Other Teachers....
At least once everyday I wonder why I work so hard to make sure the students are working and held accountable for what they do. Today, I found out a few things about another teacher that made me wonder more than usual.
A student of mine left his folder in my class yesterday after tutorial. I opened the folder to find out whose it was. The first thing in the folder was a progress report for his other math class (most of the students take math twice). From Oct. 10 to Nov. 27, this math teacher had 5 grades. 5 GRADES! One project, one test, one notebook check, one quiz and one homework assignment. 5 grades. I've got 20 grades.
Next, this student had only done 2 of these five assignments. So he should have gotten zeros for the other three assignments, right? NO! This teacher does not give a student a zero for something they didn't do-- it's like the assignment never existed. This kid didn't do a project, didn't keep up with his notebook, and didn't do the one homework assignment. Guess what his grade was? An 87! This math teacher doesn't hold them accountable for anything!
This kid does none of the assignments in my class either, and flunks every test. He's got about a 40 in my class. He wants to know why my class is so much harder than the other math class.
It gets worse. The kid also had his last test in his folder. I looked it over, because for Algebra we all use the same tests and then compare how well our students did. There were 22 problems, so each one should have been about 4.5 points. This math teacher only took off 2 points per problem! No wonder all her kids have a higher test average! All my kids would be passing too if I only took off two points per problem!
It actually gets much worse after this. Two math teachers are not coming back after Christmas break. One of them teaches Algebra-- state tested. Great.
Once again, I find myself wondering why I work so hard. At least I can sleep at night-- I know I've done my job.
posted by Tiffany @ 4:50 PM
2 Comments:
The magic question: Why are so many students doing so poorly on the district and/or state test?
The real magic question: Why are the students with those 87% averages scoring just as poorly as our students on the district/state tests?
Don't think I could have made it this far without you :)
Posted on the Outstanding Work wall outside a ninth-grade teacher's classroom: reports on Maya Angelou, at least six of which were nearly and clearly and at-a-glance identical, copied verbatim from the internet (unless the students at my school forget the words "memoirist," "chauffeurette," and "inauguration" in the summer between ninth and tenth grades). So it's only reasonable that they all received the same Outstanding grade: 100.
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