Public school teachers make up the largest, most accessible sector of the United States’ intellectual class.
They are the cannon fodder in the War on Thinking.
Public school teachers are the largest constituency that represents a government-funded social program.
They are the cannon fodder in the War to Starve Government.
They time my wife with a stopwatch. The government curriculum must be followed! An afternoon behind schedule, or ahead, and the warning letters come. No matter that the children struggle, or that having mastered the material, they sit despondent, bored. If her students learn too quickly, she is deemed out of compliance. If she takes time to explain, she is deemed out of compliance. If she is far enough out of compliance, she is deemed substandard.
In June 1862 the Harper’s Weekly published the following:
THE conduct of Mr. Stanly, the new military Governor of North Carolina, has naturally excited great attention it has raised the profoundly important inquiry whether the United States makes it a penal offense to teach any person to read and write. Doubtless the authorities at Washington will have disposed of Governor Stanly’s action before these lines are read. But the principle involved ought to be clearly understood by every citizen. The law of 1830 in North Carolina forbids all persons to teach “slaves” to read or write. Mr. Stanly’s order assumes that all blacks in the State are slaves. But they are not so, so that even upon his own technical ground his proceeding is unjustified. The United States, whose agent he is, does not assume that any man is a slave or a criminal until he is proved to be so.
It is now legal to teach the great-great grandchildren of slaves to read and write: it is merely made near impossible. Thus we enjoy the fruits of a century and a half of Emancipation.
The rich bring their children up to speak confidently, with the assumption of privilege to come. The poor duck their heads, assume their lot is unceasing, give up or explode in righteous, misdirected anger. The rich can better survive an alcoholic parent, a distracted parent, an absent or abusive or dead parent. The poor do not have ten-dollar copay childhood counseling included in their health plans, nor SUV rides to private tutors.
The ideologues dismiss the peeling paint, the nonexistent books with a wave. They declaim the futility of throwing money at problems caused by lack of money.
I graded tests for her last night, a trivial bit of help on a bad night, a gaze into the abyss. Every Scantron bubble wrongly darkened, every miscalculated fraction a mark against a birthright, and the viscid, monstrous trash who chase their tax cuts would deny the children even the pencils with which they make their mathematical errors. We bought the pencils instead.
I am a strong man. I could not bear her burden. Not one in fifty of you could, and I mean no insult. We who expect our jobs to end by nine P.M., we who do not mark a day as special when we can eat lunch or use the bathroom, we who do not have the lives of thirty people in our hands each day and watch them slip through our grasps: we cannot know the soul-gnawing that is a good day at work for Becky.
A few paragraphs down in that 1862 issue of the Harper’s Weekly, the reportage continued:
Whenever any especially inhuman and repulsive measure is proposed in Congress or elsewhere it receives the support of people who call themselves, and are called by their friends, “the conservative party.” Whenever a base and disgraceful interpretation is given to any clause of the National Constitution it is called by the same persons “the conservative view.” Whenever any rigorous and radical means of suppressing this cruel rebellion are suggested, they are malignantly resisted by the same “conservative” party and papers.
The best advice to give a new teacher: learn how not to cry until you are at home. I have known people in a thousand professions, and routine weeping is associated with but one. Sometimes the veterans chuckle through the tears. Sometimes, as last night, one tear erodes the penstocks, and ragged howls of anguish echo off the walls, nails clenched deep and cutting into palms.
The conservatives’ disdain for Becky’s work, their negligient hatred for her students, twists a dagger in her gut. I try to take the long and jaded view, but I do not lightly bear injury to my love, even in the abstract.
I do not wear hatred comfortably, but sometimes love compels it.
Thank you.
First of all, thanks to Becky for doing God’s work.
Now, for the tough part. I’m not the best spokesperson for public education. I was educated by the Jesuits until I hit my sophmore year of high school (when I went from an urban Catholic high school to a rural public high school).
That’s when I entered my first public school. Didn’t learn much I didn’t already know. And all my teachers were just as frustrated with the situation as I was. But local school boards, state mandates, etc. made it so that they couldn’t create too many special projects or reading lists just for me. So, I pretty much just sat around for three years and only took away new knowledge in chemistry and physics. Oh, and I do a mean steno. And I bet I made lots of teachers cry.
First much admiration and respect for Becky to continue in the profession, as it deteriorates into a quagmire of abject meaninglessness, destroying not just the children but the future as well. Were she made of weaker stuff, i would think she would have tried to get out by now, if not out, then at least to another district with more funds and less obstacles to success.
Few people understand what the job of a public school teacher has become in this country. Fewer people understand how public schools came into being, and from whence they obtained their curricula and structures. But it seems that nearly everyone feels perfectly competent to criticize teachers and the institutions. One of the several messages i communicated to teachers in training was: that they were choosing to enter a, perhaps the only, profession that required them to succeed in grad school (including getting in in the first place), and to continue to pass graduate level courses throughout their careers, while being underpaid and constantly criticized by nearly everyone else in the culture for nearly everything they do. Upon whose definition of merit does the quality of a teacher become evaluated? That of the public who seem to know so much about how kids should be taught? What makes all the public so aware of how public schools function?? What gives them the confidence to critique and demand this or that process or standard or testing regimen?? It would almost be too cliche’ to suggest that they gained this capacity through education?
Thanks Chris for pointing out some of the issues in a profession i loved dearly, but one from which i am so very happy to be retired. And now a little teacher humor food for thought.
Have you heard about the next planned “Survivor” show?
Three businessmen and three businesswomen will be dropped into 3 elementary school classrooms for 6 weeks. Each business person will be provided with a
copy of his/her school district’s curriculum, and a class of 28 students.
Each class will have five learning-disabled children, three with A.D.D., one gifted child, and two who speak limited English. Three will be labeled with severe behavior problems.
Each business person must complete lesson plans at least 3 days in advance with annotations for curriculum objectives and modify, organize, or create materials accordingly. They will be required to teach students, handle misconduct, implement technology, document attendance… write referrals, correct homework, make bulletin boards, compute grades, complete report cards… document benchmarks, communicate with parents, and arrange parent conferences, for starters.
They must also supervise recess and monitor the hallways. In addition, they will complete drills for fire, tornadoes, and shooting attacks.
They must attend 100 hours of workshops, faculty meetings, union meetings, and curriculum development meetings.
They must also tutor those students who are behind and strive to get their 2 non-English speaking children proficient enough to take the TAKS tests.
If they are sick or having a bad day, they must not let it show. Each day they must incorporate reading, writing, math, science, and social studies into their program. They must maintain discipline and provide an educationally stimulating environment at all times.
The business people will only have access to the golf course on the weekends, but on their new salary they will not be able to afford it anyway.
There will be no access to vendors who want to take them out to lunch, and lunch will be limited to 30 minutes.
On days when they do not have recess duty, the business people will be permitted to use the staff restroom as long as another survival candidate is supervising their class.
They will be provided with two, 40-minute planning periods per week while their students are at activity classes. If the copier is operable, they may make copies of necessary materials at this time.
The business people must continually advance their own education on their own time, and pay for this advanced training themselves. This can be accomplished by moonlighting at a second job or marrying someone with money.
The winner will be allowed to return to his or her former job.
WAY TO GO… THANK YOU TEACHERS…
Pass this to your friends who think teaching is easy and to the ones that know it is hard.
Tell Becky that for whatever it’s worth, there are lots of truly grateful parents out there.
And grateful non-parents, for what it’s worth. I’ve known a few public school teachers. Caring and dedicated all, and frustrated and stifled at every turn.
I am right there with you. My wife is leaving the public school system after 8 years because she just can’t stand it anymore.
“If her students learn too quickly, she is deemed out of compliance. If she takes time to explain, she is deemed out of compliance. If she is far enough out of compliance, she is deemed substandard.”
My wife teaches the low reading group amongst the third grade students at her school. She is encouraged to not give her students grades above a “D”. Because if they are receiving a “C” or better then they need to be moved out of the low reading group. This, to me, is ridiculous. If a student is starting to do a little better, that just means that being in the low reading group is helping. Students that are no longer challenged in the low reading group should clearly be moved to a more challenging group. But, to put an arbitrary cap on the grade they should receive is silly.
I posted the text below as a comment yesterday on the topic of bonuses for test scores.
My wife is leaving teaching. Why? Because, there is so much testing and so little positive reinforcement that she just can’t stand it anymore. She loves her students, and she really wants (wanted) to make a difference, but the system is now stacked so far against most teachers, that they are just treading educational quicksand.
Further emphasis on testing takes time away from teaching. Yes, testing needs to happen. Yes, performance bonuses for teachers that are doing good work might help to create incentives. But, first and foremost, teachers need the opportunity to teach. No matter what the wingnuts say, the bottom line is that teachers need smaller class sizes, more resources, and longer (or more) school days.
