<p>sptch: I think until the public steps into our shoes as teachers they won’t realize the unrealistic work demands put on teachers. Budget cuts this past year cut high school teachers’ planning time in our area in half while increasing student numbers by 30%. I know a lot of teachers who are getting out. Supposedly our 45 minutes after school gets out counts as planning time, but no one factored in the clubs we are expected to sponsor, the students we routinely tutor and the required meetings that seem to go on during that after school planning time. </p>
<p>I have been told: “You are lucky to have a job.” and “You have summers off.” The reality is that I get paid 7 1/2 hours a day for days that usually last between 10-12 hours (7am-7pm is not unheard of) and during the summer I go to trainings, plan for the next year and grade research papers as I have a two year class. </p>
<p>I should have listened to my mom who warned me that being a teacher in America was going to be tough because American society doesn’t have the respect for teachers as other countries do. What is the benefit? The kids. Keeping them engaged and watching the light bulbs go off in their heads is the greatest feeling in the world, but even so too many teachers are too worn out to be as effective as they could be.</p>
<p>I think the welfare state, regardless of race, has had a huge impact on destroying the family unit and making teenage motherhood acceptable. Kids with both parents and kids with adult parents do better in school. Terrible unintended consequence that’s hit minority kids particularly hard.</p>
<p>Re "And I’m sure the tuna sandwiches at “Colored Only” lunch counters were tasty and nutritious.</p>
<p>You are way out of line…"</p>
<p>just so blossom and others who simply MUST hang onto this white-guilt driven, endlessly apologetic red herring position that slavery should be held forever responsibility for what is essentially one’s failure to do what can be done for oneself - you are way, well…clueless</p>
<p>slavery was a way of life in a great many cultures before the usa became the usa. my forebear from germany moved here to escape it, joined the union army to fight against it, my parents grew up poor, had no slaves, and worked hard to make my life easier. i did the same for my own kids. the answer today is not another program - it’s family responsibility.</p>
<p>I tend to side in small parts with Barrons on this one. We can’t see the forest through the trees. We’ve become so paralyzed with fear of being “politically incorrect” that we can’t see that the ground has shifted and the needs of two or three generations ago may have changed. We’ve become so numb to the rhetoric that it just blows by. We keep pointing to flaws in teaching when the flaws may not even exist at that point. And in my opinion we do a disservice to all the immigrant families and members of other cultural or religious groups who have assimilated, achieved and been educated in our colleges and universities by lumping people into vague racial categories. How different is it relegating a person to the back of the bus a couple generations ago because of a trait any different than filling a corporate position or giving someone a seat at a selective college now because of a trait any different? That person still will always wonder what it would be like to be judged just for the person they are and not a physical or cultural reason. We need to stop talking about what was and talk about what is.</p>
In this day and age, anyone who has a job is very fortunate. Here in NYC, there are thousands of people who’d feel very lucky to have your job. It’s hard, valuable and deserving of much respect. But eeryone who has a job has a leg up.</p>
<p>It’s painfully obvious why many minorities don’t graduate from college. And by minorities, I’m assuming we are referring to NAMs. </p>
<p>The Bell Curve. </p>
<p>They are not smart enough. </p>
<p>Another possible reason is that they are smart and realize graduating from a third-tier school in a soft major isn’t a guarantee of anything (opportunity costs), so they leave to work instead, because it is a much better use of their time.</p>
<p>“…Kids with both parents and kids with adult parents do better in school…”</p>
<p>The child of a single mother who is a college graduate has a greater chance of attending and graduating from college than a student who lives with both parents whose education ended with high school.</p>
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<p>Of course it is but I am so tired of the excuses. It’s so easy to say, “Well, if they don’t get it at home, then we can’t do anything about it.”</p>
<p>Most children attend public school in this country. Do people really believe that having a child for seven hours a day, 180 days of the year for 12 years is not enough time to be an influence that is nearly as strong as home life? I find that hard to believe.</p>
<p>This isn’t even a real problem. The article is full of liberal religious nonsense. </p>
<p>Good thing that many minorities don’t graduate college. It would be even better if the marginal students never suck up thousands of dollars in federal funds and loans in the first place trying to complete college. </p>
<p>But a lot of people don’t. I’ve noticed that Asians are often put in a different group than other minority races and ethnicities. And the fuss over Obama in the early time of his campaign and that college admissions scam article reminded me how African immigrants and children of African immigrants are treated as a different group than African-Americans whose ancestors were slaves.</p>
True, but most of teenage single moms aren’t college graduates. Look at Bristol Palin. Making fathers optional did no one any favors.</p>
<p>I administered a program a few years ago employing people coming off welfare into entry level jobs in a law firm. Most of the employees were super and went on to better things, but there was a significant number that couldn’t handle the logistics of working. Showing up on time every day, conducting themseles appropriately, doing the job for which they were paid. That subgroup was also extremely prone to take offense in the normal course of workday and to be often at odds with coworkers for trivial things. Ultimately, the program was discontinued because it was disruptive. It’s hard as an adult to teach those skills, and employers certainly don’t want to do it.</p>
<p>White men will be just fine. Somehow, they’ve learned to live with power and privledge they did not earn for hundreds of years in this country. So, apparently all that wondering hasn’t been too large a burden. </p>
<p>Although what that has to do with this thread, I have no idea. </p>
