicate with each other. The lack of teacher knowledge about what goes on in other classrooms down the hall, down the street at the next school, etc. has been perhaps the single most astounding thing I've encountered as an educator. We don't know ANYTHING about what ANYBODY is doing. Well, I hear tell there's this new Internet thing, and it has like this email thing where you can write to folks and hear back from them. How about we use it and ninety-eleven other ways to keep up with each other? Getting serious, how about we use it to let others know how the fight is going at our school? That we aren't alone and that we can learn from each other how best to handle, change, obliterate negative policies? And maybe make our own practice better along the way? I know, crazy talk....

As per normal, I'm gone on far too long, and in this case written to an extremely small audience (outraged teachers willing to read stuff that goes on far too long). Still, maybe just maybe we can really do something this time. And they persist in calling me a cynic.

AYP Texas: Statistical Snake-Oil Hits a Gusher And We Should Buy Some For New Mexico Right Now

2009-08-09T21:02:00.007-06:00

I spent my weekend trying to understand new AYP counting rules Texas somehow roped the U.S. Department of Education into accepting.

Oh, that's not right: I actually spent a nice weekend at home, sprinkled with a bike ride out to the Rio Puerco and a partial night at the bizarrely crowded Marble Street Brewery.

But enough about me, let's talk explosions of dense statistics.

Texas did real, real good on their version of the standards-based assessment this year (the TAKS). And I say that as a former, lapsed Texan. Real, real good. Okay, the graduation rate sucks in Texas, too, but the scores this year was great compared with 2008.

But looking deeper, you can see the mention of something called the Texas Projection Measure. And that's where my weekend (outside of bike rides and beer) comes in. You see, despite what many of us in the K-12 teaching game in New Mexico may think, other states are doing all kinds of "interesting" things when it comes to standardized testing and scoring of said testing.

All kinds of things. And 99.7% of readers of this blog have probably tired weeks ago of me pointing out these "interesting" things. But I'm tellin' ya...it's interesting man, really!

I'd never make it in a sales job. Anyway, here's the deal.

The Texas Department of Education submitted a proposal to the U.S. Department of Education that Texas be allowed to use this mind-twistingly complicated statistical model to predict how kids who failed this year's TAKS will most likely do on the TAKS two years from now. And...here's the good part...and if the statistical model showed that these failing kids now would most likely pass two years from now they'd go ahead and just count the kid as passing now.

I swear I'm not making that up.

And the U.S. Department of Education accepted this statistical thingamabob, the Texas Projection Measure.

And as you find buried about midway in the Austin American-Statesman story linked above:

The introduction of the Texas Projection Measure helped schools climb the accountability ladder. More than half of the 2,151 exemplary schools in the state were bumped up to that level because of the measure.

Now ain't that sweeter than a field of bluebonnets under an azure Texas sky? Especially as news story after news story from the Lone Star State is proudly reporting the scores as evidence that, once again, Texas is a whole 'nother country where just about all the kids are "exemplary".

Still, some are critical of the Texas Projection Measure. A Frances Deviney from something called the "Center for Public Priorities" says it:

"does a disservice to the students and the schools by masking the true number of kids still struggling to meet the state's academic standards."

Now I tend to think differently about this than Frances Deviney. I say if you talk somebody into letting you play a baseball game where you get five outs and the opponent gets three, you do it. If you can rig it so your batters get four strikes, run 75 feet to first base instead of 90 and get to throw spitballs....well, then I'm damn well gonna hock up a loogie and get to pitchin'.

And that's basically what's happening here. Texas is giving themselves (with Fed blessing) five outs. New Mexico still gets three. Or really only one, considering that's all it takes to "fail" on the 37-part AYP scoring.

So I admire what Texas is doing here, and Georgia and all the other states who have created more "sophisticated" rules here than we have in New Mexico. I admire them and am very, very, very pissed off at my State Department of Education for not having the gumption to do the same.

And here's another reason I admire Texas and blame New Mexico. In fact, here's the real reason. The Texas Projection Measure is an attempt to create what's called in the business a "growth model" for student performance. Instead of simple one-size-fits-all "proficiency" scores, Texas is trying to create individualized scoring that shows significant and proven growth in student skills.

Now it may also be true that all the statistical mumbo-jumbo has a political motive, one of waiting out the current insane No Child Left Behind requirement and giving Texas a year or two of cover until a new NCLB is created.

Nevertheless, New Mexico needs to learn two lessons here:

Other states are successfully petitioning the Feds to allow for flexibility in standardized test scoring.
Other states are creating "growth models" that take into account the skills and needs of individual students.

And here in New Mexico, in Albuquerque where the latest AYP scores show 9.9% of its middle school Special Education students were "proficient" in Math, we can't even get a damn alternative assessment for kids meticulously screened, tested and monitored as having significant educational deficits.

I don't care whether you call it cheating, gaming the system or want to feel better and just call it a "growth model"...not doing something like our whole 'nother country to the East is both stupid and incredibly hurtful to our students.

Back When The Health Care Debate Was Relatively Sane

2009-08-09T19:33:00.003-06:00

It's late 2008, and Princeton Economist Uwe Reinhardt writes a little series for the New York Times explaining why health care costs so much in the United States (reg. required?). Dr. Reinhardt includes the graph above, explains it. Commenters make largely substantive additions to the debate. No one brings up much in the way of "eugenics", "socialism" or "best health care system in the world".

Part II in the series is here

Part III in the series is here

Part IV in the series is here

The last essay in the series is from December 12, 2008. Right at nine months ago. Seems like nine million years ago.

Today in "Experts Say": Clunkers Edition

2009-08-07T13:44:00.003-06:00

According to some estimates, the total of $3 billion in the Cash for Clunkers program could result in an $18 billion boost to the overall economy....Auto industry experts estimate that 750,000 clunkers will be scrapped as a result of the program, leading to the sale of 750,000 new cars.
--CNN.com, 8.7.09

Hmmm...

$3 billion, divided by an average of $4,000 per "clunkers" rebate = .....uh....carry the one...uh....

750,000?

How do these "auto industry experts" do it? Man I wish I could be one of them "auto industry experts"!

Meanwhile, space travel experts say Falling Satellite X still has a 70% chance of landing in water....

AYP Denouement: Time To Go To Work

2009-08-07T08:50:00.003-06:00

I've tried this summer to personally get a better handle on this standardized testing thing, and to pass on what I've learned as I think I learn it.

But like most things, when one starts really peeling layers they only find more layers. And more layers. And even more layers. And pretty soon the layer peeler is so far away from those not peeling layers that the layer peeler speaks a language nobody else understands and can generally be considered a "strange talking little weirdo".

Hi, I'm the strange talking little weirdo.

And, trying to be objective about it, the big reason I'm a weirdo is that 99.9% of all observers of and participants in this standardized testing mania feel one (or more) of the following four things:

No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Standardized Testing Is So Stupid That We Should Just Avoid Thinking About It
NCLB Testing Proves Public Schools Are Bad
NCLB Testing Has Problems But Is Here To Stay And That's the Way It Is, So Deal With It
NCLB Testing Has Problems And Many of Those Will Get Fixed When NCLB Get Reauthorized, So Let's Put Up With It For The Foreseeable Future

And given these viewpoints, the very strong tendency is to have a visceral reaction to NCLB while avoiding any real rational investigation into the whys and wherefores of it.