In most public schools today the average k-12 teacher is responsible for child psychology, parent counseling, special education, discipline, first aide, day care, family planning, document management, and oh yeah, teaching. Society expects teachers to teach morality, religion, and patriotism, and then get around to math, reading and writing. What about science, social studies, or the arts? Being phased out to make room for more tests. Society expects them to handle all of the crap that the parents don’t deal, then add in other crap like; “my child can’t participate in the Thanks Giving Day project because it’s against our religion”, or “you have to make sure Johny goes to the nurse three times a day to get his HIV meds”, or “you loose your prep period because you can’t send Darius to Gym because he has a personality disorder and he gets in too many fights” or….
The list of special needs or special concerns or special situations goes on and on, yet somehow a teacher with 30 students (most with “special” needs) is supposed to meet all of those individual needs and simultaneously teach the rest of the class.
That is why our schools are failing. Because parents don’t or can’t hold up their end of the bargain. Because society undervalues education, and somehow expects the teachers to magically make up the difference.
Janeen wrote
A whole lot fewer than there used to be. My wife has taught for 39 years, and over those years parents have become less and less help and more and more in the way. Never having read to their children, they wonder why their children can’t read. Having used television as a babysitter, they wonder why their children can’t decipher books—aren’t even interested in them. Having taken no responsibility for their children, they whine because someone else doesn’t do so. Accountability, like charity, begins at home.
I’ve taught in private schools my whole career, so I live in Neverland compared to your wife. Knowing what I do about teaching in the public schools, I know I would never do it, even though my salary would probably jump by $10K. Frankly, I don’t know how people do it and stay sane. I admire your wife and all those other dedicated teachers who stick it out in the public schools.
The problem isn’t the Becky’s of the world.(just the opposite) The problem is the system. Give parents the right to choose what school their child goes to and allow the money to follow the child to that school. This will allow teachers the chance to regain control over their domain. Yes, it will. It will put the emphasis on how to teach children. Parents will flock to schools that they feel teach children. They won’t flock to schools where there is stifling administrative burdens. Then Becky’s of the world will again be heros. (as they deserve)
I wondered how long it would be before a voucher apologist showed up.
First off: No private school could afford to run on a public school’s budget and with the legal requirement public schools have to teach every single child. You allow that tax money to accompany children to private schools, you’re depleting funds from the kids who no private school would touch.
Second off: that tax money does not belong to the parents, to be spent as they deign appropriate according to their whim. I have no kids, yet I pay the same property tax rate as does someone with eight kids. So does my neighbor whose kids are grown.
Those taxes are an investment in the general education, one that is little served by sociopathic advocacy of vouchers. I’m not paying taxes so that the reactionary twit community can siphon that money off to keep their kids away from Blacks and Latinos.
(Why is it that the people who would reform public education on a free market basis can so rarely type a correct sentence? That says something to me.)
Please note: scubajim’s little poorly-worded comment is the only one of its type I will allow to stand. This is not a forum for those who would dismantle the schools to advance their views. I don’t care if that seems unreasonable. People like scubajim are part of the reason Becky comes home crying, and part of the reason so many of her kids are doomed. This forum is closed to them. You don’t think that’s a fair stance on my part, feel free to complain over at Little Green Footballs. I am fucking fed up with it, and I do not want to hear it.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a mountain to climb.
The pattern is:
Well-off people can afford swimming pools and big jungle gyms in their backyards, so they stop supporting public parks.
Well-off people can afford to live in gated communities with private security forces, so they stop supporting public safety.
Well-off people can afford to buy all their books at Barnes & Noble, so they stop supporting public libraries.
Well-off people can afford to send their children to private schools, so they stop supporting public education.
And so our society unravels, bit by bit.
The most important part of the unravelling tapestry is education. Please thank Becky for me. I hate to admit it, but I couldn’t do what she does. My wife’s best friend, a junior high math teacher, gave up last year. She’s now much saner, unfortunately.
Oh, and for you voucher proponents: Let’s improve public golf courses by giving poor kids vouchers to play at elite private clubs.
“I am fucking fed up with it, and I do not want to hear it.”
RAmen!!
This is my 25th year as a classroom teacher. All but three of those have been spent in public schools (three years in an independent private school after being RIFed). I now teach middle schoolers how to read and write and keep their hands to themselves, along with a lot of other things.
You folks have no idea how much these comments - and Chris’s original post - mean to me, especially after the very demanding week I just had.
And please, spare those us of who do our jobs in public schools your nonsensical rhetoric about “choice.” “School choice” is about publicly-funded resegregation, period. I don’t get to choose who gets to be in my classroom. They show up. They’re mine. That’s why they call them “public” schools.
Wow, what a barn burner! I’ll not resort to profanity or name calling to make my point.
I am not surprised at your lack of evidence for your statements. People who “argue” emotionally don’t feel they need evidence just name calling. Appeal to emotion, while very effective to garner public opionion, it just isn’t effective to produce results.
My desire is that our children get a much better education. By our children I am including ALL children in the US. When I say our children I am refering to ALL the children in the US and I am not excluding any child due to their race, gender, ability or economic status. I am NOT refering to my children.
Further more I desire all of our children to get a much better general education. The only way for our children to get a better education is for us to allow and SUPPORT teachers to do that. If you read earlier comments in this you notice things like:
“But local school boards, state mandates, etc. made it so that they couldn’t create too many special projects or reading lists just for me. So, I pretty much just sat around for three years and only took away new knowledge in chemistry and physics.”
“If her students learn too quickly, she is deemed out of compliance. If she takes time to explain, she is deemed out of compliance. If she is far enough out of compliance, she is deemed substandard.”
“My wife teaches the low reading group amongst the third grade students at her school. She is encouraged to not give her students grades above a “Dâ€?. Because if they are receiving a “Câ€? or better then they need to be moved out of the low reading group. This, to me, is ridiculous. “
“But, first and foremost, teachers need the opportunity to teach.”
I agree whole heartedly with those comments. To me those comments indicate the control being taken away from teachers to do their job. In any job, if you assign responsibility without authority you are not in a good situation. I get the distinct feeling you have mistaken me for wanting to increase the burden and complexity of requirements on teachers. I don’t. I want teachers to have more control over what they do.
There is no evidence that under the current system a private school is less effecient than a public school. There is a lot of evidence that private schools are much more effecient than public schools. In my own community they spend about $8,000 per year for an elementry public school child. (More for special needs children) Yet, I can send two elementry school aged children to an excellent private school for about $9,000 a year total. Yes, almost half. (It is a school with a very small endowment so the children are not being subsidized and they are not on scholarships.)
Do some independent investigation. Look at the studies done on vouchers for poor children at Milwakee, WI. Think about the basic economic laws of supply and demand. Monopolys are not efficient and do not meet the needs of the customer. (students in this case) If you look at it from a business point of view the best businesses cater to those who are delivering the goods or service to the customer. In education those people who are delivering the service to the customer are teachers.
I feel you have a lot of misconceptions about my point of view. I hold teachers in high regard. Furthermore, they are critical to the sucess of a society.
If I had my way, I would like to see the following changes in the education system:
1. More days of school per year. We are way behind the rest of the world in this regard. Yes, that implies you have to pay teachers for that additional time. I don’t expect them to work for free or for less money.
2. Support systems designed to support teachers in their job. Your main delivery of the service (education) is via teachers (by definition) so you have to do everything to enable them to do their job. I don’t have anything specific in mind because I am not a teacher. The system has to be set up to work with teachers to support them in their work.
3. A lot less administrative overhead. The current system is quick to reduce teacher head count when they need to adjust budget. That makes no sense. Instead the current system needs to look at reducing non-teacher head count before reducing teacher head count.
4. Less monopolistic system. Competition drives quality. Yes, we need basic standards that everyone gets educated. Yes, vouchers would play a role. Money follows the student to any school they attend. Works rather well in places this has been tried. (see Europe for some additional examples)
5. Opportunities to teach the basics in more depth. Reading, the arts, writing, science, math, and history are very important. With more school days and support of teachers this goal should be more realistic.
I hope you have a nice walk. The fresh air will help to clear your head.
and the viscid, monstrous trash who chase their tax cuts would deny the children even the pencils with which they make their mathematical errors.
I hear you, brother.
My thanks to Becky and all the other teachers. I don’t think they’re doing “God’s work.” I think they’re doing Society’s work.
Does she cry all summer too? Most PS teachers are stiffs who couldn’t hack it in a real job. Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach. They say that for a reason…
scubajim should be given the “Unnecessary And Wholly Unfounded Snarky Condescension Award.” Cripes.
That aside, voucher proponents need to look at the evidence. I take it as a given that private schools are more efficient. Why? Because (for the most part) they pick and choose the students they take. Because they are largely exempted from the piles of mandates placed upon public schools by legislatures who believe (often with good motives) that teachers should fill in for parents. Because they pay their teachers much less. Etc.
