In The Tyranny of a Single Data Point from Tinkerings,
Tim talks about his sruggle dealing with weight loss. His weight went up 3 lbs.
in one day and even knowing that his body was reacting to different things, he
used negative words to himself and felt like a failure. He also states,
“The tyranny of a single data point can be the difference between an
under qualified teacher thinking they are rocking it with their kids, or the
proverbial rock star thinking they are simply a failure pretending to be a good
teacher.”
I took have been trying to lose weight for the past 3 months
and only weigh in once a week. My weight has gone up and down but basically I
still weigh the same as I did on January 1. Part of me says that I’m still
doing good because I’m not gaining weight but part of me wants to lose it and
lose it quickly! Of course, I look back at all the bad food choices I’ve made
this week and swear that I will do better next week. Unfortuantely I’m having
trouble with willpower and need to come up with a new plan. But that is for
another post.
As for data affecting teachers in the classroom, I totally
agree. I still go back to the situation when No Child Left Behind came out and
I found out that I was not a highly qualified teacher. I had a Master’s + 30,
was nationally board certified, taught for 25+ years and was even awarded the
state Special Education Teacher of the Year! But, I was not considered highly
qualified to teach my self contained high school students functional life
skills and were not even getting a high school diploma. Of course, this hurt my
feelings, but I did what I had to do. I paid my money to take the Praxis
certification test to be certified to
teach elementary education. I didn’t take any courses or study for this and
passed it with flying colors. That makes me feel as if that was more of a “tax”
than any necessity to improve my teaching.
Meanwhile, there was a teacher next door to me teaching the
same thing but was considered highly qualified because she was an elementary
education certified teacher. Eventually after 3 years of tremendous
documentation and evidence, the school was able to fire her for incompetence.
Unfortunately for the parents and students, it took three years to accomplish
this (due to our highly litigious society, many schools want to dot their I’s
and cross their t’s before firing anyone).
The scores that made her highly qualified and me, not highly
qualified had no bearing on our competence. It made her feel as if she could do
anything she wanted and that I needed to watch my back.
I’ve seen students know the class material one day and then
feel like they had never seen it the next day. I need to make sure I look at
progress over time and not just one day at a time. I’m not a great test taker
so I try to include other ways for students to show me that they understand the
material I’m teaching. Unfortunately, some of my students have been taught to
only look at the test grades as a indication of their progress even though I
insist that they are doing other things that count towards their grade. When
they get a lower grade than expected, they like to argue that they did so well
on the tests but I have to show them that they didn’t do so well on other
projects or answering questions about the text during class.
Sometimes we also have to take in account the effort that a
student puts forth. I find it very hard to give a student a failing grade on a
test when I know he has put so much effort into the work. I usually offer an
opportunity to retake the test or offer it in a different format. Sometimes
they feel like they have already failed it once so what is the worst that can
happen, so they are more relaxed when
they retake the test and do wonderful on it. I can always tell if the student
hasn’t studied or put any effort into their work but I feel that if they try,
the number they score should not be the deciding factor of their progress.
How do you feel about numbers? Please share.
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