Inner-city schools don't have to be inner-shitty schools

Whilst the Rochester City School District is in damage control mode with today's arrest of a junior administrator at Jefferson High, our departmental meeting revealed that it seems the English department has the closest correlation with dreaded State testing. In other words, the grades received in English classes are roughly equivalent to the State ELA tests at the 8th and 11th grade levels. So why is it that English teachers report what others dare not? Or do they?

Many of our students are failing miserably. What do you expect when locally the academic hurdles are buried in trenches so that they resemble speed bumps? Or the propensity to adopt programs for their cash value, not for their efficacy in student achievement. Programs that leave nothing to teacher innovation...(oh, but you're in an inner city school, they exclaim, don't be so idealistic!) Inner-city doesn't necessarily mean inner-shitty instruction, so don't mandate it to be so.

The system doesn't work. Teachers are continually pressured to "teach to the test." And I would say this is the biggest mistake that can be made. I guarantee that 95% of my students will never see a critical lens after they leave the environs of high school. There is little relevance between the Regents exam and real life. But the politicians in their pseudo-ivory towers keep believing that the academic standards are highest in history, but I'll be damned if half of my students can give correct change for a $20 bill.

I suspect the secret to our "successful" correlation of grades to exams stems from encouraging students to think in the gray areas. People argue that it's not fair to compare departments because the "English" curriculum is loosely organized at best, and allows for a lot of instructional freedom. Yep. It does. And thank goodness for that! Somebody has to reveal the process of thinking critically. We're not hampered by the albatross of Regents-directed content, so we can luxuriate in the gray areas, instead of rushing to the correct multiple choice answer.

Ironically, at the same time that our principal is promoting our Book-of-the-Month, Who Stole My Cheese?, a cult classic of 1990s business management gurus, state and city administrators cling to the Old Cheese philosophy. The book, for those not familiar with it, advocates embracing change with enthusiasm, because change is inevitable...Well someone should recommend the book to the City and State officials who are in a self-induced tranced muttering the mantra of "Testing, testing and more testing equals accountability." No wonder America is on the decline, with all but the most elementary jobs being out-sourced at escalating rates.