"Welcome to our urban high schools, where kids have kids and learning dies"

[ChristianTrader]

In my short time as a teacher in Connecticut, I have muddled through President Bush’s No Child Left Behind act, which tied federal funding of schools to various reforms, and through President Obama’s Race to the Top initiative, which does much the same thing, though with different benchmarks. Thanks to the feds, urban schools like mine—already entitled to substantial federal largesse under Title I, which provides funds to public schools with large low-income populations—are swimming in money. At my school, we pay five teachers to tutor kids after school and on Saturdays. They sit in classrooms waiting for kids who never show up. We don’t want for books—or for any of the cutting-edge gizmos that non–Title I schools can’t afford: computerized whiteboards, Elmo projectors, the works. Our facility is state-of-the-art, thanks to a recent $40 million face-lift, with gleaming new hallways and bathrooms and a fully computerized library.

....

"Nobody Gets Married Any More, Mister" by Gerry Garibaldi - City Journal

 

[Scottish Lass]

Yep, same for the last public school where I taught. Sometimes scores went up; sometimes they went down. It never occurred to the powers that be that the variation lay within each sophomore class (the grade that first takes the graduation tests) rather than in the latest method or with the teachers or the gadgets.

 

[KSon]

When government schools are seen as the ultimate determinant of academic success, failure is assured. In my 10+ years in them, parents were rarely held accountable for encouraging good study habits, helping children with their studies, and implementing consequences when failure resulted from a lack of effort. You can give teachers NASA equipment with which to teach their students and it will fail if the primary education is not occurring in the home. Seven hours a day at school is not enough to overcome the other seventeen hours a day spent in apathy (at best).

 

[moselle]

I recently talked with a 2nd grade public school teacher and she lamented the fact that she had only 15 minutes each day with her entire class of 24. For the rest of the day, 1/4 to 1/2 her students were in and out of the class for various special needs therapy or tutoring of some kind. She gave me the run-down of the daily schedule, and for the 7 hours they were in school, they only did language arts and math, with a weekly hour session in music, phys. ed, and art classes. It reinforced my belief that public school teachers (and many private school teachers) have an impossible job.

When my dh was getting his education degree, he was told that regardless of what kind of teacher he was, some kids would succeed and some would fail and some could go either way. His job was to do what he could with the "go either way" kids because it wouldn't matter what he did with the other groups.

 

[kvanlaan]

Yep, same for the last public school where I taught. Sometimes scores went up; sometimes they went down. It never occurred to the powers that be that the variation lay within each sophomore class (the grade that first takes the graduation tests) rather than in the latest method or with the teachers or the gadgets.

But that's just the thing - it would appear that regardless of the good teachers in the system and their efforts, the system treats a child as a non-descript unit of humanity, interchangeable one with another. That is doomed to fail.

 

[JBaldwin]

In my short time as a teacher in Connecticut, I have muddled through President Bush’s No Child Left Behind act, which tied federal funding of schools to various reforms, and through President Obama’s Race to the Top initiative, which does much the same thing, though with different benchmarks. Thanks to the feds, urban schools like mine—already entitled to substantial federal largesse under Title I, which provides funds to public schools with large low-income populations—are swimming in money. At my school, we pay five teachers to tutor kids after school and on Saturdays. They sit in classrooms waiting for kids who never show up. We don’t want for books—or for any of the cutting-edge gizmos that non–Title I schools can’t afford: computerized whiteboards, Elmo projectors, the works. Our facility is state-of-the-art, thanks to a recent $40 million face-lift, with gleaming new hallways and bathrooms and a fully computerized library.

....

"Nobody Gets Married Any More, Mister" by Gerry Garibaldi - City Journal

Have you ever read any of John Taylor Gatto's books on the public school system? He muddle through 30 years of New York schools and came to the same conclusions. He says the system will kill any love of learning in a child in about 3 years. He estimates that 5% of government schooled students survive the system with a love of learning, about 80% survive the system, but never went to step foot in a school again, and 15% of the them totally fail. He also recounts that the reason he was successful as a teacher is because he abandoned the standard methods and taught children in a way he knew they would learn and love to learn. He also got in trouble for it.

Another interesting read is the Ratio Studiorum which outlines the teaching methods of the Jesuits. When I read through it, I sat down and bawled like a baby, because I realized how I far we have come (in our schools) from real teaching. While obviously I don't agree with the Jesuits or Roman Catholicism, the principles of teaching set down by the Jesuits are amazing, and they work. I applied just a few little things I gleaned from Jesuit methodology to the classes I teach once a week, and now the students are "eating out of my hand". In one class, I couldn't get the students to leave when the class hour was over.

 

[TexanRose]

It's true that a good teacher can only do so much--but at the same time, there are some really terrible teachers in some of those schools (I have connections within Houston's school system, so I have heard some eye-opening stories) and it really does make a difference when those terrible teachers are replaced with better ones. To that end, any extra funding ought to be applied to increased teacher salaries. I know at least half-a-dozen people who would be interested in teaching--and very good at it--if they wouldn't have to take such a pay cut as compared to their current careers or career tracks. And those who are willing to work for a teacher's salary aren't likely to take a job in one of the worst schools unless they get a substantial bonus for doing so.

 

[KSon]

It's true that a good teacher can only do so much--but at the same time, there are some really terrible teachers in some of those schools

Agreed. My general point would be that the poorness of a teacher is greatly magnified by a poor home environment. Parents who are active daily in their child's educational affairs can minimize the impact of poor teachers, as well as maximize the impact of outstanding teachers. I fully agree that poor teachers need to be held accountable and weeded out, but the root of this problem, like MANY others, begins in the home.

 

[CatherineL]

That article is heartbreaking.

 

[he beholds]

That article is heartbreaking.

ditto : (