Why Testing Is Important

 

Why Testing Is Important

By Jill Jenkins

When a mechanic repairs an engine, he first tests the various systems and focuses his repairs on the systems that aren’t functioning.  The purpose of the test is to make the car operate to optimum capacity.  He doesn’t berate the car for needing repair. (Unless he is my father who once beat an old jalopy with a hammer for not working, rather counterproductive.) Similarly tests in school should help improve student learning because they give the student a clear view of which material needs to studied; they help teachers have a better understanding of which material they need to approach in a different manner; and they give school administrators and districts an opportunity to identify effective teachers and ineffective teachers and use the stronger teachers to enhance the teaching of those weaker. 

Test to Grow

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts”

Winston Churchill

Students should be taught how to use the data from their tests to identify areas of weakness in their learning and be given additional learning opportunities using different methodology to improve their understanding of the material they did not master.  Students learn at different time lines and in different ways. When the student completes the additional study on the material, he/she should be given another assessment to show mastery.  Unfortunately like my father some use test results to determine the worth of the child which can lead to test anxiety or cheating.  Learning is a process and the student needs to understand that not all the flowers bloom at once.  Communicating disapproval of the student based on tests results is like beating your jalopy with a hammer. It is counterproductive.  Students need to be encouraged to take the steps necessary to master the skills and try another assessment. 

 

Test to Develop

“Failure is success in progress.”

Albert Einstein

Assessments of every kind are important teaching tools for educators.  Identifying specific areas of instruction that are successful and identifying specific areas of instruction that are not successful can help teachers identify which methodologies are reaching more students and which students need an alternative methodology to be successful.  Continually self-evaluating instruction can greatly improve student performance.  Teachers need to be exposed to a variety of new and different instruction methods to be effective.  The last thing schools need are teachers so tied to a teaching unit that they laminate and use it for decades after its effectiveness has waned.

 

Test to Adapt

“If you are afraid of failure, you don’t deserve to be successful.”

Charles Barkley

School administrators and districts need to use assessment data to identify teachers who are strong and teachers who are struggling.  Strong teachers can share successful teaching strategies with weaker teachers.  Teachers with poor testing performance should be given an opportunity to improve their teaching methods, but if they refuse to improve, they need to shown the door.  There is nothing more pathetic than a weak teacher being allowed to discourage the development of hundreds of students for decades.

 

Tests are important tools for improving learning and instruction if they are used as tools and not punishments.  However, tests need  to be carefully developed so they evaluate what has been taught and show no basis in their word choice.  A carefully worded and well-crafted test is essential. Learning is journey, not a destination. 

 

Should I Stay or Should I Go

 

Should I Stay or Should I Go?

By Jill Jenkins

Many schools across the United State face teacher shortages.  Why are so many teachers leaving the profession or like the musical group Clash sang wondering, “Should I Stay or Should I Go?”  It’s not hard to imagine that teachers mentally and physically exhausted from teaching both virtually and in-person classes simultaneously during the pandemic now facing over-crowded classrooms and traumatized children who might have lost a love one to COVID or terrified from the recent images of school shootings might want to seek alternative forms of employment.  After all teaching has never been a lucrative career and now being confronted by angry demanding parents organized by the extreme right to attack curriculum, books, libraries and educators might find it simpler to find a new career. Their guerrilla tactics might be an attempt to intimidate educators to make it easier to privatize schools and hire only like-minded friends?  Who knows?  The results, however, is many teachers, especially special education teachers are not renewing their contracts. 

 

Teaching has never been a lucrative career.  During my years in the classroom, I remember teachers begging the water department to give them a little more time on a bill or hurrying off to a second job with a briefcase full of papers to correct.  I remember one teacher who managed a movie theater at night and as he left the theater one weekend night, he was held up at gun point and his briefcase full of science tests was taken.  Boy, was the criminal in for a surprise.  Shortages in education started a long time ago.  First, the district couldn’t find substitutes willing to work for so little.  Some districts lowered their standards until some of us joked that they will be picking up homeless people with “Will Work for Food” signs and offering them school lunch.  Some districts offered teachers $10.00 to cover classes during their preparation period.  It wasn’t really an offer, because I offered the secretary $10.00 if I didn’t have to cover another class.  She didn’t find it funny.  As the district had more difficulty finding teachers, most of us had to give up our preparation period and teach seven classes anyway.  Seven straight classes of students with no consultation period or breaks led to more burn out and increased the problem.  Should we be surprised that when we burdened teacher with preparing and presenting both on-line teaching and in-person teaching while risking their lives with possible exposure to COVID that they might conclude that “there are some things that not even a pig will do.”

