Stemming the STEM tide

Urban school district superintendents resemble car salesmen in their passionate pushing of the latest pointless ornaments to the resource-guzzling Humvee of educational reform. Maybe it’s all about resume padding. Check this from Rachel Norton’s April 9 SFUSD Board of Ed meeting notes:

In large part, the Board was fine with the Superintendent [Carranaza]’s decision to put a large chunk of the additional money (about $2 million …) into a new STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) initiative. Among other things, the money would go to hire a STEM Director, three program administrators and 14 teachers on special assignment to develop curriculum and support schools in expanding their STEM focus.

It’s easier to damn than to dam the flood of this STEM nonsense, but Krashen speaks truth, with lots of footnotes, in the face of the tide. And Robert Skeels drains more of the deceptive deluge via NPR and The Atlantic:  “…numbers released by the National Science Foundation show that people with doctoral degrees in those technical fields are struggling to find work in their industries…” and “Worse yet, as of 2011, approximately one-third of people graduating with a doctoral degree in science, technology, math or engineering had no job or post-doctoral offer of any kind.”

So let’s get on with bridging that oh-so-scary oceanic STEM gap, shall we SFUSD? I’m sure the SFUSD teachers who agreed to furlough days over the last several years are “for the most part fine” with continuing pay cuts. After all, what could improve classroom teaching and student learning more than the hiring of  three more program administrators and 14 more teachers on special assignment?

The PEEF money that Carranza and Norton are “fine with” dumping into an idiotic STEM initiative would more than appropriately cover the $1.7 million needed for a furlough day’s restoration.

Rhee-ducto ad San Francisco

Along with spinelessly rubber-stamping annual budgets that they don’t understand , each building’s School Site Council in SFUSD is responsible for reviewing and approving a yearly document called the Balanced Score Card (BSC). The BSC adheres to a central-office generated template. This year’s template [PDF] includes a brand new section requiring administrators and council members to provide numbers on new test result “targets.” This kind of stuff: “% of 10th graders passing CAHSEE in ELA and Math…% of SFUSD 9th graders graduating UC/ CSU eligible (Stated definition: A-G courses with a grade of C or better)…” 

What could possibly go wrong with this new site-based, SSC-approved, data-driven decision making? Certainly Washington D.C. , via Atlanta, has nothing to teach us:

Millet, who resigned after Rhee’s first year, is convinced that principals passed the message along. “There was this whole atmosphere of uncertainty. And when principals feel threatened that if their scores don’t go up, what do you think they’re going to bring down the next level, to their teachers? They’re going to make their teachers feel extremely intimidated that if they don’t do better this year than they did last year, there are going to be consequences.” That led to changes in teaching. “Everybody felt this urgency to improve test scores, and there was no focus on instruction,” Millet says. “The entire focus was on improving test scores.”^[15]

OK, I’m being snide. After all, every SSC has teacher representatives. At my site we have four teacher reps on the SSC. I have every confidence that they, and their parent and student co-representatives, will critically address the ridiculousness of test result targets being included in the 2013-2014 BSC. And I’m equally confident that our administrative team will advocate for that critique’s inclusion in our final BSC document.

Bwahaha.

Indeed

“How many good classroom teachers will no longer be in the classroom because they question decisions by ham handed administrators looking to quickly make a name for themselves by implementing shortsighted procedures that might look good on resumes, but will have a negative impact on student learning?” – A Warning to Young People: Don’t Become a Teacher

A rout of snails

I had a conversation with a teacher colleague today about fighting off Obama’s despicable sell-out of Social Security. The colleague seemed puzzled and asked, “I don’t qualify for Social Security, do I?”

I was tempted to answer, “No, no, YOU FUCKING IDIOT, you don’t qualify for Social Security! In fact, CalSTRS provides you with a much better pension than Social Security would provide. But your fucking pension depends on …”

I contained my rage.

I hear, informally, that our School Site Council (SSC) decided last week that the library gig that I’ve had for the last ten years (and that has been, as far as I know, a full-time position since about 1925) will be reduced to a 60% position for 2013-14. Some of the teacher representatives on the SSC seem to have acquiesced in that decision. Well, it makes sense given the demand for STEM classes and curriculum. Why read when you can contribute to data?

I’ve finally realized that, at least at my school site, teachers’ collective defensive capacity is equal to the defensive capacity of a rout of snails:

“Shelter in place, friends.That noise you hear is NOT footsteps.”

Idiots.

So says Cassandra.

Best comment heard so far about the “Hall way”

Charles Pierce: “…the standardized test… is the collateralized debt obligation of the education ‘reform’ scam.” The metaphor breaks down when you realize that Beverly Hall is looking at 45 years  in jail while Steven A. Cohen is looking at Picassos on his new Hamptons mansion’s wall.