I’ll note two items concerning scubajim’s list of prescriptions: there is a fundamental contradiction between his point 2 and point 3. He wants less overhead, but more teacher support. And I’m in favor of teaching fundamentals, but too often that’s code for “let’s not teach children to think for themselves” (I am not ascribing this intention to scubajim, at least not without evidence he shares this belief).
Lenny,
You’re an idiot. My mother has been a public school teacher for thirty-eight years. She has worked every summer for thirty-eight years. The work of teachers does not end when the students leave.
If people like Lenny think teaching is so easy, why don’t they teach?
I know there’s a lot of comments on here, so I am afraid mine will be lost among the shuffle.
Know this, both Chris and Becky. I am halfway through finishing my teaching certificate. I’ve quit once before for reasons similar to those listed above. I will not quit again.
Many potential teachers will hear the horror stories and bail before ever giving it a chance. I know, I was one of those. However, now I read a story like that and it energizes me.
I will teach high school physics. A subject that is not required to graduate any high school I know of, although it should be. I will do this because an understanding of how the world around us operates can only lead to greater progress as a society.
“Those who can’t teach wish they could.”
A friend sent me the URL to this blog. He and I discuss politics, current events, and so forth on a regular basis.
I recieved my teaching license in 1993 and was a substitute (I believe the U.S. usually terms them ‘supply’) teacher for three years. The mid-nineties were a time of educational budget cuts, and seeing years of substitute teaching, probably not even long term or term contracts for the most part, ahead of me, I decided to change professions. I miss teaching, but I don’t feel that I could go back, and keep my sanity.
I felt moved to post due to a few of the things said.
1. Please tell Becky that she should not ignore her own health and well-being, but for as long as she is able to stay in the system, she is helping the children who need it. I still feel guilty on some days, that I have let society down, being one of the ‘good ones’ who bailed ship.
2. Thank-you for your love and support of her. I was single when I taught, as were a number of the other substitute teachers I ran into… it was that much harder, not having someone to come home to, that understood.
3. scubajim: Canada hasn’t had to deal with the voucher system, and though I’ve read a number of articles pro and con, I’m still not confident I understand all the issues. However, one thing you aren’t addressing, which has been pointed out to you, is that Public schools take all children. You are either a zealous idealist, have lived a blindered life of an elite, or are dense, if you can not see that a ‘free market’ system will not necessarily support the ‘best’ teachers. It will support the values of those in power and those who desire to join them. The vast needs of students have already been eloquently stated…private schools will not be taking all these children in…public schools will become further ghettoized with the best and brightest going to the ‘better’ schools, and leaving the poorest, the most disenfranchised, the most problematic, the most vunerable students to flounder along as best they can.
Also, scubajim your comments were poorly worded, and I’m not even a strict watcher of spelling and grammer. Go re-read Chris Clarke’s response, he did not call you names, he did not make appeals to emotion, and he did give reasons for his postion. He swore once, when he said he was ‘fucking fed up’ with the voucher system being defended. He did not swear AT you, and, considering the strain he and his wife are under because of it, I hardly think one swear word for emphasis would shock you so much.
Lenny…
Like any job or profession there are people who do it well, and those who don’t. Where one lives and gets to work often changes how easy or hard it is to do their job. Yes, some teachers have it easy. Yes, some teachers don’t do a very good job. These are not the teachers in the majority, and I know from personal experience that sometimes they started out as ‘good’ teacher, before burn-out and stress took its toll.
I find you arrogant. While true, that in some areas of education of any kind, a teacher or professor may become distanced from their students and their profession, for the most part that isn’t the case. Also, the truly skilled person, who has a love of their subject matter, often want to teach, to pass that along. I doubt you’d make your remarks about the teachers at the Top Gun flight school, or at the Harvard medical school. I think you are being elitist to imply that those who teach in public schools only do so because they can’t work elsewhere. When that does happen, it is often because things have become so difficult that those who have any option to leave do, and those without many job options get hired by schools who in a crisis start hiring unqualified people.
I do not know why the above post inserted a smiley, it must have had to do with a punctuation typo. It also excluded a parentheses. And, I thought my location would post with my name, if it wasn’t noticed in the article, I’m writing from Canada. I was a substitute teacher in Nova Scotia, and am now currently working for the Federal Government in Ontario.
Points 2 and 3 aren’t contradictory. Currently the national average ratio for teachers to non-teachers in the public sector is about 50%. There isn’t mich variance from state to state from that percentage. I think you could keep the number of people running the place the same in total and shift the ratio to closer to 75% teachers to 25% non-teachers. There are plenty of tools and techniques that can improve teacher’s lives and lessen administrative burdens.
The system is currently topsy-turvy. Administration should be viewed as overhead and teachers as vital. (administration doesn’t teach children) You need some administrative duties, but not a 50% load. (10% administrative load would be great, but if we could only get to 25% that would be a great win for this society)
Yes, I want children to learn to think for themselves. I didn’t explicitly say so. I want them to be able to apply the principals and facts that they learn to real situations. I don’t want a bunch of parroting bobble heads for students.
Folks, the economy is global and getting more so each year. There are about 1 billion people in India and about 1.2 billion people in China. Of those 1 billion in India half of them are under the age of 15. (similar age-population distribution for China) Those youngsters are hungry for our jobs. Protectionism isn’t going to work. (and I don’t hate them, they are doing what is in their self interest; I wouldn’t expect them to do otherwise. I work with some very bright people from those countries. They are good people.)
The only way we are going to hope to stay competitive is to a fantastic job educating our children. Just throwing money at it isn’t going to help. Just cutting money isn’t goign to help either. We need to improve the system. Yes, if the children go to school more days we are going to have to fund it which means putting more money in. There is no free lunch.
Scubajim,
Lets take a look at some of the obvious problems with your ideas:
Private schools currently do not have to take everyone. So they are less likely to take the children with behavioral problems and severe learning disabilities. Additionally, they are much more likely to have family support with the teaching goals (if you pay $9,000 a year out-of-pocket you expect your child to do the damn homework!) And they frequently pay their teachers less. All of these aspects lead to much less overhead and a more efficient learning environment.
What do you think your costs would be if those children with behavioral problems and severe learning disabilities could go to your child’s school? And what if the parents didn’t have to be able to dig up $9,000, but only $1,000 ($8,000 from the voucher)? Do you think that maybe costs would go up? And maybe the learning environment would be hampered?
Lets also take a look at the schools themselves. You seem to be under the impression that competition drives quality - which seems unlikely when a nebulous goal like “education” is invoked. But I don’t see how that would work. Lets take schools A, B, and C. A has good testing scores, B has average, and C has poor scores. At the end of the year, every parent applies to send their child to school A, with B as a backup and C as the last choice. The administrators are not stupid, so they jack up the prices at school A, and so do the ones at school B. So now to go to school A it is $9,000 plus the school voucher. How is that a better system than what we have now? The rich will get edjucated, and the poor will not.
Maybe you should think this whole idea through again.
KaVry:
The difference between Top Gun instructors/Harvard med school profs vs. PS teachers is that the former have proven themselves among the best in their professions, whereas the latter… well, they will show up.
One of my parents worked in a PS for 10 years, so I DO understand how the racket works. You can bullshit the world if you like, but you can’t bullshit good ol’ Lenny!
scubajim, it sounds like you recognize the importance of public education. Many voucher proponents don’t. You say that just throwing money at the problem won’t work. Too often that is code for “we need to cut funding” but you seem also to recognize the need for additional funding for public education.
Lenny,
You are a disgusting, vile human being.
Cheeto,
Let me point out that I send 2 children to a private school for $9,000 a year. That is $4,500 per year per child.(the 6th grader costs a little more than the 2nd grader, but on average it is $4,500 for my children) The local public elementry school gets $8,000 per year per child for children that do not have any additional special needs. If the child has special needs the school gets more money. (not unreasonable)
There is no reason why private schools wouldn’t take special needs children. The law says the government has to provide an education for them not that the government has to supply the education. The diffence being that the government can have a private party provide them with an education.
You are making an assumption that private schools won’t, for the additional funding - which public schools in Oregen get - take special needs children. Not a valid assumption. There are private schools especially for special needs children. (I had two sisters that attended them.) I am not for leaving them out in the cold.
I’ll tell you what I would back a school voucher plan that only applied to students who’s families are 200% or lower than the Federal poverty level. (http://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty/03poverty.htm) So a family of 4 making less than $36,800 in 2003 dollars would be eligible. I think the effect would be positive enough that the benefit would “leak” out to more affluent areas.
More affluent people have a form of school choice presently. The more affluent you are the more freedom you have to choose where you live. As any Real Estate Agent will tell you people usually choose homes and condos based upon the quality of schools in their area. People on the short end of the economic stick get a heck of a lot less choice. So they are stuck with crap. (usually) Ironically, I am for giving them more economic power by letting them vote with their dollars. They aren’t morons. I strongly believe they will use those dollars to better their children. (by choosing where the dollars go)
I don’t want the dollars to go towards fanatical religios schooling. But trying to control it takes away the options of allowing the individual to decide.
scubajim…
On this, I totally agree with you, “We need to improve the system”. In the meantime though, kids still need to be in school, and teacher’s still need a decent working environment, and hopefully somewhere along the way, some actual teaching and learning happen.
