claudiapena.com

For the Texans: (If you are in the US, be on the look out for this bogus bill coming to a school district near you and fight very hard against it.) SB 1643, will essentially tie student’s test scores to my evaluation, my paycheck, as well as my job.

During my first year of teaching, I got so sick and tired of my stinky kid in the classroom being both stinky and without homework that I decided to pay a “surprise” (they never had their phone on) visit to her house. It was marvelous seeing her dad pop open his third can of beer watching the latest boxing match on a flat screen huge tv. That was also the year, I had the fourth grader that took the principal’s car for a ride and start a neighborhood “party” in which more than 5 police cars arrived after school. Because of my pretty face and a promise I made to God, they were miraculously infused with knowledge the day of the test and passed. Wake up!! I was in my classroom from 5:30am until the janitors kicked me out from Monday to Saturday. Even with that, my students, who came from an all Spanish classroom the year before, were hard press to pass the writing or reading portion of the test.

Teaching is a rewarding job because of all the hurdles teachers jump demonstrating perseverance and hard work to their students. SB 1643 will restrict teachers to a workbook approach hitting solely on TAKs and will essentially take the curiosity and fun from learning.

This bill will also foster a very hostile and uncomfortable climate between administration and staff. Think about it, the principal may not be the bad guy but if your numbers are bad, that is going on your permanent record. I can foresee alot of the teachers just walking out and saying, “Well, you are going to fire me anyways.” Or maybe, like Half Empty says, they might just load one teacher with all those special kids. There is nothing that a public school teacher will be able to do about it.

This bill will promote stress which will make cheating on the test an extremely happy option. (Especially when teachers don’t want to loose all the education, money and hard work they’ve put into that teaching license.) Do we really want to repeat the ugly headlines on the Houston Chronicle? It’s counter intuitive.

This bill unfairly and disproportionately affects minorities. It takes at least four years to make a decent teacher who is happy and knows the material. Well, the place where most young teachers start is the inner city, which has many of the above mentioned problems in minority homes. So as the child goes further into their academic career, they fall lower each time so that each successive teacher will have to get that good teaching gene infused. Think of both the teacher’s and student’s moral. Bad.

So please either paste my post or the following line, to the Texas Senate:

Ms. Shapiro, SB 1643 is not a bill that would benefit anyone and I will ask that you retract it. I am a (Texan/citizen/supporter of education) and I will make sure to tell all my friends about it so that they can retract their support as well.