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Hernando Today

Educators Worry About Plans To Cut Assessment Teachers

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By TONY MARRERO

Hernando Today

Published: March 18, 2009

SPRING HILL - When J.D. Floyd K-8 Principal Joe Clifford talks about the value of assessment teachers, he often comes back to "Young Joe."
Young Joe is struggling in reading and language arts and his prospects for the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Tests are troubling. At Floyd, teachers consult a purple binder kept for each class that provides detailed graphs on each student's progress.
Results for class assignments and tests are put in colorful graph form to show where Young Joe is struggling and give clues to what kind of strategies teachers can use to help him improve.
Assessment teachers — currently one at each school in the district — put that data together, help interpret it for classroom teachers and suggest resources to help teachers get Young Joe back on track.
The student is fictitious and the source of the moniker is obvious, but the value of assessment teachers is real to thousands of students in the district, Clifford said.
Beyond that, assessment staffers also help administer tests ranging from the FCAT to the SAT, and get the data to the state and federal bureaucracies for the A Plus Plan and Annual Yearly Progress.
So it's troubling, Clifford and other educators say, that the district is considering trimming the assessment teacher ranks by 10, so that there will be one for every two schools. They maintain the assessment teacher program, created about four years ago, is working as it was intended to and has clearly helped improve the district academic performance. The success culminated in last year's overall "A" grade and higher graduation rates.
The cuts would save about $571,000 and is one of the strategies that the school board has approved in principle to cut the budget by at least $16 million next year. Officials are hopeful the cuts will be achieved through attrition, but layoffs haven't been ruled out.
"I get that there are budget cuts that need to be made," Clifford said. "But we have to make sure the services that impact our children's services in the classroom are sacrosanct, and in my opinion, this is one of those."
If the public and politicians want school accountability, cutting assessment teachers is counterproductive because they take the "guessing game" out of education, said Classroom Teachers Association President Joe Vitalo.
He compared one of the roles the teachers fulfill for students who need remediation as medicine for an ailing patient, and cutting their numbers is like saying, "It's OK, you're still getting the medicine, you're just not going to get the full dosage."
Superintendent Wayne Alexander acknowledges that "it's not ideal to have anything less than one assessment teacher at every school."
But Alexander maintains that the district's financial picture requires making do in less than ideal conditions. The goal is to keep some assessment teachers with hopes of swelling the ranks again when funding levels improve, he said.
School board Chairwoman Dianne Bonfield agrees.
"We're kind of in famine times," Bonfield said. "What do you do in famine times? You cut back. You still have, but you have less. I think we'll be able to manage."
Arlene Cotto, a second-grade teacher at Floyd, hopes so. Teachers are already working long hours and don't have the time to put together information that Jan Oppedal, Floyd's assessment teacher, provides on a regular basis.
"It gives me the security to know I'm doing the best I can for all my students," Cotto said.
The concern at the high school level is great, too, because of the sheer number of tests beyond the FCAT that have assessment teachers swimming in an acronym soup: the PSAT, SAT, ACT and ESOL tests, among others, are all overseen by the teachers.
The state will soon be changing how high schools are evaluated by the state, something assessment teachers will have to keep on top of, said Dyane Maxey, who fills that post at Hernando High School.
Maxey is already crunched for time and lost her paraprofessional last year due to budget cuts. Still, she said she's confident she can handle the data crunching at two schools. But she won't be able to physically administer tests anymore.
"You physically can't be at two schools and do what needs to be done," Maxey said, adding that the responsibility may have to be given back to the guidance departments.
"Something's going to be lost there, whether it's the school grade that's affected, or guidance counselors may not be able to meet with as many students," she said.
Hernando High Principal Ken Pritz acknowledged the challenges.
"But in tough times you got to do what you've got to do," Pritz said. "If the decision is made, we'll make do with what we have."
The district will soon get to work on a plan to divvy up the assessment teachers, possibly according to grade level or geographic proximity, Alexander said. Principals will have a say in that process.
Clifford said he's already working on a training plan to help his teachers take a little bit more responsibility if he has to share Oppedal.
"Teachers are going to have to do more," he said. "We can complain about it, or we can suck it up and deal with it, and that's what we're going to do."
But, he added, "It's a bicycle that has to be built as we're riding it."

Reporter Tony Marrero can be reached at 352-544-5286 or lmarrero@hernandotoday.com.

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