I still don’t see you responding to what we do with all the kids that aren’t fitting into either the cookie-cutter public school (curriculum/test driven in ways that don’t take in different abilities) or the pre-screened private schools. Let’s go over the list again: Physical disabilities, Mental disabilities, a laundry list of ‘special needs’: Behavioural problems, ADD, Abused children (physically and mentally), Children who have been traumatized, Immigrant children who have poor English abilities and different cultural norms, Children whose parents are in active military duty, Children who are in gangs, Children who have to work part-time (this includes older grade school/middle school chilrend…paper routes, help in family run businesses, etc), Children who have one or more parents/family in prison, Children with AIDS, Children born with drug addictions, Children that are alcoholics or addicted to drugs, Children that are being prostituted, Children with Fetal Alcohol Affect, Children with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, Gifted children, Autistic children, Children that have seizures for any number of reasons, Schizophrenic Children (that would be the upper end of grade school at the earliest, and middle school/jr. high), Psychopathic Children, Children grieving (death of parent/s; siblings; other family; friends), Children that can’t speak, can’t hear, can’t walk, can’t hold a pencil, can’t move on their own….
... Anyone else want to add to the list?
I substituted for three years in what is now the capital city of Nova Scotia, Halifax, but before amalgamation was three seperate school boards (Halifax/Dartmouth/Sackville). It has a metero population of about 450,000. I taught mostly jr./sr. high school, but also some elementary. Some jr./sr. high schools were set up with ‘middle school’ arrangements, some were not. I worked about 3 days a week, on average…sometimes for more than one school/school board within the same day.
I saw and often taught, children with almost every problem I listed above. I can’t even imagine what it would be like in places like Baltimore, New York city, Chicago….within Canada, I’d be equally overwhelmed by schools within Toronto, Vancouver’s East Side, Winnipeg.
If you are a caring person, it burns you out. I had a hard time dealing with the emotions of knowing that 13-15 year old girls were working as prostitutes. I was distressed to see the severely inappropriate behaviours of the majority of a small special education class I taught, knowing that the majority of them had been sexually abused by family members. Luckily, there wasn’t much gang violence, and most the racial tension wasn’t violent… but… I still was apprehensive when a student I had issues with, walking ahead of me in a busy hallway said to his friend loudly, ‘yeah, I reallly want to kill the bitch’ and looked over his shoulder and stared at me. What could I report? I’m a substitute, I get called in based on not causing undue problems for admin. and I had no proof he meant me, and no one I could grab in a fast paced hallway and say, ‘did you hear what he said’. No witness, his word against mine. I let it ride.
So, scubajim… what do we do with all these kids? What sorts of solutions do you see a voucher system offering?
Re: Lenny, you are a vile and disgusting human being!
I am? Really? For daring to express a valid viewpoint based on my firsthand experience? Does this mean we’re not buddies anymore? I’m always impressed by the tolerance for different views displayed by the liberals! I forgive you your trespass.
Love,
Lenny
i think chris made it very clear that his post is not a forum for the likes of scubajim and lenny. you guys want schools to be better? go help a teacher—by doing what she needs done. go help a class. donate supplies.
quit talking and start working. go help deal with 20-30 little rascals who are eager to learn [or, settle them down, get to know them, and help them get eager]. do that for about 180-200 days a year. THEN, you can rant on about the public schools.
becky, you are an angel. for every kid who makes it, there are at least a dozen such angels behind them. i wish your work was honored as much as it deserves to be.
Yeeeeah, “teachers are people who couldn’t hack it in a real job” sure is a valid viewpoint, and is adding enormously to the quality of this discussion. Also, I’m having difficulty figuring out how “blatant trolling” is a view.
You’re not fooling anyone, asshat.
If Lenny’s parent really was a teacher for 10 years and considered it a “racket” he/she certainly dropped the ball at home.
Who would I be trying to fool? Lenny keeps it real at all times.
Fox1: I’m sure that’s not the only thing you have trouble figuring out.
BTW, teachers are tax funded, so they get a cut of every working persons take. So see, the likes of scubajim and lenny do help! You’re welcome! No more tears, ladies, it’s almost summer.
Also, 35k or so is pretty good for a soft indoor part-time job, at least in the opinion of this working man.
Since diversity of opinion is clearly frowned upon here, I will sign off. You may consider yourselves educated, and enjoy your pity party.
Kathy,
Please point out where I made any disrespectful statements about teachers in general or Becky in particular. To lump Lenny and I together is rather silly. I don’t support Lenny’s point of view at all.
For your information my wife and I do volunteer helping teachers in classrooms. Do I help them in a classroom 180 to 200 days a year? No, I don’t. I have a full time job and there is no way I can help that much.
My wife is very artistic and so she volunteers by running an Art Literacy project. She gets the materials together, she gets other parents volunteer, and she spends a considerable number of hours each month helping teach art literacy in the classroom. She worked as a full time jeweler for over 20 years and loves art. She has a real talent for it.
I am not artistic. I help students who do not speak English as a first language improve their Englsh. I also help them with their homework. It can be quite a challenge because I don’t speak their first language. I also spend time with youngsters trying to encourage those interested in engineering. (First Lego League) All of these efforts are volunteer.
Frankly Kathy you would be more effective with critical thinking skills.
“Fox1: I’m sure that’s not the only thing you have trouble figuring out.”
A zinger of the first order, to be sure! The loss of your devasting wit on this page only adds to the pain, I’m sure, of losing your valuable, “diverse” opinions!
I hope someone else comes along to provide the valuable counterpoint of mocking others for crying and informing us who “has it easy.”
Meanwhile over on Pharyngula...
Now that is a good idea. Lock in existing public school funding at pre-voucher rates allowing for inflation and population growth, then add funding specifically for the voucher system. I have never been a voucher supporter, but that version might actually do some good.
Oh yeah almost forgot, Lenny you’re a scum bag:
“Also, 35k or so is pretty good for a soft indoor part-time job, at least in the opinion of this working man.”
If you really believe that teachers are working a “soft indoor part-time job” then you truly are a moron.
“...Most PS teachers are stiffs who couldn’t hack it in a real job. Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach. They say that for a reason…”
Lenny, my man, you wouldn’t last five minutes in my classroom. My eighth graders would eat your lunch and make you watch while they did it. What “real job” do you do, anyway? Did I miss that?
And there’s a reason why “they say that.” It’s because “they” are idiots.
Still sitting here waiting for a valid argument from you. Gonna be a long wait… Why bother?
Who would I be trying to fool? Lenny keeps it real at all times.
Man, I love it when morons refer to themselves in the first person.
I’ve done physical labor before… spent a summer in college working on a construction crew in LA after the Northridge quake, another one working as a maintainance worker and janitor at a church, and yet another painting an entire parochial school.
I’ve been teaching for 10 years now, and not only is it more emotionally draining than these other jobs, it’s just as physically demanding as construction. No shit.
I don’t sit down the entire day, unless it’s to play piano (I’m a music teacher). I’m constantly moving. I spend a huge amount of the day conducting and singing, and if you think that’s not a big deal I encourage you to spend several hours a day with your arms in the air or doing crunches… conducting’s a hell of an upper-body aerobic workout, and singing is much more physical than people suspect. Plus, I’m very animated and intense in the classroom, and this takes a physical toll as well. For many years, I’d be at school at 7 AM and leave my classroom at 6 PM to go to my second job as a community college voice teacher, my third job as conductor of a large gay men’s chorus, or my fourth job as a church choir director. I’d get home between 10 and midnight, check email and sleep for a few hours, and get up to do it all over again. Every day.
(Oops. Hit “submit” instead of “preview.”)
So, when people talk about teaching as not being a “real job,” I pretty much realize that I’m talking with someone whose opinion I can safely ignore due to their cluelessness.
Chris, this was a lovely post. I know how discouraged Becky gets, but having met her I get the sense that she’s awesome at her work.
My son goes to an inner city high-school.
A girl in his chemistry asked the teacher if she could get together with her to get some additional help.
Teacher said no - learn it on your own.
My son spend his middle school classes doing “handouts” while the teachers (some - not all teachers I imagine, or at least I hope) browsed the internet.
It seems our worst schools have the worst teachers. Is there anyway more funding would get rid of the teachers that are wasting space?
I almost hesitate to raise my chrome dome above the wall in this shootout, but the simple fact is that by focusing on chosen anecdotal details, one can take either ‘side’ and be right enough to argue passionately.
Yes, teaching is an impossible job; I could not do it (though I used to volunteer a lot at the school when my kids were young). But while defending against a completely dysfunctional school system, teachers’ unions have made it impossible to pick out dysfunctional teachers. That is one pair of realities.
