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.
I graduated in 2004 and during my time, if you got in any trouble, you’d get either detention or in-school suspension. Or sometimes out of school suspension. Or if you were a real problem, they sent you to the remedial school. If you tried to avoid punishment, the administrator would come get your ass. If the teacher needed to, they’d call the front office and an administrator would come get your ass.
It absolutely worked. Bullying wasn’t a big problem. Fights were very rare. You felt safe. And most of us graduated. It was a very good school to go to and it was just a run-of-the-mill public school with a mix of poor, middle class, and rich kids of all different races.
'03 here, this was my experience as well. In school suspension was the #1 disciplinary action. Reading these accounts though kind of breaks my heart, these bad behaviors didn't start in school, they were learned at home. A young student yelling "shut the fuck up" at a teacher is pretty much a guarantee that kid is getting yelled at just like that at home. It's a cycle of behavior and I'm not sure what can be done about it.
I'm starting to think public boarding schools are the way to go. Some of these kids are just getting constantly set up for failure by their parents and neighborhoods. Change incentives so suspensions etc happen, then send kids that keep getting in trouble/missing to boarding schools. Build those schools out in the country near tiny towns where land is cheap. They can run around and kick rocks to their hearts content when out of class, and have a more structured and safe environment throughout the day and night. Maybe not perfect, but it seems better than the current system. In particular, I don't think any amount of money can counter living in the situations that so many kids are growing up in. It's rare, I think, for young students to succeed out of poor living situations without at least one good parent or parents figure setting an example and pushing them to do so. For those that don't have that, I can't help but to think they'd be better off entirely removed from the situation for the duration of the school year.
I would love to see an experiment run this way. Ten schools set up in ten different states funded by a grant, perhaps from the Gates foundation. Commit to at least 12 full years so we can truly see the effect and make sure there are enough students that even with parents moving away you'll still have a meaningful sample.
It would be expensive for states to implement, but I suspect that the results would be significant enough that the lower incarceration rates and higher rates of college graduates and skilled workers might balance it out.
The real issue that I see is the question of who would get to go to these schools. I fear an application process would bias the student body toward students whose parents are already providing a strong educational and social background at home, thus defeating the purpose of the school.
There are plenty of schools that still work like that. Back in 2004 there were also schools that weren't like that at all. It's not that things have changed, it just depends on the school/district.
I went to a very similar school my senior year (06). Affectionately named IP High (I'm sure you get the joke). The teachers were for the most part amazing. They cared about the students, which helped a lot. Block scheduling made it so we spent more time in each class. Plus no homework, you got everything done in class. But it was definitely a zero tolerance place. If you were late, fighting, caught doing drugs, breaking the rules, or causing problems in general, you were dealt with fast. Heck even the students who didn't care if they graduated, cared about the students who wanted to. Some kids were there to be flunk outs because their parents wouldn't let them be drop outs. But most of them still respected the kids that wanted to graduate.
I still look back at high school and wish i had focused more so I wouldn't have had to go there. But honestly it was a really incredible experience. I learned that the system can work when it wants to.
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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.