On Georgia's Withdrawal from PARCC

Last week, the state of Georgia decided to formally withdraw from the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) consortium. Here is Georgia Education Superintendent John Barge's explanation for the decision.  Link:  Barge's Explanation
In a nutshell: PARCC costs too much, and we can come up with stuff that's just as good.

My response to his explanation:
This is as unacceptable an explanation as we could possibly have hoped for. Georgia spends a measly $18.00 per student for assessments, and the state won't increase this for PARCC, let alone to a level that is on par with other states like Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania. We can't afford $30 million dollars for students for their DIRECT benefit, but we can afford $300 million dollars to dig out Savannah harbor with our fingers crossed that students as well as the rest of Georgia may hopefully one day benefit from its trickle-down largesse.

It is very tiresome when political leaders continually say, "You're just going to have to trust us on this. We know what's best" -- particularly on an issue like education, where Georgia has languished for GENERATIONS! Two years ago, you all agreed that PARCC and RTTTop were the golden ticket, even though you knew then that it was going to be expensive. But now you say that Georgia was only in the consortium just to see what was going on -- camel's nose under the tent, in other words -- and then we sneak away! How noble!! Great lesson for the kids: "You don't have to expend any effort, kids. Just copy from your neighbor's test!!"

You say, Mr. Barge, that our forthcoming tests will be just as good, just as rigorous as PARCC -- but, students won't have to spend as long being tested, and the in-house system won't cost as much. HUH?!?! How are you going to square the circle on that one in a reliable and valid manner???

I think the real reason is that you have burned your political bridges with the GOP (charter schools kerfuffle), and they've made you drink the kool-aid on this one, or they're going to show you the door come next election cycle. As for the Governor, he has to get rid of an issue that is so volatile with the Tea Party wing because he has a guy up in Dalton who can stir up trouble for him with the base and make him spend more money in the primary than he would otherwise like to. He needs this CCS/PARCC issue to go away, just like his junk yard.

I just hope that for your penance they don't make you go down to Savannah and help dig out the river with a little plastic shovel.

Per pupil spending on Assessment systems (go to pg. 9)
http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/reports/2012/11/29%20cost%20of%20assessment%20chingos/11_assessment_chingos_final.pdf (go to page 9)

My Dog Harry

My dog Harry

loves it when -- on the back porch,

listening with me to the crickets --  

I slide him slivers of cheddar

from my paper plate.  He sits,

peering through the screened-in darkness,

and searches for backyard varmints

or wayward interloping cats.

My dog Harry

sits with me on the couch --

A Person of Interest flickering

in the colorblind distance --

and rests his chin upon my thigh,

heaving great sighs from time to time,

thoughts of squirrels perhaps,

or the collie at the dog park.

My dog Harry

lies on the carpet,

equidistant

from me at my desk

and where the children sleep

in their beds.  

I do not need a yardstick.

My dog Harry

wags his tail gale force

when he sees the red leash,

and leaps onto my legs

for his harness.  

He walks with me full gallop

and pees on every vertical surface --

bushes especially,

and our neighbors’ unsuspecting mailboxes.

--Michael McIntyre

Dacula, April 2013

What Happened to Sears?

ALMOST LIKE THE CABLE GUY
Saturday, 2/2/13, first arrival window was 10-1...changed to 1-3....showed up at 3:30, disheveled and exhausted looking. I later found out that he'd been non-stop for a month and a half, 12 hours a day, 7 days a week -- and he looked it. I genuinely felt sorry for him, as he was working alone, for what appeared to be (surely) a 2-man-job.We had to leave the house at 6:30, so he came by the next day to finish. 4 hours into the job on Sunday, he realizes that the belt drive shaft will not fit in our garage, as there is a drop down header which supports the bonus room above the garage. I would think that the salesperson who came out the previous week realllly should have caught that little detail. The install technician said that he did not know if Sears would be able to make the opener work at all. A phone call technician later said that they might have to take the door down and refund our money.

ONE WEEK LATER 

So, for this week we've been manhandling the garage door (even though he did not put a handle on it), and today a tech called to say they'd be out on Saturday, February 16 to see if they can fix the door. Frankly, I'm ready to call Overhead Door (who installed the previous door, which lasted for 14 years) because they evidently did not have any problems with the support beam running the width of the garage. They simply used a shorter,screw drive shaft. I don't know why Sears cannot accomplish this task.


AH, FOR YESTERYEAR
When I was young, it was always a big impressive deal when the Sears technicians would drive up your driveway in their shiny panel van. This time,not so much, sadly. Our technician arrived in his own beat-to-death pick-up truck with supplies and tools just thrown into the bed and spilling over its sides. It is sad that corporations have worked themselves into this corner: chasing profit margin means gaining operational inefficiencies, which all too often means hiring straight commission sales people to get the job, and then utilizing one person to do a job that 10 years ago would have been done by two installers. Of course, we consumers -- constantly chasing the cheapest deal in town -- have largely enabled corporations in this self-destructive behavior. See Circuit City....see K-Mart.....

I was giving a test today, and I checked the news only to read of today's terrible event in Connecticut I looked out at my class, and a student looked back at me, smiled, went back to her test. And then I looked at my classroom door and the heavy filing cabinet that I would topple in front of it if, god forbid, I ever needed to.

