5.2 Respondent's Performance

Comments on Prior Adverse Ratings :
U rating refers to my annual performance review (the first I ever received). Walters was punishing me for allegations whose resolution was pending : it was misleading to introduce it under the rubric Employee History. Mr. Viani rejected the document, presented as evidence of unsatisfactory in attendance -- my rubber room attendance, that is ! Also, my lawyer pointed out that I was not under Walters supervision since mid February 1998.
Comments on Unsatisfactory classroom observation : the classroom observation was conducted by Mr. Lenihan, Foreign languages Department : how can you evaluate a lesson you do not understand ?Click here for details. By the way, Walters found it safer to leave it to Lenihan, lest she betrayed her own academic deficiencies : her computer education background does not predispose her to evaluate high school math lessons. The last time she tried was in spring 1996 : she came in with an "adviser", Ms. Lucci, the lead teacher, a title she bestoyed on her.

Remark : working with incompetent, uninspiring principals :
Of all people in the world, you would think that Walters, a computer education major, would have been more receptive to my suggestion of teaching Excel (Microsoft's spreadsheet) to all students -- she opposed it. This modest program (compared to her Utopian) , if implemented, would have been highly beneficial to the students in math and statistics (functions graphing, correlation and regression,etc.), science (visualization of experimental data), social studies (visualization of social and economics statistics), etc. Example of project (writing the report being facilitated by the integration of Excel and Word) :
Given : SAT data for the 50 states, say, over the last 5 years.
Questions could run from descriptive statistics (histogram, scattergram,etc.) to more advanced concepts :
1) Linear correlation between the verbal and quantitative components of the test in a given year ; 2) Using regression to tell whether students more proficient in English do better in math, with the possibility of prediction ; 3) Why do we explore this conjecture, not the other way around ?
For Advanced Placement students : if data were according to gender, race, social status, etc., was available, the ANOVA (analysis of variance) for instance, could be applied to compare two groups or more. This tool is widely used in the social sciences : economics, sociology, psychology,etc.