August 14, 2014,

This week is pre-planning for school. The students start again on Monday. We had a county-wide elementary music teacher in-service today.

A while ago Florida legislature passed a law stating that teacher salaries would be tied to how well their students perform on tests. For the classroom teachers, they are tied to their student's performance meaning they have about 22 kids that determine their salary. For us, it is much trickier. Right NOW activity teachers salaries will be tied to the school score for academic testing (math, reading, etc...that we really have no part of).

Until next year. We are starting our music end of course exams (and P.E. will have P.E., art will have art, etc). Florida law dictates that I MUST test at least 50% of my students in music end of course exams. My county raised that to 51%. So that means I am going to have to test ALL of my 3rd-6th grade students in music at the end of each year.

The test itself is going to be 40% written and 60% PERFORMANCE. Which means ALL of the students in grades 3-6 will need to be individually recorded as they SING. And they will be assessed on their SINGING.

So those 5th grade boys who think they are too cool for singing? Or the third grader who is too shy about their voice to sing....yep. ALL of them will be recorded. And then how welt hey do is how my salary and my JOB will be determined. So I could potentially lose my job over this if, for one year, I have enough students decide that music is a joke and they are going to tank the exam on purpose. Or if I just have bunch of students who are tone deaf and, no matter how much work I put in, still can't manage to match a pitch.

So stressed and overwhelmed at the moment.