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<p>Of course it’s a co-op. It’s not backed by data, very few people are buying it anymore. Racism is a bad habit in this country. I don’t think we should encourage that habit by treating it as rational thought.</p>
It’s not an excuse. It’s a legitimate problem. We can, as a society, do a lot about it, but we’d have to be willing to take a lot of kids out of the home. It’s very hard to educate a child properly when you also have to feed him, provide medical/dental care in the school – particularly wnen the child moves from school to shool frequently. My kids are in NYC public schools. We see every day how much some kids need. The school often is achieving victory just by keeping those children moving forward from one day to the next.</p>
<p>What individual has been living for hundreds of years? And again, you are lumping all white people together. It’s as inappropriate to lump recent African immigrants with African-Americans as it is to lump 20th century ethnic immigrants with the Mayflower WASPs.</p>
<p>Teenagers have been having sex and making babies since the beginning of time. It seem so to me it would be a lot more productive to making sure that single moms can complete their educations rather than the approach we’ve currently got going on. </p>
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<p>I respect men far too much to let this line go by. Most men are good fathers, those who walked away or didn’t like the terms of custody so they took it out on their kids by not seeing them, like to hide behind this lie. It’s a slap in the face to every man, to most men, who stick around and stick it out. </p>
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<p>It’s hard but it’s not impossible. The current choices are to stay on the path we are on or teach the skills but accept that a small subset will never be able to cope in the workplace. There is a third option but I truly hope, and will fight like hell, to make sure that American never becomes a country where those who cannot cut it are left on the street to starve.</p>
<p>In this vein, I’ve heard about a Job Corps program that teaches skills needed to maintain employment, so the company doesn’t have to train them. I don’t know if this is a national program or just in my area.</p>
<p>There are successful programs that provide not only three meals a day to students, they send home a dinner for the family each night. Medical professionals come to the schools. And so on.</p>
<p>It costs a lot of money and it would be ideal if each family could carry their own weight but they cannot.</p>
<p>Even more than being a liberal, I’m a realist. I grow ever increasingly impatient with all the hand-wringing and wishful thinking. These are the problems, this is what it costs to fix them and if we don’t fix them now then they will cost even more as the cycle of poverty, mental illness or whatever the roots of the problem is, is allowed to consume another generation.</p>
And it would seem to me the most productive to make it more desirable to those young women to wait to have babies.<br>
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<p>Well, PMK, perhaps you’re not as familiar with communities in which most fathers are never part of their children’s lives. I suspect you are coming at this from a much more middle-class experience. It is very sad that there are entire communities in which fathers don’t walk away because they don’t like custody arrangements. They were simply never present in the first place and may not even know that they are fathers.</p>
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I happen to think that, regardless of what the statistics say, educators in many failing schools who deal with great sociall pathology (my kid’s school, as I’ve mentioned before, has many amputees from LIberia for whom learning to use prosthetic limbs is a huge step, although test scores may not show it) are among the greatest heroes we have. If you’re willing to fight so hard, how far would you go? Remove kids from homes that, while not dangerous, will never allow them to succeed academically?</p>
Yeah. The New York City department of education. They do all of these things, even in the summer. Which doesn’t leave a lot of time for actual academic instruction. That’s exactly my point, PMK
We actually do all those things that you suggested. It costs a lot, but it’s worth it. The problem is that when the schools function to help the kids survive, they can’t educate them. If you are looking to see needy kids fed and provided with medical/dental/psychological care, as well as school supplies, then the public schools are a smashing success. It’s when you add academic standards into the mix that something has to give. I would respectfully say that you are an idealist in the finest sense. But not a realist.</p>
<p>Of course. That’s why there has to be comprehensive sex education and free, easily available birth control. Further, young women have to have the confidence that there is a future worth waiting for in front of them. And that has to include college for teen moms who don’t wait. Telling them to wait, trying to guilt trip them or scare them doesn’t work and that’s what’s going on in my state. </p>
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<p>Kids in our district who have breakfast at school go in a half hour early, they all eat lunch and evening meals are served in after-school programs. They see the dentist or doctor once a year. That only leaves…the entire school day. </p>
<p>Fathers were never made disposable. If men walk away, then they own that. Most men do not walk away, most men are involved fathers. Yes, even men in the poorest of neighborhoods.</p>
<p>I have no idea what statistics have to do with educators in failing schools being heroes. Of course they are heroes. That does not change the statistics of what works, who winds up in college and so on. We have a lot of social myths in this country that drive the national conversation on issues of education. Evidence based reform is possible but it involves becoming reality based as well.</p>
If the statistics say that a school is “failing” it reflects on the educators. It doesn’t nececssarily reflect the work that is done to even get the students to that failing level.
I wish that were true, but it simply is not in many communities, and it’s accepted as the sad norm.</p>
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Yes it does, but I think your reality may be different from that of the poor inner city students. Which is another reason why I think eduation should always be locally administered. I’m sure your community has specific difficulties, such as the Liberian amputees in mine. Different solutions for different problems.</p>