Why public schools are failing, black and white

[the]

Who said every parent is bad?

A school that has even 50% of its kids coming from broken, dysfunctional families who do not care about raising their kids properly, or about education, is going to be a rough place. Because it's ironically the disruptive, bad kids who consume most of the resources (teacher's time, etc.)

A private school is not inherently better or worse than a public school. As you seem to be agreeing, the success of the school is based on the PARENTS. It is financially unfortunate for you that you live in an area where the public schools are not as good, or better, than the private schools.

[widgeon13]

I think there is quite enough blame to include all party's, parents, teachers and the system.

Life circumstances have some bearing on where kids end up as well. My father-in-law introduced our son to aviation about 20 years ago. He was always a good kid and worked at school but never seemed to have something really excite his interest like aviation. He is now ATP rated in both fixed wing and rotary, is captain in S-76 and co-pilot in Falcon 900 and 2000. He truly loves what he does, has for the last 20 years. I wish I could take credit for his love of aviation but this kid flys like it was a sixth sense (not cocky, just comfortable). Somehow he got that knowledge and skill from his grandfather, who flew a Grumman amphib for 50 years.

I remember when he was in HS saying to my wife, "what is this kid going to do when he grows up". I think as parents we gave him the fundamentals and discipline but had it not been for his grandad, god knows what he would be doing today.

Mom and Dad couldn't be more proud but we can't take much credit for his skill in aviation.

[Taz's Master]

Public schools would be alot more successful if education were not compulsory. If education beyond the 8th grade had to be earned by meeting standards to be accepted for another year of schooling, you'd see a different attitude from society.

Of course maybe it is less expensive to throw money at the problem than to have a significant portion of the population with an 8th grade education.

But then the drop-outs could fill the labor gap created when we send the illegals back home.

[island_dude]

The problem with public schools is that it is a captive audience. They have to take everyone regardless of background, preparedness or parental involvement. Without a doubt there are lousy school systems that under-perform and will always do so no matter what amount of money is thrown at them.

In this thread, I see a lot of one size fits all statements of "truth" as well as generalizing from an anecdote. Neither represents the reality. My daughter was in an expensive private school. We decided to try the public elementary after a couple of issues cropped up. Surprisingly, she is doing much better in the local public elementary than in the private school. The chemistry seems to fit better for her. The school is well managed, funded, and successful. We have a mix of incomes and levels of participation.

This situation is different than the one that my Mother had in her teaching career. She had a real mess to contend with challenges at every level. The two situations are not comparable in any way. There are committed teachers in both environments -- some are not.

This much I can say: We as a country do not value teaching as a profession. In fact, the no Child Left behind act and many of the other "standards" driven solutions only emphasize the out right disdain our society has for teachers in general. "If the child fails it is the teacher who is responsible". "Pay for performance...". Its all crap. At the bottom of it all, everyone expects the teacher to perform miracles while earning crappy salaries and having everyone tell them exactly what to teach and how. The standards based curriculum of today leaves almost no leeway for actual teaching.

My new tenant earns just north of $40K a year with an MS. In the Boston area, she is practically at the poverty line. I can't see how anyone with any sense would go into the field given all of the responsibilities and few financial incentives. I recall some idiot in one of these threads counting up the number of class room hours and showing how the profession is such a cakewalk. He never bothered to consider all of the outside obligations that go with the job.

This is the sort of attitude that will bring this country down in no time.

[Jims5543]

Originally Posted by island_dude

In fact, the no Child Left behind act and many of the other "standards" driven solutions only emphasize the out right disdain our society has for teachers in general. "If the child fails it is the teacher who is responsible". "Pay for performance...". Its all crap. At the bottom of it all, everyone expects the teacher to perform miracles while earning crappy salaries and having everyone tell them exactly what to teach and how. The standards based curriculum of today leaves almost no leeway for actual teaching.

No child left behind is a joke. The school pre tests the kids, then decides which ones to pull out of normal classes to tutor on how to take the tests and then labels the hopeless ones as "learning disabled" and tosses them to the side, or leaves them behind. Learning disabled children do not count towards the schools score so the school knows to exclude them and get them out of the loop early.

When I was a child my teacher taught me the lesson, where this whole, its up to the parents to teach their kids, thing came from is beyond me. I remember LEARNING in school and then doing homework to prove to the teacher I knew what they taught me, if I bombed my homework the teacher would work with me and any others to make sure we got it.

Public Schools have done away with cognitive training, the building blocks of learning. They gear up for the tests right from the get go. Our kids are programmed to fill in circles correctly, forget everything else.

The part of your post that I quoted is why I pulled my son from Public and into private. The teachers are handcuffed, told what to do by government officials that have no clue how to educate a child and probably has never been in front of a class. Yet they will tell the teachers what to do. Government controlled anything is a clusterf*ck, why should schools be any different.

