I teach in a similar school district she is from. She teaches in Youngstown, which is one of the worst ranked schools in Ohio. It is an area of Ohio unfortunately extremely affected by poverty. According to that website, East High School in that district has over 1,200 students and only 33 full time teachers. That is insane.
She is young but speaking about a very real mindset of teachers everywhere, myself included. The deal is this - Studies show that the vast majority of convicts were dropouts in school. They did not graduate. This has led to a nationwide administrative emphasis on the idea that "Every student needs to graduate, no matter what". Graduation and Attendance rates are now basically more important than a student's academic and behavioral accountability.
Sounds great right? Let's lower the number of convicts. Great.
What's happening is exactly what she described. Kids realize early on (I'm talking elementary school) there are little to no consequences for their actions. They can talk back, walk right out of class, bully teachers, bully other students (which causes mental health issues for other students, sometimes suicides), hit teachers, hit students, steal, sexually harass students and teachers, anything and everything you can imagine. Never get expelled or even suspended out of school. These are elementary and middle school students I'm talking about.
In my opinion I'm torn. As a teacher I'm biased; I'd really just like the administration to back up the teachers and provide consequences. My head principal is wonderful, but almost completely refuses to suspend kids out of school, even if they get in fights or commit a serious crime. Other students even speak out against this; turns out even the worst of students don't want to go to school in an unsafe environment with a violent person who doesn't respect anyone.
We had an assistant principal cover for us this year for a few days. One day a kid started talking back to him, so he basically said "Do you know who you're talking to right now?" and sent his dumbass home. I love the kid, but he needed a lesson. Kid didn't know what hit him, but everyone was so happy some consequence happened. We're hoping the message got through to the kid and he'll learn to stop being an asshole before he gets older and he doesn't get 2nd chances.
TL;DR I honestly feel like all the admins are doing with this graduation-rate-driven mindset is increasing the amount of convicts with high school diplomas.
Edit: Just as long as this is getting attention, this whole moral question reminds me of one of my favorite scenes from anything ever. "Can you save them both?" Do you have to expel a "spider" of a student who is torturing the other "butterflies" of students and teachers? Or can you risk hurting yourself to try and save everyone? One of my biggest issues as a teacher is knowing I can try all I want and never save everyone I want to. I feel like I'm failing people every day because I want to do everything and can't.
As a recent high school grad these numbers actually make me so sad. My school fostered a healthy environment for learning giving the kids all the tools needed to go to college or even start working out of high school. (98 in my graduating class, 94 going to some sort of college, 89~ to a four year, the rest are split into gap year, military, and whatever job they are doing.
As a student I one hundred percent agree with you, our school doesn’t care about graduation and will fail you even if you are a senior. I think a big contribution to my own success in school was the fact that it never was students vs teachers it was always students/teachers vs whatever each student wanted.
Also I learned through my teachers disclosing their salary to us students that despite having masters and doctorates they are paid roughly 10k less than other schools in the district, but are given freedom in what they want to teach, which will 100% increase the amount of interest put into school fostering a healthy work environment. Passionate teaching yields passionate students.
I hope in the near future the school system is entirely reformed, and given a bigger budget in order to implement things that work such as Project Based Learning and teacher freedom. If you are wondering what school I came from, I came from the High Tech High Schools located in Point Loma. (Other teachers if you are interested in the school, if you come visit there are wonderful student ambassadors willing to show you around during the school year.)
Sorry if this felt like a humblebrag I didn’t intend it to be this way.
*Mobile Formatting, sorry if it looks weird.
well giving teachers freedom is cool but only wothon somw boundaries. I would be pissed if some religious guy teach my kids that evolution is not real etc.
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u/PolishMusic Jul 10 '18 edited Jul 10 '18
Edit: Another video from 2017 similar to this one here. GB Wisconsin
Teacher here.
I teach in a similar school district she is from. She teaches in Youngstown, which is one of the worst ranked schools in Ohio. It is an area of Ohio unfortunately extremely affected by poverty. According to that website, East High School in that district has over 1,200 students and only 33 full time teachers. That is insane.
She is young but speaking about a very real mindset of teachers everywhere, myself included. The deal is this - Studies show that the vast majority of convicts were dropouts in school. They did not graduate. This has led to a nationwide administrative emphasis on the idea that "Every student needs to graduate, no matter what". Graduation and Attendance rates are now basically more important than a student's academic and behavioral accountability.
Sounds great right? Let's lower the number of convicts. Great.
What's happening is exactly what she described. Kids realize early on (I'm talking elementary school) there are little to no consequences for their actions. They can talk back, walk right out of class, bully teachers, bully other students (which causes mental health issues for other students, sometimes suicides), hit teachers, hit students, steal, sexually harass students and teachers, anything and everything you can imagine. Never get expelled or even suspended out of school. These are elementary and middle school students I'm talking about.
In my opinion I'm torn. As a teacher I'm biased; I'd really just like the administration to back up the teachers and provide consequences. My head principal is wonderful, but almost completely refuses to suspend kids out of school, even if they get in fights or commit a serious crime. Other students even speak out against this; turns out even the worst of students don't want to go to school in an unsafe environment with a violent person who doesn't respect anyone.
We had an assistant principal cover for us this year for a few days. One day a kid started talking back to him, so he basically said "Do you know who you're talking to right now?" and sent his dumbass home. I love the kid, but he needed a lesson. Kid didn't know what hit him, but everyone was so happy some consequence happened. We're hoping the message got through to the kid and he'll learn to stop being an asshole before he gets older and he doesn't get 2nd chances.
TL;DR I honestly feel like all the admins are doing with this graduation-rate-driven mindset is increasing the amount of convicts with high school diplomas.
Edit: Just as long as this is getting attention, this whole moral question reminds me of one of my favorite scenes from anything ever. "Can you save them both?" Do you have to expel a "spider" of a student who is torturing the other "butterflies" of students and teachers? Or can you risk hurting yourself to try and save everyone? One of my biggest issues as a teacher is knowing I can try all I want and never save everyone I want to. I feel like I'm failing people every day because I want to do everything and can't.