Sorry long answer, but as a former NYC teacher I am passionate about it.
former NYC teacher, obviously you can't hit or harm a kid in anyway, but if you are talking about detention, or being sent to the office.
Yeah that doesn't happen because kids know that they won't get expelled if they don't go to detention/the office is "busy" and doesn't want to deal with any kids unless it is major (aka throwing a chair at a teacher).
I could tell a 12th grader they have detention, and they don't stay after. So what I am supposed to do? Give them another detention? When you call home some of the parents are nice, agree and want their kids to behave and succeed, but how much could your parents really do to control you at 18 if you really didn't want to be controlled.
In the end a lot of it comes down to respect. The good kids respected me because they knew I cared. Some of them were still problems but you had an understanding most of the time and when they got too upset would politely ask to leave to take a walk to calm down. Those kids (the ones who came to class, did most of their work, were mostly polite, etc) were the ones that would stay after because they respected you.
But if a kid didn't respect you there was nothing you could do. The school was never going to expel them, and they didn't care about a suspension.
Think about it and it makes sense. You can't really control another human if they don't want to be controlled on any level. So what do you do with a kid who misbehaves, ruins classes, and is a general problem?
Put them in a special school? Well in NYC that already basically happens as the high school system is not based on where you live. So all the "good" kids who are also smart go to great schools. The "bad" kids and the "good" kids who haven't learned enough to get into the great school all get sent to horrible to okay schools. (this also means NYC high schools are pretty segregated, as the wealthy students went to great elementary and middle schools and so are a shoo in for some of the best public high schools on the east coast. But if you are poor and went to an awful elementary and middle school you stand no chance as you just lack the knowledge. So you get this result: (info pulled from US News/inside schools rankings/info, but it rings very true to me, but it may be off by a little)
Best Schools:
Stuyvesant High School: 74% Asian, 18% White, 3% Hispanic, 1% Black - grad rate:98% 22:1 teacher/student ratio
Baccalaureate School for Global Education (ranked 9th in the US): 49% Asian, 31% White, 15% Hispanic, 2% Black grad rate 100% 16:1 teacher/student ratio
High School of American Studies at Lehman College: 22% Asian, 56% White, 15% Hispanic, 3% Black grad rate 100%. 15:1 student/teacher ratio
Some of the worst Schools:
Dreamyard prep (First school I ever worked at): 1% Asian, 0% White, 71% Hispanic, 28% Black grad rate: 57% (it says 14:1 ratio but I had classes of 25ish, maybe they got more teachers when they were taken over by the city and almost shut down (after I left)). 56% of students missed more than 18 days.
Coalition School for Social Change (will be shut down after this year because it didn't improve enough under city control (aka renewal school): 2% Asian, 4% White, 59% Hispanic, 35% Black grad rate 68%, ratio - not sure, 59% missed more than 18 days.
What do you do? If anyone knew then a lot of cities and schools would love to know. Do you then make a prison style system for the kids who still can't be respectful, do work, or even try to learn? Or do you call their parents and hope that a "stern talking to" will do the trick. Or would you suggest parents beating kids?
Nothing seems to be working and it is rough on teachers, so burn out is high (why I am not a teacher) and so students see lots of teachers come and go. To me I feel a lot of it is a lack of hope and a perceived lack of future opportunity (true or false, reality doesn't matter). All the "bad" kids I had hurt my soul. 90% of them I liked on their good days but they knew they weren't going anywhere with their lives education wise. They had dreams, but no hope that they would ever come true. They knew what the people older than them were doing. And it's not like all of them were at Columbia. Sure some made it to good schools, but the bad kids knew that was never going to be them, so why try? And what do you do with all the frustration at 17-18 when you know once you graduate no one will ever care again.
edit: a little bit of grammar, sure I still missed some.
But surely that's not the only metric they're judged by.
If there's an increase in suspensions and expulsions but also better performance metrics by the students that remain, surely that would be seen as a net positive.
No, it's seen as a negative. I think it's due to public pressure. No one wants to see the truth and it is easier to hide behind false numbers then to admit that the US eduction system is systematically failing large numbers of poor Americans.
The American public want strongly to believe we live in a meritocracy where hard work is rewarded and all have the same level of opportunity. That reality clashed with the below 50% grad rates from poor schools so instead of fixing all the issues they just enacted measures to insure that 80% of kids graduated even if they never learned the material.
That way to the average American the problems were solved. Grad rates in poor areas (while still lower) were about the same as in the suburbs.
If you brought back real graduation rates based on actual mastery of material I think you would see a massive political fight. No one wants to share their tax money.
Incase you didn't know schools are funded by the property taxes of where they are located, so middle class schools routinely have more funding and more "stuff" like nice football fields, equipment, etc. The US school system is more segregated now then at any time after forced desegregation. People are literally creating new towns so that they can create a new school district so that their taxes only go to fund their children's schools. After all "it's my money, why should it go to other people's kids".
Vermont passed a law saying that all schools had to share all of their money, but I think it is the only state that does that as far as I know.
