Intermediate And Middle School Student Evaluation: Fill & Download for Free

The elites recognize programs over personnel as the route to success. This has been going on for decades now. Just read any literature by Carol Tomlinson, or other researchers, who have been touted to us teachers for decades as the standard-bearer for all things quality in teaching children. While many of their techniques do have merit (in controlled laboratory-esque settings), it’s about the numbers, folks. There are at least 25 children per teacher in any primary or intermediate classroom, and more likely, the number reaches above 30. At a minimum, teachers are expected to do the following in order to get a favorable review:differentiate instruction and assessment for every pupil;work individually with students, based on how formative assessment dictates the need;document everything in the school’s official online system.(Since it is not possible to do all of the above, a and b are often fabricated in the process of performing c, which is the only one of these three items that actually matters to a teacher’s performance evaluation. See #2.)2. The current teacher evaluation system does not reward quality teaching; it rewards documentation and the appearance of quality teaching. Getting rid of this phony system within the framework of how public school districts actually operate is nigh-on impossible. That means that how education occurs in our country also cannot be seriously addressed.The elites don’t want things to change, because then, the money that follows these ineffective programs and phony evaluation systems would disappear or be reallocated. And, if you don’t need a program or a convoluted evaluation system, you also don’t need someone to administer it.This was the short answer. If you want the less abridged version that includes a solution to our failing public education system, read on:As in any situation in need of a solution, analyzing reality is the key. If you want to know what really happens in our schools, visit the classrooms without an appointment. What you’ll notice is that there are too many children and too many needs for one adult to successfully handle. Those students who are already proficient or even close to proficient work independently while the teacher struggles with the few or many who need help. What this means is that the intellectually-abled are hardly ever challenged.Here’s a solution that combats the numbers game:Limit class sizes to 20.Hire three adults per classroom, ideally one master teacher, one beginning or intermediate teacher, and one aide. The three people will keep each other informed and on the right track as they work together for the good of their students. This ratio should be implemented kindergarten through middle school.The master teacher is the one in charge, but the others act as a sort of checks-and-balances system. True collaboration is the key, not the masquerade called collaboration seen now in many educational venues. These three teachers will meet daily to discuss planning and achievement, and exchange who works with whom periodically, so that all children receive the benefit of all adults.Grading will be better addressed, meaning that each piece of work completed by a student gets a thorough going-over, rather than the seconds worth of eye-balling that happens now. And even more preferable, rather than grading papers after school only, many can be reviewed with the student during the actual teaching day.Make the teacher/aide workday 8 1/2 hours. A workday that starts at 8:00 can end at 4:30 under this system. Make it possible to get everything done during this time so that teachers do not take work home with them. The first half hour is devoted to planning; students begin at 8:30 and leave at 3:00. Teachers then meet about how their students did that day and who needs remediation, grade papers together, and do long-term planning with the time remaining on their own school day. Morale improves because home time truly becomes family time. This increase in morale will transfer back to the students in the classroom. (This option will not be popular with some, possibly many, teachers, or their unions, but, given that there are now three adults sharing the load, building in collaboration time is key to their success.Reduce pointless meetings and professional development. Eliminating highly-paid trainers for teacher improvement puts millions back into the district’s budget. There are lots of resources available online, and teachers who wish to improve their techniques will seek out PD as a team. While this may seem counter-intuitive to those outside the profession, professional development imposed on teachers without their invitation is doomed to failure. Just ask any teacher in an anonymous survey. While they may sit respectfully through the enterprise, they are often resentful at the intrusion on their professional time and participate in a going-though-the-motions way only. It becomes a wasted hour, and can destroy morale. Try to imagine being told in your job that you need to improve something that appears not to need improvement. How likely are you to take it seriously?But as Matthew Bates asserted, no one in authority actually wants