WALKING THE PLANK

A string of comments in the previous posting revealed a rather insidious direction taken by the district. Whether on purpose or by accident it reeks of creepy.

Springboard, a College Board product, has been put on fast-track. Please hit the link and check out the curriculum info. Shades of "Voyages".

Teachers drained from teaching extra period.
Some start to show strain. Absenteeism rises.
Substitute teacher pool unable to cover absent teachers.
Teachers must now cover class for absent coworkers, leading to burn out and additional absences.
District takes control of exam grades via district enforced curve.
Springboard, a program of prepackaged lesson plans, resources, and tests makes its appearance for the English, Math curriculum.

Will the teacher component be marginalized?

Now to the abbreviated comments:

***"...Any wonder moral is so low? And with Springboard coming, most of the math and English teachers aren't really pushing their own curriculum much. Might as well just teach the semester exam along with FCAT and make us all "look" good. Of course the students will suffer, but "they" stopped caring about what the students really need long ago."

***"The SpringBoard instructional system combines rigorous course work with assessment and professional development in five synergistic components. Each course centers on classroom-tested Model Instructional Units that prepare students for AP® and college-level work.
Sounds like SRA for high school."

***"With SpringBoard... we won't need college educated individuals anymore... just really great trained monkeys... Is this what we want to do to our teachers and students??????"

***"Hey just think (we won't have to think) no making up lesson plans, or adjusting presentations, or updating supporting info, etc.
No explaining methods to parents, just refer them to the APC or the college board.
There is an UP side to this: we can actually get our conference stuff done during our one measley conference!!!!
New hires won't have to be vetted because anyone can "sleepwalk" thru it.
The teacher crisis will be over because anyone can be hired and "covering" classes will be a thing of the past."...


There ya have it. So far.

By the way, Ms. Faliero, we patiently await your resignation.

WHEN 6 OUT OF 7 = 5 OUT OF 5

From Bob Weinstein's Column "Why Employees Jump Ship ".

"Gregory P. Smith, author of "Here Today, Here Tomorrow: Transforming Your Workforce from High-Turnover to High-Retention," says most employees take new jobs because of management problems. He lists five common management mistakes:

1. Demanding that one person do the jobs of two or more people, resulting in longer days and weekend work.

2. Cutting back on administrative help, which forces workers to use their time copying, stapling, collating, filing and performing other clerical duties.

3. Putting a freeze on raises and promotions.

4. Not allowing the rank and file to make decisions or denying them pride of ownership.

5. Constantly reorganizing and changing direction."

"DON'T STAND SO CLOSE TO ME"

Something is not right about the Plant physics teacher's inappropriate email to a student.

The papers are asking its readers to make too much of a leap in logic on this one:

"The school district suspended Plant teacher (name deleted), 22, with pay pending an investigation, Cobbe said. He was hired in September. The district is reviewing his computer to see if the case needs to be reported to law enforcement.

Officials first became aware of accusations against him late Wednesday when an assistant principal saw the female student in a hallway and asked how she was doing, Cobbe said. The student then reported the e-mail."

"how ya doing?" "no, how YOU doing?"

Plant AP's must have a lot of face time for students.

Too bad the guy wasn't a Board member.

Anyone got the goods on this one? How's my intuition?

"...and THE SURVEY says:..."?

It's February.

There are only 4 months left. Not a lot of time left to affect change in time to save your employees or membership.

Whatever happened to
"the survey"?

You know, the one that was supposed to be taken to measure the impact of "substituting" a conference period with a teaching period for no additional money.

Is a curve being generated?

Call me crazy but it took less time to make us teach the extra class!

Hart To Heart

After reading Lee's riveting post, which included information she gathered from Mark Hart, it is obvious that Ms. Faliero must address the issue.

Do the right thing Ms. Faliero. NOW.

< rewind >

JENNIFER BLEWIT

Does everybody remember those tedious teacher in-services we were forced to endure?

How about the one titled "Ethics Training"? How many times were we admonished with: "You are held to a higher standard." ? How often were we told that even if we were in a restaurant drinking, we never knew who was at the next table watching, listening.

How often were we told that we could be called to Professional Standards at the slightest, vaguest phone call, letter or infraction for reprimand or termination? "You are held to a higher standard."

Our board member Jennifer Faliero got caught trying to pull a quick one.