The news from Connecticut has been pretty impossible to process.....as a parent, as a teacher, as a plain ol' human being......I've been sitting for the last two hours with head phones and loud music trying to keep the awful thoughts at bay. I eventually wrote, hard as it was. My prayers to the families and community of Newtown.

Newtown

On the whiteboard in neat manuscript:
December 14, 2012
Today’s weather is chilly.
A little yellow mitten
rests by the window, fallen from its cubby --
the one with the Spiderman lunchbox.
A Hello Kitty hair clip,
sits alone on the desktop
like an exclamation mark
for the carefully taped down nameplate
S-O-P-H-I-A.
And in the hallway,
hanging from a clothespin,
a fingerpaint sun smiles down
from bright blue construction paper sky.
CLap, CLap, CLap!!
There’s a man with a gun in the schoolyard.

Michael McIntyre

Dacula, GA

Summer Days End

Father
pack mule
grasping up the florescent goggles,
the lime-violet dive sticks
and the castaway towel
adorned with Angry Birds.
Popping the stubborn clip
to let down
the goliath umbrella -- 
cerulean and sun-stained 
ivory stripes -- 
careful not to pinch a finger.


Children cranky,
wife exhausted 
with Southern Living.
Close now by the horizon,
Apollo dips behind a 
big Bradford Pear, 
and its shadow casts
on the concrete 
trail of damp footprints
that fade away toward the
chain link gate.


A wayward pink tee shirt
skitters across the cement --
stubbed toe, expletive stifled.
And father
shakes out the Super Soaker
like an Easter Sunday bishop, 
slinging holy water 
on a row 
of slightly askew
but penitent 
chaise lounges.


-- Michael McIntyre

Some Thoughts on Running as a Form of Recreational Loco-Motion

My ponderous legs

chug and churn

up the hill

as if laden

with cinder blocks,

or 25-pound sacks of flour

intended for that pizza place

over by the Kroger.

Any moment now….

I wait for the crack --

the gunshot-like snap of a hamstring

to echo through the neighborhood,

bouncing off of the tidily manicured Tudor

over to the stack stone façade

of the house with the man

who always cuts his grass too low.

In a minivan

the lady from the cul-de-sac

motors by,

chatting on her iPhone –

snickering, no doubt,

at the idiot who looks near cardiac arrest

as he lumbers by the mailbox

at 1252.

I lift an index finger

in recognition of her,

so as not to appear rude.

Thankfully,

I quit smoking 10 years ago,

or I’d be bent over on the sidewalk,

hacking up a lung

(or some suspicious viscera)

by the freshly painted fire hydrant

at the bottom of the hill.

Or perhaps I should’ve never quit.

And instead

lapsed into middle age,

Archie Bunker-like:

a comfy chair to cradle me,

and a TV tray

with a ham and swiss on rye

as my reward

for a day well done.

On the Instruction of Writing...with help from a robot

As states and school systems struggle with ever-shrinking budgets, and as the march towards on-line schools becomes ever-quickening, education providers and vendors have begun to investigate robo-readers as an effective (read "monetarily efficient") tool for writing instruction.  A great debate, subsequently, has ensued:  Could these things possibly be any good?  Science World Report article.


I am currently piloting the WriteToLearn program (Pearson) for my district.  I teach language arts to 100 seventh graders. The WTL program purports to analyze the writer’s semantics (meaning), and it uses the Six Traits model as its framework -- IDEAS; ORGANIZATION; CONVENTIONS; WORD CHOICE; SENTENCE FLUENCY; VOICE.  Interestingly, it uses the same type of algorithmic analysis that the Dept. of Homeland Security uses to sift through and find commonality among millions of emails, websites, etc. The system does a serviceable job, I feel, in helping to provide students with quick, meaningful feedback when they are in the early stages of the draft/revision process (when they ask, Is this good!?!?) -- especially when it is a roomful of 30 students who all want immediate feedback.  I would not, however, dream of using this program as the final assessment of a piece: the analysis simply misses too much of the nuance (and meaning, even) that developing writers bring to their pieces, albeit sometimes awkwardly.  In that respect, a fellow writer needs to be the final judge.


I wholeheartedly agree that automated systems such as WTL will not ever be able to replace an instructor who knows what he or she is doing (OK, probably not ever).  Perhaps that is the rub here:  there are far too many “writing” instructors out there who don’t know how to teach writing well -- they know it when they see it, but they can’t teach it. And this is by no means entirely the fault of the teacher; even pharmacists sign up for professional development to stay on the top of their game.  I wish, certainly, that we would spend as much money on professional development for writing teachers as we seem bent on spending for these automatic programs.  But school systems are in a budget panic, and I recognize that they are looking 10 years down the road and not just at next year.  


To be sure, when pondering the future of education, we live in curious, tumultuous times.  I always shake my head when I see the 7th and 8th grade football teams practicing.  Each team fields 70-80 players.  Each team then fields 13-15 coaches to help the players in specific areas such as receiving, offensive line, defensive line, special teams. Coaches see their players for 7-12 hours a week for practice and games.  Teams start weight training in March, and spring practice in May. These players will receive about 210 hours of practice and feedback before the first scrimmage.  My academic team of 100 students, on the other hand, has 4 core teachers, each of whom sees his or her students for a total of about 210 hours for the entire school year.  Until we as a society pledge to support learning with the same volunteer energy and money that we support our extracurricular activities, I would argue that we are always going to have, for the most part, an under-educated student body -- and a society of poor writers.