I'm not blaming anybody for that. For one thing, it's damn complicated. I could go into strange talking little weirdo mode and tell you in 713,000 words just how complicated it is, but that's kinda the problem here. Here's a scenario that has played out, I'm betting, many, many times at Burque Babble in recent days as the scores have come in:

Concerned Internet Searcher: Alright, let's find out how my school did on these tests.
Google: Hey, Concerned Internet Searcher, here is a list of hits for the search terms "Volcano Vista AYP Albuquerque"....1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, Burque Babble Yadda-Yadda-Yadda AYP Albuquerque
Concerned Internet Searcher: Whoo-hoo! This Burque Babble should have some info, let's click on that!
(CIS clicks and pages changes to large picture of goat and 675,000 words of impenetrable text)
Concerned Internet Searcher: What the Hell is all this crap? I just wanna know how Volcano Vista did? Did we pass or not? I'm gonna go check that little "yes/no" chart at ABQJournal.com. Screw word diarrhea boy here....

So let's just say it's complicated.

So complicated that even those professional directly affected, my colleagues for instance, will show up this upcoming Wednesday morning for the very first day of work, see our test scores on a projection screen, and immediately start talking about how stupid the testing is and that will be that.

And unlike last year, when I actually did open my mouth and made a point about how small sample sizes make slight positive variances meaningless (big mistake), I'm not gonna say diddly-squat. I'm not going to mention to anyone that I'm a strange little weirdo who has spent probably 15 hours looking over school-by-school test reports for 2009. Who has written obscure 713,000 word posts on things like confidence intervals and AYP regulatory differences between State X and State Y.

I'm just gonna drink my bad, weak-ass staff meeting coffee as fast as I possibly can, nod my head in acknowledgement when fellow staffers make observations about how stupid the test is or how much better the 57 kids in a particular subgroup did versus last year, and if directly asked (and only if directly asked) I will simply say:

"Well, it's complicated."

And then go to the oasis that is my classroom and get to work planning a school year.

The one difference this year is that along with teaching I want to use the strange little weird information I've gathered, and destroy NCLB in New Mexico as it is currently implemented. I cannot expect much in the way of involvement from my colleagues in this regard, as they are busy implementing the crazy tenets of NCLB in New Mexico, and, besides, it's complicated.

The same might be said of my Union, my District, my State Department of Education. I'm going to continue peeling layers and find out what can be done and if anyone really wants to do it. I am not terribly optimistic.

And, speaking truthfully, at some point in the upcoming Semester I'm sure the daily energy thrown into my classroom and my love for what I do in that classroom will replace any energy I have for the frustrating process of getting NCLB implementation changed here. And that process of replacement will continue until at some point I forget all about it and am no longer a strange talking (thinking) little weirdo.

Well, I'll still be a weirdo. But the strange NCLB thoughts will subside and I'll just do my job, and when asked will say "Testing is stupid". And mean it. And mean nothing more than that.

Happy school year, everybody. Let's enjoy this last weekend before that upcoming Wednesday morning staff meeting.

P.S.: I'm just kidding with the resigned fatalism above. We're gonna change the friggin' world!!! Who's with me? C'mon, who's with me? Hello? Is this thing on? Testing...

A Few Thoughts on the Governor's Graduation Initiative

2009-08-06T07:47:00.005-06:00

Like everybody else, I applaud Governor Richardson for gathering his political energy on the subject of high school graduation. The New Mexico graduation rate is awful. Yesterday's announcement was evidently only the beginning of an 8-step plan that, besides graduation, will tackle the achievement gap that currently exists between whites/economically privileged and people of color/economically disadvantaged.

Like I said. Good. Let's get to work.

That being said, I just want to point out a few obvious things, as we teachers are want to do, on what a serious attempt to deal with these matters entails.

There is a tendency to think student achievement and grades go hand in hand with academic rigor and standards. But they can actually go in completely opposite directions. If we become so concerned with retaining all students that we are willing to employ grade inflation, watered-down academic expectations and curricula that don't properly prepare for either college or the workplace, high school diplomas won't mean anything. Even at our current level of grades/standards, many New Mexico students who go to college have to take remedial classes in subjects such as Math.
The Governor wants to do a much better job of tracking dropouts, identifying them and returning them to school. Okay, but once back at school we need to give these students something to do. Something that appeals to them and will keep them in school. One thing to consider would be an expansion of non-college track trades programs. For example, how about a solar power system installation program at Albuquerque High School? Now it is very possible the Governor already has plans for an expansion of trades training. Great. Just keep in mind that it will cost money to create/run these programs, money probably far beyond the $8.9 million figure being spouted yesterday.
Speaking of money, if the Governor's plan is successful and we get 10,000 current drop outs back in school we have to spend money not only tracking and returning them, but must pay for additional teachers needed because these students are back in school. Some schools will also need additional classrooms.
And again, yes AGAIN, speaking of money, retaining high school students is about more than dangling a diploma and the hazy lure of a good job down the road. Perhaps New Mexico could pursue some sort of tangible monetary incentive program as I brought up in my last post to offer more immediate benefits to these students.
NM Education Secretary Veronica Garcia yesterday touched on the need for a "cultural shift" when it comes to valuing graduation from high school. She also mentioned the need for "outreach" to help achieve this cultural shift. A Public Service Announcement campaign was even mentioned. While I agree PSA might help in this regard, I just want to make sure the State doesn't spend the simple money on things like PSA campaigns and "tracking" dropouts, without spending the much harder money on things mentioned above. To be honest, leaving it up to PSAs scares me.
Lastly, with increased, and very needed, focus on this area we need to avoid losing focus in other areas. Many high schools now are bifurcated institutions. There is one de facto school for college prep, and one de facto school for kids the teachers/parents/administrators are just hoping graduate. If the latter de facto school grows, it must not be at the expense of the college prep school. When the actual dollars and energy start flying here, it's gonna be real hard to avoid robbing college prep school to pay "c'mon let's graduate!" school.

As the Governor's/Secretary's comments yesterday concerned the graduation problem, I'll leave, as they did, the achievement gap issue for another time.

AYP: Show My Students the Money (and not some test-prep consultant)

2009-08-05T21:04:00.007-06:00

Mr. Klein attributed the city’s gains in large part to its efforts to hold teachers and principals accountable for improving scores, including paying students $50, teachers $3,000 and principals up to $25,000 for significant progress.
--from "Gains on Tests in New York Schools Don't Silence Critics", Elisa Gootman & Robert Gebeloff, New York Times, 8.3.09

Fifty bucks, huh? Let's make that one hundred, and leave the teachers and principals out of it (we get paid already). How much would it cost to pay every APS student who scored proficient or better? I tried to find out what the bill could possibly be (100% proficiency), but damn if the District Report link is dead at the NM Public Education Department. Can't find the total number of APS students tested in 2009 there. Btw, could somebody fix that link?

Edit: Proving once again that Burque Babble is the most powerful force in the Universe, the dead link noted above now works. Coincidence? Yeah, almost certainly. Anyway, as the suddenly resurrected report shows, APS tested right at 41,500 "Full Academic Year" students. For purposes of the little riff below, we'll disregard the district figures and proceed as if the link stayed dead.

Okay, let's just use last year's instead. Damn, can't find a link for 2008 either. No link exists at all.

Let's try the APS website.

Of course you know I'm joking when I say that. Saying "Let's try the APS website" is like saying "Let's try to obtain information by slamming our heads into a concrete wall over and over". It's like saying "Let's try to learn more about my school district by sticking a screwdriver in a 220-volt washing machine electrical outlet".

Alright. Let's count school by school from the NM PED website. Okay, let's not. That would take like six hours. Okay, why not just look at my school and say we're running a "Pilot Program"! Whoo-hoo! Pilot Program!

Last year my little middle school tested 883 kids. Remember middle schools usually test relatively large numbers not only because they are typically bigger than elementary schools, but because they test all three grades, unlike high schools which just test 11th graders.

Okay, 883 kids. But in terms of kids that really count, only 794 students were considered to have attended my school for the "Full Academic Year". So we're only paying up to 794 students. I mean, we're generous, but we're not crazy.

