Adequate Yearly Progress

by Roxanna Elden

She concentrated instead on hating Breyonna’s purse.

“Deceive?”

“New Year’s Eve?”

“Sleeve!”

“Just so I’m clear: This means our jobs will depend on test scores and some formula that hasn’t even been developed yet?”

There were no actual teachers at the event. They were at work today, setting up for the year ahead. He, too, would have liked to be at work.

Apparently Global Schoolhouse Press, which had published Nick Wallabee’s book, also produced Texas’s standardized tests.

Accusing someone of defending the status quo in education was like accusing them of defending Goliath in the story of David and Goliath.

The implied message had been lost on none of them: some of the people in this room would end the year “resigning” to “spend more time with their families.”

The Curriculum Standard of the Day, posted online even later than usual today, had caught Lena in the middle of an entirely unrelated lesson. Now she was trying to cover the required material as an add-on during the last fifteen minutes of class.

TransformationalChangers, as Dr. Barrios thought of them, always seemed to have taught for exactly two years. Then they moved on to work at places whose names were capitalized words stuck together.

Best leaders are followers, wrote Dr. Barrios. Something seemed off about the statement, but he didn’t want to say anything

Then he reviewed his notes, trying to string together the arrangement of words most likely to make Daren Grant go away. “Thank you so much, Mr. Grant.” He smiled. “It’s great to hear you’re taking such a research-based, macro approach toward transformational, disruptive change. And, naturally, we love innovations based on abundant data.” Daren Grant made no move to get up. “I look forward to sharing these best practices with our teacher-leaders.”

“I just mention it because some of the classrooms have limited board space.” “Well, an innovative problem-solving approach to that might be to have them write in smaller letters!”

The most common gripe was that Destiny dumped its worst students into Brae Hill Valley to improve its own test scores,

“Our strategy is to have teachers use what students don’t know as a starting point, and then perform actions that will make students know those things.”

“Isn’t that”—Lena was confused—“pretty much the definition of teaching?”

she rarely enforced any actual consequences. This not only kept suspension numbers low, it also meant few teachers bothered to fill out referral forms in the first place—and these were the two ways the district calculated discipline numbers. It was, of course, these same two tendencies that caused actual student behavior at the school to skid downhill, but this was no time to make changes to the one set of numbers that felt assured.

It was strange how he spent so much time frustrated that students were not listening to him, only to get nervous when it seemed they might be listening too

hard.

What were the chances the author was really sitting there going, Hey, let’s add some hand symbolism in here so English teachers have something to put on a worksheet!

“That’s why we’re opening up our school system to that same businesslike competition. In fact, we’re telling businesses, If you think you can educate our students better than our district schools, come on in and do it. And if our district schools want to keep their students, well, they’ll have to do… whatever it takes to win!”

our most important norm is that we commit to unpacking our assumptions so we can co-investigate our subject matter from a stance of respect.

So… I killed the bee and ate it!”

nobody in the copier line seemed to notice the sarcasm except Maybelline, who glared as if data were a member of her family whom Lena had just insulted.

The truth was, she wasn’t even sure there was such a thing as an “author’s purpose.” There was more than one reason for writing anything, and some of the best authors never revealed their purpose at all.

Rich kids could mess up and still go on to college. They could commit crimes and still go on to become CEOs. They could cheat on their taxes, or defraud sick people, or run banks into

the ground, and leave others to clean up their messes. Hell, they could even become president.

Only then could one explain the need to scale up one’s macro impact by going to graduate school, or working at a consulting firm, or running for office.

WHAT WOULD AN ADDITIONAL SCENE AT THE END OF THIS STORY MOST LIKELY BE ABOUT?

The newest big fix is often a reaction to the last big fix that didn’t quite work as everyone hoped.