And the system is stunningly dysfunctional, mostly because there are way too many cooks composing the broth. There isn’t a special-interest group in the country that hasn’t got its fingers into the curriculum process or the production and choosing of textbooks. It’s a wonder our teachers can even move in the straightjacket of conflicting requirements.
With so much pressure to ‘fix’ education (driven by idiot politicians who are sure they know how) there is little room for trying different things. Have an idea for a newspaper-based history/math/science curriculum? Using Larry Gonick’s Cartoon Guide To Chemistry as a textbook? An art class in ‘Cartooning as a communication skill”? Sounds interesting, but you might as well forget it.
Another pair of realities is that, although the criticisms raised of vouchers have merit, that system does work well in countries where it is the norm. And it is really unfair to characterize every parent who wants their kids out of a lousy school as a racist.
Yet another pair of realities is that classrooms are often pathologically boring places. I am convinced that this is the cause of many ‘behavioral problems’, and certainly worsens those which stem from parental neglect.
But how, in the straightjacket, could the teacher possibly make the curriculum interesting? Another pair of realities is that teachers sometimes have to compete with the internet for students’ attention, in classrooms full of computers installed at the end of ‘technology will fix everything’ campaigns. And yet, education certainly could use technology in places, if anybody knew which technology, and when, and how.
I apologize for the length of this comment for such a tiny point as this: for all the problems that vouchers have, it may be the only way for schools to escape the clutches of monomaniacal, federally-driven education theories and explore more innovative methods.
Decrepit, that’s the kind of thoughtful comment - about vouchers or any other subject - that I truly appreciate whether I agree with it or not. Thanks.
scubajim, I prefer Lenny’s approach. You responded to a direct and rather pointedly worded request by saying some pious crap about politeness and forging on ahead. At least Lenny’s upfront about being a dickhead.
Let me repeat: I did not write this to give you a forum to advocate defunding the schools. You claim with one side of your mouth to admire teachers, but you jumped like a vulture on this topic to advocate defunding them with the other side of your mouth. That pisses me off, and I find it an insult to my wife and her colleagues.
In short: go away. Is that clear enough for you? Take your smarmy fake respect somewhere where people might buy it.
We do not have vouchers where I am from but we do have choice. Parents can choose from a variety of options- bilingual programs, girls academies, sports schools , “army” schools, dance schools, or their neighbourhood school. There are also home school hybrid options.
Does it make it better- to some degree. There was a recent article in Macleans magazine about how California is looking into this. There are benefits to making a school user friendly. Staff are able to use their talents in a more specialized way if they choose to.
Unfortunately there is still bureaucracy, and tonnes of it. I think it is the nature of the beast as we live in such a big society.
Hopefully life gets better for your wife. I work with small children and I cannot imagine how much work their is when you move up in grades.
Parents can choose from a variety of options- bilingual programs, girls academies, sports schools , “army� schools, dance schools, or their neighbourhood school.
And thoughtfully implemented, “magnet” school programs are wonderful things.
There are also home school hybrid options.
Which is what every child’s public school experience ought to be. Every child should be home schooled, even if she attends P.S. 141592 five days a week.
scubajim, do yourself the favor of arguing honestly. It’s good for the brain.
Sorry to leave you hanging there Charles, but scubajim’s last trollish comment went bye-bye, and he won’t be coming back any longer.
No apology necessary.
Chris,
I was thinking more about your comment, “Every child should be home schooled.” I’m lucky: All four of my grandparents had college degrees. The idea that I might not go to college never even occurred to me. Thanks to my parents, I figured out how to read before my fourth birthday (only two years behind you!). All the kids I grew up with came from families who also took it for granted just how important school was.
Obviously, others are not so lucky. Every day I see people who don’t even talk to their babies. Those kids then start kindergarten not even knowing what letters are. Without friends and family to push them along they have no realistic hope of ever catching up.
No one talks much about Head Start anymore, it seems, since it was cut back some years ago. If someone knows about any other program that has done anything to get kids on track before they start school I’d like to hear about it.
charles—not a one of my grandparents had a college degree. both of my grandmothers started college, and dropped out after a semester or a year to marry. the grandfathers never enrolled. still—family encouragement and opportunities count for a lot.
chris—your comment about every child needing to be home schooled is so good, so true. i know for a fact that caring adults have wisdom to share—sometimes the wisdom comes from formal education, and many times it comes from other experiences. some of those moments can help shape a life in the most lovely ways. we never really know which moments will count in the long haul, so i guess it makes sense to do the best we can at each moment.
sorry for sounding sappy. i think good intentions + time + doing interesting things with kids (or all that boring repetitious learning-to-read or learning-math stuff) = a benefit for every kid so fortunate.
I haven’t read all three pages of comments, but to Lenny’s comments I’ll just quote one of my favorite quotes about teaching: that it’s “the easiest job in the world to do badly and the hardest job in the world to do well.” I know teachers who don’t try and don’t care, and yes, they last longer because of it. And I know teachers like Becky. Like so many other groups of people, the teaching profession includes a wide array of very different individuals and no generalization can cover all of them.
I’ve been working toward my certification for a long time, because after my second stint of student teaching I got so depressed I couldn’t move—precisely because I was facing what Chris Clarke describes. So I’ve taken 18 months off for lots of therapy and a little medication (more luxuries that most of our students don’t have!), and am now trying again to finish up and actually get a teaching job.
This is actually my second detour: I have always wanted to be a teacher but the first time I worked in a school I got so depressed I didn’t come back for ten years.
As a white student in a privileged neighborhood growing up, I went to “good” public schools and had no idea what was going on in the schools for “everyone else.” Seeing it first-hand is a daily shock and horror. I’ve seen much more blatant racism and discrimination in school than anywhere else, thanks to those teachers mentioned above, the non-Beckys, who don’t try and don’t care—and some of whom went into the profession just out of sadism, in my opinion.
But it’s the Beckys of the profession who provide a relief from those others, and keep each other strong. I hope Becky will prioritize her health and sanity (without which she can’t help others, after all). That said, as long as she can hang in there, I am so grateful to her. As her future colleague, I know I will need people like her as comrades in arms against this inhumane and destructive system.
One of the messages I want my students to get is they should do their best, but if they can’t make it in these horrendous school conditions, that doesn’t mean that they should consider themselves idiots and losers who will never make it in life. There are many intelligent and ultimately successful people for whom school (even in less draconian days) was just not a good environment. I’m not sure how to convey this to them, since I don’t want them to de-prioritize working hard in school—although my sense is that every student wants to succeed in school and feels terrible when they don’t, even if, after enough years of failure, they begin to act as though they don’t care.
The sad thing is that there is not enough of a movement against these trends in school, because the teachers—the ones who best understand what’s going on and what’s at stake—are too busy and exhausted to create a movement. What can be done about that?
It looks like there are a lot of passionate PS teachers here. First let me say I applaud every minute you spend in that classroom. Especially for those in the worst schools, I don’t know how you do it.
I thought this forum might be a good place to ask some questions that have been simmering in my head ever since my own harrowing public school experience.
1) If you love to teach, why would you want to be a public school teacher? I love to teach, so I tutor at my university, and I’m planning on becoming a professor. Community colleges, liberal arts colleges, and private schools seem like the places for teaching; so what attracts you guys to the public schools?
2) Should public schools really be involved in so much behavior management/parenting? Especially at the high school level? Based on my limited knowledge of educational psychology, is seems that there is no point in teaching if a person has no desire to learn. It is the person who does the learning, there is no way to force it on him.
Current public tracking systems seem to break down into 4 tracks: juvenile delinquent, special-ed, normal/vocational, Gifted/AP/Honors/College prep. There is no track here for the vast majority of low-performing students, the apathetic behavior case. Kids who don’t do homework, don’t care about academics, disrupt class, and just kind of slide along through the system, meanwhile lowering the standards for everyone else. In short, any kid who the teacher feels they have to parent instead of teach.
I’ve been wondering, what if teachers had the option of instantly sending any non-academically focused student over into a new, non-academic track? Facilities for these kids would be some sort of general behavior/parenting track. The problem is, what the heck do you do with the kids on this track besides pretend to teach them stuff?
It seems that public schools are weighed down with the burden of having to present the illusion of instruction to kids who don’t want to learn. Things like talking to a group of kids who are asleep/browsing the internet/doodling, etc. At the same time these kids are annoyed by the school system’s desire for them to present the illusion of having learned something. They have to pass the exit exam after the 5th attempt, cheat on tests, etc. All public school does for kids like these is make them miserable and cynical.
The problem is the public seems to think there is no alternative. No one has come up with an alternative program for what to do with all these slacker kids.
