Regents...

Have you ever been congratulated for doing something you know you aren't responsible for but you've put up with enough other shit that you take credit for it anyway? That's how I felt when my principal came up to our department meeting and congratulated us on our hard work and getting our students to pass their Regents...

My previous estimates put our students at around a 35% passing rate (assuming that everyone needed a 65 or higher to pass). But if you have an IEP or are an upperclassman, then you really only need a 55 to pass the exam. So if everyone were held to the same 65 or higher standard, then around 20% would have legitimately passed the exam.

Through the magic of generous grade curving and bureaucratic decisions that supersede our grading decisions, more than 75% of our students have passed their living environment exam. That's not to say that's a representation of all my students but only the students who qualified by having their 1200 minutes of lab work.

It's interesting that we create these standards and then never really live up to them. If that's the case then who is supposed to take them seriously? Certainly not the students...

It's actually a few percentage points lower than last year's Regents performances but I'll take responsibility for any real discrepancies since I'm the noob of the science teachers. We still have yet to find a science teacher to fill an open position. We need an Earth Science or Living Environment teacher to help fill in our expanding curricula in other elective sciences...

I'm so glad there's only one day left till the official end of my first year teaching in the South Bronx...

Anyway I have to do some last minute homework...