Then, there is the problem of the parents.  Trust me there have always been parent who complained: “I don’t want my son reading Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist because a woman is violently murdered in it;” I don’t want my daughter reading Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, because it makes White people look bad;” I don’t want my son reading Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame because there is too much sexual innuendo;” or “I don’t want my son to read Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 because the language is horrible.” (That one I had to review the text to find the word “bastard”.)  Today, however, the parents are organized and they are coming to enforce a list created by far-right political groups to classrooms, PTA meetings  and school board meetings and they aren’t just concerned about their son or daughter.  They want their demands to be leveled against every student.  In the past some school districts distracted these complaints by organizing committees comprised of teachers, administrators and parents to approve lists of books appropriate to be “taught” at each grade level.  The committees served two purposes: first, they kept teachers from pilfering books from other grade levels; second, they kept parents happy because if they objected to what the teacher had selected, they understood it had been reviewed and if it was still inappropriate in their view, they could select another book from the list to assign to their child only.  In all my decades of teaching only one parent made such a selection because she felt J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit had too much magic for her religious beliefs. This approach might still work if the administration held strong.  Unfortunately, these parents want their demands met not just for their child and not just for book in the classroom, but want to control what is available in the library and want to control what all students read.   Frankly, if they want that much control, they should pull their kids out of public school and either home school them or send them to a private school.

 

What’s the solution? President Lyndon Johnson faced similar shortages in the ‘60’s and he offered to forgive educational loans for those who taught in low-income schools.  Since many teachers find it had to pay back student loans on a teachers’ salary, forgive all student loans for anyone who teaches five years in a public school.   Furthermore, district should offer more perks like free health insurance and a good retirement to teachers like they did 40 years ago.   Society should be celebrating what teachers do in the classroom instead of weaponizing parents to destroy public education.  Benjamin Franklin’s idea of free, public education was a great idea then, and it is still a great idea.  Celebrate our amazing teachers.

Keeping the Fox Out of the Chicken Coop: School Safety

by Jill Jenkins 

 "An Ounce of Prevention is Worth a Pound of Cure" Benjamin Franklin

    My maternal grandmother owned a chicken farm (a chicken ranch in today's vernacular), but this was the depression and the eggs fed her large family and were used to barter for other food helping to supplement or husband's income as a glazier for Bennet's Glass and Paint.  Foxes could decimate a coop of chickens. They would bite off the heads of all the chickens burying those they couldn't carry back to their large litter of kits. To protect her chickens my grandmother used multiple layers of protection: an sturdy  outside fence protected the chicken's yard, a sturdy coop where the chickens were locked in the night, and two guard dogs.  First, she had a sturdy outside fence made from heavy steel chicken wire that foxes could not gnaw through. Second, the fencing was buried three feet underground so foxes couldn't burrow under it.  Third, the chickens were housed during the night in a locked coop made of heavy wood and strong chicken wire set atop of a thick pad of cement.  Finally the chickens were protected by two trained guard dogs: Chin, a Chow and Birdie, a Labrador Retriever. Students in schools need to be protected by multiple layers of protection. Educators have no power over legislation or police departments, but can prvide the same kind of protection my grandmother did for her chickens

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Fencing the Perimeter

    Like the chicken coop, the perimeter of the school should be fenced. Obviously, the school doesn't need to bury the fence underground, but the fencing should be sturdy and tall enough that a teenager couldn't hop the fence as he recently did in Texas.  Security cameras are a must.  A combination of supervising teachers and aides with cameras surrounded by a high fence should ensure the safety of elementary students during recess and keep violent visitors with drugs and weapons from entering high schools and middle schools.  

The Chicken Coop: The Building

    Schools vary greatly depending on the level: elementary, middle or high school or the decade in which they were built.  In the late 1800's  to the early 1900's were built in multi-levels with many entrances and lots of windows.  In the middle of the 1900's they had less levels, but still lots of windows and entrances.  In the 1980's many schools were built as pods with the offices in the center of the school and groups of four classrooms separated by thin walls, moveable walls or a curtain.  Many of these rooms had interior doors for teachers to move within the pod easily.  The building had few or no windows; however,with the office centrally located, visitors had to pass half of the classrooms to reach the office putting those classrooms in peril if there was an intruder.  To create a safe barrier to protect students in any of these designs is going to difficult and costly. 

• One Entrance for Visitors

    Schools regardless of their design need to create one entrance for visitors that is isolated from the classroom and manned with an armed resource officer who verifies the validity of the visitors need to visit the school and makes certain the individual is not carrying any lethal weapons.  The officer provides a visitors pass after the individual signs in and states his/her reason for visiting.  

• Doors

    All doors need to be spring loaded so they automatically close when released and all doors exterior and interior should be locked during school hours.  Doors should be electronically locked and all faculty and staff should be given picture identification cards containing an electronic key to open the door when needed.  