change. They just want the dollars that promising change nets them.In the interest of full transparency and honesty, I must point out that it is not only the elites who balk at change, however. Most teachers intuitively KNOW that things cannot continue as they have in public education. Not if we want to actually educate our children. But they aren’t willing to change how they view the classroom setting. Teachers do not want to give up the sacro-sanctity of their private realms. Sharing their classrooms as a triumvirate will not appeal to most of them, but that bias is to their detriment. Non-teaching requirements will only get more onerous in the future, as politicians continue their knee-jerk reaction to abysmal test scores.That knee-jerk reaction has led to our current teacher evaluation system, in which it has become more important to document teaching tasks and their supposed outcomes than to actually perform those tasks. * Let that sink in for awhile. * Official test scores have become almost an aside: if one has documented that one worked with a kid three times a week on such-and-such with superb results, that is the bottom line. There is no arguing with documentation. The elites have made that clear, and they reward teachers handsomely for their compliance with a favorable evaluation.For more on this evaluation system that promotes fraud among teachers, read my book, an expose written under the guise of a novel.The fact that effective teaching has become so difficult under current circumstances is exactly why we need a monumental shift in the way we view education. It will take a huge public outcry to make that happen. Those without school-age children are not exempt from this. An educated populace is an essential element of a republic based on democratic principals, after all.Edit, 11/11/2019: In response to the comment objecting to my use of the term “elites” as a way to absolve the taxpaying and voting public of their responsibility in this mess we call public education, I’d like to clarify:My final paragraph states that I do believe we, the public, have the ultimate power and responsibility to make changes. That is what I meant by a “huge public outcry”. The problem is that most people not in the business of education apparently do not understand what the underlying issues are, so they don’t know how to vote or what to insist on. That is why I wrote my book and am working on a nonfiction follow-up to it, and why I wrote this post as an answer to a very good question.I used the term “elites” to refer to those who make the rules that the rest of us must follow, i.e., the bureaucrats at the district and state levels, the researchers who come up with “Best Practices”, and the politicians who make education policy without considering unintended consequences (or knowing much about the realities in the trenches). Elite seems like a pretty good way to describe people who live outside the horrible system they have created for others.

There are a number of factors.Many, many universities and departments use Calculus and some other courses as "wash-out" courses for undergraduates. Wash out courses are used to reduce the number of students in a specific major.They either make the course difficult, or set grading standards high.Teaching calculus based on set theory is one way to make things more difficult.Requiring knowledge of a large number of integration formula is another way, having problems that require considerable work on transforming the problem in a short test time is another way.A large fraction of students then get D's or F's, and are encouraged to either switch to a less demanding major, to repeat the course, or to drop out.So people with switch from electrical engineering to civil engineering (not structural), or from engineering to business.Calculus is the best known wash out course, and gets used on engineering, physics, and chemistry students.Thermodynamics is sometimes used for juniors in engineering.Organic chemistry is often the killer course for pre-med.This even happens in some graduate schools:Law school is a gauntlet of multiple wash out courses, see the accounts in "The Paper Chase" and " 1L "Some quantitative finance courses generate wash outs for MBA'sOkay, now why the hell to universities do this ?1. The practical, operational reason- Many people want to major in engineering, science, pre-med, etc. So the school accommodates them by admitting them with these declared majors. However, engineering, science, and pre-med are expensive courses to teach, they often require lab facilities, which are very expensive, and thus there are a limited number of slots for upperclassmen (juniors & seniors).So "wash-out" courses are part of the "load balancing" of the university.Note that many of these courses are "graded on a curve" - which means their has already a bias towards a decision made about how many will pass and how many will fail. There will be some objectivity, if one class is getting 100's on all tests, they will pass everyone, if people are really slacking off, the number D's & F's will go up.If universities were to not admit as many students to these high demand majors, their would be strong political push back on public universities, and alumni