794 x $100 = $79,400

Sounds like a ton of money, right? Well, that's the max remember. 100% proficiency. Also, keep in mind that my school is spending somewhere around $25,000 paying for this curriculum-in-a-box program designed by "consultants" to teach struggling kids in Math. Not to mention the fact my school has had to radically change our entire "master" schedule for all students because this curriculum-in-a-box supposedly cannot be taught properly unless a whole separate period is created to do so.

Now you can't put a dollar value on pain in the ass aggravation, but I gotta think creation of this new schedule, all the stupid meetings we had about it, will have about it and assorted pain and suffering for both the kids who have to take this curriculum-in-a-box crap, and those who have to take something else while these other kids have the curriculum-in-a-box crap has to add up to some sort of equivalent to monetary compensatory damages. Not to mention the punitive damages I'd like to monetarily impale these teach-to-the-test consultant hyenas with.

I'm saying it's at least worth the equivalent of $50,000. At least. And combined with the $25,000 already mentioned we're just about at $79,400.

And here's the $79,400 question. Which do you think would lead to a better proficiency rate: The offer of $100 to every kid reaching proficiency (we could make it $50 for proficiency in Math and $50 in Reading) or this curriculum-in-a-box and radically revised "master" schedule?

The Times story doesn't get into any sort of definitive answers on anything, and doesn't touch much on the student pay specifics at all. Yet, New York City isn't the only school system trying things like this. Chicago schools pay students for good grades, but I haven't seen any data at present from the researchers at Harvard who were funding the Chicago program to study the results. Some research is coming in regarding a Texas program to pay students who score well on Advanced Placement tests, and the findings by Cornell University's Kirabo Jackson seem to show a benefit.

Of course there are moral/ethical/educational questions here beyond the simple pragmatics of "will paying students work?" For me, the bottom line is this: I'd rather see students paid than consultants and curriculum-in-a-box makers who don't see kids on a daily basis, have zero accountability themselves and are simply opportunistic scavengers of the testing mania we currently suffer under.

Just as is the case with college athletics, all the players in the standardized testing game get paid, except the actual players. No teacher, administrator, test creator or test publisher expects to work without getting paid here. And I'm betting pretty much all those who scream about how horrible paying students is expect to get paid for doing their job as well.

Oh, and to answer the $79,400 question above: I'd bet 79,400 dollars to doughnuts more kids would become proficient at my school using $100 cash incentives than some curriculum-in-a-box. Take me to the Pilot Program, folks, and let's gamble. Uh, not gamble...uh, no it's not gambling...it's research. We would be conducting very, very serious research.

P.S.: I truly understand and appreciate the "knowledge for knowledge sake" argument. After all, I'm a guy who got a Master's Degree in Political Science in a mad attempt to do the absolute most studying possible while being guaranteed of making the absolute least amount of money possible. I'm a big proponent of "lifelong learning" and all that. Knowledge might be Power, but I know for a fact it's Fun, and that's way more important than Power to me. Still...let's be honest here and realize that for many the intrinsic rewards of learning stuff might not be as important as they are/were for us, and as they will, hopefully, eventually be for them.

P.P.S.: I know paying for proficiency might be unfair to certain students like Special Education kids. Trust me, I've got a plan, a 47,000 word plan I'd love to lay on ya, but let's face it, this has gone on long enough. Email me if you want even an executive summary of "Leveling the Playing Field: A Monetary Manifesto". See, that Master's in Poly Sci did pay off for me. I can use grammatical colons in titles like nobody's business.

AYP: Other States, Other Scams?

2009-08-05T10:16:00.003-06:00

No 50,000 word AYP treatise today, just a link to what might be the Magna Carta and U.S. Constitution combined of AYP regulatory documents.

It's the Alabama "AYP Interpretive Guide"

I'd explain why I think this is the most sublime, elegant and downright tricky piece of bureaucratic prose in educational history, but it would take me 50,000 words to do so.

Besides, why try to compete with a document so deviously formulated and well-written? I am not worthy.

And some people say folks from the Deep South aren't that smart...

Just read it. And yes, it will be on the final exam.

P.S.: I was drawn to the Alabama situation after seeing a stream of "wow, we're fantastic!" newspaper stories on AYP there. Here's just one example. Beautiful. So elegantly tricky; so deliciously devious. I think I might be tearing up. Am I less a man because bureaucratic beauty such as this makes me cry?

AYP APS: The 2009 Unintentional Humor/Horror Awards

2009-08-04T18:17:00.016-06:00

As has been pointed out by at least one observer, we've had enough posts around here on AYP lately to fence the XIT Ranch. And I'd be lying to you if I didn't admit most of 'em have, at times, been drier than the Texas Panhandle, what with all the statistics and numbers and so on.

So let's lighten up a little and hand out some "awards" to individual schools that experienced little weirdnesses in their results/posting, weirdnesses that in many cases will result in a year of utter Hell for the folks attending/teaching/administering at these schools. Hence the "humor/horror" in the title above. To keep the mood light, we'll use an extraordinarily cheesy music theme this year.

And now....the winners!

The TMBG "We Were Once So Close To Heaven" Award: La Cueva High School

They Might Be Giants is my all-time favorite "pop" band and they had a song way back in the dark recesses of the 19th Century called "Road Movie To Berlin". The lyrics contain the following:

We were once so close to heaven
Peter came out and gave us medals
Declaring us the nicest of the damned

Well, in this year's testing La Cueva High School "passed" in every one of many subgroups except "Students With Disabilities". Below is how they did in this area in both Reading & Math:

...........# Tested.................% Proficient.......% Needed to "Pass"
Math......34..............................26.5..........................28.1
Reading..34.............................38.2...........................40.4

In other words, if one more La Cueva Special Education student had been proficient in Math & Reading La Cueva would have "passed". One. La Cueva isn't alone in this regard, as I found the same situation (with varied subgroups) at Chamiza, Comanche, & Dennis Chavez Elementaries and at 21st Century Charter School. The award goes to La Cueva however, as it's a high school and has that certain name recognition that attracts some and engenders big-time schadenfreude in others when "bad" things happen there.

Of course the true horror here is that there is a Special Education student (or several) who is going to hear about this factoid and feel bad about it. And that kid might be at one of the elementary schools listed above. A little fourth grader. A nine-year old.

See, I told you they were humor/horror awards....

The Carly Simon "You're So Vain/You're No Good, You're No Good, You're No Good, Baby You're No Good" Award: All Albuquerque Charter Schools

I think at this point enough people are sophisticated enough to know that test scores from charter schools are bullshit. Charters are always too small to have any scores from subgroups count and many of these schools are created to attract specific populations that better ensure higher scores (e.g. Public Academy for the Performing Arts).

Interestingly, one school that fits the latter categorization, the "Albuquerque Institute of Mathematics and Science" AIMS (aka: The Feudal Prince Marty Chavez School for Cherry-Picked Test Score Statistics) is among several schools whose report link doesn't work at the State PED website. The link worked for a very short time yesterday, then it didn't.

Those wishing to develop dark conspiratorial reasons for this in a campaign season are highly encouraged (although if you look here you see AIMS, aka TFPMCASFCPTSS, shows up as having "passed").

But back to the point on charters in general and why they win this award. The problem here is that even though just about everyone is sophisticated enough to know the scores from these schools are bullshit, they still use charter school scores as comparison with non-charters. For instance, read this thread at Duke City Fix. I think we see where all this is going, and it's no good, it's no good, it's no good, baby it's no good....

Edit: I was out feeding the horses this afternoon and starting humming that "You're no good" song..and I think I remember it's actually a Linda Ronstadt song. Yup, it is. Oh well, I always got those two confused. More of a Joni Mitchell guy myself.

The Interpol "It's up to me now, turn on the bright lights" Award: Amy Biehl High School

(Note: In terms of full disclosure, I used to work at ABHS. Now I don't . Long story. Buy me enough Marble IPAs at the brewpub and maybe I'll tell you about it sometime. Still, I really like ABHS and refer my exiting 8th students to the school all the time.)

