Once again I’ve been drafted to participate in what I call the “Not A Thing” seminar. It involves missing five days of school (today being the second) in the hopes of learning how to make the rest of the faculty (i.e., the part actually getting stuff accomplished because they’re at school instead of in the seminar) more professional, more collaborative, and more focused on student learning.  Click here for my post on the first time I went through it, and click here for my second post on N.A.T.

As expected, I got almost nothing new out of it. I did get some planning done, had an opportunity to speak with the principal, saw a couple of my old bosses, and enjoyed a nice roast beef sandwich with swiss on rye.

Anyhow, on to the griping. Early in the day, the presenter said (I’m paraphrasing slightly), “Common assessments should never be used for teacher evaluation.” What, you may ask, is a “common assessment”? It’s an assessment (test, quiz, essay, project, etc.) given to all students in a given subject at a given school, or in a district, or statewide, or nationally.

Say Mr. Alpha, Mr. Beta and Mr. Gamma gave exactly the same test to their students on the same day. That would be a common assessment. Say Alpha’s students averaged 90% on the test, Beta’s students averaged 70% on the test, and Gamma’s students averaged 50% on the test. It seems safe to say that Alpha’s students were better prepared for the test than Beta’s students, who in turn were better prepared than Gamma’s. Why the discrepancy?

There could be several reasons for the discrepancy. Maybe Alpha has the strongest students and Gamma has the weakest. Maybe Alpha, Beta and Gamma didn’t have the same amount of time or the same type of materials to prepare their students for the test. Maybe there were distractions in Gamma’s room that didn’t occur in Alpha’s room. Maybe Beta’s students were all having bad days, and Gamma’s kids were having worse days. Or, perhaps, Alpha taught the content and skills better than Beta, who in turn taught it better than Gamma. Perhaps Alpha is just a better teacher than the other two. Why on Earth would we preclude that possibility, or reject the idea of using common assessments to test that possibility?

Take the AP United States History (APUSH) exam, a common assessment created by the College Board. My students have had the highest pass rates at my school on that exam every year I’ve taught the class. I’d like to think that I’m one of the better APUSH teachers at my school, but my high pass rates are most likely a reflection of the fact that I have the strongest students at the school. But let’s assume the opposite: say my pass rate on the APUSH exam is 50% lower than the school average even though my students are 50% smarter than the average kid at my school. Why shouldn’t my boss use that data to reconsider my position at the school, or at least to keep a closer eye on me?

Judging and evaluating teachers is not easy or precise; after all, it’s not as if every teacher has a perfectly randomized sample of the student body in their classes so that teacher comparisons are statistically unbiased. And common assessments shouldn’t be the only, and perhaps not even the primary, tool for evaluating teachers. But if you put common assessments completely off-limits, as this presenter suggested, then you eliminate the most objective element of teacher evaluation. What are you left with?

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There was also the usual nonsense about never giving zeroes, but I’m too tired to write about it right now. Suffice it to say that a grade of zero remains a distinct possibility in my classroom.

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I’m watching V. It’s okay, but I miss Inara’s raven curls. The pixie look just doesn’t cut it.

To mark the occasion, I wanted to write something really snarky like “Twenty years ago, the Berlin Wall came down. No reason, just kinda happened. Just one of those things”–but I think the sarcasm would be lost on too many people.

It still blows my mind that that stupid, ugly, evil wall was built in the same country that historically had produced so many great philosophers, artists, musicians, and inventors;

…that the people of East Germany and East Berlin suffered so long under the utter stupidity and violence of communism while their free brothers to the West blew right past them culturally and economically;

…and that so many useful idiots throughout the Cold War painted communism as a moral equivalent of capitalism, as a choice that the East Germans made, rather than something that was forced on them.

It should remind us that our past doesn’t inoculate us from everything that could go wrong in the future. It should remind us that free people must guard their freedom jealously and tirelessly.

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I would love to know why President Obama thought it was important to make a campaign speech at the Brandenburg Gate, site of Reagan’s “Tear Down This Wall” speech, but not to attend festivities commemorating, say, the 20th anniversary of the tearing-down of said wall. I don’t think that’s a cheap shot, either; I think the occasion warranted a live appearance, not a video recording from the Oval Office.

An e-mail from a former student:

Greetings, Mr. Viscariello.

Do you know anything about the Presidents of the US all being related to English aristocracy, most of them descendants of Charlemagne and King Edward III? Do you think/know if this is just another conspiracy theory or factual information?

I have done some research and looked at what is claimed to be the family tree of some Presidents, all information pointing to the theory that we have been ruled by the same bloodline since the beginning of the US.

Your thoughts?

John Birch [NOTE: Name changed to protect his identity from the Illuminati]

My response:

Dear John Birch,

> Do you know anything about the Presidents of the US all being related to English aristocracy, most of them descendants of Charlemagne and King Edward III?

It would surprise me if all of them were related to Charlemagne and/or Edward III, but it would not surprise me if most of them were.

>Do you think/know if this is just another conspiracy theory or factual information?

Whether it’s factual is a matter for historians and genealogists. If it’s a conspiracy, then the point of said conspiracy is beyond me. Charlemagne lived in the 700’s and 800’s; it’s difficult to plan ahead 1,200 years.

> I have done some research and looked at what is claimed to be the family tree of some Presidents, all information pointing to the theory that we have been ruled by the same bloodline since the beginning of the US.

If that’s true, it may be no more meaningful than any other statistical artifact. Every human being on Earth is related if you go back far enough, meaning that we have been ruled by the same bloodline all along: Adam and Eve’s.

If you want to be a little more narrow in your perception of bloodlines, then I suppose that Charlemagne is as good a candidate as anyone else for being a “common ancestor” of the Presidents. It wouldn’t surprise me to know that he was a common ancestor for a huge percentage of western Europeans (I point this out because each president has had some western European lineage). After all, being an emperor, the guy probably had far more kids than the average western European. However, there may be other people, even contemporaries of Charlemagne, who were also common ancestors of most of western Europe. But who are we more likely to notice in our family trees from the 700’s and 800’s, Charlemagne or “Mike the Farmer”?

And so what if we have been “ruled by the same bloodline since the beginning of the US”? I look at America compared to the rest of the world and I’ve got to admit that I’ll take our particular set of dynastic plutocrats over anybody else’s, anyday.

Regards,

Mr. V.

In the interest of full disclosure, I am a consultant to the Trilateral Commission and I play for the Bilderberg Group’s corporate softball team.

Take the normal look, pop out the contacts, throw on the old glasses, add some spray-on white hair color, a walkie-talkie, and a wallet chain:

I dressed as a particular co-worker whose full name resembles my last name. One day I’ll have to walk into his classroom like this.

This may set or tie a record for consecutive posts with images.

Congratulations to frequent contributor and whipping-boy Dr. Hmnahmna and his saint-of-a-wife Mrs. Hmnahmna on the birth of their daughter, James Tiberius Hikaru Montgomery Leonard Pavel Hmnahmna! She popped out da womb at 7:28 PM, Halloween night. Until we get indisputable visual evidence of the baby and permission to post it, this’ll have to do:

• F. Hair.
• 10. Belly.
• 11. Noggin.
• 12. Right elbow.
• 13. Left elbow.
• 14. Right foot.
• 15. Left foot.

Good timing, Doc and Missus–the world will always celebrate your girl’s birthday.