Madness

It is that time here. Standardized tests.

I teach second year ESL kids. Some of them are in an American school for the first time. They are required to take the same reading test as kids who have been in the US all their lives. This isn't really even amazing to anyone anymore. The chance that they will pass the state score at this level is 0.

So it is little to no surprise that (shhhh!) most kids just click through the test and say "I'm done!"in 15 minutes. They have learned the secret. Never mind that they read at a first grade level (at best), and the test is for 10th graders, and many 10th graders cannot pass. Never mind the nearly 50 questions with intense reading. Never mind that they don't usually know the word for "scroll bar" before the test but our monitors are so small that they have to scroll all over the place in 2 different windows to take this test. Just never mind.

I only heard this anecdotally, but another teacher, understandably shrill and about to go crazy, complained about putting having to administer a 70 question computer test to kindergartners, with headphones. Can anyone even imagine this?

It is just confirmation to me that those who make education policy (read: NCLB) just have no idea what kids are like, what schools are like or what will really work.

And by way of qualification, I am all about high standards, and I can even get behind some standardized testing. But agreed with a coworker this year, who when we saw the testing schedule said "Phew! With all this I won't have to write more than 3 lesson plans this year!"

It is true, our ESL kids have to take 3 and a half standardized tests just for their english proficiency annually to comply with state and federal standards. They are not short tests.

In other news, Addy said for the first time tonight "I love you!" over and over and clapped each time. It was awesome. I know she will be pulling it out of her pocket now when she gets in trouble. I can see it now:

"No Addy, you cannot hula dance on broken glass on top of the chair with bare feet while you reach across to pick up a knife on the kitchen counter. Naughty."

Addy continues reaching only now she is looking at me saying "I love you mommy!" thinking that if she is cute enough she may be able to avoid the inevitable impending repercussions of her decisions to do the opposite of what I ask.

Jeff got the tile in the laundry room down, and we will sleep for a second night with no door on the laundry room because we will just have to take it off again tommorrow for the washing machine delivery (I begged him to put it on, every bump in the night makes me wake up with a door off, I wonder why). I was rebuffed firmly. I have heard that robbers don't come when there are people in the house, but if they do come, I just might say "I told ya so", though I have sworn I would never say it. Still J wins the official stud award, he was not excited neither about tiling nor about the washing machine, but it is all over now, and he even painted the laundry room. It was a room we were both pretending it didn't exist. But now it looks decent, new trim, new paint and new tile. No fancy tile though, just cheapest of cheap since this was his first go at tile, though now he is kind of getting into it, looking at fancy tile jobs and making plans.

Krashen

Imagine, if you will, in your mind what a doctorate in linguistics looks like. Pocket protectors? Pasty complexion? Greasy hair? Notebooks full of sentence trees? Dry humor referencing prepostional phrases? Overly caffeinated sweats? Saggy belly? A little too excited about bilingual research?

Anyone who has ever studied linguistics or language acquisition knows his name. Mainly, if you know what letters like TEFL TESOL EFL ESL ELD ELL have in common, you probably, or at least you ought to know who Krashen is.

edit: okay, perhaps we should narrow the linguistics field a bit to applied linguistics, the area specifically of language learning, which is where this Krashen fellow is the most prolific...

This guy basically put out some pioneering research centering around fancy terms like "Comprehensible input" "Affective Filter" and "Acquisition v. Learning". Most of these things are terribly, terribly basic ideas. Affective Filter is that people learn less or not at all in anxiety or fearful circumstances. Acquisition is how a baby learns English and Learning is how most of us learn foreign languages: slogging through grammar sheets and verb conjugations. Flashcards and memorization and practice.

I am a terrible linguistic nerd myself. I delight in breaking the rules, observing the patterns in languages I have learned and just speculating on how it is that I picked up that one word in Russian, and how I forgot it. I like to sometimes speculate on "bad words" in foreign languages and how it is that that they can be bad when if I say them when I hardly know what they mean. I actively avoid ending sentences with prepositions. I love just listening to spoken Russian or Spanish, like I would enjoy the voice of someone I love. I am just wierd that way.

I am not terribly sweaty, I can be rather pasty here in Portland here (more on that later, I got a product that has elicited some interesting comments), but suffice it to say, I am in no position really to be critical, I am always interested to hear what Krashen says.

And today was even better because in between hearing the jokes I heard 2 or so years ago, I got a mountain of papers corrected. Thank God, they sat there mocking me for so long. Have you ever heard papers that need to be corrected mocking you? It goes like this:

Me: To heck with you, I am going on a date with J, you will just have to wait.
The papers: Haha! You go! Have fun! But no wine for you because I will be here waiting for you when you get home! MUAHAHHAHAHAHAHA!
Me: icanthearyouicanthearyou. (slam! of door)

Krashen has a rather hilarious personality beyond the "skinny sweaty man in a green suit" fashion of his life. His wit is a razor, and is as irreverent as they come when it's the politics of grammar (don't ask) and teaching literacy/bilingual education. He makes fun of just about everything, which is good. He gave a crazy number of breaks (we started at 830 and had 2 breaks before an hour long lunch and 3 breaks afterward)

There is no doubt in my mind this man is making a massive killing on these things. We paid 175 dollars each, at 250 people, about 3 to 5 thousand for the space...no wonder he retired. He could do about 4 of these a year and call it good at if he cleared 35K a crack after expenses and before taxes.

And teachers are the exact right audience. They studied him in college, so he has credibility. He doesn't have to produce a college level chunk of research to impress his findings on his audience. He is pretty relaxed in these things. But it is well tolerated because he isn't saying anything that is particularly hard to swallow.

So what did I get out of this?

He cites some statistics relating to the availability of books in libraries and homes and how they compare with literacy test scores. The results are not surprising, so why in the world would anyone think that a school library with a certified librarian is an option? Kids with less access to books have lower reading scores. Not rocket science.

He talks about how bilingual education takes longer because the kids are digesting more information but ultimately result in a better educated individual. I buy this, but I understand how taxpayers are more interested in buying the economy sized education at the bottom of the line rather than the high end education with a good option package that really should be standard.

That is what Bilingual Ed is, it is the education for those who know what education should be. Still, the idea of paying a whole lot more for educating immigrants is too much to ask of taxpayers in general.

I am not going to nerd out on y'all, it would take me forever to do a good job of that.