My kids are both in Montessori schools and the atmosphere is supportive and the teachers work hard, care and are compassionate. Something todays teachers lack, compassion. Especially the tenured ones.

[snowman]

There is absolutely NOTHING wrong with teaching to the test. If the test shows that the student knows the material, the student has succeeded and learned what was taught. NOT rocket science. There is NO place in elementary or high school for any far flung fancy concepts of learning, just the facts are needed. These facts form part of the basic tool set the student needs to go on to college, or work in a modern world. The point to remember is BASIC skills.
Educators (teachers) would have you beleive that some mind bending advanced kind set of skills need to be learned in grammar and high school. That is total BS. If the kids learn the contents of the test, they have learned all that is needed.

Unfortunately, for a good student, learning stops at the 8th grade level. Their next 4 years are generally wasted, except for the few that pass the advanced tests well enough to get college credit. Even then those students are generally not challenged and we waste a resource that could advance the world. Instead we spend on losers, people that will never contribute anything to the world of any significance. My oldest kid was valedictorian at one of the top schools in CA, gpa 4.25, class of 700 people. She never broke a sweat on any homework, worked a 30 to 40 hour a week job, was capt of cheer, had a rep for having fun at the beach, was homecoming princess (never ran for the position) and so forth. She got credit for almost 2 years of college when she graduated high school. The point I am going to make is that I KNOW her, very well, as I am her parent and I have spent a lot of time with her in her activities. She was only operating at about 25% of her capability. She and a LOT of other kids like her are going unchallenged. Challenging this group of people is critical to our nations success in the future as they will almost certainly be part of it and lead their generation to whatever their capabilities can provide. Not only are we not challenging these people we are SUPPRESSING their capabilities with political correct CRAP. You can put a thousand hours into a KIA and never have any thing but a KIA, but you can put one thousand hours into a Ferrari and win world championships. Our schools are putting the thousand hours into Edsel s!!

Back to the bottom line. It isn't the parents, the teachers, the students, its the SYSTEM. Scrap all support for public schools, they have FAILED and nothing will bring them back. I suggest vouchers, all the same value, good for any school. Only govt function is to report the statistics from whatever these schools put out. Parents are responsible for the quality of their kids education, there is no better interested party. Even bad parents will perform better than our govt schools.

[RickM]

Originally Posted by snowman

Public schools are failing for one very simple reason, we reward failure!!

The public schools are the only industry in the world where if you do bad, you get more money, ie a reward for failure.

"Merrill Lynch's Fired CEO Was No "Casualty" - He Caused Them!
by: krazypuppy
Tue Oct 30, 2007 at 12:42:30 PM CST

After putting in place irresponsible, fiscal policies and a culture of speculative, short-term thinking which led to the worst quarterly losses in Merrill Lynch's history, it only seems fitting to me that CEO Stan O'Neal should have been fired.

But here's the line that bothers me:

The still unfolding mortgage-related credit crisis has claimed its biggest corporate casualty so far: Merrill Lynch CEO Stan O'Neal.


Excuse me, but how is O'Neil, who earned $50 million a year as CEO, a "casualty"? O'Neil currently has accumulated $160 million in stocks and options at Merrill Lynch and his buy-out package is expected to be around $200 million. And now at the age of 56, this guy gets to "retire", as the business sections are calling his firing, and spend the rest of his life playing golf and enjoying the good life."

[berettafan]

POP the highest earning CPA's i have worked with/for have, to a man, been terrible writers with marginal to very poor grammar. not sure what that says but it's an odd occurence i have noticed.

[stomachmonkey]

Originally Posted by snowman

.....Even bad parents will perform better than our govt schools.

Uhm, yeah, right, sure.

[berettafan]

Originally Posted by Jim Cesiro

Every parent is bad?


Oh, and private schools seem to be a magnet that draws in parents that care.

they are a magnet alright. a magnet that pushes away poor (aka black, hispanic, blue collar, etc) folks and thereby reap the benefit of a student body that will tend to perform to higher standards.

in some cases a private school education will serve a child better than a public school education. those instances tend to be in areas with mixed incomes. i don't believe for a second that the teachers or administrators in private schools are of better quality (my limited experience has been exactly the opposite in fact and to a major degree) it's just that they are starting with better stock. to put it in honest terms there are less poor black/hispanic kids in private schools because their parents don't 'care' enough. result is less distractions for students and teachers alike.

Politicians saw this and knowing that a real solution (calling a spade a spade) would cost them votes they came up with this entirely bogus 'no child left behind' b.s. What is so maddening about it is that it so clearly was not offered with the intent of helping schools but rather deflecting attention away from politicos and allowing them to say 'hey, we gave you the answer you just aren't implementing it correctly'.

Snowman you need to read post #46 carefully. It is, sad to say, largely accurate.

