Suspensions and School Letter Grades

Friday at 4:00pm conversation #2

In case you had a memory fade the first Friday at 4:00pm conversation centered on pole dancing and lap dancing.  It was quite entertaining to listen to representatives of the opposite sex discuss jiggly room activities but for the most part I remained silent.  We have now advanced to the next Friday.  With the scholars safely on the bus Gnu and I were preparing to leave when Oreo walked into the room.  The conversation between Oreo and Gnu centered on a general education scholar who recently went through a series of evaluations that indicated that this scholar would be better off in a special education classroom for scholars with emotional disabilities. Although I was not actively involved in the conversation I was aware that it was getting pretty animated.  As I understand it, Gnu will be assigned as the teacher of record because of the emotional disabilities diagnosis and will be required to write an education plan.  Keep in mind that Gnu has never even met this scholar and now she is the teacher of record and has to write an education plan.  This is not sitting well with either Gnu or Oreo and I notice that Oreo started to fan herself with some papers.  I notice this and ask if she is alright.  She says yes, I'm just overheating.  Oh, oh!  The conversation just moved in a direction that says you better shut up. Unfortunately my mouth was running faster than my brain and I say to her you know there are some oils that you can purchase to address that issue.  She looks at me and says what?  I repeat myself and say there are oils specifically designed to lesson your overheating issue that you can apply to the back of your neck.  She responds that her problem is more of a hormonal problem.  When a guy is taking part in a conversation with two women and overheating and hormones are being discussed it's time to go so I gather my stuff and head out the door.

The two Friday conversations included discussions about pole dancing, lap dancing, overheating and hormones.  We'll see what happens on Friday #3.

If you've been reading this blog for any length of time you are aware that I don't think fondly of pointy headed intellectuals.  For the record, a pointy headed intellectual is a person that has a fancy title either before or after their name that wants to dictate the direction that education takes in the state of Indiana. While I really don't have a problem with the title MD or PhD I do have a real problem with pointy headed intellectuals that are taking control of education in the state of Indiana that a lacking one key title, classroom teacher.  To date, these pointy headed intellectual have given us IRead3,  ISTEP, and school letter grades. The first two items have costs the citizens of Indiana tens of millions of dollars and in my opinion have been a complete failure.  However, I'm not on my I hate mandatory statewide testing bandwagon today but will instead talk a little about the school letter grade.

Over the last couple of weeks or so something has changed at our school and I think there is a direct link to the school letter grade and this change.  Although I'm not one hundred percent certain I believe a school's letter grade can be negatively impacted by the number of suspensions a school hands out.  Knowing this I have a feeling our school may have completed a projection that showed that our school letter grade will be lowered if we continue suspending students at the rate that we are.  So why am I thinking that our school letter grade is at risk?  The following events happened over the last couple weeks.  While at recess MiniJ and NoFouls get into an argument about a basketball.  Punches are flying and MiniJ loses his balance and falls.  NoFouls continues his attacked and is so aggressively kicking MiniJ that EM steps in between them and actually lays on top of MiniJ to protect him.  In PE, in a span of five to eight minutes MiniJ has hit either with his fist or a jump rope three girls.  At recess, MiniJ goes into a storage room to get a kick ball.  As he exits the room Yo! is waiting for him.  Once Yo! sees MiniJ he fires a kick ball directly at him and hits him in the face.  Yo! is directed out of the gym to our classroom.  When he enters the room he next directs his aggression at Gnu that included throwing an object, directing a few F-bombs at her and flipping her off. In our classroom an incident occurs between The Collector and MiniJ.  The end result is that The Collector scratched MiniJ in three locations on his face.  Those are some pretty serious rule violations that involved injury and the end result was nothing happened and that is what got me to thinking something changed.  

When I first started working at this school our letter grade from the state of Indiana was an F.  I can recall clearly the look on the faces of the teachers when they received the news.  I also recall that during our F year our suspension days numbered at ninety or just little above that number.  Our school's latest letter grade today is a B and I'm certain one of the contributing factors to this jump in letter grade was the drop in the number of suspension days.  Right now we are just past the mid-point of our school year and given that nothing happened following the four incidents of aggression that I mentioned previously I thinking our suspension days are trending in an unfavorable direction and they need to be curtailed.  If this is what is needed to maintain our letter grade I'm fine with it but just tell me so I know what is going on.

It's a frustrating time right now.  Gnu and I work in an environment where physical and verbal aggression is common and scholars from other classrooms, scholars from our classroom and adults are at risk of injury.  I don't like being in this position but I realize that a drop in school letter grade can result in the state of Indiana taking over complete control of a school,  it can cost a principal her/his job, it can cost a school teacher her/his job and that is ridiculous.  And do you know what really irritates me about being in the ridiculous position where violent behavior takes a back seat to a letter grade?  Pointy headed intellectuals in conjunction with politicians put together a letter grade evaluation system that failed to consider the physical aggression that takes place in a special education classroom.  And why did this happen?   Because very few if any of these pointy headed intellectuals have a title before or after their name that says classroom teacher.

It's the weekend and I'm out.