I think the problem is we pay too much attention to parents and not enough to the actual person whose life it is. Many of these kids have other interests besides homework and reading censored committee-written textbooks. They want to start a business, play sports, rap, make art, etc. Frankly I don’t see why they can’t just be provided a supervised place to do all these things, kind of like a day care or summer camp. At some point in the future many of them will mature to the point where they genuinely desire to learn, and at that point they will just enter community college. From my experience and observations, a motivated 20-something person of average intelligence, newly desirous of college education, can garner himself a decent high school level education simply by browsing the internet, reading books, listening to TTC lectures, etc; so I don’t see any point in forcing him to endure classes for which he isn’t ready and is only going to disrupt and slow down. I myself am a high school dropout who had a 2.0 average, was in a terrible public school in New Orleans after being kicked out of numerous private schools, hated most of my classes, etc. All public school did for me was make me suspicious of the government, cynical about the world in general, and just plain miserable. Now I’m 26, extremely happy, and about to graduate college with two majors, a 3.6 GPA and a pick of graduate schools. What’s wrong with this system?
Its odd to me that in America, the land of the “individual,” we have this communitarian need to “educate all children” (and all at the same rate I might add) whether they like it or not. I think some people just need time to develop a potential for education, and the everyone-graduates-when-they’re-18 model is just plain unscientific. Some people should graduate at 16, others at 30. I believe A.S. Neill had basically this same philosophy, just wait for the person to desire learning on their own and forget about forcing it. Wouldn’t you guys rather come to work and meet 30 students who are there because they are eager to learn something, not because they all happen to be the same age?
I should add that my system isn’t actually all that different from what actually goes on currently for many of these kids, it just provides encouragement and freedom instead of a prison-like atmosphere and the illusion of academic education.
J Gambrell, I appreciate that you are well-meaning, but from my experience (which has been heavily tilted toward “at-risk” students ages 10 to 14), every child wants to learn and succeed. The students you are referring to have almost literally had that beaten out of them.
The solution is not to shunt all those kids off somewhere where we can be sure they will never have a chance in life, but to change the system so that it doesn’t kill every ounce of curiosity and willingness to take risks before they turn 14.
Tracking was developed out of the eugenics movement, which you should research if you’re not familiar with it; basically it was an attempt to scientifically justify racism. Unfortunately for its proponents, Hitler (whose “philosophy” was a direct outgrowth of the movement) gave eugenics a bad name. Nonetheless, we still have many relics from the era when it was a mainstream ideology, including tracking in school.
There are piles and piles of research showing what kind of curriculum and classroom creates the best learning environment for *all* students and gives *all* students a chance to succeed. I urge you, if you are interested, to explore the genuine social-science research (with a critical eye to methodology, of course). We know what works. It has been proven over and over.
But for many reasons, we don’t have those schools. These reasons include (1) the free-market-ideologues’ war on public services of all kinds including education, (2) the religious right’s war on secular education, (3) wealthy parents’ focus on what is good for *their* children at the expense of others (because if schools did a good job of educating *all* children, how would rich kids have the advantages to which they firmly believe they’re entitled?), and (4) almost total illiteracy in (and distrust of) social science research among the overwhelming majority of U.S. adults.
Reason #4 explains why everyone who has ever set foot in a classroom seems to think that they can just pull school reform ideas out of their, uh, ears without ever taking the trouble to explore what others have learned from careful study of schools and the psychology of learning.
Our “common sense” is not useful here. It is too much shaped by our own unique school experience, our position in the hierarchies of race and class, the random anecdotes of our friends, etc. Our “common sense” will give us solutions like the one J Gambrell (and scubajim, and others) propose, which despite good intentions would be hideously unfair and damaging to the majority of students.
Please, if you are interested in this topic, read and research and learn. We *know* how to create good schools for all students. We just have to have the political will and the *numbers* to insist and demand and not be satisfied until those schools come into existence in the U.S. And perhaps most important, we also have to want schools that are good for all students, not just “my” child.
vcrs,
I have read plenty of research on education, thank you very much. As for education being a science, well, when I ask psychologists or economists if education is a social science, I get answers along the lines of “Well it SHOULD be…but.”
My ideas do not come “out of my ears” but come from years of reflection. Oh and thanks for telling me who Hitler was, don’t know how I missed that! What I’m saying isn’t radical crazy-talk, I’m just saying that I think the main problems with public education are sociological and social psychological. I think the pedagogical and funding problems are relatively minor and manageable issues.
I agree that, at birth, every (healthy) child wants to learn. I think Piaget demonstrated this quite well. By the time they reach middle or high school however, you cannot just assume that their innate drive for learning is directed at school. Many kids fulfill this need in other ways, such as learning to play video games, learning rap lyrics, etc. Why should everyone love to read and do math?
Frankly, the research I read contradicts your if-you-build-it-they-will-come position. You cannot just build the perfect school system and expect all people to learn. Your attitude is entirely teacher/system/process oriented. You are ignoring the person himself! It is that kind of thinking that leads to unrealistic one-size-fits-all systems.
If you think you can build a system that delivers 100% success, then I think you have been watching too many infomercials. Even the best programs have bell curves going in, and bell curves coming out. No system is going to suddenly produce a bunch of clones, nor should it. And no system is going to work if there are people disrupting class. I sat through one class in middle school where a student actually dribbled a basketball all through class and bounced it off the blackboard whenever the teacher turned around. The teacher was too intimidated to do anything about it (and no this wasn’t some nightmare ghetto school with leaky ceilings, this school had plenty of funding but was unable to fire bad teachers and was unable to turn away hoodlum students).
How can you honestly think that if you just “follow the research” and set up the “optimum learning environment” you are going to get everybody to learn? That’s such a ridiculous position I can’t understand why people defend it. I sit through wonderful classes every day at the #3 ranked public liberal arts college in the country and not every single person learns! Let me let you in on a little secret *whisper* not everyone comes to class!
And for those who do show up, it is just 50 minutes in a classroom, a minor part of a person’s life. Its not an isolated bubble. Many of the reasons you discussed are a big part of this. THAT is why I suggested my system. The idea I posted here is a pragmatic compromise, not an idealistic dream (yes I have those as well). The thing I don’t get is how so many teachers, yourself perhaps, manage to maintain this idealism in the midst of the crushing reality they face every day.
And while we’re on the subject of the “optimum learning environment,” let me just deflate it a bit because it hasn’t changed for almost two thousand years, its still a comfy chair combined with a good book.
By the way, of course people from outside the system criticize it, that is the accepted practice in most arenas. Institutions don’t typically advocate for their own elimination. Anyway, education is about as public an institution as I can imagine, and deserves the intense scrutiny it gets.
I think you really missed my point here vcrs. You seem to be talking about unfunded school systems, that’s a problem with an obvious solution, and its not what I was addressing at all. I’m talking about what to do with unmotivated, unteachable students, at the middle school and high school level.
I’m glad to see so many of us are safely ensconced in our defensive bubbles of ideology, right or left, so that we can shield ourselves from the day-to-day reality of public school teaching by reverting to one more goddam political blog comment argument thread. And life goes on.
Chris Clarke, feel free to drop out of the discussion if you don’t feel it is of value.
J Gambrell, you raise some really valuable points but I must take issue with your idea that students should be allowed to just bypass subjects they don’t enjoy. We have a whole society of people who are too easily manipulated, and reading, history, math and science are the front-line tools in a working baloney detection kit.
I agree that it’s worth thinking about how to provide for students who just don’t fit the mold, but even they need reading, history, math and science, somehow.
Well Chris, I think this thread is more interesting than THAT.
But if things are getting too rhetorical, then maybe direct questions are better.
vcrs, in your teaching experience, do you find that you have techniques to deal with motivational issues like misbehavior, apathy, etc the things I talked about?
Chris - I was thinking a wink but it didn’t end up on screen… Doh! My apologies.
A comment on testing results in Charter and Private Schools versus Public Schools: Surprise! When you adjust for income differences, the public school scores are equal or higher than “choice” schools. The studies used the NAEP which is given nationally to compare schools accross the country. Check them out on the NEA website. Private schools do have lots of advantages besides being able to pick their students. They do not necessarily have to screen staff with background checks (parents beware), give State tests required for NCLB, pay teachers a living wage, and so on. Many of them do an excellent job, but the test scores don’t show them way ahead as you might assume. I personally prefer a good public school any time where children have the opportunity to live in community with all kinds of other people in a safe setting. This segregation and fear of the Other in our society is being used to manipulate people into making decisions that are against their own self interests. I am a Title One middle school science teacher and I love what I do but agree generally with what All of you are saying that the system is slowly going insane!
Some bad things include top down management, not only for teachers but for building administrators as well; Over Testing and Misuse of Testing, Political programs which make teachers look bad and politicians look good. This gets politicians off the hook for doing anything about poverty, lack of medical care, parents with no time for raising their children because it takes 2 adults to make enough to get by (falling buying power for the middle class). The problem for all these things is blamed on us little old school teachers while politicos look good because they are saving the public from the terrible public schools (look at those test score results again!)!
