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It is ironic how things turn out.  What I mean by that is that is when one thing is going well then another aspect of life seems to be going down the tubes.  Does that happen to anyone else or is it just me?

The last couple of weeks at school we found out from the powers that be that our school is going to be taken over by the state?  Now I know that sounds horrible and on the surface it looks like we must not have been doing our jobs, but as I have looked at it closer I still do not understand how we were chosen.  Let me walk you through it.  Every year with about a month and half left of school public school children take what equates to their ‘end of year’ tests.  Now why do they take these tests with a month and half of school left to go I have no idea, but that is what the education department decides so that is what we do.  Now if your school does not reach a certain score they are placed on a list that contains all the at risk schools.  Those schools get additional funding and support so they can improve, if after so many years they have not improved enough then the school goes through an overhaul.  That is where my school is at right now at the overhaul stage.  There is one lifeline for the school which is to make safe harbor.  Safe harbor is raising test scores 10% from the previous year.  If you do that then you have another year to improve before the powers that be move you farther down the line before they eventually take you over.

My school missed safe-harbor not because our math and language arts tests did not improve by 10% which they did but because of one of the subgroups did not improve by 10%.  Did I lose you?  Ok here is how the system works lets say that a school is made up of 65% Hispanic-Americans, 15% African-Americans, 15% Asian-Americans, and 5% European-Americans (trying to be politically correct there).  Hypothetically speaking, if everybody passed the tests except for the European Americans and all 5% of them failed then the school is a failing school.   Now if that happened five years in a row then the school would be taken over by the state and half the teachers could be replaced.  Now the subgroups are not just based on race, but students are also placed in other categories like if they are regular education students or on an IEP (individual educational plan) or if they are ESL (English second language) or proficient in English.  If just one of those subgroups does not pass then the school is considered failing.  In other words, if 90% pass the tests but the 10% that failed made up the majority of a subgroup then the school is in trouble.

Now lets step back from the realm of hypothetical and move into the situation I find myself in this week.  Sometime this week I will have to interview for my job and I do not mind that fact and completely believe in the idea that teachers should be held just as accountable as the students, which is what they do in high schools because if students do not pass the tests they do not graduate.  At the middle school level if the students to do not pass the tests the teachers can lose their jobs and the students might have to take an extra reading or math class in high school.  Not quite the same, but I digress.  So this week I will have to walk into a room with at least four people from the state department and explain to them why they should keep me on the job.  I have no problem doing that because my tests scores have gone up just about every year except for last when they dipped to just 89% passing the U.S. History test.  You might not think that 89% is that high but compared to the two tests that count which are math and language arts which score in the high forties I did relatively well.  Not only did my students score well on the tests but I was a finalist for district teacher of the year in a district that has 92 schools last year, and have coached a successful soccer program that has finished in first or second place six out of the seven years I have been coaching.  So, despite my relative success at a failing school if I do not interview well, meaning telling the state department what they want to hear this week, then my teaching career could be over.

So, while my career could be going down the tubes my wife who is unbelievable with all that she does including working two jobs while pregnant is working for her sister’s business which is having just a fantastic year.  In fact, some of their products were just highlighted on NCIS Los Angeles last week and will be on the show again tomorrow.  If you watched last week’s show and remember the scene where Kensi pulls the gun from her blouse that type of holster, the Flashbang Holster, is made by the company Karen works for, in fact her sister is the designer of the holster.  They just got another big contract so things are looking up for them, which is wonderful maybe they will hire me in the future.

As of now I am just thankful that I still have a job, but it is frustrating that both of us cannot be soaring on high right now instead it seems we are just on opposite sides of a roller coaster.  When one of us is up the other is down which now that I think about it is sure a lot better than both of us on the down slope.

Picture via http://tomobert62.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/teacher14.jpg