Friday, June 21, 2013

REGENTS MARKING DAY 6: WILL WE EVER FINISH?

We have now been grading Global History and US History Regents exams for a full week at various grading sites around the city.  There may not be an end of this new and supposedly improved electronic grading process anywhere on the horizon.

The Department of Education and their private sector partners at McGraw-Hill cancelled per session (teacher overtime) marking for last night and tonight so many of us figured that the end might be coming.  That thinking could be off base.

After yet another day of reading papers, we were told we were nowhere near finished.  Teachers can come back to Cardozo and other centers for per session  to grade all weekend.  I don't think the DOE is expecting many volunteers as they told us at the end of the day to be ready to return to the scoring site for more grading on Monday, during the regular school day, if they can't finish over the weekend.

The problem with that is the students are supposed to be in attendance on Monday. Do we cover classes or do we grade? In addition, schools are having graduation ceremonies and teachers are being kept away to score exams.  Besides not having grades ready on time so students can know if they have met graduation requirements in a timely manner, can anyone justify not allowing teachers to be present to see their students graduating?

For the record, I will be spending the weekend with my family enjoying this beautiful weather.  I won't be giving up my time to rescue the DOE from their own incompetence. However, I feel very bad for the kids and have already suggested that students who were given a passing grade in the courses that correspond to the Regents should have the Regents mandate waived if that is all they need to complete their graduation requirements. Students should not have to pay for DOE bungling.  State Education Board of Regents Chancellor and co-chair of the Bill Thompson's campaign for mayor Merryl Tisch should have considered New York city's less than stellar record in implementing new programs (see SESIS) before her group banned teachers from scoring papers from our own schools.  Has anyone asked Ms. Tisch about this?

One more question: When we scored exams in our own schools, as we always did, can anyone remember it taking more than six school days to grade a set of exams?

In this new and improved current electronic grading system, even if one happens to be a fast reader, it often takes so long for papers to come up on the screen so it slows the grading down.


8 comments:

reality-based educator said...

I have a super efficient AP. When I first started, it used to take about 3 days to grade ELA Regents (4 essays, read twice, about 400 students - so 1600 essay, 3200 readings minus third reads.)

By the end of the old two day ELA Regents, we had it down to 2 days.

The ELA Regents still isn't completed city-wide yet either.

We were supposed to do more per session last night for it, but they canceled it.

Now there's supposed to be per session for the ELA grading over the weekend.

The exam was given on June 11.

It's now June 21.

Can you imagine how Bloomberg, Walcott, Shael and the rest would be screaming if these screw-ups were happening because of teachers rather than their own incompetency?

Anonymous said...

And the response of the uft has been to tell teachers to just report back to the centers instead of insisting that this be voluntary by now.

Anonymous said...

Why isn't the union at least telling people that it might not be the wisest thing to do per session? They are so weak.

Janella said...

We, at the union, must insist that you stop this nagging about golden opportunities to earn more pin money at the end of a school year. This is unprecedented! When have you even gotten per session for marking exams? Get back to work you ungradeful fools!

Anonymous said...

Janella- Are you friendly with Raving Lunatic? You two seem to have a lot in common.

Anonymous said...

as I had written elsewhere - let bloomberg and walcott and all of the idiots at DOE corporate headquarters ruin their weekends and grade - and as i said elsewhere - that isn't even a good idea because they don't know any of the answers to any of the tests.
i really help very few teachers signed up to grade - let the DOE fix their own disgusting screw up

Anonymous said...

one more thing - not one of the 2000 atrs has been called to grade - another gigantic huge tremendous waste of the atrs - but there is no way in the hell that they have made of my life that I would show up to "volunteer" to grade- i am going to enjoy the show - I just feel sooooo bad for the kids but the DOE doesn't so oh well

Anonymous said...

Great points.