Good things: We get to work with wonderful children every day! I am a National Board certified Teacher and that is a wonderful program that has governement support. Local school communities can be built by teachers. Find friends at work and cooperate wih one another to build a support network. Community is a powerful force in the classroom too. All those wonderful children who speak different languages or who are meeting different challenges daily are also a blessing and a resource in the public school that the exclusive private schools miss out on. Just bring on those “so-called” little lemons and give us a chance and we will make lemonade every day!
hmmm
look here:
http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2006459
“Students at grades 4, 8, and 12 in all categories of private schools had higher average scores in reading, mathematics, science, and writing than their counterparts in public schools. In addition, higher percentages of students in private schools performed at or above Proficient compared to those in public schools.”
Also, lets remember that charter schools are public schools!!!!
There have been a lot of interesting points made. One thing I’m noticing, and I think Chris Clarke was somewhat refering to with his ‘left’ vs ‘right’ comment, is that there is a focus of one ‘kind’ of school system over another, and really, there are studies that show that different approaches have their merits.
There have been experimental schools (I can’t be bothered to look it up now, but one of the more famous was in England, I believe in the 60s) where it was up to the students to do the required units to graduate. They could do them in any order they preferred. One could do gr. 7-12 math in a row, or do all their Arts courses in gr. 7 followed by all their Science courses. It was found that students who didn’t do anything after a short time got bored, and started to participate.
Home schooling is great, but I also give a word of caution. Public school for many children has been a place to escape horrors of home, or more commonly, to be introduced to ideas that are of far broader scope than what they learn at home, both from the student, the teachers, and the curriculum, as well as nifty things like the school library and class trips.
Tracking has an earned bad reputation, but, on the other hand, public schools are mostly aimed at making students ready for University, but studies show only a small segment of students go directly to University from High School, or go to University at all. Some general forms of streaming may be useful. Does someone who wants to be a chef really need algebra, for that matter, how many people really need the amount of algebra taught? I wish, in these kinds of cases there could be more survey/introduction/history of courses, that a student could take in place of the main subject.
I’ve had no use for Algebra, though I’m glad I know generally what it is and why its used. But, in our rather ethnocentric/white/male/European system, I suprisingly never learned the following until I was out of University:
“The first treatise on algebra was written by Diophantus of Alexandria in the 3rd century AD. The term derives from the Arabic al-jabr or literally ``the reunion of broken parts.’’ As well as its mathematical meaning, the word also means the surgical treatment of fractures. It gained widespread use through the title of a book ilm al-jabr wa’l-mukabala - the science of restoring what is missing and equating like with like - written by the mathematician Abu Ja’far Muhammad (active c.800-847), who subsequently has become know as al-Khwarazmi, the man of Kwarazm (now Khiva in Uzbekistan). He introduced the writing down of calculations in place of using an abacus. Algorism (the Arabic or decimal system of writing numbers) and algorithm both derive from his name.”
Not new to math majors or history buffs…but, I’m constantly suprised by things I learn that never get mentioned, and worse yet, things taught that have white-washed history (sometimes literally).
I’m rambling, my apologies. I agree. The system needs over-hauling, but, in the meantime, it’s hard not to feel that we are re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
And, for any other naysayers, jobs I have had: potato chip packer on an assembly line, stream surveyor, cleaning person for an office building, maid at a 3 star hotel with cottages, day care worker, numerous retail sales, fast food service, computer programmer, library assitant, chaplain’s assitant for cadet camp…
hardest emotionally and physically : teaching.
Final note: To the person who brought up Unions…I agree, while protecting teachers, they make little distinction whether the teacher should be protected or not. In my experience, Unions have not only made it difficult to get rid of teachers that are deadwood or sadistic, they have also caused a dichotomy of how teachers are viewed: a profession? like a doctor…or, a trade? like a trucker. It took me a four year undergrad degree and a 2 year education degree to become a teacher. I would like to see the Union abolished and replaced with some sort of self-governing standards committee like other white collar professionals have.
Of course, I may be bitter….during my three year tenure as a substitute teacher, the Union traded away my substitute teacher pay (it was lowered to less gross than what I had been making before, net), my ability to have a tenure/tracking list (who got called not only became a free-for-all, but political and despotic), my ability to have pay go up if I taught more than 30 days straight, and my ability to be hired full-time if I was in a contract position at the same job full time for more than two years running.
*blush*...apologies for the length… this thread has brought back the best and worst of those years.
Perhaps the main problem with our public education system is simply its homogeneity. One of the big advantages of tertiary education over secondary in this country is the incredible diversity. Why is it students are only offered one or two choices (public or private basically) at the secondary school level, and then literally hundreds of educational choices when they get out?
I am vice-president of our local school board. We are in a relatively prosperous area. 23% of our students are poor. In the Catholic schools it’s 8%. Also, the Catholic Schools can discriminate—ie. no or few children with cognitive or other learning disabilities. Public schools by law must take every child.
To Lenny: Those who teach CAN do. In order to be able to teach something you have to know the content profoundly. You are so full of crap, I’m suprised you haven’t been composted!
Re Test scores:
Those are raw scores. if you read my post carefully you will find it cites studies that leveled the scores for socio-economic differences. Public schools come out even or ahead in those. If you just look at charter schools (they may be public but they don’t have to play by public school rules) they come out behind. The Feds initially tried to hide this in masses of data.
Also I lumped the “choice” schools charter and private together. I also think there is a real need for alternative schools and lots of choice in response to what children need. However, if you have a flat tire you don’t take more air out or put air in the other three as many political programs to change the schools (like vouchers) tend to do. That only hurts the children left behind and you may have figured out by now that also ultimately hurts Society as a whole, including you and me.
One other point is that here in the South magnet schools, especially around prestigious programs like IB (International Baccalaureate)are used to bring up low test score averages in failing schools and to meet integration orders. Unfortunantly they are schools within schools with little mixing of the two populations - advanced track and mainstream.
As for Unions, I belong because no one else represents me - certainly not the politicos or folks like you who bash “those teachers”. Who do you plan to replace these “dud” teachers with when many excellent teachers are being driven out and there are nation wide shortages? Certainly we have our share of “duds” as does any workplace. It has become popular to demonize unions recently as American workers continue to lose pensions, health care coverage and buying power. Who else does represent them? Certainly not most of Congress with their K street lobbies and millionaire clients. I am not ashamed of being working class. Millions of working class people are highly educated thoughtful people who work hard for Living. I figure my 25 minute lunch and lack of planning time and bathroom breaks qualifies me a working class even though I have a masters degree and national board certification.
Ah I’m sorry I didn’t realize you were adjusting for SES.
If private schools can be so much more selective, then what do you think accounts for the public (district) schools’ success?
KaVri: “Unions ... have also caused a dichotomy of how teachers are viewed: a profession? like a doctor…or, a trade? like a trucker.”
I never thought of it that way before. An interesting point. At the university where I work I am an administrative professional and there is constant chatter about unionizing. I’ve always been rather cool to the idea and I think you’ve helped me understand why.
I suppose I shouldn’t union bash, in theory, I believe in them, and in Canada they don’t seem to get quite as unmanageable as they do in the U.S.
Still, self-governing bodies such as doctors have seem to represent doctors just fine. Maybe I don’t know enough to speak on the matter, it just seems sometimes that Unions are part of the problem as much as the top end administration and red tape. I do believe that if it is the only thing we have, be involved. I admire those in the union that I knew when I was teaching, they were trying to exert positive change. However, one past president who was now treasurer was the one who first explained to me the idea of abolishing unions and self-governing like doctors as one way to adress some of the problems.
We don’t have the shortage problems as badly as you do (yet)... but, with the deadwood gone, maybe we can entice back some of those who left and/or have more people choosing it as a career.
That was the other reason I left…it isn’t seen as a ‘career’ anymore. Nurses, who also have it tough, do have their experience count for something. At least from what I’ve been exposed to, we don’t hire a newly graduate nurse over one with ten years experience…but that kind of thing was happening all the time. I even had teachers I knew in the system confide that ‘Mrs. Doe will never get offered a contract, she’s such a good substitute, no one wants to lose her’
*shrug*... When I left, there was amongst the substitutes a woman with ten years experience in Ontario, who had been subbing for five years trying to get a full-time contract. My sister-in-law was hired/fired every year for five years before she got a contract. The cuts were so bad, that no positions were posted for the upcoming school year (this is in August) because every available sub position was being given to teachers who had just lost their jobs.
Gack! Now I’m becoming part of the problem by venting and complaining…and I’m one of the rats that left the ship *wry grimace*. I still miss teaching and I’ve been away from it for about ten years now. I still might return to it, but now is not the time due to other considerations.
