Yes They Grew But Can I Take Credit For It?

We are in the midst of testing season at my school.  The students are doing MAP tests, as well as their writing assessments and we gather to discuss the results, to think of strategies.  To rank, to sort, to file.  To highlight, to shine a light, and to discuss what is working and what isn't.  We pat some teachers on the back - look at that growth, and we wonder what else we can do.  We wonder if merit pay is on the horizon and how we will be ranked, filed, and sorted.  That will be based on these test results on those students gains or losses and yet, can we really take credit for the gains that our students may have made?  Can those test results really be accredited to the teacher?

I often wonder how much growth my students do on their own?  How their brain creates new connections, new ideas, and new strategies for conquering the learning we do?  How much of that growth can be attributed to their parents or home environment rather than the school?  How many of those new connections can really be chalked up to their natural development as a growing child who all of a sudden gets it more?  Or even how much of their growth should be attributed to their first teachers, perhaps in daycare, pre-school or kindergarten?  Those teachers set the foundation, taught those students that school was safe and an environment they could continue their learning in.  Can I take credit for any of the growth shown a piece of paper?  I don't know.

Who Wants to Teach "Those" Students?

I became a teacher because I believed that all students could learn.  I believed that children have a purpose in life; that all children do not start out mad or confused, or hopeless.  I continued being a teacher because children proved to me that they wanted to learn, be happy, have a better life, and they they did not mean it personally when they acted out.  And yet, as I read articles like the one posted in the LA Times today (via @LarryFerlazzo), I wonder how many young people entering college will want to become a teacher; a believer in all children.

America's education policy is a numbers obsessed community.  We rank our students comparatively so that proper interventions can be given, we dole out pointless letter grades based on obscure percentages, we graph, we draw, we list from highest to lowest all in the quest of how to teach with more meaning, more ability, more effectiveness and more adherence.  This number obsession is now targeting teachers through merit pay suggestions, firings based on test scores, rewriting of school wide goals based on  the percentage of yearly growth in academics by individual teachers.  Nowhere is it mentioned where students started at the beginning of the year, what happened during the year, or any other factors that may have a play in how a child (and teacher) performs.  After all, how many of us have ever failed a test simply because we did not get enough sleep or had something else on our mind?  To use those test scores as the sole basis of observation of someones teaching skills is an injustice that we cannot afford to let pass.

I am not saying that there aren't poor teachers out there, of course there are.  However, we all know many educators that are passionate about their job and passionate about their children.  Because that's what they are; our kids.  We take them all; the hungry, the poor, the talented, the needy, the angry, the hopeless, the mutes, the ghost kids that are there one day and gone the next.  We invite them all into our room, into our lives and we do our best in teaching them something, even if it just means teaching them that ours is a room they can feel safe in.  And that is why I became a teacher; to invite them into my family, to show them all that someone cares about them, even if they have an overabundance of people who support and cherish them.

So as merit pay is discussed and jobs are cut because of test scores, I wonder; who will teach "those" kids?  The ones with the files as thick as a Harry Potter book, the ones everyone knows even if they have not taught them. the ones with the missing files that never seem to materialize, the ones that leave class to go to doctor's appointments, counseling, therapy, or just never show up.  The ones that so brighten my day, even if they are  there half of the week.  The ones that are forced into an adult role when they are 9, the ones that carry their little sister's backpacks in the hallway and hold their hand when they get on the bus because it is them against the world.  Who will teach those kids when you may lose your job because they did not live up to an inane standard set by a far removed government?  I will...will you?