Today I subbed in a self-contained special ed class. It's in my LA County district -- indeed, it's at the same school where I subbed yesterday. There's no need for me to do "A Day in the Life" today, of course, with aides taking over the class.
For the math part of the day, the students are to go to the Target or Walmart websites and find five articles of summer clothing on a $50 budget. I volunteered to help one of the guys out. He finds his articles quickly, but unfortunately the grand total was almost $60. I have him replace his $20 shorts with the $6 pair that his friend finds earlier.
The guys do take a break, and the aides take them a walk, so this is when I sing my song. I know -- I've been singing "Big March" so often during these special ed walks, but the Big March is over. And so I choose another simple song, "Mousetrap Car," instead.
By the way, there was a brief mention of yesterday's George Floyd trial verdict (again, I only discuss it when it directly relates to the classroom). As is the case in many special ed classes, this class normally watches CNN 10 news each day. But today's CNN 10 was mainly about two topics -- the coronavirus and the verdict. One of the aides feels that some of the students may be traumatized if they hear too many stories about the pandemic -- and that's before considering the story about the verdict. And so she decides not to do CNN 10 today.
Today is Eightday on the Eleven Calendar:
Resolution #8: We follow procedures in the classroom.
Of course special ed students in a class like this must follow procedures. But it's the aides who tell them what procedures to follow -- these students have issues, and they know how to handle them without getting into arguments.
Because today is test day, it's also a traditionalists' post. Most of our main traditionalists have been somewhat active lately, but I don't wish to link to any particular one of them today. Instead, I'll start with a few things going on in my districts, and then link to two articles that the traditionalists discuss.
Let's start with the hybrid schedule. All three of my districts have announced that they are moving up to the next level, with more in-person instruction for students. My LA County district is moving up from Level 2 to Level 3 next week, expanding from one day to two days per week (the usual hybrid).
And my Orange County districts are moving from Level 3 to Level 4, expanding from two days to four days in-person per week. Mondays will remain online only for all students. Indeed, one of the districts made the switch this week, while the other will change over next week.
The other announcement to make involves the SBAC. California has received a waiver that allows districts to decide what to do about assessment, so schools don't necessarily have to give the SBAC. So far, I haven't heard from my LA County district, but both OC districts have stated that the SBAC for Grades 3-8 as well as the California Science Test have all been cancelled. Instead, each district will give its own assessment -- if I'm not mistake, one of my districts has chosen IXL for middle school math.
The only SBAC that must still be given is Grade 11 English and math. The reason given is that colleges sometimes use the SBAC as a placement exam.
All of this means that the middle school math class where I completed my long-term will not be taking an SBAC this year. (It's my first OC district where the IXL will be given, not my long-term district.) I was worried about the state test earlier. Recall that I started bean-counting the number of members of various demographic groups in my class in anticipation of the SBAC. Indeed, this goes back to my old charter school. The reported SBAC scores combined our scores with our sister charter, but one subscore, Grade 7 Hispanic, isolated my students from our sister charter's -- and that subscore wasn't good. Now that there's no middle school SBAC, such bean-counting here will no longer be necessary.
OK, so let's get to the stories that have riled up all the traditionalists lately. The first one takes place in Dallas, Texas:
Not every student heeded the district’s call. Of Lincoln’s 144-person senior class, 107 students returned. Districtwide, 43% of seniors came to campus on Monday, with the largest turnout at Madison (95%).
So this district is also expanding in-person learning, like my OC districts. The difference is that it's apparently going from two to five days of in-person learning, at least for the seniors.
Recall the attendance wager I had with the traditionalists -- I paid 2-to-1 for every senior (and junior) who attended in-person, since older students are less likely to attend than younger students. Notice that at 2-to-1 odds, I would have lost money when 43% of the seniors attend. But I definitely would have won money while it was still two days a week, when only 27% attended. That wager is no longer on, though, since this article says everything I wanted to say with the wager.
The traditionalists howled when they read this story. By the way, notice that the reason for the extra days in-person is that nearly half the class is on pace not to graduate.
What exactly do the traditionalists want, anyway? What they want is for all the students who aren't showing up to receive F's -- not D-'s, not I's, but actual F's -- period. So that would be at least 57% of the seniors who would get all F's on their report cards.
Of course, of 57% of the seniors were to receive all F's, then at some point some parents would sue the district for not allowing their students to graduate. That leads to the second part of what exactly the traditionalists want -- they want judges to side with the district and throw out all such lawsuits. If 57% of the class isn't graduating, it's because 57% of the class isn't doing the work.
One traditionalist analogy that has come up several times is the bridge analogy. Suppose someone is hired to build a bridge, and makes money from the tolls. Now suppose for some reason, the builder is unable to build the bridge -- perhaps a pandemic breaks out prevents him from building it. The builder will argue that he was unable to build it through no fault of his own -- and he's right. But still, the fact is that the bridge hasn't been built. People can't cross the river because of what should have been built, and he can't make money from the tolls paid by people who should have crossed the river.
Thus to the traditionalists, this is how schools should be run. Yes, the students aren't learning as much because of the coronavirus, which is no fault of their own. But the fact remains that they aren't learning as much. And students who don't learn much doesn't deserve to graduate.