Speaking of charter schools, probably no school has had a better "reputation" this decade than ABHS. But with this year's scores, the school's bullshit has finally caught up with it. Namely, the graduation rate at this place has been abysmal for, forever. And that fact finally raised it ugly little 33% graduation rate head this year, and the school shows up at "failing" in its "additional indicator".

Is Amy Biehl the only high school with a bad graduation rate...absolutely not, as every story on the subject has told us in 52 pt. bold font headlines. But now the "bright lights" are finally on the subject at ABHS, and the school's reputation better matches reality.

The Offspring "Now the neighborhood is cracked and torn" Kids Aren't Alright Award: Mark Twain Elementary

Man. When I worked at Hayes Middle School (another "cracked and torn" situation) in the 90s, Mark Twain Elementary was our "good" feeder. Stable families, solid students. Now look at these scores a decade or so later. Mark Twain didn't pass in ANY subgroup. None. There are very few examples of that extreme in the entire district. And Mark Twain is one of them. Think I'll just continue with the "Kids Aren't Alright" lyrics for that one:

Now the neighborhood's cracked and torn
The kids are grown up but their lives are worn
How can one little street swallow so many lives?

The Jethro Tull "Skating away on the thin ice of a new day" Award: Bel-Air Elementary

Last year Bel-Air didn't "pass" and it wasn't really even close. This year the school scraped by with a remarkable combination of "Safe Harbor" passage (the number of those proficient in a subgroup went up 10% or more than last year's ultra-lousy proficiency scores), just getting by in some areas, and having just too few students to count in subgroups like "English Language Learners" and "Students With Disabilities". With an amazingly small amount of statistical icing, Bel-Air was able to cover up the entire AYP cake.

The odds of doing that again next year would be somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,000,000 to 1. Or worse.

Lastly...the Spinal Tap "You know where you stand in a hell hole" Award: Shared by Highland High School, Polk Middle School & Washington Middle School

I tend to be sarcastic, so let me disclaim here. I truly respect the Hell out of the students, teachers and administrators at all three of these schools. Truly. There are most likely great things happening at these three institutions. It's a damn shame we're never going to hear anything about those great things, because these schools are never going to come within 1,000 light years of "passing" this AYP thing. Never.

There is a better chance of every student at Polk, a school not too far from my house in the South Valley, winning the World Series of Poker Main Event than there is of the school making AYP. Same with Washington and Highland.

And, really, the same can be said for a bunch of other schools in town for all the reasons I've dryly mentioned in my overly numerous posts in recent days on "AYP: 2009". And all those posts and all those reasons are never going to mean a good goddamn to public school critics who just want to use AYP to prove pet assumptions that schools like Polk are "hell holes" in every way. And that's why these schools "win" this award. Not because what happens within them is necessarily hellish, but because all the students, teachers, parents, and administrators from "passing" public schools, charters and privates can all feel superior and look down at these places.

Of course, now La Cueva HS is just as "failing" as Highland HS. Amy Biehl is no "better" than Polk or Washington or any of the other "failing" schools. Welcome to Hell, folks. Welcome to Hell.

AYP NM: We're Not Alone and We Can Do Something

2009-08-04T07:35:00.004-06:00

It's a different State, but the madness is basically the same.
Here's the "100% by 2014" curve for Arizona
(note the ridiculous giant leaps expected shortly)

One thing I've noticed in doing fairly intense education research the last year or so is that schools are the opposite of pizza. Just about everybody thinks the best pizza in the world is the place down the street. Conversely, just about everybody is also convinced their own school district is most probably the most awful in the universe.

Take the reaction to Standardized Testing. As scores come in around the country, newspaper large and small report the findings. Findings that often seem to confirm the local school district is deficient. Commenters to those online stories rant and declaim about how awful the local district is. Here are a few examples (each word a separate, though highly similar link).

Closer to home, the Santa Fe New Mexican has a solid little story this morning about the New Mexico scores, with special attention paid to the little education pizza joint down the street, Santa Fe Public Schools. The news is bad. The comments are vehement, venomous and just about violent. Unprecedented failure. Local and state heads must roll. Dogs and cats living together.

What are those of us in the apparent downward spiraling cesspool of public education to do? Looking more closely at the scores, it's apparent the overall percentage of those achieving "proficiency" is going up. Small increases to be sure, but up. Nevertheless, these improvements are overwhelmed by the vagaries of subgroup scoring, and the continued perception that our local schools are failing in ways unmatched by schools anywhere else.

Two asides. One: Regular readers of this little blog probably saw the word "subgroup" above and are now wincing as it must surely mean Scot will go into one of his 50,000 word deconstructions of subgroup scoring. Not this time....those wanting to read such density are free to look through earlier posts (be sure to bring plenty of caffeine and No-Doz). Two: This local "sky is falling" perception is not limited to the United States. Despite what Americans might think, citizens of other countries are convinced their own school systems suck, too. I visited Germany this past June and had more than one conversation with parents aghast at German public school practices and test results.

So getting back to the question: what do we do now?

First, we need to better understand that we (parents, children, teachers) are not alone, both across the nation and within our own districts. I've touched on the national/international front, but here are three quick facts of solidarity locally:

No Albuquerque Public School middle school made AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress)
Only one high school made AYP
And perhaps most importantly, no APS school (elementary or otherwise) with statistically relevant numbers of both "Students With Disabilities" and "English Language Learners" made AYP. Zero.

As has been said here ad nauseum, infinitum and a whole hell of a lot of times, we must change the way "Students With Disabilities" and "English Language Learners" are tested and scored. Again, we are not alone in thinking this. Newspaper stories/editorials across the country bring up the same point. But instead of simply yelling about the misguided attempt to be "fair" to these populations by making them test at the same exact level of proficiency despite the fact that they have specially designed educational plans developed in response to noted, catalogued and meticulously recorded educational challenges of language, etc., we need to do something about it.

The system of "accommodations" to adapt the standard test to these special needs is a joke. The continued hurtful embarrassment to these kids, their parents and teachers by forcing them to take educationally inappropriate tests is a travesty.

And we can do something about it. States like Georgia have successfully petitioned the U.S. Department of Education to allow for alterations not only in scoring for these populations, but to have an altogether different test for Special Education kids. New Mexico needs to do the same. We need to quickly design fair and useful assessments that can more truly determine individual student progress in these populations, and stop this charade of "fairness".

As I have suggested before, I just wish politicians who crow so proudly about how No Child Left Behind is designed to help ALL children could spend a few hours in the testing room for some Special Education kids in New Mexico. That would surely speed up the process of testing reform exponentially.

Having addressed the sham "fairness" of testing these subgroups, we in New Mexico also need to lead the way in developing a new framework for improvement in student proficiency. As anyone who actually works in education (and frankly, anybody in any field who has actually looked into it at all) can tell you, the infamous 100% by the 2013-2014 school year proficiency curve chart is perhaps the most ludicrous, silliest ideas in human history.

Each state has been "free" to develop their own chart, but No Child Left Behind mandates that each silly little chart (Arizona is linked above) end up with 100% by 2013-2014. Everybody...EVERYBODY thinks this is stupid. NOBODY argues that the chart or expectation has any scintilla of reality in it. EVERYBODY is waiting for a reauthorization of No Child Left Behind to recast this silly little chart in more realistic terms.

But it's now 2009, and there's been no reauthorization of NCLB, and that stupid, silly chart is still with us.

The New Mexico Public Education Department needs to go from its current role as passive, reactive whipping boy to taking a proactive, innovative approach to gauging student improvement. We should not wait for the Federal Government to change silly charts, but forge our own and lead the Federal Government in developing realistic standards of progress.

