American Education

My wife is a teacher. She has taught from kindergarten to 4th grade and back.
I don’t know the best way to go forward necessarily, but I know if the family does not care, the kid has no chance.
No system, no government, no method, no policy can make up for the parents bothering to give a fuck.

The largest problem in education today, from what I can see is parents. Everybody seems to think their child is the incarnation of God himself and they can do no wrong. You can spot a bad teacher, when their admonitions conflict with the history of the child, but frankly that is rare. Most of the time, your kid is an asshole. He gets that from home. Kids act different at home than they do at other places. I made peace with that fact a long time ago. I made it a point to make sure that I didn’t think my kids were not regular human beings.
That does not make me better, or my kids worse. It merely opened me to the fact that my kids may have issues, that are better addressed, then defending their honor beyond all costs.

Parents think their kids are all the chosen perfect beings. They are not, they are average, most of them. That’s not a bad thing. And if your teachers detect a problem and their is more than one teacher that makes that point, its not that the teacher is a bitch. Your kid made need help. Punishing the teacher or the school will never help you child.

We are programmed to believe our kids are without fault, blameless. They are human beings prone to error, my kids as well as yours. We have over burdened the school system to raise kids. My wife works in a title 1 school and several parents have expressed that very fact. But teachers cannot whip your kids ass, they cannot punish them, they cannot make your kids behave. Only parents can do that. if the parents do not take responsibility of their kids, if they leave it to the schools, then the cycle of failure will never end.
Parents and families are responsible for raising their kids. Schools can teach, only if the kids cooperate. If they don’t, it’s permanent chaos. If the families treat the schools as adversaries, the cycle of failure has no choice but to persist.

Make no mistake, some kids are assholes, real assholes. It comes from home. Age makes little difference when the kid comes to school smelling like a blunt.

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I wrote this in another thread. Seems relevant:

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I’d say that this is a very good indicator of the kinds of people who are tops in teaching and wpuld be drawn to it otherwise…I believe it reinforces my point earlier about not wanting to doeal with the crap of teaching primary/secondary.

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Reminds me of when I was in elementary school. I went to the school my mom taught at from 3rd grade to 5th grade and I always got in trouble for talking out of turn, being too fidgety, the usual super active boy stuff.

If I tried to give any explanation for why I did what I did that went against what the teacher said, my mom would say “I’m going to believe the teacher everytime.”

My best friend teaches music at a Title 1 high school and he said he has parents exactly like the ones you described. They side with the kids over the word of Teacher. When I told him about my Mom he simply said “she knows the truth.” Lol

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This same issue is noted with target-based, non-profit, educational systems too, ED. You can attempt to maximise the educational experience, or maximise the targets achieved. This is often directly tied to your budget as well.

Can you elaborate on what you mean by a ‘target-based educational system’?

I can elaborate on the UK experience if you like?

Basically, under the New Labour government in the 90’s till the mid 2000’s there was a push to measure 3 major testing sets. Key-stage 3’s, GCSE’s and A-Levels.

Funding would be tied to performance in these central exams. What happened, rather than a qualitative improvement in teaching standards, was a tendency to teach to the exams. It also further exacerbated funding issues for poor performing schools (axiomatically, the ones most in need of more resources, as they are often in impoverished areas).

Meanwhile, actual scores in literacy and mathematics remained stagnant, and there was a push towards softer subjects at A-level. The result was similar to the one you mentioned as a downside to a profit motivated school. Student performance/ educational experience took a backseat to hitting the target metric.

Does that make sense?

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Just some sources for the period when New labour ended. The problems still persist. I was incorrect as to the start date, it came in 1992 under the former Tory government, but no-one has touched them in 25 years.

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Legal–this is extremely similar to our problems here. Testing is not the same as educating.

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It is a difficult problem. When the public fisc is involved, people want to see measurable results for opening their wallet, but the very desire to justify the expenditure may devalue the impact of said expenditure.

