Shaking my head... In San Francisco, a high school science teacher came up with a unique way to incentivize standardized test-taking and compel students to raise their scores: Local Teacher Gets Inked as Reward for Test Score Gains.Stanley Richards, a teacher at City Arts and Technology High School in San Francisco, told students that he'd get tattoo on his leg if the they could reach a target score. But not just any tattoo -- this would be a tattoo of the former vice principal "as a sumo wrestler, holding a medallion of test numbers and slaying a dragon that represents the standardized test." I'm sure he thought it was a brilliant idea... at the time:
As you'll see in the video below, Richards came up with the idea of getting a tattoo — of Koh, as a sumo wrestler, holding a medallion of test numbers and slaying a dragon that represents the standardized test— if students could increase their score on California's Academic Performance Index by 50 points. The school was expected to raise it by seven points.You can actually see Stanley Richards getting the tattoo in the video here. Seems like his heart is in the right place, but... damn. That thing is not pretty, and it's permanent. I wonder how long before it hits him that this was probably not such a good idea. Is it me, or do the kids seem a little underwhelmed when he reveals the tattoo to them at the assembly? Hats off to you, sir.
"I was 99 percent sure," Richards said, laughing, "that it wouldn't happen."
But it did, and now Richards is the proud owner of a calf tattoo, featuring, as promised, Vice Principal Koh as a sumo wrestler. "Stanley was under the gun to get the tattoo because the class that took the test that had the most weight, they were graduating," he said. Richards, who is also leaving the school this year, also termed the tattoo "a memorial" for his time at City Arts and Technology, where he's worked as a founding faculty member for the past seven years.
