Your Tax Dollars At Work

Sheesh. I just took this new long term assignment teaching eighth grade math and I come to find out that the powers that be screwed up on the CRT testing schedule and that the students get to take the test a month early, and instead of actually having time to teach the concepts that are going to be on the test, we get maybe a week or two to do several weeks of teaching.

Now mind you many of the things on the test were not even going to be covered for at least two weeks, so that the kids would actually have time to become familiar with the material and concepts before we were going to start with the test prep stuff.

And to top it all off, none of the classes are doing math at the 8th grade level. Most are at least two to three grades below where they should be and one is literally at the second grade level. They can barely figure out that 20% is the same as .20, and getting them to figure out how to calculate tax is another matter altogether.

Need I mention that math is not one of my best subjects? I'm ahead of them to be sure, but I've not taken a math class since 2005 so I'm a bit rusty to say the least.

I certainly have my work cut out for me, don't I? The one good thing is that I'm used to getting thrown to the wolves and I'm pretty good at figuring stuff out on the fly, so all hope is not lost, but it's certainly not going to be easy, for my students or for me.

And yet we want these same people to take over the health care system... Hell, they can't even figure out when to schedule tests for a bunch of middle and high school kids...



----------------
Now playing: Silence - Delerium & Sarah McLachlan
via FoxyTunes