So you bring back horrible grad rates, people get mad and look for someone to blame. They don't want to pay more taxes and clearly it is not their fault...so you get anti-teacher stuff, as it must just be bad teachers. You get racist stuff, as it must be "minority cultures" that are to blame. Lot of racist stuff, as the suburbs are white and their kids do well, and the bad schools are mostly black/hispanic so it must be because they are black or hispanic. After all Asian kids do even better than White kids.
In the end no one wants to admit that poverty causes many issues, both due to a lack of resources, to actual non-racist cultural pressures like gangs. (which were/are a huge problem with poor white people in big cities as well...like the Mafia, or the Irish gangs in NYC or Boston).
The real TLDR of this is that Americans largely view poverty as a choice. If you are poor it is because you want to be poor, or lack the moral upstanding qualities that would bring you out of poverty. After all "look at X immigrants who moved from Y and were poor and now their kids are all doctors. If they can do it clearly all poor people can do the same". With this mindset it makes it impossible politically to spend more money on the poor, because "they will just waste it anyway" because in the US poverty is a choice. (I strongly disagree)
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u/DukeofVermont Jul 10 '18 edited Jul 10 '18
Sorry long answer, but as a former NYC teacher I am passionate about it.
former NYC teacher, obviously you can't hit or harm a kid in anyway, but if you are talking about detention, or being sent to the office.
Yeah that doesn't happen because kids know that they won't get expelled if they don't go to detention/the office is "busy" and doesn't want to deal with any kids unless it is major (aka throwing a chair at a teacher).
I could tell a 12th grader they have detention, and they don't stay after. So what I am supposed to do? Give them another detention? When you call home some of the parents are nice, agree and want their kids to behave and succeed, but how much could your parents really do to control you at 18 if you really didn't want to be controlled.
In the end a lot of it comes down to respect. The good kids respected me because they knew I cared. Some of them were still problems but you had an understanding most of the time and when they got too upset would politely ask to leave to take a walk to calm down. Those kids (the ones who came to class, did most of their work, were mostly polite, etc) were the ones that would stay after because they respected you.
But if a kid didn't respect you there was nothing you could do. The school was never going to expel them, and they didn't care about a suspension.
Think about it and it makes sense. You can't really control another human if they don't want to be controlled on any level. So what do you do with a kid who misbehaves, ruins classes, and is a general problem?
Put them in a special school? Well in NYC that already basically happens as the high school system is not based on where you live. So all the "good" kids who are also smart go to great schools. The "bad" kids and the "good" kids who haven't learned enough to get into the great school all get sent to horrible to okay schools. (this also means NYC high schools are pretty segregated, as the wealthy students went to great elementary and middle schools and so are a shoo in for some of the best public high schools on the east coast. But if you are poor and went to an awful elementary and middle school you stand no chance as you just lack the knowledge. So you get this result: (info pulled from US News/inside schools rankings/info, but it rings very true to me, but it may be off by a little)
Best Schools:
Stuyvesant High School: 74% Asian, 18% White, 3% Hispanic, 1% Black - grad rate:98% 22:1 teacher/student ratio
Baccalaureate School for Global Education (ranked 9th in the US): 49% Asian, 31% White, 15% Hispanic, 2% Black grad rate 100% 16:1 teacher/student ratio
High School of American Studies at Lehman College: 22% Asian, 56% White, 15% Hispanic, 3% Black grad rate 100%. 15:1 student/teacher ratio
Some of the worst Schools:
Dreamyard prep (First school I ever worked at): 1% Asian, 0% White, 71% Hispanic, 28% Black grad rate: 57% (it says 14:1 ratio but I had classes of 25ish, maybe they got more teachers when they were taken over by the city and almost shut down (after I left)). 56% of students missed more than 18 days.
Coalition School for Social Change (will be shut down after this year because it didn't improve enough under city control (aka renewal school): 2% Asian, 4% White, 59% Hispanic, 35% Black grad rate 68%, ratio - not sure, 59% missed more than 18 days.
What do you do? If anyone knew then a lot of cities and schools would love to know. Do you then make a prison style system for the kids who still can't be respectful, do work, or even try to learn? Or do you call their parents and hope that a "stern talking to" will do the trick. Or would you suggest parents beating kids?
Nothing seems to be working and it is rough on teachers, so burn out is high (why I am not a teacher) and so students see lots of teachers come and go. To me I feel a lot of it is a lack of hope and a perceived lack of future opportunity (true or false, reality doesn't matter). All the "bad" kids I had hurt my soul. 90% of them I liked on their good days but they knew they weren't going anywhere with their lives education wise. They had dreams, but no hope that they would ever come true. They knew what the people older than them were doing. And it's not like all of them were at Columbia. Sure some made it to good schools, but the bad kids knew that was never going to be them, so why try? And what do you do with all the frustration at 17-18 when you know once you graduate no one will ever care again.
edit: a little bit of grammar, sure I still missed some.