As I mentioned above EVERYBODY pretty much agrees on this. Yet nothing is being done. I can only think this is due to the perception that we are alone in our educational suckiness. We're not. Stop cowering, New Mexico. Amid a bunch of really bad numbers..and the numbers, such as that on graduation, are really bad, are overall numbers of statistical improvement.

For example, lost in a sea of bad news, AYP failure and sky is falling, PED Secretary Veronica Garcia noted this yesterday:

Over the last five years, the percent of students proficient or above has increased 11% overall in Math, 5% overall in Reading, and 6% overall in Science.

Are these gains enough...probably not. Could they be better...yes. Still, they are gains, but gains never noticed in that sea of bad news. As has been noted by EVERYBODY, NCLB is currently designed, carefully designed, to perpetuate and exacerbate the public perception that there local school district is a disaster, and that things MUST be better elsewhere. Increasing Math proficiency by 11% in five years is generally impressive. How many "common decent New Mexicans" are going to know/remember that little statistic?

In August 2009, only five years away from the insane dream world of "100% by 2014", there is a vacuum of educational leadership at the state level to take on the federal insanity. This needs to change. Period.

I'll close with a personal note. This year my little school "failed" in the areas of "Students with Disabilities" (both Reading and Math) and "English Language Learners" (in Reading). We've failed for pretty much the same reason for a few years now, and have reached the "failing school" status of "Restructuring-1". Whatever the Hell that is.

Near as we can tell, "Restructuring-1" means we have to attend a bunch of meetings on "continuous improvement" (among other things), and express sentiments like "by continuously improving we can maximize our value-added educational opportunities and create an environment for universal student success". There are a great number of professionally depressing aspects to No Child Left Behind, great injustices as noted above. For me, personally, nothing tops the professionally enervating ennui of looking forward to a school year full of meetings on "continuous improvement".

I'm hoping my staff and I can overcome the ennui, and use the anger created by these stupid meetings to effect change both at my school and throughout the system. You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. Okay, maybe on this one, I'm the only one. We'll find out. This School Year of 2009-2010 is the year to really find out.

"Cash For Clunkers" Program Extended to Purchase of Bicycles

2009-08-03T22:07:00.002-06:00

--because we could use a little break from all the standardized test result statistical mumbo-jumbo

Albuquerque/Washington-- The wildly successful “Cash for Clunkers” program initiated by the Federal Government to revive the U.S. Auto industry while also putting “greener” cars on the road took a new direction yesterday with the announcement that bicycles could be purchased instead.

Rebates of $4500 are offered to car owners wishing to purchase bikes from registered local bike shops around the country. The plan is intended to bolster bike shops whose business has fallen off as the “fixie” craze has subsided and the Tour de France has ended for 2009. The environmental benefit of bikes is being cited as a reason as well.

Upon announcement of the bike program, Albuquerque, New Mexico bike shops were inundated with calls and walk-ins asking about the offer. Bert Yancy of “Bert’s Bikes and More” noted at least ten separate in-person customer requests. “About half the guys who came in were driving very old Saabs and Volvos. Really old. And they all wanted to look at like $6000 racing bikes and stuff. It was kinda weird to see these old timers checking out Cervelo R-3s and asking about hand-built Waterfords. I mean these guys were old and pretty chunky. But hey if it moves bikes, I’m cool with it, as long as I’m not stuck with the damn Saabs.”

U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood told reporters yesterday that someone participating in the bike portion of “cash for clunkers” would automatically get the maximum $4500 rebate. As rebates are calculated on amount of gas savings, drivers going from even high mpg “clunkers” like a 1987 Ford Fiesta would still be going from approximately 40 mpg to, theoretically at least, infinity mpg. Despite this, Secretary LaHood emphasized the importance of trading in old SUVs and such, especially as “a lot of you older SUV owners could really stand to lose a few pounds, if you know what I mean.”

Some Republicans lawmakers derided the bike aspect of the program, citing arguments that bike riders do not pay taxes for road construction, most bikes are currently foreign-made, and, as Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn, M.D. put it, “those damn bike riders are always in the way, slowing everybody down and weaving in and out of traffic. No way in Hell should we be paying to put up with those losers.”

Hearing considerable criticism on the entire “cash for clunkers” program and the new bike initiative in particular, President Obama himself tried to rally support for both, telling an audience of touring cyclists in Alexandria, Virginia “I really think any sane person given the chance to buy forty-five hundred dollars worth of touring bike and accessories is going to ‘see the light’ and end up doing at least part of the Trans-Am, if not the whole damn thing.”

The cyclists in the audience immediately broke into wild applause, before rushing out the meeting room doors to race each other down to a nearby dealer of popular Surly brand touring bicycles.

AYP NM: Making Sense of the Numbers

2009-08-03T16:48:00.004-06:00

Having had a chance to look a bit deeper into the test scores released today, I think it's important to first mention a few positives before assailing you, dear reader, with the nunchucks of statistics that follow.

Speaking specifically of APS schools, I see two elementaries that stand out (btw, I have no connection to either of them, and don't even know anybody who works there).

Alvarado Elementary is a North Valley school, pretty darn close to Sadie's Restaurant. Alvarado was remarkable this year because over 50% of its "Students with Disabilities" SWD (i.e., Special Education kids with half-time SpEd service or more) were proficient in Math. Their figure of 54% is higher than many school's non-SWD populations. It's really high.

Combined with eeking out the SWD score in Reading, Alvarado Elementary was a very rare incidence of an APS school that both "passed" AND had enough SWD kids to count toward "passing". More about exactly how rare an occurrence that is below.

La Mesa Elementary is in what can be considered a "tough" part of Albuquerque, just East of the NM Fairgrounds. Its population of "English Language Learners" (ELL) accounts for over three-quarters of the entire tested student body. These ELL kids were proficient in Math at a 51% clip. Now it's true La Mesa did "pass" overall this year solely because of "safe harbor" provisions, but that Math number for ELL kids is, again, remarkable.

There are other successes in the dense thicket of scores released today, but these two stand out to me.

Now on to the nunchucks.

In case you don't already know, the New Mexico Public Education Department doesn't consider a testing subgroup as statistically relevant unless there are 25 members of a particular subgroup tested at a school. For example, if School X tests 24 "Students With Disabilities" that subgroup doesn't count. If School X tests 25 SWD kids..the subgroup counts.

Number of schools within the APS umbrella reporting scores today: 168
Number of "passing" schools: 39
Number of "passing" schools with 25 or more SWD students tested: 4 (Alvarado, Monte Vista, S.Y. Jackson, Zia...all elementary schools)
Number of these four "passing" schools that also had 25 or more ELL students tested: Zero

In other words, zero APS schools "passed" who had the statistically relevant number of test participants in the areas of both "Students With Disabilities" and "English Language Learners". Zero.

Keeping in mind that a school had to have 25 Full Academic Year students (i.e., students who attended the same school for most all of the testing school year) participate for a subgroup (e.g., Students with Disabilities, Hispanics, etc.), the following factoid is also slightly interesting:

Number of schools within the APS umbrella reporting scores today: 168
Number of "passing" schools: 39
Number of "passing" schools with between 17-24 SWD students tested: 14
Number of "passing" schools with between 17-24 SWD students tested who were on a pace to "fail" in the area of SWD: 10

I'll leave the breakdown in regards to ELL students to others.

The above illustrates a fact and raises a paranoid concern. First, it's easily apparent the number of schools "passing" is bogus. So much is tied to whether a school has 25 test participants in a subgroup that the idea of "passing" is a joke.

Second, I would NEVER suggest that some elementary schools are doctoring their number of SWD kids in an attempt to stay just below the 25 student threshold. I would NEVER say that...but if you look school by school, and keep in mind the exponentially more convoluted screening procedures for Special Education these days...it's not terribly hard to turn the above factoids into paranoid speculation.

One only wonders how much more rampant such paranoid speculation would be if test scores were ever truly tied to something like "Merit Pay".

