The assessment I had to give this week over the Pythagorean Theorem was not written by me, nor was it written by anyone in my building, and furthermore it was split into four parts for reasons that make sense in a way but I will not be getting into here. My partner teacher and I looked at the fourth test and decided that it was much too difficult and so we decided not to count it as a test grade, but to give it anyway, since, y’know, the Lord High Muckety-Mucks want us to.

I decided to Do Science. Anyone who spends any time around teachers nowadays is fully aware of the common teacher complaint that we’ve never seen such a level of don’t-give-a-shit from our kids than we are lately, and that further the level of inability to notice things, in general, is a big problem.

You, being an adult, have likely already noticed that I wrote the fucking answers for the second assessment– yes, it was only four questions– on the board.

106 8th graders in my class completed that assignment today. 26.4% of them failed the Problem Solving portion of it, a number so close to 27% that I am considering writing John Rogers and asking him to make an addendum to his Crazification Factor. If I add in the number of students who clearly did not notice that the answers were on the board in plan and large letters– and I promise you that board is not in an obscure location in my classroom– but did not out-and-out fail, it rises to 45.3%, which is completely Goddamned insane.

One of these days, someone will figure out a way to separate kids who don’t understand something from those who simply don’t give a shit, and on that day, American education will change radically. Until then, however, I’m going to keep bitching about the notion that my job performance is evaluated by how other people act.