Is Our Children Learning?

This week, the state department team of evaluators will be visiting my school. This will be their second week in the district. The first week, they visited the Middle School, where my three roommates teach. The principal and the teachers were interviewed, observed, and evaluated. The principal and several of the teachers, including one of my roommates, failed to meet expectations. This means that the state will continue to visit and observe those teachers, and changes may be made at the higher levels of the administration.

To prepare for the visit, we had several speakers. The speakers told us how to prepare for the visit, down to giving us the correct answers to the interview questions. Everyone except first year teachers had to prepare a portfolio to turn in to the state, giving evidence of student progress under their teaching, professional development, and taking initiative to improve the school. We will all be visited twice in the classroom. They will be looking for how well we follow state standards, whether our children are engaged, how we respond to misbehavior, etc. Then we will have an interview about how we assess the kids, how we diagnosed them, etc. We aren't jsut being evaluated on the answers we give, though. We will also be evaluated on how well we communicate orally and in written documents. I don't think that will be a problem for me, but for some of the teachers in my school, it may be. (Conjugation, what?)

GSD Roommate, who teaches fifth grade math and passed even though the interviewer didn't like him, says I have nothing to worry about. "Mississippi would be the state that gets picked last for everything," he told me. "Imagine a baseball game. California and Texas are the captains. I'll take... New York. Let's go, Massachusetts, Washington, Colorado... Virginia, Pennsylvania... And last to be picked? Mississippi. Stick him out in left field and pray no balls go that way. Louisiana, right. You take that back, back, back, spot, over there. Try not to throw up on yourself. And that's who's coming to evaluate you."


More information about the evaluation and the problem (that we are one of the eight lowest performing schools in the second to lowest performing state) can be found by clicking on the following links:

From the Mississippi Department of Education:
Priority School Designation
Student Acheivement Model Information

From the Clarion-Ledger:
State Mulls Taking Over District

About the Ratings in General

A Dissenting Opinion on teaching to the Test:
Misguided Push Towards Testable Education

As our esteemed president pondered, "Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?" Well, now we are asking it in my School District. Hurrah. Wish me luck.