Lady Justice is blind to the sides of all cases.  She weighs each side carefully before reaching her decisions.  Luckily, she has her wrists exposed so that she can feel the money as it whisks up flowing sleeves (ones only, please).  It does feel hopeless sometimes when you don't have the cash to keep her complacent.

In honor of pirates, I have decided to make grog.  Tomorrow will be the taste test.  (Grog was created by mixing rum, water and citrus juice to create a palatable drink for sailors on long voyages.  I will use it to prevent scurvy, obviously). 

This is what happens when you mix small amounts of intellect and large amounts of boredom. 

Cheers.

This makes me so mad, all these blues running around out here, I could spit. 

Uh...permission to speak freely sir?

Go a head

That was really freaking gross.

Today marked the first day of Regents testing in New York State.  And today began a new chapter highlighting the complete ineptitude of the NYS Board of Regents.  Just when I thought we were at the nadir of education, Commissioner Mills and Company found a new way ignore any type of common sense.  The Regents is a full battery of tests in which a student must pass at least 9 high stakes tests in order to get a NYS diploma.  Each test is designed for a three hour block of time and there are two testing periods each day in late June.  Late June is a horrible time here because the weather gets hot and the testing centers tend to be gymnasiums, which get unbearably hot.  Any way you look at it, the situations are less than ideal for a system that is suppose to objectively determine how much a student has learned for their career.

The worst year of testing is 11th grade.  The students take two English tests, an American history test, a Language test, a Math test, and usually a science test (physics).  With seven days, and twelve testing periods, you would think that these students would be shown a small mercy by taking one test a day.  Not in the State of New York.  Our 11th graders will sit to write two essays for English Thursday morning, get a half hour break, then take their Math B exam on Thursday afternoon.  Friday morning will be another two English Essays, then the afternoon will see them taking a Foreign Language exam.  The last exam is their Tuesday afternoon US history test.

So out of 48 possible hours, our students will be testing for 12.  A quarter of two days, seated in a hot humid gym expected to do your absolute best work.  Nice.  Freaking counter intuitive if you ask me. 

I can't help wonder who sat down and decided when the tests would be administered.  Somebody in the upper levels of the Education department had to okay the time table.  How in the world could they have missed this?  What was reason could they possibly have for screwing over an entire grade level across the entire state?  Who benefits from this?  Surely not the students.  This begs the question, if the educational system is not to benefit the students, than who does it benefit?  Surely not the teachers who have to sit in the same gymnasiums proctoring the tests, then spend a couple more days locked away grading tests they didn't design.  Seriously, I need to find out who gets their jollies from students preforming at less than optimum levels on state mandated test that could jeopardize students' graduation.

Don't get me wrong, I am not writing this as a knee-jerk reaction against the Board of Regents or high-stakes testing.  I am reacting because these students are not being given all possible opportunity to succeed, indeed they are put in a position to fail.  The English Regents are simply mind-numbing.  Then a short break and a complete shift to mathematics.  Who does that? 

I do understand that some students are always going to get screwed and take two tests in one day.  I did it because I was advanced.  I don't expect the state to take the advanced students or the unadvanced (?) students into account, however I just spent two minutes and came up with a workable schedule where the average student takes only one test a day.  Not hard.  Why wasn't it done?

In the Era of Accountability, who is watching State Ed?  Our students, teachers, and administrators are expected to do so much, to know so much, to cram so much into 40 weeks and then at the end of the year they are not given full opportunity to demonstrate their ability.  That is simply criminal.  And you know people are going to pay the price for it.  Students will fail and have to take the tests over again in the summer, or they will repeat the grade next year.  Teachers with a higher failure rate risk loosing their jobs because their numbers weren't high enough.  School systems stand to lose substantial state funding because their student body wasn't up to snuff.  And what of the Board of Regents?  They will contemplate all this, and decide that they should add another testing period, from 3:30 to 6:30.  It will be more efficient if they can get those tests done in 4 days instead of 6.  I might suggest that they add another, from 5 am to 8 am, that way it will be done in an even 3.  Then the 11th grade could be done in one day.  That seems logical to me.

I am serious about finding a candidate for Governor of this state who has the balls to give me freedom to dismantle the Board of Regents.  Of course, anybody with a brain won't take the governor's position because there are too many things that need changing.  But that is a rant for another day.  Maybe tomorrow night when I can't sleep.

Need a break form education.  I am working on a lesson plan exploring the Carter and Reagan administrations.  I didn't realize how much talking Jimmy Carter did.  He was all over the place shaking hands.  China, Panama, the Middle East; all places that Jimmy made efforts to make people happy.  Even domestically, he was the man who founded the department of education.  Pope Charming, when will this man get rehabilitated?   I think I need to go out an buy a jar of Jiffy. 

Also, I hadn't realized that Reagan was one heck of a public speaker.  He was just plain good, you trust him instinctively.  You should be able to find clips of his public addresses on youtube, and then you will probably get distracted by clips from Bedtime for Bonzo.  That is ok too.

By the by, the lesson is for 11th graders at the local high school.  I am still short contact hours because I was sick.  There should be just enough class days left for me to get to 100 hours.  I am excited for next week because I am teaching this lesson for Juniors. then covering the conflict in Vietnam for freshman, then reviewing government and economics for Seniors.  This is doing wonders for my intellectual ADD. 

However, this means I am not working too hard on my incompletes.  There is so much to do: it is frustrating to start, but I got about five books from the library on improving literacy and some are even good!

Part of the reason educational reading hasn't progressed is because at the same time I got the Count of Monte Cristo.  It is such a good book, Dumas is amazing after the first 50 or so pages.  Those first few are so bland as he starts to develop characters and puts the story into a historical perspective.  If you have time, you should read it (and yes, it should be labeled as educational).

Today I am looking for plane tickets to go out to see my loved one at the end of the summer.  She is doing well and I will let her fill in details as she desired.  I miss her terribly, to put it mildly.