Today at lunch, we were sitting around talking about the programs CCR and PQR. These programs were to keep schools accountable for their programs and spending of categorical money appropriately. They were a pain. We wrote long summaries, collected data and work, and filed a tremendous amount of paperwork to 'prove' that we were doing our jobs. It was not fun. The worst part of the whole system was that these files were huge and there wasn't anyone in the world that would go through them all and check the work. Why did we go through the effort when no one would bother looking at these files? We did it for the funding and politicians who tied strings to it.
Today we have NCLB that uses testing data to 'prove' that we are doing our job. It definitely doesn't take as much work going through the results as those boxes of files we used to keep. The problem is that a test is not an individual and neither is a bunch of files in boxes.
True accountability is walking into my classroom and seeing the students and the skills and struggles that they face. It has always been this way, but for some reason the people trying to hold schools accountable do not want to go to the classroom. If you want to see how a school is doing, visit and get to know the children, parents, and educators at the school.
Get to know the student that is so anxious to leave for Spring break that they are day dreaming during instruction. This is not just Spring fever; this student finally gets to travel to Colorado to see their father after a year. Do you blame them? Do you expect them to do well on Chapter 27? Time moves on and the stories are infinite.
'Back in the day' we didn't have high stakes testing and NCLB....man those were the good old days! Remember when George Runner came to Sundown 18 years ago when the school opened and waved at us. He truly knows my students and can judge what I do in my classroom. :/
I love that you point out that none of the people who claim they want to assess what is going on don't want to go into a classroom themselves. It's so sad, but so true.
ReplyDeleteWhat I remember about good ol' George's visit was needing to find an apple crate for him to stand on so he could see over the podium. So glad he, and all the other politicians, can visit schools just long enough for the photo op and then decide that they are experts on education.
ReplyDeleteIts so frustrating when lay-people feel that they are experts in education simply because they were once students...