There's a certain phrase in our language, double-whammy. A "whammy" is bad, so a double-whammy is when two bad things happen in succession. To many Dallas seniors and their parents, the current situation is a double-whammy. The first whammy is the pandemic itself -- the millions who are getting sick, the thousands of Americans who are dying. The second whammy is that the district is making them go to school (that is, risk exposure to the virus) and write essays and do hard math problems in order to get a diploma.
The traditionalists, of course, criticize this double-whammy idea. It's based on the assumption that learning -- and doing the boring work that's necessary to learn -- is bad (that is, a whammy). On the other hand, the traditionalists start from the assumption that learning is good. If learning is good (rather than a whammy), then enforcing learning during a pandemic is no longer a double-whammy.
When the pandemic started last year, many students had extra time to play video games. Why isn't playing video games during a pandemic considered a double-whammy? That's easy -- most students consider playing video games to be good. If students -- and their parents -- would only consider learning to be as good as the traditionalists believe, then more learning would have occurred. Just as the bridge-builder whose income depends on tolls will find a way to complete the bridge (despite the pandemic), so should the students whose graduation depends on actual learning, say the traditionalists.
The traditionalists criticize the students for not agreeing that learning is good. They criticize the parents for not backing them up when they say that learning is good. And, as we've seen, they also criticize the teachers for not agreeing to reopen the schools to in-person learning as soon as possible, since they argue that only when teachers see students face-to-face does any learning take place.
Ah yes-- the traditionalists don't like us teachers either. Their beef with us is over union opposition to a swift reopening. To them, teachers should have thought, the students don't learn unless they see us right in front of them, and we won't be successful unless they learn. Therefore, we should lead the charge to reopen as soon as possible -- only then can we build the bridge. (Recall that this is the old tutoring argument -- I've already admitted that tutors are successful with students because they are sitting inches away from their kids, so the logical conclusion is that teachers are more successful when they are close to the students as well.)
But then you might ask, what about the pandemic? We've already seen that many traditionalists are what I call "zero percenters" who believe that for most people, the probability that they will die of the coronavirus is, to the nearest percent, 0%. To them, any fear of the virus is irrational -- parents shouldn't be opposed to sending their students to school, and teachers shouldn't be opposed to teaching a full class five days per week.
So what should we do with teachers who are sincerely afraid of the virus -- those who truly believe that their likelihood of catching the virus is more than 0%? The traditionalists don't say -- presumably, those teachers would still find a way to see all of their students face-to-face as much as possible. The other possibility would be for them to take a leave of absence until after the pandemic, for them to be replaced with a teacher who isn't afraid of the virus and is willing to see the students face-to-face.
Oh, and some traditionalists are anti-teacher due to the SBAC and other state tests. Once again, they think back to the bridge analogy -- the purpose of the test is to determine whether the bridge has been built or not. (Notice that while traditionalists usually oppose the Common Core, they have no problem with test-based accountability.) Again to them, if teachers have a problem with getting students to pass the test during the pandemic, then they should be replaced with those who have no problem doing so.
All of that being said, there's a second article making the traditionalist rounds:
In his four years at Augusta Fells Savage Institute of Visual Design, he passed three classes and earned a grade point average of 0.13. Yet, his transcripts show his class rank is 62 of 120, meaning 58 students, just in his grade, have a 0.13 GPA or lower.
Well, there's one thing we can say about Baltimore as opposed to Dallas -- at least Baltimore isn't inflating grades to make the students graduate, as the traditionalists are accusing Dallas of doing. And of course, the particular student mentioned in the article has had a low GPA for all four years of high school -- that is, it started long before the pandemic. In Dallas, the grade weighting and lack of engagement is clearly tied to the pandemic.
What are the traditionalists saying about Baltimore? They're saying that the school should be closed -- as in shut down forever. They criticize Dallas for being dishonestly bad, and they criticize Baltimore for being honestly bad.
As usual, the traditionalist debates have no simple solution. I don't know the best way of solving these problems in these two cities.
This is what I wrote two years ago about today's test:
Today is approximately the end of the fifth hexter -- the midpoint of the third trimester -- so it's a good test day.
Today is the Chapter 14 Test. Here are the answers to my posted test:
1. DE = 32, EF = 16sqrt(3).
2. TU = 16, US = 8sqrt(3), SK = 8, TK = 8sqrt(2).
3. 3/4
4. 3/5
5. 0.309
6. 0.625
7. 1/2
8. sqrt(3) (Some people may consider this question unfair, since the above question and both corresponding questions on the practice had rational answers, leading students to believe that they can just use a calculator to find the exact value rather than use 30-60-90 triangles.)
9-10. These are vectors that I can't reproduce easily here.
11. BC/AC (or a/b, if the students learned it that way).
12. AB and AD
13. ACD and CBD
14. This is a vector that I can't reproduce easily here.
15. (9, 6)
16. 115 feet, to the nearest foot.
17. (1, 4)
18. (3, -3)
19. (3, 2). (I hope students don't get confused here and solve these three backwards!)
20. This is a vector that I can't reproduce easily here.
Thus concludes Chapter 14. Stay tuned -- we're starting Chapter 15 tomorrow.
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