Okay, enough for today. Tomorrow I think we'll again tackle what to do now, from tearing down the test itself and rebuilding a fairer system, to responding to critics who seem to think this testing means one thing when, in fact, it very much means something else.

AYP NM: Your Shining Success Story! Sierra Alternative

2009-08-03T14:39:00.005-06:00

From the prepared remarks by NM Public Education Secretary Veronica Garcia in a just concluded press conference:

This year, student achievement goals or AMOs moved and (sic) average of 4% over 2008. New Mexico had a total of 13 schools come of (sic) designation. Please help me in congratulating the following schools:
oSierra Alternative – Albuquerque Public Schools
o Congratulations!

Now look at the actual test results for Sierra Alternative. The actual number of "Full Academic Year" (i.e., those who count toward overall scores) students tested this year: two. No actual proficiency percentages are posted because of privacy concerns. If you only test two kids it's pretty easy to figure out exactly who passed and who didn't.

And this is the success story. Congratulations Sierra Alternative!

For the beginning of a longer look at the numbers, drop on by this post..if you dare.

P.S.: The (sic)s above aren't intended to pick on the Secretary...but those are some godawfully written remarks. Then again, given these scores I wouldn't have wanted to spend much time writing up remarks either.

P.P.S.: I looked back at the Sierra Alternative score report, and I still have no idea why this school was mentioned today. It's got to be a mistake. Maybe they meant Alvarado Elementary instead. Now that's a success story (if one considers doing well/better on these standardized tests worthy of the term "success").

AYP NM: On First Blush It Ain't Looking Pretty

2009-08-03T12:54:00.014-06:00

Looks like some results are hitting the "wires". A cursory glance at the APS reports shows:

Not a hell of a lot of APS schools will have "Met" status for 2009-2010.
Just like last year, no APS middle school "Met".
Only one high school, Volcano Vista, "Met" (wonder if it was "Safe Harbor"...edit: scratch that theory as Volcano Vista is a new school and didn't even have scores last year)
A few charters are in "good" shape, but most aren't.
The number overall of APS "Met" is far less than 50%. In fact, I get 38 "passing" out of 168 reporting schools...and 14 of those "passing" are charter schools (with funky little statistical/filtering situations I will get into later).
And here's the list of schools who "failed" because of 1, 2, or 3 subgroups. If I may make a small criticism of PED, this is one lousy looking document. There are about 64 ways this important information could be communicated more effectively.

More as it comes in. Edit: Here's the beginning of a deeper "analysis" (warning: high eduwonk geek factor!)

Maybe somebody can think up an AYP Score Results "drinking game". Given the results I'm looking at so far, looks like we're all gonna need a drink or two, PED Secretary Veronica Garcia included.

P.S.: If I read this correctly, the number of APS schools coming "off designation" (i.e. schools previously "failing" who "passed" this year) is..........one. That one is Sierra Alternative School, and even that school looks to have "Not Met" because of an inadequate graduation rate. For the entire state, the number of "off designation" schools barely fills the top half of one 8.5 x 11 inch spreadsheet page. 13 schools total. And only 8 of those schools (that's 8 in the entire state of New Mexico) show up as "Met".

Frankly, that little spreadsheet page is all-around confusing.

The New AYP Phone Book Is Here! The New AYP Phone Book is Here!

2009-08-03T09:12:00.003-06:00

Well, almost here.

As noted by Nancy Tipton at ABQJournal.com, the New Mexico Public Education Department is having a 2:00 p.m. news conference to announce the release of 2009 Standards Based Assessment (i.e., testing) and tap dance around the bad news while overly gloating on the good.

You know, a press conference.

More important to the dweebier among us, the PED website has a spankin' new webpage this morning (suave silhouettes of kids in thoughtful, yet playful poses included) which, for now, solely tells us:

AYP 2009 will be available after 2pm on Monday, August 3, 2009

Like "AYP 2009" is the next "Star Wars" installment, and we're a bunch of uber-nerds who will stand outside the movie house for hours/days to be first in line when the movie/scores come out.

Sad to say, that analogy fits me to a very perfectly formed "T". I am already wearing my AYP helmet, and hold a plastic "light saber" with the words "Annual Measurable Outcomes" painted on it with White-Out. It's damn hard to type while holding a plastic "light saber", I can tell you.

More later. Remember, I'm first in line, even if I have to go to the bathroom.

P.S.: Edit...As "Results Day 2009" unfolded, I blabbed more and more about the whole thing. Those looking for a bit of "analysis" on it all can look here.

So What Happens If All Educational Hell Breaks Loose?

2009-07-31T16:42:00.004-06:00

In other words, what happens if our school district becomes Detroit?

I'd planned on giving the Internets a needed weekend break, but ran across this story from the Detroit Free Press on Detroit Public School (DPS) plans to have private firms take over 17 schools.

The story, the companies, the attempt to ban hiring the companies, and the comments all combine for a general The Road McCarthy-level public school post-apocalypse.

Oh, and when the DPS school board met with the "state-appointed emergency financial manager" brought in to take over the district's extremely wayward budget, the board voted to not work with the Governor-appointed "financial manager" guy, and instead will sue to bar the "financial manager" from hiring the four outside firms in the first place.

Golly.

Well, I'm feeling better and better about Albuquerque Public Schools with every syllable I read in these Detroit stories! Maybe we should keep these horror tales on hand when things get rough and the NM standardized test scores come out next Tuesday.

Have a good weekend, everybody, and be thankful you don't teach (learn? live? financially manage stuff?) in Detroit.

In Cycling News

2009-07-31T07:19:00.004-06:00

George Hincapie rode the last four stages of the Tour de France with a broken collarbone, including the climb of Mount Ventoux. He knew something was wrong, but wouldn't let doctors examine him because he wanted to finish the Tour.

One person's crazy is another person's inspiring.

I'll try to remember that little story as I attempt a little self-constructed three stage "Tour of Albuquerque Thing" this weekend (collarbone intact). As a early close-out to Summer, and the end of my seasonal teaching unemployment, I'm going up Tramway this morning to see how slowly one can take a bicycle up the La Luz trail road without simply having the bike and rider fall over.

Then it's on to a Saturday celebration of the new Rail Runner stop at 599 and Cerrillos Rd. with a ride up the Turquoise Trail. Can't miss out on a chance to do a Santa Fe bike/rail loop that avoids the worst part of the loop (i.e., Santa Fe).

And Sunday I'll close things out with some friends as we go up South 14 to Oak Flat (which is a strange name because I think of that whole ride as anything but flat) .

Strange...typing the above suddenly makes me sleepy. Maybe I'll just take a nap. No, not really...but I won't be riding with a broken collarbone. At least I'll try not to.

If I see you out on the roads, I'll try to ring my new "Incredibell" as a form of saying howdy. And if you happen to see me and my bike reclined/supine/sprawled on a steep hill somewhere, try not to laugh too hard.

Have a good weekend, everybody.

AYP: Other Voices, Same Lament

2009-07-30T08:45:00.002-06:00

As we approach the eduwonk holiday of "Standardized Test Results Release Day" (now August 4th in New Mexico), how about some contextual input from other folks around the country? This morning's quote comes from an editorial in the Frederick News Post, Frederick, Maryland:

NCLB's heart was in the right place. Its intent was to ensure that special needs, economically disadvantaged, non-native speakers of English, and other vulnerable subgroups within a school population not be left behind. But has the bar been set too high for the schools that are diligently trying to educate these kids?
The ground rules for schools achieving AYP are neither reasonable nor fair. In fact, they're an onerous disservice to our school system, its individual schools and their administrators and teachers.
Indeed, no child should be left behind where public education is concerned. But neither is it fair to stigmatize an entire school and its staff because one, possibly small, challenging subgroup within its student population fails to make AYP.

