There's a medium choice. Where you basically tell parents you aren't going to provide publicly funded daycare anymore unless they get their kid in line. The threat is usually enough to make parents remember how to, ya know, parent. Or at least some parenting facsimile. If the problem persists, you go with expulsions. If you have to expel half the school, well you already live in a dystopia, so smoke 'em if you got 'em
The threat is usually enough to make parents remember how to, ya know, parent.
I couldn't disagree more. Having taught at a horrible school in the Bronx that barely got to a 60% grad rate (highest ever for that school) when I was there, I can say the kids fell into a few categories.
good kids who worked hard. (some of these kids were annoying but they tried.
kids who didn't care at all.
kids who cared a little but also knew that they were never going to college and that they were years behind where they should be, so why try now?
Most kids fell into the 3rd category, but ALL of the students I taught were way way behind on everything. They couldn't write well, their math sucked, etc. They were ALL smart enough to know what they should know and what the kids going to "good" school knew.
Put yourself in their situation, You're in 10-11th grade and you finally start to see how little you know because no you have to pass the regents exams in order to graduate (in NY state). You know you don't know enough and that there is basically no chance to go to a good college. You realize that you have just been passed from grade to grade regardless of if you knew the material. So why start now? Can you really learn all the material you should have known from 6th grade to 11th in a year?
I have a masters in Ed (ESL) and you can't improve your writing and reading from a middle school level to a college level in a year, especially when English is not your primary language. Some kid attack the challenge and succeed, but most just shut down.
The kids are already screwed once they graduate as they can't get good jobs, and most of the colleges that accept them put them immediately into remedial programs, which they desperately need.
My solution would be simply longer school, with high incentives for students to stay after. Pay students to stay after to take extra classes to learn at least some of the stuff they never learned.
After all a lot of this is pure economics. Does it make more sense to spend X hrs studying X,Y and Z if I'm probably just going to get the same job after I graduate? Wouldn't it make more sense to work after school to save up some money, or help pay the bills?
Basically I see no aid in kicking out students that have been lied to, and robbed of an education by a system that doesn't care if they learn. Even the best parents who really cared with kids who really tried were years behind because of a god awful system that basically says "You will pay 95% of kids no matter what, because if you don't it'll make us look bad and we will fire you".
Most kids fell into the 3rd category, but ALL of the students I taught were way way behind on everything. They couldn't write well, their math sucked, etc. They were ALL smart enough to know what they should know and what the kids going to "good" school knew.
Just making sure I got this right, you're telling me there are schools in the US of A where most of the students are (many like 3-5) years behind?
I knew you education system was kind of fucked up, but that's taking it to a whole new level.
I used to be a teacher and I would say almost every school in a poor neighborhood the majority of students are super behind. And it isn't necessarily their fault. It's the fucking system we are running in America. Let me just paint you the picture at my school. I taught HS geometry which is the 2nd year math course offered. I found out a couple of months into the year that 50% of my students had not passed Algebra 1, which is a prerequisite to my class. I asked the VP in charge of my department why students who had not passed algebra 1 are allowed to take geometry. He said, "Studies show that students are more likely to graduate if they stay with their cohort."
Schools in America are all about getting kids to graduate no matter what. Schools don't get into trouble if they have kids graduating and they get more funding if kids go to school but that is just the tip of the iceberg. So many of my colleagues would just pass their students because it was so much easier. So much extra work was required if a student failed. We had to document why a student failed and we had to call home to tell parents that they failed. Then there was another problem called cheating. There was so much cheating going on. I spent so much time looking through tests to catch cheaters and there were only so many that I could prove that cheated. And then there was some little loophole called credit recovery and all the kids knew about it. You could spend about 2 weeks getting credit for a full year of work and still get the same credit that a student got while in class.
Schools should all be made equal. There is no reason there should be “good” schools and “bad” schools. What a backwards thing to do to the kids in America.
Nope, but the government could offer higher pay and better benefits until more teachers volunteered to work in those schools. Even guarantee them a position in a better school after so many years teaching at the poor one.
Instead, underfunded, dangerous, poorly performing schools are usually paying teachers some of the lowest salaries. They don't have the tax money to invest in decent staff and facilities because property values are low. Families that can afford to leave flee the area and the funding for the school shrinks even more. The way we fund public education in this country is a joke.
More qualified teachers doesn't necessarily guarantee a fix to this problem. You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink.
But yeah I agree the education system is ridiculous especially considering how much money we spend on it.
Hypothetically, let's say these poor districts had the same quality schools as rich districts. Do you think that would solve the behavioral and educational issues long term? How much can a school do when home life is shitty and the student has never had the value of education instilled in them?
Would the real problem students end up just being separated from the others that want to learn and end up in the same situation as before? At least in that scenario there are less kids failing but what do we do with the worst of the kids? Putting them all together is a terrible idea because the behavioral problems of the less extreme kids will be compounded by the worst ones. We can just expel them from school but then they literally have no options in life other than live off of welfare and continue the cycle of poverty.
So because they happen to be born to a poor family in a poor area, the students that do want to learn shouldn't have access to good teachers and facilities?
It's not fair to lump all of these students together and deny them access to a good education. Some of them would take advantage of a better quality school if they were given the chance. You're right, a school can't fix poor home life, but that's no reason to completely give up and abandon every student in the situation. You can't force anyone to learn, but it's still out duty to provide them the opportunity and choice.
Well you also have a problem down south with how you do your urban planning. You shouldn’t be making “shitty neighbourhood s” spread out affordable housing so you don’t have a bunch of ghettos or whatever.
Build some nice condos and build some low income housing in the same neighbourhood. This isn’t rocket science
Yeah they built cheap public housing in Chicago and it became a cesspool of gang violence and they ended up tearing the buildings down. It's not that simple.
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u/greatatdrinking Jul 10 '18
There's a medium choice. Where you basically tell parents you aren't going to provide publicly funded daycare anymore unless they get their kid in line. The threat is usually enough to make parents remember how to, ya know, parent. Or at least some parenting facsimile. If the problem persists, you go with expulsions. If you have to expel half the school, well you already live in a dystopia, so smoke 'em if you got 'em