• Hallways

    The hallways and the doors should be monitored with security cameras with an assigned armed resource officer in the command center monitoring all of the camera locations at all times.  He should have radio access to a third armed resource officer who who monitors the halls and/or the outside police department as the incident demands. 

• Emergency Button and Radios

    Staff members and faculty should wear radios with emergency buttons on their persons either on their wrist or around their necks.  In some school that I have taught in emergency buttons were installed on the walls, but teachers move around their classroom when they teach, or they take their classes to other locations on campus making the button useless.  Furthermore, if an intruder to enter the classroom. the teacher couldn't sprint across the classroom to push the button without being noticed.  The radios should connect the teacher to the security office command center where she gets immediate help instead of a secretary who answers when she has time. 

The Guard Dogs: Personnel

    Just like Chin and Birdie, the guard dogs at my grandmother's chicken coop, the staff should be properly trained on a regular basis.  Everyone from janitors, aides, cafeteria workers, teachers, counselors, and administrators should participate in training on a regular basis.  Most importantly is "buy In" so the administration needs to "sell" it to the staff.  Some eager beavers will follow the procedures enthusiastically and to the letter of law.  The administration does not need worry about this group.  A second group will complain or refuse to comply.  The administrators need to use both the carrot and whip with this group.  Since the lives of both students and teachers are at stake it is important that these teachers learn the importance and comply or maybe they don't belong in education.  The third group is the most dangerous. They are the staff who say "yes" but when the cards are on the table they do whatever they want.  They are difficult to identify, but take a look at other activities they have given lip service to and let them know that there are consequences for not  complying and be sure to follow through with those consequences.  

The Chickens: The Students    

    If you have ever lived next to a chicken coop you know chickens are noisy. If you have ever lived next to a school, you know children are noisy.  Both are even louder when they are frightened.  Therefore, it is imperative to to trains students how to shelter silently in place.  Their lives depend on it. They need to be able to identify and report potential danger that they observe in the school or on social media.  Creating an environment that is both comfortable and safe so student feel safe confiding in teachers, counselors, administrators and resource officers is paramount.  However, providing an on-line site for students to report such dangers could be another layer of protection.  These reports would go to the security command center and be acted on urgently.  Training staff to react and communicate dangers in a urgent manner could make all the difference.  

In Conclusion

    Schools can be safer if multiple layers of protection are instituted.  Yes, it will be more costly, but students' and teachers' lives are worth it. 

  

A Return To The Dark Days

 

By Jill Jenkins

Across the United States extreme conservatives are attacking curriculum, school districts, schools and educators. The environment is toxic.  Teachers who already spent countless hours adapting lessons to on-line formats for the pandemic before returning to the classroom to help traumatized students who have lost family members to COVID 19 and the security of a classroom community while feeling isolated learning on-line at home. Many parents were balancing teaching their children and working at home in financially difficult time where housing costs and food insecurity made life difficult . All of this negatively impacts many students. Teachers have stepped up and should be celebrated as heroes.  Instead of embracing and supporting these heroes, parents are asking to scrutinize textbooks, curriculum and even teachers.  These are dark days.

 

In Lehi, Utah a young educator revealed her LGBQ status on Tic Tock happy that her students were using her classroom to share their own LGBQ status with her after hours.  She felt she had created a safe place.  Instead of accepting her, the school suspended her while they blasted the local television news  with her post until the conservatives were aghast and then fired her after an hour-long school board meeting.  She could have sued for discrimination or first amendment rights to free speech, but instead she accepted her fate, ending her career as an educator in this state.

 

Although many teachers share family pictures and stories with their students in attempt to make them less alien and more human to young people, this might not be the right time for that.  We are entering a dark age and protecting a teacher’s career might mean staying off of social media.  School districts are so fearful of these conservatives that some have began accepting student teachers only from colleges affiliated with the dominate religious organization and hiring only those teachers.  As a result, they are populating schools only with people of the same religious beliefs and cultural beliefs as the majority of the population. The districts want to avoid controversy.  Unfortunately, not every student shares the religious belief, and culture, so those students feel alienated and the majority of the population is not prepared to deal with a more diverse world when they leave the confines of the community.  No one wins.

Even more difficult is those in a teaching career who do not share the same religious, cultural, or even race as the majority.  Not only will teachers who are gay lose their career, but teachers who are a member of another ethnic group, teachers who have a child out of wed-lock or teachers who have an abortion. are all in danger.  We have to return to a time when students were shocked to see a teacher at a store, where teachers have no life outside of school and above all that teachers never use the restroom.  Stay off of social media, remove all the pictures of your family from your desk and quietly endure until the time that teachers can be celebrated as heroes. Remember if we lose emphatic teachers, it will be the lost children who will suffer, not the loud mouths trying to politicalize education.