"...onerous disservice to our school system, its individual schools and their administrators and teachers." Nice. I'll have to steal that one, only I'd add the point that most onerous of all is the disservice to those Special Education students and English Language Learners themselves.

Still, if I were to see an August 5, 2009 editorial in a New Mexico newspaper with statements like the quote above, I'd probably need immediate medical attention. That Grade III concussion I'd get from hitting my head on the floor as I fell out of my chair in disbelief would be a doozy.

P.S.: Come to think of it, if a simple concussion could lead to changing this "onerous disservice" I think I'd be willing to do it...much simpler than lobbying, protesting, phone calls, letter-writing and all that. Probably less brain damage as well.

Your National Laboratory Geniuses Proving Their Worth

2009-07-29T20:40:00.003-06:00

Hashem Akbari, Dr. Rosenfeld’s colleague at the Lawrence Berkeley laboratory, says he is unsure how long it will take cool roofs to truly catch on. But he points out that most roofs, whether tile or asphalt-shingle, have a life span of 20 to 25 years.
If the roughly 5 percent of all roofs that are replaced each year were given cool colors, he said, the country’s transformation would be complete in two decades.
--Felicity Barringer, New York Times, "White Roofs Catch On As Energy Cost Cutters", 7.29.09

Nice to have our highly trained, massively schooled Lab scientists here to explain those thorny percentage problems for us. I bet Mr./Dr. Akbari has a really cool white lab coat, too. With pens and stuff in the pockets.

Burque Babble: Silencer of Liberty (Corrected)

2009-07-29T08:55:00.003-06:00

It has come to our attention that changing the setting on comments from "everyone welcome, even crack-pot anonymous people" to "something about Open ID, which your humble blogger doesn't really understand" has deprived freedom-loving Americans (and my guess would be freedom loving Rwandans and Luxembourgians/bourgites/bourglanders as well) from the right to write stupid things.

And I shouldn't be the only person writing stupid things here.

So, I've undertaken the single greatest act of anti-censorship since the Pentagon Papers, and switched the comments here back to "everyone welcome, even crack-pot anonymous people".

Please remember me fondly when having lunch with folks from the Nobel Prize committee. And remember my version of Scot only has one "T" in it. I'd hate to win a Nobel Prize and find out they gave it to Scott instead of Scot. Man, that would piss me off.

But I digress. Comment away. Use the powerful sword that is your keyboard and plough as many paths of logic, argument and prose as you wish. Knock yourselves out, people.

Lastly, reading Coco this morning is not only good, disturbing fun (cops tasering 14-year olds), but alludes to further proof that 99.9% of all internet comments are written by....well...just who are these 99.9% of comments written by? Aliens? Lower forms of animals suddenly equipped with opposable thumbs? Evil robots ? Jim Villanucci? Jim Villanucci-controlled evil robots?

Anyway, the 99.9% above does not apply to comments made here. This is and should be a sacred oasis of wisdom in the huge, intellectually barren desert that is the Internet. Now if only the blogger himself could provide some wisdom...even once.

P.S.: Isn't it fun to read stories/columns from faraway newspapers and the comments to those stories/columns? Isn't it fun to try to figure out just what the Hell is going on in these towns? Take this little Op/Ed piece on local education from some place in North Carolina. Kinda reaffirms your faith in humanity while also kinda making you embarrassed to be human, don't it?

You Think You're Sick of the Heat?

2009-07-28T09:22:00.003-06:00

Full Disclosure: I'm sitting in a New Mexico house with Central Air-Conditioning turned down to "igloo".

We're all sick of how hot it has been, especially when it's not a dry heat and the swamp coolers are less than optimally effective.

Well, if you want horrible, unlivable heat try Seattle on days like today. Or Wednesday. Or Thursday.

.. Excessive heat warning remains in effect until 6 PM PDT
Thursday...
... Air stagnation advisory remains in effect until 6 PM PDT
Thursday...

High heat, high humidity and very, very few air-conditioners. Usually the ocean/Puget Sound is its own air-conditioning system. For the next few days the system is broke.

And if you read John Fleck you realize an awful lot of smart folks strongly feel the system might be broken for a long, long time.

P.S.: And don't even think about Portland, Oregon. 103 today. 103. All those cool bike commuters in the Rose City will probably be lying dead on the side of the ultra-bike friendly roads by 4:00 this afternoon. Still, it might be better to be lie dead in cycling Portland than live with a bullet in your bike helmet in supposedly hip Asheville, North Carolina.

Could Your Classroom Use Nine Billion Dollars?

2009-07-27T08:22:00.003-06:00

I'm personally loathe to use words like "webinar", but for nine billion dollars there's alot of loathing I am willing to put up with.

The U.S. Department of Education is conducting a "webinar" today at Noon MDT to "Review announcements of the following new ARRA (America Recovery and Reinvestment Act, aka "Economic Stimulus") programs:

Race to the Top
Teacher Incentive Fund
Investing in Innovation
Education Technology
Title I School Improvement Grants
Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems"

From looking at the "webinar" link, it appears the little people (i.e., us) can "attend". Yes, this event is most likely to be boring, aggravating, intimidating and ultimately depressing, but my classroom could use a billion or two dollars worth of stuff. Some new dry erase markers, for instance. Titanium dry erase markers with NASA-designed dry erase ink usable in conditions of weightlessness and high G-forces.

So what the heck. Join me for what should be the onset of a bewildering feeding frenzy.

Update (18:00 7/27): Well, I listened. Near as I could tell, if I figure out how to change the name of my school to "Albuquerque Charter School for the Continuous Improvement of Standardized Core Curriculum Goals" we stand a pretty good chance of getting nine billion dollars, or at least a goodly portion.

More seriously, 99.9% of the time I'd run away from federal grants for education faster than David Beckham from American soccer. But the pot o' money is so huge this time. "Unprecedented", as the U.S. Department of Education spokesperson said at least ten times today.

I hope the NM P.E.D. and APS were taking good notes.

AYP: Hawaii and "America's Choice™"

2009-07-26T20:36:00.003-06:00

Here's an article from some time back that slipped through my cattle-guard sized Internet filtering cracks. For those who don't want to RTFA, it discusses the dramatically increased amount of Hawaiian taxpayer money going to non-Hawaiian educational firms like America's Choice™ to fix schools deemed "failing" via No Child Left Behind.

I mention/link it here, months later, because:

It's a news story I'd like to see from newspapers in all 50 states
Hawaii's NCLB test scores just came in and....

"A record number of Hawaii schools this year failed to meet their progress goals under the No Child Left Behind law. This year marked the second year of dramatic increases in the number of schools failing to meet the federal goals, known as "adequate yearly progress." Only 34 percent of schools — or 97 campuses — made AYP this year compared with 42 percent a year ago."

As has been mentioned here before, New Mexico's "failing" schools (including mine) are using firms like America's Choice™, and will most likely do so on a much greater scale as our number of "failing" schools continues to climb.

One sentiment expressed in Hawaii is the concern about money being sent to "the mainland". Kind of makes me want to dig a giant moat around New Mexico so folks can better understand the mistake of throwing tons of NM taxpayer money at these educational carpetbaggers.

Okay...as a "liberal" Southerner, I admit I'm not 100% comfortable with using terms like "carpetbaggers". For some of us, even in the South, the Carpetbaggers were actually the good guys. So let's avoid that semantic can of worms, and just refer to America's Choice™ as "predatory scumbags making untold and largely undocumented profits from a warped, misguided policy designed to set up public schools and its current students as failures."

Something like that. It's a bit lengthy as defining terminology goes, and obviously a work-in-progress. Journalists from the 49 states that aren't Hawaii are encouraged to tweak my little definition as need be in writing their own stories on how their State is throwing piles of money at these NCLB war profiteers.

A-B-C. A-Always, B-Be, C-Closing. Always be closing.