[berettafan]

Originally Posted by snowman

There is absolutely NOTHING wrong with teaching to the test.

i had a college professor that taught to the test. took me an entire year and a LOT of hard work to recover from that injustice (he was an accounting professor). i knew the answers to his tests but learned very little about accounting from him.

the CPA exam is renowned (this will soon change) for being terribly difficult to pass. yet every partner/firm owner i have worked with/for has stated clearly that passing this exam proves you are a good test taker but tells nothing of your abilities in the real world.

[snowman]

One of my sisters passed the CPA test, first time, no sweat. She has her own firm now. Finding good people to work for her is her biggest problem. Sounds like a bunch of wives tales to me. Those that can do, those that can't make excuses, or tea.h. I can't say the word, to many in my family.

[berettafan]

ask your sister what she thinks about my comments. my guess is she will agree.

[Tobra]

Originally Posted by snowman

Yes, if those schools are failures. Send the students to successful schools.

tried that, busing, did not work, failing students did not want to learn any more sitting in a room full of interested students than they did in a room full of slackers

Originally Posted by berettafan

POP the highest earning CPA's i have worked with/for have, to a man, been terrible writers with marginal to very poor grammar. not sure what that says but it's an odd occurence i have noticed.

not so odd, some people are really good at math, some at language, not too many really good at both, I only got a 710 on the math part of the SAT, and I always liked math better than english

[berettafan]

okay, i don't mean to bully this thread with numerous posts but i gotta say the following in response to Tobra's bussing comment....

****ING A BROTHER!!!! It's about time somebody else around here saw vouchers for what they really are.

[BeerBurner]

Originally Posted by Jim Cesiro

Learning disabled children do not count towards the schools score so the school knows to exclude them and get them out of the loop early.

This is not true. Students with learning disabilities and emotional disabilities are generally expected to meet the same standards as the rest of the students, and the school's score reflects that of all students. (There are some exceptions, but those cases are relatively rare.)

BB.

[berettafan]

Beer that (Jim's statement) is essentially the case in the county my wife works in. Maybe it's different by state or county?

[Jims5543]

Originally Posted by berettafan

they are a magnet alright. a magnet that pushes away poor (aka black, hispanic, blue collar, etc) folks and thereby reap the benefit of a student body that will tend to perform to higher standards.

I had that preconception as well and was pretty nervous when signing our kids up that this would be the case. Its partially true, there is a spattering of Doctors and Lawyers with kids in the school, but, there is also quite a spattering of Blue Collar kids, one girl in my sons class, her mother works 2 jobs to be able to afford to send their daughter there, they also drive old cars and live in a simple home. Something I am heading back towards in an effort to keep my son in there as long as possible.

The school is also far from being white bread, its very multi cultural with Indian, Hispanic, Black, Oriental and I am sure other ethnicities I have missed. The really cool part? The kids all like each other, none of them stand out they all are mixed together and are similar, as well as compassionate and they all work hard not only for themselves but to help each other.

These kids also go to a local Pre-School once every other week for 2 hours to help with underprivileged children. They also co to a convalescent home once every other week to visit with older folks and keep them company. Read to them etc... They are also encouraged to participate in community services like beach cleanups, fund raisers that will not benefit the school.

I can go on and on but I can only tell you all the preconceptions I had were shattered once my kid began going there.

Same same goes for my 4 y/o his class is a total melting pot and he and his 2 friends are called the 3 musketeers in the class, the other 2, one is a black boy, the other is a little girl. The boy, his dad is an engineer with a magor power company and makes good money, the girl, dad drives a front end loader for a land clearing company. We are friends with both sets fo parents and they are both great people.

I am sorry, but saying private schools are only for rich white kids could not be further from the truth.

[Jims5543]

Originally Posted by BeerBurner

This is not true. Students with learning disabilities and emotional disabilities are generally expected to meet the same standards as the rest of the students, and the school's score reflects that of all students. (There are some exceptions, but those cases are relatively rare.)

BB.

Thats not what some Florida teachers told me. When I was fighting with my sons middle school, leading to him being pulled and put into private school, I spoke with a few teachers and they admitted they find the kids that will never pass the test, label them, learning disabled, and get them out of the way. This way they can concentrate on the kids that can be helped and have a shot at passing.

Its all about scoring an A on the tests if the school gets a D or lower they loose a LOT of money and then parents like me can get vouchers to put towards our kids private school tuition.

[BeerBurner]

Utlimately, students with learning disabilities are supposed to meet the same standards as the general student population. Now, there are ways that a student with a severe enough disability can be assessed by a different standard that does not count against the school, but that is something that should be a last-resort approach and not a broad-sweeping solution to the problem.

Granted, I'm working on VA standards and not FL standards, so there could be some state-to-state variances that I am not aware of. And I won't deny that there will be some abuse of the rules in the system as well.

That said, every student with LD/ED that I have taught had to meet the overall standards as the general popluation. At the middle school I taught at, we even had a few students with mental retardation who were assessed under those same standards.

BB.