In a message dated 10/28/00 3:13:15 AM Pacific Daylight Time, Csubstance@AOL.COM writes: << below nat'l norm >> Sounds kinda like, "failed to meet standard" to me, Arthur. I tried to tell you the tried and true standardized could be even worse than the WASL wacko fuzzy, because people find them easier to justify. WASL and MCAS will die because of their ridiculousness, when parents and kids wake up and boycott, but when they're replaced by ITBS, watch out! And ITBS starts at 3rd grade now. It can easily and cheaply be instituted as a grade advancement test for all grades. Great sorter of the haves and have nots. Be careful what you wish for as a lesser evil. Juanita -------------------------- eGroups Sponsor -------------------------~-~> eGroups eLerts It's Easy. It's Fun. Best of All, it's Free! http://click.egroups.com/1/9698/16/_/8573/_/972742464/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------_-> From: "George N. Schmidt" Subject: Re: Chicago Teacher Test Fallout To: ARN-L@LISTS.CUA.EDU In a message dated 10/27/00 1:28:53 PM, arthur.hu@AUBETA.NET writes: << and can you personally attest that these tests forced out some good teachers that you knew? >> October 28, 2000 Hello Arthur: The answer? Yes. Most currently, George Cummins (English) and Jim Tucker (math) retired this September from Bowen High School, after the school was placed on "academic intervention" by the Vallas administration. Bowen, which was the last school I taught at before they suspended me for heresy, was placed into "intervention" because the TAP scores in "reading comprehension" were below 20 percent of the 9th and 10 th grade students combined reading "at or above nat'l norms." I could list 100 other teacher, many of whom I knew personally, since the 1997 "High School Reconstitution" (again, based on "low" TAP scores) dumped 188 tenured teachers from seven Chicago high schools. We've published a number of articles on them. Of course, there is also me. I'd still be teaching English to some of our most "at risk" kids today had the school board and the mayor not decided they'd better purge me for heresy before the word of all their scams got out too far. Remember: I was fired for publishing a newspaper on my own time, not for anything I did during the performance of my duties as and English teacher and security coordinator at James H. Bowen High School in Chicago. This town has been trying and burning witches for the past five years, ever since Chicago got the religion of "school reform" based on high stakes "standards and accountability." The purge trials of the teachers have been in the high schools. The high schools are where all the lies comes down the pipes and focus in a jet stream. Because Chicago sorts kids into the magnet school elite (who get into high schools based on test scores) and the remainder (who go to what we call the general high schools here), virtually all of the high scoring kids are recruited into the magnet and "college prep" high schools after 6th or 8th grade (yes, some are recruited at the end of 6th grade), the remaining kids, the vast majority who are "below nat'l norm" (meaning below the ITBS median, which our rulers carefully obfuscate in discussions) wind up in the general high schools. Then the teachers in the general high schools (and the principals) are fired or demoted for having kids with "low" scores (on the ITBS and its high school equivalent, the TAP). The most dramatic tragedy in all of this teacher bashing came a summer ago. On July 23, 1999, Joe Hillebrand, a high school English teacher, killed himself by walking into the path of a commuter train at Harlem and Avondale streets in Chicago. In his suicide note, Hillebrand explained how his being forced out of his job was the main reason. We covered this in our September - October 1999 issue. Unfortunately, most teachers still don't get it. They believe that the "grade equivalent score" is "grade level", don't understand the nature of the bell curve and the notion of the median, and therefore think that they can get all of the kind in their classes (and schools) to "grade level or above" (i.e., at or above the median) through hard work and selfless self-sacrifice. Julie (PURE) can give you plenty of examples of kids who've been victimized the same way by our norm-referenced test based "standards and accountability" here in Chicago. Probably the only thing worse than a WASL or MCAS is to use something like the Iowa and TAP, since both are normed in a way that guarantees that the majority of urban kids like the ones we teach in Chicago will be below "grade level" since they are below the median. By lying about the basic statistics of all this, the newspapers and rulers of Chicago produce all of these victims, young and old. George Schmidt Editor, Substance 5132 W. Berteau Chicago, IL 60641 773-725-7502 Hope this helps. I'm on deadline. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the ARN-L list, send command SIGNOFF ARN-L to LISTSERV@LISTS.CUA.EDU. --part1_7d.c391683.272c3933_boundary-- .