It’s technically a stupid question, with an answer that ends up eating itself. That’s because the tools we use to measure teachers are the same tools we use to measure schools: test scores. So a bad teacher, by definition, is a teacher whose students are getting low test scores, and a bad school is one with teachers whose students are getting bad test scores. Therefore, the good teachers will always be in the good schools, and vice-versa.

Technically, that is. But we all know that there are good and bad teachers who are good or bad independent of their students’ test scores. If that’s true (and it is) surely it would behoove us to work out a system where the best teachers work with the neediest children, right?

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Our last student day was last Thursday.  After the final test in my first period Algebra class I asked B if he thought he should receive a passing grade.  He had been suspended for 10 days for a bad choice, and had not made up the missed work, or corrected the tests that he had done poorly on.  He said no, he knew he had not done the things he needed to do to pass.  I told him I was sorry, but I agreed.  He had more than enough chances and had not taken advantage of them.

It was also the day my mother died.  It was sudden, but not unexpected. She was 93, and had a wonderful life.  So I rushed through the checkout procedure, turned my grades in and left for Seattle to be with my sister and brother.  When I got back home yesterday I checked my school e-mail and found this message:

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I’m supposed to write on Jordan’s report card that he is promoted to sixth grade.  He shouldn’t be promoted to sixth grade.  He hasn’t done the work at fifth grade.  He reads at a third grade level.  He’s not ready for sixth grade.  Yet, I’m not allowed to make the decision that this child needs a second chance at fifth grade.  I have to promote him because it might hurt him emotionally to not be with his friends.  

I’ve had other students like Jordan before – students who miss a third of the school year, students who don’t try because they’re so far behind as it is, and students who never do the assignments. I feel the same way every time- dread mixed with worry.  I dread having to write the next grade level in the section that reads, next year’s assignment with my signature below, and I worry Jordan will be dropping out of school in the next few years.

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We were driving home down I-5 a few weeks ago when Freebird came on the radio. So I turned it up, since that’s what you’re supposed to do, and began to sing. There I was, a middle-aged, suburban man, singing Rock and Roll’s quintessential anthem of existential freedom while driving my family of four down the highway in a Dodge Caravan. It didn’t matter; at that moment I was a Freebird.

But apparently the irony wasn’t lost on the ghosts of Lynyrd Skynyrd. For it was at the song’s climatic moment, where all three guitars are going after it full-tilt, that our mini-van’s fuel pump stopped doing that for which it is named. And if those dead old boys had something to do with it, I can’t blame them. We coasted to the shoulder as the song ended. I was no longer a Freebird.

Ten days and a new fuel pump later, I received two messages. One was from our mechanic and the other from my school district’s central office.

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For my English 9 Final exam, my freshmen were to write a literary analysis essay which compares the stages of the archetypal hero’s journey in Homer’s Odyssey with the corresponding stages in a recent film of their choice. Simply placing the two side by side was not enough–they had to actually deconstruct and analyze. They had to cite text evidence and learn to paraphrase scenes from the film in order to use specifics to support their comparisons. They had to draw inferences, seek common threads, and extend those threads beyond art into the universal truths revealed by the archetypal hero and his journey.

All last week, we did prewriting activities in class, reviewed effective introductions and conclusions, practiced paragraphing, paraphrasing, transitions and analytical commentaries. We discussed how to select evidence to support a proposition, and we examined old drafts of past assignments. These skills, this thinking, is what we’ve practiced all school year.

Monday, during the two-hour block, the students were provided computers to word-process and polish their final drafts, based on their hand-written notes. 

I told them my expectations were high. I told them that A’s would be rare, that I would be hard to please. I asked if they felt prepared for the challenge, and they said yes. And then they did something that startled me.

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Last week I had my end-of-the-year evaluation. I walked into my principal’s office, closed the door and discussed my progress on the goals we had set forth back in September. And when all was said and done, I found out that I am “satisfactory.” What a relief.

Actually, in my district, as in most, you have to be pretty bad to be “unsatisfactory,” and “satisfactory” is as good as you can get, which can leave most of us who have a stake in the teacher evaluation system feeling somewhat, well…unsatisfied.

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This picture is my classroom on the day before school started.  It seems like a lifetime ago.

Today I had my students write letters to me, as I’m sure many of you do.  The children who wrote letters to me are children I’ve come to know well, but I can still remember that first day of school, and the strangers they were then.

One young man wrote something so funny I wanted to share it with you.  Also, I’d love to hear the funny little successes you’ve all had that have nothing to do with test scores, but have everything to do with helping young people reach their potential as human beings.

He wrote, among other things, “When I skipped class and you chased me all over the school, and finally pulled me out of the boys’ bathroom where I was hiding and dragged me back to class, that moment I felt like you cared about me more than any other teacher has EVER.”

So there you go.  Who knew such a ridiculous moment would have such a positive echo?

What are your little gems as you wrap the year up and say farewell to your students?

I absolutely hate the phrase “teacher accountability.”

Don’t get me wrong–I’m not in favor of protecting bad teachers. What I am in favor of is systems which make teachers better. That, to me, is what people think they mean when they talk about “teacher accountability.” But that’s not how “teacher accountability” actually manifests. 

It manifests in only one way which can be summed up in one word: “punishment.” 

And the theory that punishment makes me better at my job is more than a bit misguided.

A recent Edweek.org article by James Stigler begins by making a similar point. He explained that the current push toward “accountability” through only end-product evaluation and levying of punishment is actually proven to harm productivity and effectiveness:

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By Tom

I’ve been following Congress’ “passive decision” to draw the line on deficit spending just when there was a $23 billion education bill in the works, designed to bridge the gap between the $100 billion given to education last year and some time in the future in which education is fully funded. Sponsored by Senators Harkin and Miller, both Democrats, it received tepid support from Obama and even tedider support from Congressional Democrats. By all accounts, it is isn't going anywhere, and will probably be dead by the time you read this.

But I still feel like talking about it.

We’ve bailed out God knows how many banks and investment firms in the past two years, along with a car company, but when education asks for some emergency money to keep a couple hundred thousand teachers in the classroom for another year, suddenly it’s time to count pennies.

Fine; I get it. We can't just put everything on Visa for the next ten years. We need to draw the line somewhere, and start paying for stuff, even education, with real money. But what we don’t need is nonsense like the recent editorial in the Seattle Times by Lynne Varner. Read it yourself, if you want, but she makes two bold points that I can’t ignore:

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By Mark

This time of year is filled with platitudes and pats on the back. Many scholarship dollars have been awarded, certificates of achievement handed out, and now that June is here, cute little embossed diplomas in little padded booklets are being divvied out all across the nation to folks in awkward gowns and cardboard hats. Kids who no one thought would make it will, and scores of teenagers will be the first in their entire genealogy to accomplish the feat of completing a high school education.

We high school teachers will always say that graduation is a bittersweet time. It is a familiar rite of passage wrought with (of course) pomp and ceremony. Each ceremony across the nation likely follows a similar pattern: a few songs from young musicians, a few words from the top scholars, a guest keynote speaker who reminds the robed young'uns just how very very special they are before they march proudly across the stage, shake a few hands, and cross that critical threshold into adulthood.

I have a few wishes for the class of 2010, some typical, others perhaps not so.

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