and donor push back for private schools.2. Accreditation standards - Universities need to be accredited by various regional and professional governing boards. Thee groups are the "quality assurance" that the product of the university (the people with degrees) know their stuff and are smart enough to use. So these boards want to see tough grading standards, comprehensive curricula, extensive lab work, and graduates who are comfortable using all the intellectual tools of that profession - calculus, statistics, organic chem, whatever.Now, the accreditation standards could be met by tough grading in the junior level courses of a particular subject...but, remember that there are limited student slots at the junior level and above, so washing out students that late is going to reduce the total number of graduates. Besides, by that time some of the profs and TA will have come to know the students, which makes flunking them out more emotionally difficult. Also, the student is not in a good a position to change majors. Better to wash them out with Calculus or Organic Chem when they are still just numbers to the department.> So from this viewpoint, the "wash-out" course is like a second SAT test, to see if you have what it takes to continue in your major. So grading is tough on the wash out course, and then they can be a little easier and more collegial on the later courses.3. Elitism and Control of the number of professionals to keep salaries up-This is pretty well known. Physics is one of the most elitist subject areas, and Medicine has a strong interest in controlling the number of doctors. Veterinary medicine is even more extreme in limiting numbers.> What does this mean for the student ?First, realize that "wash out" courses are not prefect filters...I know of one of college where the undergrad Calculus textbook was adopted by the some of the better local high schools for their high school calculus course.Students from those local high schools did not have a problem with the Calculus course - which was graded on a curve, by the way. Think about what happens to students who did not have calculus in high school...Things to consider doing -1) Make the wash out course your #1 or #2 priority.2) Get the books and the syllabus a quarter ahead time and spend about 4 hours going over and seeing what you need to learn, and evaluating which parts will be easy.3) Ask your friends, TA's, etc. about tutors. Tutors vary in their ability, you may need to try two or three before you find one that works for you. Find the tutor either before or in the first few weeks of classes, not just before the midterm.4) Get a second or third book that explains the same subject slightly differently. Use this whenever the main text book seems odd or unclear. If you have the time, read both textbooks to make sure you really understand.5) Work some of the problems in the text book, maybe one easy, one intermediate, and one hard one, before school starts. Try to go at least 3/4 through what course will cover in the book. That way, you consider each section, and say - this looks familiar, "I can do this", or "I have no idea what this is about, I better get help early" or "they are using a lot of trigonometry and trig identities, I need to review that."In other words, find out all of the nasty surprises.6) Use online video, like Khan Academy, to learn the key ideas and any problem areas.More gaming related -1. Ask upperclass people about how each prof tends to grade. There are often differences, and sometimes you can select your professor.2. Look at your first class. Not to be prejudiced, but if your calculus class is full of Russian kids talking about how they did on the "Math Olympiad", and the class will be graded on a curve, you may want to move to another class. (Some of those Math Olympiads kids may be very good tutors, but you don't want to compete with them...)3. Try very hard to get not just an A, but 100% A+ in the first few weeks and first two tests. For most of the difficult courses, the later material builds on the early material, and you need the most solid foundation you can get. Many of the kids who will drop out will drop out early. If you have an A+ to start, and you start having trouble later, you can still get a B. If you start with a middle B, and you get in trouble, and the curve tilts the wrong way, you can end up with a D or lower.I would like to have Jay Wacker comment on this question, if he feels like it.

“My roommate never attempted to murder me. For this, I shall be grateful for life.”Sometime in 2013, my social media feed was filled with posts expressing their gratitude. Everyone wrote this in their post, and tagged their roommates.#How to avoid getting murdered in your dorm#In 2016, this hashtag was all over the place again, with roommates tagged in the posts.Our gratitude was genuine, because not every roommate was well-behaved enough to not murder their roommate.