Having never done this, I don't know what to expect. I'm really not expecting anyone to read a blog from a boring old fart of a teacher/attorney/tired father, but what the hell; it's free.

Lately I've been thinking about the state of education in the state of California. Thanks to the worst president ever, we have a system called No Child Left Behind, or NCLB. It mandates all kinds of testing and reporting by schools to make them better imposers of education on our youth. In all, it's a crock of shit.

What NCLB does is pressure schools, and in turn, the teachers, to teach to a test. Yes, I know that all 5 of you home-schooling moms out there who Googled "education" or "NCLB" are reading that line and saying, "Stupid pisant teachers always blame the president for making them teach to the test." Well, yes Mrs. Christian, stay-at-home, my child won't touch those dirty illegal aliens, stick up my ass, mom; it does and here's how. Each year a school is given a report on how its test score have improved over last year's. You see, the feds in NCLB look at test scores and only test scores to measure the progress of a school. So, if a school's scores go down, the idiot teachers are obviously not doing their jobs. If the scores stay the same, no progress, something must be wrong. If they go up, must be the good parenting. All bullshit.
You see, even if a school's scores steadily improve over the years, as they have at my school, then you can still not meet the insane criteria set by President Big-Ears and his dipshit cronies.
They call us an "underachieving school." Nice. Kiss my ass.

The fine state of California goes one better. They say to the offending school, you've got 3 years to get your shit together, or we're coming in; kicking ass; and taking names. Like a state that can't elect a decent governator could come in and run a junior high school. Give me a fucking break. Now. (in case you couldn't tell, I'm not one for exclamation marks) My school is in the third year of being piss poor according to the unrealistic measurments set by the bureaucratic asswipes in Washington and Sacramento. In other words, if our kids don't get their collective asses in gear, I'm going to have some overpaid, long retired, brain dead "consultant" coming in and telling me how to get my kids to do better in school. That will be fun, no doubt. Please, someone, fuck me in the ass. It would hurt less.

The sad part of all of this is we have improved. Hell, we've kicked some serious ass in the past three years where test scores are concerned. You think someone from the Big Sac or D.C. would give us a laurel and hardy handshake? Hell no! (there, an exclamation mark, or is it point. happy?) They would rather tell us we missed our goals by .2% (I'm not making this up, we missed by that much in one of our criteria) of the EL students. Well, we obviously suck ass.

I could go on, but why? No one is reading this, at least not on purpose; and if they are, they don't care. Governator Arnold, kiss my ass. President W, get in line. You're both shams.

Oh, here's a great analogy about using test scores to judge a teacher's effectiveness. Say you're a doctor and you are evaluated by the state every year (they are, I think), but they don't actually evaluate you personally, they look at your patients' test results. So, they may look at patients' EKG's, blood cultures, HDL/LDL levels, chest x-rays, whatever, but you know that they always look at certain tests (in California, the state looks at a student's CST, or standards test, scores). So, as a bright doctor, what do you do? Why the answer is simple; start pushing drugs on the patients that will cause the certain tests to come out favorable. You might even put them on a diet, or suggest an exercise routine. Everything possible to prepare for those state mandated tests. But, what if the patient is a rebellious smoker with a penchant for Krispy Kreme doughnuts (don't get me started on that bunch of crooks. May Scott Livengood burn in Hell, smoking a big dog turd)? That one doofus could ruin your state scores and your license would be in jeopardy. Not fair is it? Welcome to the world of education. The only place where you have exposure to a child for about an hour a day and you're supposed to change all of his or her bad habits over the course of 180 days. Sucks to be us.

I'm tired of writing. I'm going to the gym and taking my kid to soccer practice.
I do CrossFit at the gym. Go to the website: www.crossfit.com. Get your ass handed to you; come back for more. I post there as Ron N. I talk more than anything else, but I keep most of my thoughts in as I have great respect for the Glassmans and the members of the armed forces
who frequent the site. Get some.

Next: Something about music, I think.