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Well said. Quite a difficult problem indeed. I think in one form or other, any solution will include less standardized testing. You simply can’t quantify it all.

The only exception I could see would be if one were to implement a German or Japanese style education system where you filtered out anybody below X grade average yearly or periodically. However that goes against our American and British sensibilities that education ahould be available to all (one I quite agree with)

The shift in parenting is the single biggest problem in education, IMO. When I was in school, if I did something wrong, my mom sided with the teacher and I would get in trouble. There is a mom in my wife’s school, who’s child is disturbed, deeply, deeply disturbed. He is violent, hurts other students, hell he even kicked the AP in the eye in one if his tantrums. His mother blames the other students, the one’s he hit’s, pokes, pushes, etc. He’s been suspended 4 times, IN THE FIRST GRADE!
“Um, Houston, your kid is fucked up”
Mom tried to pull the race card, except most of the staff is black, so that didn’t work. It’s just amazing. He’s going to hurt someone bad and then it will be too late.

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@The_Myth

I had a thought, and was wondering what you thought of it. Would it be beneficial to have higher pay rates for teachers in lower achieving school districts and incentivising higher performing teachers to teach in these areas?

Also, do you think having a controlled teacher-pupil ratio in these areas be beneficial?

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Thats nothing. My wife got stabbed by a six year old. Then she was written up for not following procedure.

Because if you get stabbed by a six year old, you obviously did something wrong.

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She got written up? I weep I brought kids into this world. The last decent generation is alive now.

My wife was stabbed too by a 6 yr old too… Fortunately, he was at least suspended for…a day.

I think it’s a good idea, and NYC did something similar when I got hired to teach in Brooklyn - because it was an under performing school, I got an extra $4K per year. The problem was that when I took a job on Long Island, I made $15K more than I did in Brooklyn. Under performing schools are frequently in poor communities and the salaries reflect the meager resources of the community.

Another problem is tenure. If I’m tenured in my school, why would I leave? I’m essentially trapped in my district because I have a mortgage and two kids and there is no incentive great enough for me to risk my tenure.

If districts were to make tenure portable, I think you would have more teachers willing to try to make a difference in the under performing schools.[quote=“Legalsteel, post:233, topic:226179”]
Would it be beneficial to have higher pay rates for teachers in lower achieving school districts and incentivising higher performing teachers to teach in these areas?
[/quote]

With regards, to student teacher ratio, I believe research has proven that fewer students in a class room does correlate to higher achievement. In fact, the very expensive prep schools have a much lower ratio than public schools and are taught in more of a round table type model. If there are only eight kids in a class, it’s pretty hard to sneak by without doing the work or paying attention. In a class of thirty, it’s a lot easier to fall through the cracks.

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Fantastic article. As a parent of Latin geek, I love this. It’s not paywalled this morning, but please let me know if you can’t read it.

In light of our recent Bio of Race thread, notice the relevant thoughts. From the article, "'I have been an educator in the public schools for more than 20 years, and you are badly underestimating the reason [bad families, poverty, IQ, whatever] these kids aren’t learning.’ Translation: Black children, or at least inner-city black children, are ineducable. "

How wonderful to see this school, and others like it, prove them wrong.

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unfortunately paywalled, I just checked. :frowning:

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Well dang. I was able to get to it from RealClearPolitics this morning, so I was sure it was open. Sorry for the huge wall of text. Here it is.

Black Men Speaking Latin, WSJ
A dead language helps forge identity and esprit de corps, like boot camp for Marines.

Black men don’t do Latin. Or do they?

It may not be surprising to learn that a charter school named Boys’ Latin still offers courses in this dead language. But it is surprising to learn that this is an all-black school in an iffy part of West Philadelphia, and Latin isn’t merely an option here. It’s a requirement.