2009-07-24T23:17:00.007-06:00

"It's good for the respiratory system," Damon said of using blowguns. "It's something you can make yourself. You can get pretty good with one in 10 minutes."
--Steve Damon, "founder of the Oklahoma-based United States Blowgun Association"

Mr. Damon is quoted in a Seattle Times story headlined: "2 Seattle bicyclists shot with darts in Ballard neighborhood".

Thanks Mr. Damon. I've been trying to find some good exercise for my respiratory system. Seems like a blowgun is a good way to go.

And there are just so many targets to practice on. They're like everywhere.

P.S.: Sorry for the obscure movie line in the post's title. Funny thing is, I have an overwhelming urge to go watch "Glengarry Glen Ross" (for the 914th time) right now. Mamet was a hero before he turned into a bit of a schlub. What is it Carlyle said about heroes and hero worship?

Did I really just make a freakin' Thomas Carlyle mention? Man, this really is obscure reference night over at the Babble. Time to stop dealing with such obscurities, and get back to my blowgun practice. I can feel my respiratory system getting better already. Really.

AYP: Maybe Stories Speak Louder Than Numbers

2009-07-24T07:46:00.007-06:00

This whole standardized testing mess is complicated. No doubt about that. It's easy to see how even conscientious followers of the news can get flummoxed by AYP this and confidence interval that. What to think?

The statistics, terminology and sheer density of information are enough to make just about anyone's head explode. Now some might say that's deliberate, and that the blizzard of numbers tied to whether schools are "passing" or "failing" is a very successful attempt to make public education look bad, and alternatives to standard public education (charters, home schooling, private schools) look good.

I'll leave that argument for a few paragraphs, and (to the great relief of many readers of recent far-too-complicated posts here) will today avoid the use of bewildering percentages, confidence intervals and such.

In fact, I'll just use one percentage: 100%

Many of you probably saw/read this news story:

ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) - An Albuquerque woman faces a criminal charge after her 13-year-old son was dropped off at a hospital unconscious and extremely drunk.

Crystal Deleon, 31, faces a charge of child abuse resulting in great bodily harm.

The boy told police he was drinking with his mom and others on Wednesday. At some point, he said he was pushed through a window, suffering a severe cut on his finger.

Deleon told police her son arrived home drunk and started a fight.

Here's what some folks don't understand and others deliberately ignore when it comes to public schools and standardized testing. This terribly unfortunate 13-year old is going to return to a public school in a few weeks. That school will do its best to educate this child. If the student stays at a single school for most of the school year, he will be given a standardized test, and it will "count" toward performance of the school as "passing" or "failing".

And here comes the 100% part.

By Spring 2014 No Child Left Behind dictates that 100% of public education students be "proficient" in Math and Reading. It does not matter if that child has been determined as "learning disabled" through a labyrinthine process involving testing, observation and parental contact. It does not matter if the child lived in a foreign, non-English speaking, country for her/his first seven years, and lives in a home in which this foreign language is spoken 100% of the time.

More to the point today, it does not matter if this child has been raised in a horribly dysfunctional home, given little useful guidance about life, much less education, and been juvenile witness to the worst habits adult life has to offer.

100%.

By 2014 this poor 13-year old boy and every single other kid going to public school must meet some standard of "proficiency" regardless of...anything. No consideration of individual circumstances to be given, whatsoever, and no analysis of individual student growth. They are either "proficient", according to a blanket measure created by bureaucrat/statisticians in Santa Fe, or not.

That is the philosophical basis of "No Child Left Behind". That's why (in addition to its genius level marketing power) it has that name. That's the system we're playing under. Really.

I apologize for all the complexity folks, because on one important level it's really this simple.

Public schools are based on taking ALL children. Charter schools are based, in part, on trying to circumvent the rule of taking all children, devising informal/formal systems to focus on particular types of students (no offense intended "Public Academy of Performing Arts", "Albuquerque Institute of Mathematics and Science", etc).

Private schools, of course, rigorously filter who can attend based on academics, family finances and parental involvement (have you ever tried filling out all those forms to go to private school?). And after this rigorous screening, private schools don't even have to conduct standardized testing. No tests, no subgroups, no confidence interval, no reports in the newspaper with little "passing" and "failing" lists.

Yes the complicated is important. And yes, your humble blogger here is obsessively interested in having more folks know about the confidence intervals and all that. Maybe too obsessively interested. But having seen the recent twists and turns in another public debate, on health care, we are reminded that simplicity and simple explanations may trump detail and minutiae.

Some public school teachers will receive the aforementioned 13-year old boy in a few weeks, welcome him into their classes with wildly open arms, and teach their little hearts out trying to help this young man anyway they can. Good luck to them, the 13-year old who has been unfortunately displayed as an example here today, and everyone else operating within the "rules" of No Child Left Behind. Given this setup for "failure", 100% of us need all the luck we can get.

Administrative Housecleaning

2009-07-23T11:11:00.004-06:00

No, this post isn't a call for an absolute gutting of school administrators throughout Albuquerque Public Schools. A gutting that would include pillories, stocks, and other supposedly outdated public humiliation devices. Not to mention visibly tying said administrators to rail cars, and having said rail cars slowly leave Alvarado Station while the entire population of Albuquerque waves and cheers wildly, using cheers like "Huzzah!".

This post is about none of that, and I have no reason at present to make such a call (although there are one or two APS principals I shall spend the rest of the day dreamily visualizing as tied to those aforementioned rail cars...with rough, chafing ropes and hard metal rail cars floors that painfully bump heads as the supine principals clackety-clack-clack-clack down the track).

Wow...that went on for a bit. Too much pent up anger or caffeine today, I suppose.

Anyway, all "Administrative Housecleaning" means is that I'm finally giving up on "anonymous" comments. Writing stupid, arguably "funny" things and anonymous comments are fine. Trying to get something done and anonymous comments don't mix.

Besides, this will offer previously anonymous commenters to create wildly inventive names like "Scot: Teacher At Jefferson Middle School, ABQ" or "Scot Key Who Lives at..."

Alright, I'd stop before street addresses, but would urge something more than "MadTeacher" or "Arne Duncan", because I know you're mad and you're not really Arne Duncan.

So, anonymity is dead here at Burque Babble. Let me hit a radio button or two and we'll all be "accountable". If only it were that easy.

AYP: Other States, Other Rules Way Down In the Ninth Paragraph

2009-07-21T12:07:00.003-06:00

Lead/Lede (however you want to spell it) paragraph of story in the Hendersonville (NC) Times-News headlined "Area Schools Make the Grade With AYP Results":

"Nineteen of 22 Henderson County schools, or 86 percent, made Adequate Yearly Progress last year, a significant increase from the 2007-08 school year."

Seven more joyously positive paragraphs about how much better things are now follow. Oh glory be!!! Oh Flabjous day!!!

Then comes the Ninth Paragraph:

"It's hard to compare the 2009 results to previous years, however, because for the first time, schools were allowed to count students' scores on a retest."

(cue Gene Krupa rimshot)

The apples taste just like oranges if you pour enough scalding liquid on your taste buds.

By the way, here's a rundown of the North Carolina Proficiency Target Goals for Reading (revised, interestingly enough in October 2008):

Grades 3-8
2007-08 43.2%
2008-09 43.2%
2009-10 43.2%
2010-11 71.6%
2011-12 71.6%
2012-13 71.6%
2013-14 100%

Grade 10
2007-08 38.5%
2008-09 38.5%
2009-10 38.5%
2010-11 69.3%
2011-12 69.3%
2012-13 69.3%
2013-14 100%

Looks like North Carolina might be re-revising those proficiency rates when 2010 rolls around.

It ain't cheating if nobody sees you, and if you ain't cheating, you ain't trying...

Oh, and one more cliche: The devil is in the details. And in the ninth paragraph.