Gleaning Facebook: Joyce Mink for Board of Education

As a teacher I want accountability. We have goals we must meet. Standardized tests are an important tool in measuring how we are doing in parts of our mission. BUT we must never forget that we teach complex human beings. Tests cannot be constructed that measure all aspects of the job. We need administrators, parents, students, and teachers who work together to evaluate how well we are accomplishing our mission.

Joyce Mink is an outstanding public school teacher, and public school parent, who can now lend her expertise, experience, character, and heart to the decision-making of Floyd County's school board. That will be a big plus for Floyd County Schools. I was very conflicted when two people I greatly admired were pitted against each other in the primary. So I kept quiet. Now Joyce is our nominee. I know Joyce well and I am confident of her character, her expertise, her experience, and her heart. I enthusiastically endorse Joyce Mink to help direct my beloved Floyd County Schools. I ask my friends to please help elect Joyce Mink.

• Comments

  Chandler Gray

  Anyone who questions a teacher's "accountability" has never sat in a room of 28 hormonal 12 year olds who haven't had lunch or PE yet and tried to keep control, much less teach them something.
• Joyce Taff

  Good luck
• Mary Skates

  Good luck Joyce
• Robyn Higgins Teems

  I am not sure what the answer to teacher accountability is going to be. One or two 20 evaluations was not enough. The new system seems like too much. But there has to be an accountability measure and it has to be better than what we had in the past. In the words of the great "Hal David" they are sending us the best that they have got. There has to be a way to measure student and teacher performance. I am just not sure Georgia has the answer yet.
  • Joyce Mink

    A climate of fear surely isn't the answer for teachers or students. And one standardized test isn't the answer either. Best case scenario I know of is to hire good teachers and let them teach. Remember higher level skills? No time for that any more. You know which teachers are teaching. Any administrator does. Teaching is a subjective profession and as such cannot be measured quantitatively. We have spent decades trying it and it doesn't work. Let's try combining a few valid tests with real teaching and serve our customers- the students.

Gleaning Facebook: The Test That Shall Not Be Named

The Test That Shall Not Be Named Fortnight at school begins this morning. Best wishes to students and teachers. For the first time in a "Fortyear" I am not having to endure these incredibly boring and stressful days at school. Retirement has its blessings.

Comments

Jane Jameson
Retirement is not for the faint of heart! You will find something to occupy your time and interest.

Jody Brock
Unfortunately our children are having to endure what bureaucrats deem necessary.

George Barton
Is this the test where the teachers in Atlanta cheat so the children will pass, and they will get a bonus, or go to jail if they get caught cheating?

Laurie Craw
I'm not up on the issue of testing TS. What is different now from when we oldsters were in school? I vaguely remember the occasional standardized test.....

Terrell Shaw
Mounting soapbox...

When we were kids, Laurie, we took nationally normed achievement tests. Today the tests are criterion-referenced. They are based specifically on the Georgia Performance Standards for each grade level. Students who score 800 or more "meet" standards. 799 or less and they "Do Bot Meet" standards (Shame dispair, and misery). 850 and more they "Exceed standards" Teacher evaluations are based, in part, on how students achieve on the five subject-area tests.

Students must "Meet", supposedly, to advance to the next grade level. In reality the Reading test must be passed in third, and the Reading and Math in the Fifth. Fourth grade is not a "must pass" grade so fourth gets somewhat neglected like other "Non-critical" years.

Of course the home lives of the kids, relative native-intelligence, class size, charter/private school raiding of a community, etc. are not factored. When you take those things into consideration, public schools at least match and often surpass private schools on the TTSNBN, and, as a bonus, the kids may actually learn to respect a variety of races, religions, and socio-economic levels.

It takes a very dedicated teacher to jump through the bureaucratic hoops, make sure the GPS standards are mastered, and still teach the important stuff: how to work in a group, how to really use the language (speaking, listening, reading, writing), how to shake hands, what a republic is all about, how to find your passion and live it, to respect yourself and others, to really look at a rock, or leaf, or butterfly, and discover something for yourself, and of yourself, etc.

Down from my soapbox.

Jane Jameson
Your students were very fortunate to have you teaching them.

Ralph Noble
One more for me, with new CRCT coming out next year and bound to worse, just another reason to retire.

Stacie Hembree Buffington
Kyle says he has been thinking about The Test That Shall Not Be Named AKA Lord Voldemort Be Dead. Lol

John Countryman
May they die an ignoble death on the sharp point of reason!

Jane Jameson
I am thankful I no longer must be subjected to those exams! Terrell, I am grateful for you as a teacher who taught children like my grandchildren. You have a gift.

Alice Jeffries Keel
Can we say "read aloud"? - from a nameless accommodating person.

Gleaning Facebook: Annual Testing Begins

Yes, we haved named Voldemort, errrrr, the Georgia Criterion-Referenced Competency Test! 

It is no longer The Test That Shall Not Be Named*. 

We are ready. 

Wands out! 

Bring it on.

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* In my classes, until testing week begins we refer to the CRCT as "The Test That Shall Not Be Named". At that point we are ready: We have studied hard. We have mastered the objectives. We are ready to face Voldemort; to straighten our shoulders; to wield our wands (#2 pencils); to do battle. We call it out by name.