(*Disclaimer: this answer is a bit China-specific*)Senhao Lin and Yang Huang were roommates. They were both graduate students in Fudan University, one of the most prestigious universities in China.One time, Senhao and Yang argued angrily for a trivial matter. From then on, Senhao held a grudge against Yang. By the end of March 2013, Senhao had decided to pull a poisoning prank and make him sick.As a medical student, Senhao had access to many deadly chemicals. So he stole a drug bottle from the university lab which contained 75 ml of N-Nitrosodimethylamine and a syringe with about 2 ml of N-Nitrosodimethylamine had been inhaled.Senhao infused at least 30 ml of N-Nitrosodimethylamine into the water dispenser, which was more than 10 times the deadly dose for humans.On April 1, Yang started puking badly and developed a high fever after drinking some water in his dorm. He was sent to the hospital, where he fell into a coma with ensuing liver failure. His health deteriorated rapidly over the next few days, and he died two weeks later.Police identified the poisonous compound in the contents of the water dispenser in Yang’s dorm. Soon Senhao, as Yang's roommate, was brought under custody as the main suspect. He confessed before long.Senhao Lin was sentenced to death by the Shanghai No.2 Intermediate People's Court.He appealed. However, the Supreme People's Court affirmed the death penalty decision.Yang was an intelligent student, ranking first among all students in his year. He paid his tuition through scholarships he received, as his family was impoverished and his mother was very ill. He would pay his mother’s medical bill with the remaining scholarship.Yang worked as a volunteer teacher in a remote area in Tibet, and he was active in several charitable causes.On June 13 2016, an 18-year-old freshman student surnamed Peng at Kunming University was repeatedly stabbed by his roommate.It started with Peng singing in the dorm. The perpetrator (not named) and Peng couldn't get along. On that day, the circumstance was even worse than usual. Perpetrator got annoyed with Peng's singing and the two started a hostile argument.Soon, the situation escalated as Peng grabbed a chair and threw the chair at the perpetrator, who in return pulled out a knife and repeatedly stabbed Peng.Peng was sent to hospital where he was later pronounced dead from his injuries.(Not many follow-up reports about this case can be found now)In November 2010, Liwei Guo, a student in Jilin Agricultural University, stabbed his roommate Yan Zhao in the chest and back. As a result, Yan died.Liwei confessed that he stabbed Yan because he snored too much.In the very beginning, he complained to Yang about his snoring, which Yan didn't keep in mind.“I told him about it and he became angry. He verbally abused me several times, prompting me to kill him,” Liwei said in a statement.Then Liwei posted a video of Yan snoring online, which greatly irritated Yan. Since then, there was always tension between the two.Changchun Intermediate People’s Court sentenced him to suspended death penalty, which usually converts to life imprisonment after two years if he shows good behavior.This is Jiajue Ma, an introverted college student who made the headline when I was in elementary school.Jiajue was the son of impoverished parents in a remote village in southern China. He was always an academically gifted student, but after he was enrolled as a biochemistry major in Yunnan University, surrounded by even smarter students with even better grades, he was no longer seen as gifted. Instead, he was nothing more than a peasant.Jiajue struggled to afford shoes, meals and clothes. Sometimes, he would agree to wash others’ dirty clothes in exchange for some money.Gradually, he developed an inferiority complex. He felt shunned and humiliated when the well-off students from big cities flashed their new mobile phones and motorcycles.Jiajue soon became discouraged, bitter, jealous and resentful. Throughout college, he was asocial and he frequently picked rows with others.In February 2004 , when Jiajue and his roommates were playing a card game, Ruijie Shao, one of his roommates, accused him of cheating. He ridiculed Jiajue, calling him a misfit.It reached Jiajue’s breaking point. He decided he couldn't live with it anymore.The next day, Jiajue bought plastic bags, tape and a sledgehammer. When his roommate Xueli Tang was reading a newspaper in the dorm, Jiajue stormed in and bludgeoned him to death. Tang's lifeless body fell down, blood gushing out. He stuffed Tang's body in a wardrobe.The next day, he did the same to two other roommates Ruijie Shao and Kaihong Yang. He struck hard at the back of their head with the sledgehammer. Both of them died very soon.The next day, Bo Gong, whom Jiajue considered to be his best friend, met the same fate.Jiajue stuffed all the bodies in the wardrobe and fled.Eight days later, grisly remains of the four bodies were discovered, and Jiajue was identified as the suspect. Police offered a ￥200,000 (US$24,000) reward for information in regards to Jiajue’s whereabouts. [1]Jiajue was on the run for 21 days before he was captured on a beach in Sanya.Later, he confessed to the police that he killed four roommates between February 13 and 15 in 2004, and the motive was that they had accused him of cheating in a card game.Jiajue was sentenced to death by the Intermediate People's Court of Kunming. In June 2004, the time he was supposed to get his college degree, Jiajue was executed.Before Jiajue was executed, he said the prison jumpsuit was the best clothes he had worn.Some students in the university were feeling bad for him.