/vent-ramble-complain *blush*...sorry ‘bout that.
re Testing:
Contrary to the press they get, public schools do an extraordinary job under very difficult conditions. You would sometimes swear that the political programs aimed at them were actually designed to discredit and then dismantle them. And certainly there are failing schools out there with challenging populations. I work with an amazing group of very professional teachers and good administrators. We work over-time, spend thousands of dollars from our own pockets and love our kids. we would do anything for them to help them succeed. That is what dedicated teachers all over the country do. Politically it is much easier to just blame the schools instead of helping the families that attend those schools to get decent jobs, living wages and health care for their children. How am I supposed to teach a child who comes to school weeks on end with the same toothache, or other infection? The latest budget cuts affect the children I teach who have been on medicaide. They are losing their only source of health care. And these are kids whose parents work full time but don’t make enough buy health care for thier families. The challenges in this area are huge and complex. We are not going to fix them over night.
Teachers know that a difficult child is one you need to become an advocate for not point fingers at and constantly punish if that child (and the teacher) are to succeed. we need to use our test scores as diagnostics to Help not Threaten low performing schools. Here are some interesting facts about NCLB that illuminate my point: To “Pass” our school must meet 40 different goals. If we fail one of them, we are a “Failing” school. Think about it: One way to pass and 40 ways to fail. Our Title one school is entering its 4th year as a “failing school” even though we have won several State wide academic awards and families move into our neighborhood to put their kids in the school. Our total score under NCLB is higher than some of the “passing” schools in our district who do not have the high number of special education students typical of low income schools like our own and therefore do not have to pass the state tests for that category of student. That is the only category in which we do not meet the State standards. As a result, they are taking away tens of thousands of title one dollars we used for extra teachers and aids and for tutoring programs.
I can’t really answer your question about scores nation wide - only tell you what I know from my own experience. Hope this helps a little to illuminate this issue. Its complex! Its not a sound bite! But that also means that along with challenges there are also lots of possible positive responses in the different school communities across the nation. we are one of the few countries that educates all our handicapped kids. The one who used to live in institutions or someone’s attic and now go mostly to public school.
I teach a special ed science class and there are children in that class with real gifts to offer society. Dismantle the public school system and where will they go?
Lenny, go back under your bridge.
I have teachers in my family. Your BS don’t cut it.
I’ve seen what both the private schools and the public schools do.
I have a child with “needs.” He is also exceptionally bright.
One (count her, *one*) of his teachers tried to convince us that a private school for “bright & gifted” children would be the answer. Because, in my opinion, she didn’t want to deal with someone who wasn’t the norm she was used to.
Every other teacher and administrator at that same school (and the staff from the school department itself, and the staff from the various “needs” projects) worked the hardest they could to bring success to his education.
And I also saw the private sector schools and “educational programs” that were drooling when they saw his test scores, but flat out didn’t want him around at all when they figured out he wouldn’t be the little sterling tool/drone that could enhance their image.
The public school system was willing to do all they could to smooth any transition for him, and, when it was evident that the transition out was not going to happen, they worked as hard as they could to make his re-transition in as seemless as possible.
Yeah, the law says that they *have* to take him into the public schools, but they also gave a damn about *him.*
The private schools, on the other hand, made it abundantly clear that because they did not *have* to take him, they *would* not take him..
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When I first saw this article of Chris’ it prompted me to to put an <a html=“http://bostonprogressive.blogspot.com/2006/04/pain-and-glory-of-public-school.html”>article on my own site</a> about this subject.
But I also wanted to put a more personal note, in this context, here.
Do you teachers consider yourselves members of the “intellectual class” as it says in the original post?
I’ve never particularly thought of public school teachers that way to tell the truth. They are too overworked and spend as much time parenting as teaching. I beleive it was Mary who mentioned that she actually considers herself working-class.
One can be a member of both the working and intellectual classes. One describes the type of work, the other the conditions under which the work is done.
What is teaching rather than intellectual work? The fact that the intellects being taught might be five years old doesn’t change the nature of the work.
It will be no consolation at all to know that the situation is heading the same way in other countries too. It seems that it doesn’t matter what you tecah or how well as long as all teh kids in all the classes progress at the same rate.
You might be interested in looking at this discussion here.
Gill, that does seem to be the message, but I don’t think it is supposed to be. Tracking and outcome measures are SUPPOSED to just force bad schools to shape up, to shed light on the failing schools - to hold them accountable. Without national tests you just don’t get that accountability. However, they are not supposed to force schools that are already doing well to shift their focus from true education over to training. Unfortunately they do seem to have this effect because they are often so poorly implemented. Like so many social programs, for every good effect there seems to be two bad ones.
Also there are a lot of other factors that force even the best schools to turn into training factories instead of places of learning. Here I’m thinking especially of the extreme pressures on good students to “get into harvard,” the desire to make huge amounts of money, the feeling that one’s entire life will be ruined if you don’t get into the best college, the fact that college admissions are so competitive and test/GPA dependant.
This is how it plays out: The national desire to “leave no child behind” focuses entirely on the low-performing students, leaving little incentive for schools to challenge their top students. This leads to grade inflation, every top student has a 4.0, which in turn leads them to focus on other things outside of the classroom in order to make their applications stand out. They take test prep classes, they join a million activity clubs, try to get community service projects and science projects on their record, etc. All of this of course leaves little time to actually *read* any books while in school, and the classes are so easy there is little need to anyway. Then, after this 4-year long whirlwind of gamesmanship, they get into Stanford and find out that places liket that really couldn’t care less about undergraduates.
Read all about this process in Denise Pope’s book “Doing School.” Or for more on the problems of school pedagogy in general read the classic by John Holt “How Children Fail.” Written in the 50’s, its amazing how little has changed.
I support public education largely because my mother is a public educator, but due to all the problems people have been discussing above, many poor, LD, BD and “gifted” (yes I mean gifted) kids get left behind.
In fifth grade I ranked second in my school in our math competition. Unlike the boy who ranked first, I was not tracked into sixth grade math. This is largely because I was not a boy (my score in our competition was only one point below his and still in the 99th percentile). In the grade behind me, another boy was tracked a year ahead in math with special one on one time with the teacher etc. but the girl with a higher standardized test score was not. (sexism at schools)
In sixth grade at the middle school the next year I was in a regular math class. I didn’t learn a single new thing at school all year (My dad was teaching me algebra at home). My teacher was too busy with the few students in the class who could barely add (I’m serious, their math skills were maybe second grade tops). We learned addition and subtraction, multiplication tables, long addition and long subtraction and by the end of the year we covered long multiplication and division, but these were all topics we learned in third, fourth and fifth grade too. Those of us who were gifted and even the students who would be considered average were “left behind.”
We spent an entire year learning math we already knew because the district did not provide remedial classrooms for those students who truly needed them. The argument for this was that the kids who had problems would only have more if they “knew” they weren’t as good at math as the other kids. I think they knew that already.
I would have spent a lot less time really bored and doodling in class if the classes had been even remotely challenging, but because my parents thought education was important (my mom was the first in her family to graduate eighth grade, more less go to college and get her master’s degree) I applied myself to school, went to college and am now working on a PhD. If my parents had not thought education was important, I probably would have turned out like my friend Susan who barely graduated high school because she was too bored to get motivated for class.
That was a long story to make a small point. Tracking has a good and a bad side and can be taken to extremes, but something needs to be done to make sure EVERY child is getting the best education possible.
It is not cynical to point out that voucher systems are devised to separate the rich from the poor. The thin veil of fairness claimed to occur through “market forces” are disingenuous and dangerous. A few people are convinced of these arguments because they make them feel better and allow them to believe that they can have their cake and eat it too (they can get their kids out of public schools but still believe the schools they leave behind will somehow improve). Anyone in the trenches, so to speak, will tell you how flawed voucher systems are given our public mandate to educate all children.
NCLB uses “choice” as a buzz word to appeal to the fears and prejudices of supporters and to play on the hopes and fears of the naive. “Choice” is the chimera, however, that hides an elitist and racist agenda to further separate poor schools from resources and then blame them for being uncompetitive. Why this isn’t more obvious to every body is evolutionary psychology.
As an educator of teachers of science, it is very difficult to continue trying to prepare teachers with the best pedagogy while recognizing that the realities of the classroom will prevent most of them from being able to implement it. I’ve been in the classroom, both public and private, but I still can only guess at the difficulties experienced by those who are still there today, under NCLB guidelines.
Something is going to have to change, and soon. Perhaps something dramatic. Check out Oprah, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and HUNBlog for more on this topic.
And good luck and God Bless to Becky, and to you.
I might also point out that current NCLB guidelines constitute a new and insideous form of tracking, by seperating low performing schools from high performing schools and restricting curriculum materials and resources such that low performing schools cannot offer the same level of education as high performing schools. Guess where most low performing schools are, inner cities. This was all set up from the start. It’s not the unexpected result of naive policy. It’s the intended result of a political agenda wrapped in sheap’s clothing by words like “accountability”, “defeating the soft bigotry of low expectations” and “choice”.
It’s no wonder so many of us on this forum have trouble containing our venom and dismay.