"You, Ms. Faliero, are held to an even higher standard."

You must be able to make informed unemotional decisions. The decision to move away from the community that elected you and then try to keep it "under the radar" belies that fatal flaw spouses succumb to during divorce. As an elected official that option was not available to you - period.
You betrayed your district with personal intent.

You can't raise a family of 3 on $40,887 a year? You moved to South Tampa's Davis Island for more affordable housing?

You have teachers with Bachelor Degrees who must be on Level 9 (not 9 years experience but LEVEL 9) who make almost that and never thought about South Tampa's greatest housing bargain! Really, did you think anybody in Tampa bought that one?

Why South Tampa? Did you use your position to intimidate the Plant administration into looking the other way when they enrolled your daughter? Oh, wait a minute, wasn't Ms. Elia's launching pad Plant High School? Was her evaluation influenced by this move? Were your required to purchase a pass to Candyland? I wonder how you kept this enrollment away from the queen of CandyLand? Did the South Tampa "powers that be" tacitly "allow" this quid-pro-quo? At what price? See how easy it is for the neighbors to talk?

Too bad you didn't take that "Ethics Training", or did you? In any case your integrity has been forever damaged. Every decision, every comment, every public appearance will bring this baggage with it. Every little thing will be measured by this decision to move out of your district. If you can't live on $40,887 a year how can you look at yourself knowing a third of your teachers make less!

Like they told us: "Ignorance is no excuse because you, Ms. Faliero, are held to an even higher standard."

Do the right thing Ms. Faliero:

APOLOGIZE TO US and RESIGN
- the sooner, the better.

DUMBING DOWN THE HOUSE

Read The Trib's Exam Grades Going Higher.

Here is what jumped out at me.

Just 62 percent correct on the physics semester exam equals an A, for example.

"I can guarantee you no student is going to get a worse grade," said David Steele, the Hillsborough County School District's general director for secondary education. "Our goal is to ensure the grade on the semester exam mirrors the class grades for the nine weeks."

Hillsborough was first in the state to have a merit pay plan approved because it could use its semester exams to gauge student performance for other subject area teachers. But teachers are evaluated on actual scores, not on letter grades.

The district is paying $3.1 million during five years for the software was used to scale the semester exams, said John Hilderbrand, Hillsborough's testing and accountability chief. But it is also used by teachers to create their own tests and improve exams.
Scam-tron anyone? Do you think the curved grades are automatically entered on the grade gathering documents OR into the report card program?

Hillsborough is changing the grading of its semester exams at the same time high school teachers have added one class period to their day. They now teach six out of seven periods, a move by the district to save money that drew fire from teachers. The district has agreed with the teachers union to evaluate the effect on students and teachers of the heavier workload.

Steele confirmed he has heard from principals that some teachers suspect the timing of the new grading scale was done to ensure student performance would improve.

"We will not compare semester grades," Steele said. "We will be comparing raw scores on tests that are new or have changed."

Get ready.

Is it any wonder this grade manipulation/inflation continues to undermine the value of our diplomas in high school and college?

Teach to the test: be it FCAT or HiCcuPS.

A CURVE ON STEROIDS!

Here is some of what I have been able verify.

The high school regular World History exam percentage-to-letter curve:

A = 80 - 100
B = 69 - 79
C = 59 - 68
D = 49 - 58
F = 0 - 48

You can get less than 50% and you pass the test, grab a "quality point" (you need 3), and you're on your way to getting credit for the class! Talk about "No Child Left Behind".

(If your son/daughter got an "F" - maybe you have a moron in the house.)

Keep in mind that I could not get hold of the "raw score" - the actual number of items that were correct. What if 30 correct answers out of 150 questions fell at the median and set the "C" (average) range?

What if the computer assisted answer sheets were defective and tests were scored incorrectly due to a printing error?

We need to expose this statistically dishonest manipulation by the district. This is NOT being done at the schools. It is coming from the upside-down pyramid on Kennedy.

Do you have information (raw scores, curves, failure rates, etc) to shine a light on? Post a comment and let the public know what you know.

Will the superintendent apply a similar curve to MAP? Only if it will improve her public image.

Disclosure: I am NOT against curving per se. It does have a place and a purpose but I don't know any effective teacher who agrees with a wholesale giveaway.