‘I kind of sympathize with him,’ a senior said. ‘Because of a lack of money, he couldn’t socialise with other students – say, go to the movies.’[2]This, coupled with university pressures, had pushed him over the edge, they suggested.In March 2016, a freshman surnamed Lu was stabbed over 50 times and decapitated by his roommate Teng at 1:10 am inside their dorm room at Sichuan Normal University. [3]It started with an altercation between Lu and Teng on March 26, when Teng objected to Lu singing in the dormitory. Two other roommates attempted to calm them down.The next day, Teng briefly left the campus and returned to the dorm late at night. He asked Lu to accompany him to a nearby study room.When Teng returned to the dorm, he was alone, and he asked the other two roommates to call the police.On April 15, Teng was arrested.Lu's beheaded body was found in the dorm building’s study area with more than 50 stabs and the head missing. His body was so badly cut up that his family had to spend ￥18000 ($2800) to have the parts stitched.[4]Lu was described as outgoing and friendly. Born in Gansu Province in 1995, he was raised by his uncle, following his father's death when he was just a toddler.On the other hand, Teng was a troubled youth. He attempted suicide twice by slitting his wrists in high school.I have written about this in another answer. Alex C. Lee's answer to How is there domestic violence against men by women, when men are stronger?In 1994, Ling Zhu, an attractive, intelligent and talented sophomore at Tsinghua University (THU), began to show strange and debilitating symptoms, including acute stomach pain, hair loss, pain in the legs, loss of muscular eye control and partial facial paralysis. As she was unable to breathe on her own, she was sent to a hospital and placed on respirator.It took a long time to reach a diagnosis due to the unusual symptoms, and in the meantime Ling’s condition deteriorated rapidly.Some doctors suspected that her symptoms were caused by thallium poisoning. A series of tests confirmed that Ling had extraordinarily high levels of thallium in her body, about 10,000 times more than normal people.Her life was narrowly saved, but she sustained permanent neurological damage. She lost the ability to speak and was nearly blind; she remained paralyzed, with severely reduced mental function; she contracted Hepatitis C from a tainted blood transfusion.THU chemistry department confirmed that Ling did not have access to any thallium, but Wei Sun, Ling’s roommate and classmate, was the only student with official access to thallium in her experiment for undergraduate research.Wei Sun was never officially charged. Many speculate that her powerful family connections played a role — her grandfather Yueqi Sun was a senior leader of Revolutionary Committee of the Chinese Kuomintang and a key member of Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference; her cousin Fuling Sun was a deputy mayor of Beijing from 1983 to 1993 and Vice Chairperson of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference from 1998 to 2003.[1]It is said that Wei Sun changed her name to Shiyan Sun and now living in the US.This case should be long forgotten had Fudan Poisoning Case never happened. When Senhao Lin was convicted, the incident about Ling Zhu was dug out again. Over 150,000 signatures were collected for a petition to the White House to make Sun leave the US.Sun didn't leave the US. instead, during that period of time, everything related to the case had been censored, even posts and comments on forums were deleted. It was rumored that Sun's grandfather asked his old friend, Zemin Jiang, the former president of China, for help.So, what's wrong with our society today?Students in my college were required to live in dorms for the first year. Being an only-child, I can't remember the last time I've slept in the same room with others. I was cooped up in the small room with three other students. We had many unpleasant fights. None of us are in touch with each other now.I had never heard of counseling or psychotherapy until I left college. There was no school counselor available in middle school or high school. When a student committed suicide in 8th grade, the school tried hard to prevent the news from spreading out. My college has one of the highest suicide rates in China.Even after I was enrolled in college, I had no idea about mental health. I didn't know depression was a legitimate disease. I was unaware that my constant fatigue, drowsiness, irritability, lethargy and the thoughts of ending my life were not entirely because I was lazy.Before college, the only criteria to evaluate someone is their grades. Good grades equal good kids. No one has given a second thought to the importance of soft skills like communication skills, interpersonality skills and networking skills, etc.Today, we are grateful that our roommates never murdered us.Tomorrow, who will become the next campus murderer?Footnotes[1] Student killer an introvert who finally cracks[2] Ma Jiajue - Wikipedia[3] SW China college student detained after killing roommate[4] SW China college student detained after killing roommate