The Critical Edition

Reading over student work, I find a sentence that troubles me: it has a maturity that belies its author. I continue reading, and within a few moments, I’m pulling out the laptop and Googling the suspect sentence: it’s lifted directly from Wikipedia. With a sigh, I write “See me” at the top of the paper, underlining it emphatically.

Dealing with plagiarism is one of my absolute least favorite duties as a teacher; it’s especially tough when it’s a student I really like, a student who is sensible and gives every impression of being a conscientious student.

Plagiarism is a sin that is hard to treat evenly. Is unintentional plagiarism as bad as intentional? Is malicious plagiarism (“He’ll never catch on, the old doddering fool.”) worse plagiarism motivated by laziness or procrastination?

As I’m reading, and I begin to grow concerned about the authenticity of a particular essay or poem, I find myself tensing up. A brier patch of issues awaits, and it’s seldom a pleasant experience.

Celuacy for non-Poles, is a grade above an “A”. It signifies mastery of a subject accompanied by superior extra-curricular work.

On one occasion, though, a young lady of supreme character managed not only to avoid losing respect but managed to increase it. She was a student in Poland, and she worked hard to have celuacy (“excellent”) in as many classes as she could. She turned in a journal that was clearly plagiarized. (With English learners, it’s easier to discover copied work, for obvious reasons.) I spoke to her about it, asking her why she’d done it.

“I just didn’t understand that we weren’t supposed to copy.”

A lame excuse, but she had so endeared herself to me (to all teachers) with her hard work and dedication that I put off the inevitable. “Well, I’ll think about how we can handle this; my standard policy, though, has always been to give a failing grade for plagiarism.” She said nothing, but she was clearly upset.

The next day, she approached me. “I’ve been thinking about it,” she began, impressing me with her correct use of the present perfect continuous tense. “I should have known better. I want you to give me a zero.”

I did, but I made sure she had plenty of opportunity to offset that zero and maintain her high average.

She did.

Every time I’ve had to deal with plagiarism since then, I’ve hoped for such a response. So far, no luck.

Maybe tomorrow.

In preparing to read the dramatization of Anne Frank’s diary, I spent some time going over the Holocaust with students. I was taken aback at how little they seemed to know about it. “A bunch of people — I think they were Jews — got killed” seemed to be the general view. They do know something about it now, but their questions revealed both how complicated and unfathomable such an act is.

Most common was, “Why did they hate Jews?” Why indeed? Many answers, none of them short and simple. I offered a few: notions of Jewish conspiracies; Jews as “Christ killers” and the old blood libel; the fact that there are a substantial number of Jews in banking (which is directly traceable to early Christians’ reluctance to engage in usury) as proof of some international Jewish conspiracy. All those explanations in turn (which is why I was silent about The Protocols of the Elders of Zion).

As I spoke, though, and showed pictures and short clips of survivors, it was almost eerie how closely they paid attention. Any noise brought immediate shushing, and the look of shock on everyone’s face told me that there is at least one thing they’ll remember from their time with me.

I gave three of my four classes a test a few days ago. It’s worthy of comment because I so rarely give tests. In fact, I despise giving tests. It’s true that they’re a relatively quick way to assess student understanding, but our school district has such a regimen of standardized tests and tests from other teachers that I seem always inclined to find alternative methods of assessment.

Recently, our state mandated yet another standardized test for eighth graders. We now take the MAP (Measure of Academic Progress), ITBS (Iowa Test of Basic Skills), Explore, and PASS (Palmetto Assessment of State Standards) tests. Additionally, students who elect to pay the fee can take the PSAT test. Each of these tests require multiple days to complete, and so we have thirteen testing days built into the 180-day calendar (not including the day it takes for the PSAT).

When teachers complain that their students are drowning in an acronymic sea of standardized testing, this is precisely what they mean. When states complain that their schools are underfunded, these tests represent a significant expenditure.

What are these tests for? What is taxpayers’ money buying?

The PASS test is the assessment used for NCLB (No Child Left Behind) compliance. It’s a new test, replacing the PACT (Palmetto Something-or-other Challenge Test or something like that) at the start of the 2008/9 school year.

Because it’s a new test, there are additional costs as the first year’s results are audited to determine cut-off points for the achievement standards. This in itself is problematic for me, because it underscores the arbitrary nature of any standardized test. Once the results were in, test administrators began analyzing the scores to determine what score should be the thresholds for the Exemplary/Met/Not-Met standards. And what standard did they use to determine those standards? Did they perform basic statistical analysis that showed X% scored within some range, Y% scored within another range, and Z% within yet another and then used those numbers as the thresholds? If so, that would only measure future test takers against the first year’s results. Surely there must be an objective standard, right?

The MAP test is administered twice, at the beginning and end of the school year. It is just what the name implies: a measure of the progress of individual students in the school year. It’s useful for teachers to see how much progress individual students have made; it’s useful for administrators to determine how much progress the teacher has made. Of all the tests, this has the most practical application.

The ITBS is a measure of basic skills. I’m not sure its purpose. We get attractive printouts that we send home. That’s about all I use it for.

The Explore test is the newest addition. It is, as far as I can determine, a pre-ACT test. Useful, I suppose. For all students in eighth grade? I’m not so sure.

We began taking the Explore test today; we’ll finish up during the first half of tomorrow. The one heartening aspect of the test: at least one student wondered aloud about the impact so much testing was having on his education.