Turns out, too, that the young men of Boys’ Latin have become pretty good at distinguishing their ad hominem from their ad honorem. This month the school received the results on the introductory level National Latin Exam, a test taken last year by students around the world. Among the highlights: Two Boys’ Latin students had perfect scores; 60% of its seventh-graders were recognized for achievement, 20% for outstanding achievement; and the number of Boys’ Latin students who tested above the national average doubled from the year before.

“I invite anyone who doubts what this does for our students to come to a graduation and watch 100 black boys sharply dressed in caps and gowns and proudly reciting their school pledge in Latin,” says the school’s chief executive officer, David Hardy. “Not only is this an unexpected sight, it defies the low expectations society puts on young black men.”

The traditional arguments for studying Latin are well known. More than half of English words have Latin roots, so students who learn Latin improve their vocabularies and linguistic skills. In addition, the discipline of studying Latin—the logic, the structure, the rigor—helps train young minds to think more clearly and systematically.

All these arguments Mr. Hardy accepts and occasionally invokes himself. But for him Latin is also a way of addressing the most wretched fact of today’s Philly school system: Only 8% of young black men who graduate from one of the city’s public high schools will go on to a four-year college degree, according to a December 2015 longitudinal study called “From Diplomas to Degrees” by Drexel University’s Paul Harrington and Neeta Fogg.

Now, any columnist who notes the racial disparities in education, especially when coupled with a call for the parents of poor minority children to have more options when it comes to schools, invariably receives mail that begins like this: “I have been an educator in the public schools for more than 20 years, and you are badly underestimating the reason [bad families, poverty, IQ, whatever] these kids aren’t learning.”

Translation: Black children, or at least inner-city black children, are ineducable. Needless to say, Mr. Hardy and his merry band at Boys’ Latin hold a contrary view. In February they helped launch a campaign called #blackdegreesmatter to highlight why college, and the higher lifetime earnings it generally brings, is so vital for young black men.

It’s true Boys’ Latin is filled with all the challenges that come with West Philadelphia: neighborhood drug dealers, gangs, struggling single moms. You name it, Mr. Hardy says, Boys’ Latin has got it. The difference is the school refuses to accept it as an excuse for not achieving.

Why Latin? Partly it’s that the language immediately raises expectations all around. You can’t fake Latin, either. When these boys learn it, they taste the satisfaction that comes from achievement.

Partly it’s the school’s thing. Even if students hate Latin, says Mr. Hardy—maybe especially if they hate it—it’s something everyone at Boys’ Latin goes through, what boot camp at Parris Island is for Marines. It builds identity and esprit de corps.

It’s also what helps make Boys’ Latin attractive to the Philadelphia School Partnership, an influential group of donors whose mission is to get more of the city’s kids into great schools—and put more on the path to college. Since 2011, these men and women have spent nearly $60 million in private funding to help thousands of low-income students attend schools such as Boys’ Latin.

As long as the school is doing great things, folks at the Philadelphia School Partnership don’t care whether the institution they are supporting is a traditional public school, a charter school or a private school. When they look at Boys’ Latin, for example, what they see is this: a high school that sends more black boys to college than any other in Philly—and has a waiting list to get in.

Boys’ Latin is not without its critics, who point to so-so scores on state tests. Mr. Hardy argues that the scores, which have been rising, are still better than the alternatives for most young men in West Philly. For him the most important measure is that his students are getting their college degrees.

Young black males, Mr. Hardy says, get plenty of messages that they are not good enough, that excellence is beyond their reach and that college is for other people. The beauty of Boys’ Latin is that every day its students see examples of young black men challenging the reigning tropes of underachievement.

“Nobody expects black boys to do Latin, because it’s hard,” says Mr. Hardy. “And that’s exactly why we do it.”

Write to mcgurn@wsj.com.

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I tried and tried to steer my daughter to take latin, but noooo, she picked spanish. I tried to explain that not only is latin easier, but if she were to go into nursing or veterinary, it would help A LOT. Nope…
At least she didn’t take French…I don’t know anybody who passes French.

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