Why public schools are failing, black and white

[berettafan]

to add to Jim's point i offer the following:

My wife is a teacher in the public school system here. She has told me that if our son were to be somehow learning disabled he would not be attending public schools for the very reason that Jim explained in the above post. Standardized testing has a LOT to do with how such children are treated and it is a CRIME!

I suspect a major factor in how serious this is in a particular school is how 'ambitious' the administrators are.

[BeerBurner]

Hmm... All I can say is that is messed up. I guess VA has it right then.

BB.

[berettafan]

now if you guys could just get rid of that personal property tax and those horrible traffic fines!

[BeerBurner]

Hey, one step at a time!

Seriously, though, this has me curious. I have been operating under the idea that all students with LD/ED are still assessed by the same standards as the general population. It's easy to do that here since that's what we do. I've got a class tonight and the professor knows far more about the legislation than I do so I'll ask what she has to say about all fo this.

BB.

[Jims5543]

You all are assuming these kids that are being excluded are truly disabled in some way that is not the case, most of them are just from bad families and have behavior issues and are tossed to the side.

My son was being pulled from one of his classes to be "tutored" because he scored weak in Language Arts, in class he is an A to B student in, but he does not score well in the fill in color the circle tests. The funny part was he scored well in math on those tests but was failing in class. This is where he REALLY needed the help but the school would not bother because he scored well in the standard test.

Do you see how backwards this is?

I ended up teaching him Algebra myself after receiving an interim report he was failing It was too late, his grades were so low he could not get them up. Plus the teacher was fired 3 quarters into the school year. So you tell me what was the problem? The next year he was getting B's in Math and then failing Language Arts a class he has always been an A student in. Then we find out the teacher has it in for him, humiliating him in front of the class etc... There is a thread on here about it. She was an old grouchy bat that hid behind Jesus when I called her out. This resulted in my son being basically attacked by administrators and I did not feel he was safe in that school anymore.

When that whole debacle was going on I was speaking with some teacher friends and they opened my eyes to the mess public schools are, I feel sorry for the teachers they are in the middle of a mess and its no wonder its hard to find any good ones.

[1fastredsc]

Forgot to add this to my last post. My high school used to try and modify their average testing scores by encouraging "troubled" students to drop out before their scores were counted. My friend who is extremely intelligent but lazy and has ADHD like you wouldn't believe was given one of those "drop out speeches", along with his mother, by his adviser after he turned 16. Sure enough he and many others dropped out, making our high school proficiency test scores on average artificially high.
One last thing to, the black and white train of thought on display from some of our members is flawed in that we all here think like adults. We understand the importance of education and it's influence on your life long career. However, and being young enough to remember, during these years of my life (5-17) i never understood or had a grasp of how important my education is. Hell the reality of it didn't even hit me until i was 19-20, i guess i'm a late bloomer. Anyhow my point is that a good teacher, besides being able to convey their knowledge which isn't easy itself, must also be able to get their students to understand just how important the material is for their future. And the idea that you should throw those other students who don't care out to the trash because this reality hasn't hit yet only makes for more problems. I probably would have been one of the many to be thrown out under some of the attitudes being displayed here, and i'd certainly regret it for a long time too knowing what i know now. Some of the more hardcore black and white visionaries here should take a moment to remember what their mindset was when they were children/pre-adolescents/teenagers.

[BeerBurner]

Jim, I understand what you are saying. In my county, the student has to be truly disabled to be exempt from the standard of learning testing (SOL testing... can they come up with a worse acronym???), and that is a very small segment of the population. The rest of them are held to the same standard.

Your situation sounds pretty unacceptable to me and I really can't think of any way to justify or defend it. All I can really say is that where I am, we base placement on more than just how they score on some test.

BB.

[snowman]

There is nothing wrong with standardized testing. There IS something wrong with putting every student into the same group, and expecting the same results from all of them. There is clear need for at least 3 groups, below average or challenged, average, and advanced. Then there should be two additional categories if funding can accommodate them, retarded, and gifted. I would be happy with just 3 genuine categories. But it will never happen in public schools, to much PC crap. Scrap public schools, thats the answer.