This is only a test

I didn't think this job could make me any more depressed. Then we got back our state test results. Hide the guns and knives and pass the Prozac.

This is where you expect to hear that we failed miserably and that the repercussions of the vaunted "No Child Left Behind" act will soon kick in, placing our school on the dreaded Watch List, giving us some sort of probationary status and making our (students', teachers', administrators', janitors', cafeteria workers', buttinski parent volunteers', the cockroaches') lives an even bigger hell than they already are.

Alas, that's not the case. After a dismal performance on these tests two years ago, the school's leaders (read: not including miserable vet Ned Bitters) undertook a year-long action plan aimed at getting the school's test scores in line with the rest of the district and state. People were hired, many thousands of dollars were thrown at the problem, many extra hours were worked, sweat was sweated, blood was bled, tears were teared ... er, I mean shed, sleep was lost (probably because those caring conscientious educators haven't discovered - or rediscovered - the somnolent powers of a three deep tokes of some wicked green one half hour before bedtime) and many worried that jobs were on the line.

It all worked. Our scores rose dramatically. The increases posted by our kids blew away the increases posted by the other schools, some of whose scores actually dropped. (Of course, a glass-3/4-empty guy like myself sees this mainly as an indication that our scores were embarrassingly low to begin with, but since I no doubt share in some of the blame for that, I won't wax cynical on this point.) Our overall scores in most areas place us among the top schools in our district, and we exceeded the state average.

When the scores were announced, some people actually cried. Others screamed. Handshakes, hugs and backslaps were exchanged. Chests swelled, especially on that third-year geometry teacher with the perky pair of tiny tight tits, thank you very much. This was all justified, for many people truly did work exceedingly hard, and they performed quite a feat by getting our backward-assed student body to make such gains. Kudos to all for a miraculous performance.

However, I felt none of the euphoria that engulfed the rest of the staff. I did none of the sweating or worrying or caring last year, so I figured I didn't deserve to wallow in the success. I've never once cared about test scores, and all the scary threatening language in the NCLB act can't coerce me into believing that any of this is really helping the kids who are most in danger of being "left behind."

The kids that this test is designed to "help" probably didn't learn a damn thing of any use. The kids who have the most problems with these tests are the poor readers, the non-writers, the borderline illiterates, the kids for whom every aspect of public education is stacked against their limited styles of learning and not at all designed to teach them what they really need to know.

The kids languishing at the bottom of the high school cesspool are not going to college. They don't want to go to college. They don't need to go to college. There is no need whatsoever for these kids to know the most arcane biology terms, or how a bill becomes a law, or how to find the goddamn value of X, which they've been looking for since I was in school, for chrissakes. They need to be able to read for information. They need to be able to write coherently about functional matters. They need to be able to do math that does not involve letters.

I've been at this gig for a long time, and over the years I've had former students fix my car, repair a leaking washing machine, replace a set of leaky french doors, rewire part of a fuse box and serve me up some damn cold drafts on long lazy summer afternoons. I'm betting that not once has a plumber needed to assess the writer's tone in a repair manual. I bet there ain't one mechanic who has gotten a raise because he could determine the author's point of view in a short story. And those professional bartenders, the ones who make more per year than this 20-year teaching veteran? They don't give a flying fuck about the value of X and Y, and when my half-crocked ass is sitting on a sticky bar stool in front of them, I don't give a flying fuck if they know how to find the value of X, Y or even Q. As long as they know the correct amount of vermouth to add to a Grey Goose martini served straight up with a twist - no olive, please - they are going to be able to drive their own car, own a nice little house and take a vacation to Spain once a year. (Yes, I know a guy who lives like that.) When the former student who is now an electrician came to my house to do some fancy wiring work, I don't recall him having to know when a bill goes to committee in the legislative process. He just knew how to fix a potential problem that prevented me from being burnt to a crispy crust one night while I slept.

But we'll twist ourselves into knots doing all we can to make sure this segment of kids somehow memorizes enough semi-useless information to pass a test that measures nothing other than how well teachers (and students, I guess) can jump through hoops held by do-gooder bureaucrats who haven't set foot in a high school since they graduated Magna Cum on My Face on Prom Night way back when. They didn't talk to the low-level students then, and their own children are not of that ilk now. The kids they worry about are just abstractions and statistics.

So as you can see, the meeting where we received the scores filled me with a deep case of the hopelessness blues. However, a few nights later, something happened that perked me up a little bit and even gave me hope that sanity will prevail in the end. We had our annual "Back to School" night two weeks into the school year. Our principal, a wonderful lady who knows deep down that this whole NCLB thing is a heaping crock of steamy monkeyshit, put on her best happy face, swelled her chest (Oh yeah!), barely controlled her bated breathing and announced - nay, shouted! - to a packed auditorium that we made monumental gains on our tests and that the school - their school and their children! - was now in the upper echelon of the district. The reaction of these parents whose kids' lives are affected by these tests? I believe the words "lukewarm" and "smattering of applause" sum it up perfectly. None of them seemed to care.

There's a literary technique that describes a moment like that. It's called irony. I could tell you all about it. What I can't tell you all about is how to fix a leaky washing machine or how to change the oil in my car. But I know lots of people who can. In the school of practical, useful knowledge, I guess I got left behind.

Ned Bitters teaches high school and dreams of one day seeing one of his former students on stage at a strip club. You can contact him at teacherslounge@hobotrashcan.com.