CURMUDGUCATION: LIly Tries To Muster the Troops

CURMUDGUCATION: LIly Tries To Muster the Troops:

LIly Tries To Muster the Troops

This week NEA President Lily Eskelsen-Garcia kicked off the union's work as a campaigning arm of the Clinton campaign by doing some damage control and trying to get the troops in line.

I knew we were in trouble when I saw this tweet:

Is it? Is it clear that educators are on the same page about the next President? Exactly which page is that, I wonder?

The link in Eskelsen-Garcia's tweet takes us to this piece at her blog. "What's At Stake" presumably lays out what the union's campaign push will be.

The piece opens with a classic call to get in line. Lily has traveled the country, read the interwebs, and listened to the many points of view that teachers have been "not shy" about sharing. And "there will always be room for debate when it comes to the next candidate to support," which is good to hear, because there certainly wasn't any room to debate about the last candidate NEA leaders chose to support. But LEG is sure one thing is "abundantly clear"-- "Educators are on the same page when it comes to what our students need from the next president."

So what do we all agree on?

Well, one guy said teachers need a punch in the face and another guy wants us to all pack heat in school. We certainly don't want those guys! This is not so much "on the same page" as 'not reading CURMUDGUCATION: LIly Tries To Muster the Troops:





PARCC Expectations



As states continue to brace themselves for the release of crappy PARCC scores, now is a good time to look, again, at the PARCC Levels of Student Awesomeness:

Level 1: Student did not meet expectations.

Level 2: Student partially met expectations.

Level 3: Student approached expectations.

Level 4: Student met expectations.

Level 5: Student exceeded expectations

All levels share a critical term. Expectations.

It's a well chosen word from a PR perspective. Well-chosen, but not correct. Even, kind of, a lie.

After all-- what are expectations? They are an idea you set about before the fact. I have expectations about how my food will taste, and then I taste it. I have expectations about how good a movie will be, and then I watch it.

I don't listen to a new music release and then, after I've heard it, develop some expectations about whether it will be any good.

And in Teacher 101, we all learn that our expectations of our students will shape their performance-- what we expect them to accomplish will affect what they actually accomplish. Expectations are the horse, and performance is the cart.

So if we talk about expectations on a test, that means that before students take the test, we say, "I PARCC Expectations