<p>Has anyone else read this? I find it mind-boggling.</p>
<p>When I was a child, my dad was an administrator in the Philly School System, but we lived in the Suburbs and went to an entirely different School District, i.e., one that was well funded and where most of the people were upper middle class. I remember well the day my Dad brought be to a Philly grammar school for a day and put me in a fifth grade class. I was only average in my suburban school, but I must have been three grade levels above this class in reading, writing and arithmetic. The point is that Large City Schools have been terrible for decades. If you live in places like New Orleans, the public schools are so bad that a parent interested in educating their kids has no choice but to send them to a private school.</p>
<p>So its pretty clear that for decades now, large city public school systems have been failing their kids. Why that is I suppose can be debated, but I would guess its a combination of lack of funding and parental indifference.</p>
<p>This kind of thing is why home-schooling (and hybrid schooling, as in two days a week, and lots of homework) is growing by leaps and bounds.</p>
<p>I’ve been following this tragedy for the students of Philadelphia quite closely for the past few months. My DS was in a teacher training program and did his student teaching in a Philly public HS last spring. He had received support from the NSF in a program to train STEM majors to teach in urban districts. He LOVED the student teaching placement and thought the teachers, school administrators and students were wonderful, but the state of the district’s finances was such that rather than being able to hire him, the school’s principal had to fire 8 of her 18 teachers at the end of the year. He interviewed with a district-wide HR person, but it was clear that they couldn’t offer him a teaching position anywhere for this fall. So he sent out resumes and was snapped up by a wealthy suburban HS. He’s still committed to teaching in an urban district, and will probably use this year to consider whether to relocate to another city (and try to get certified in another state) or to see if Philly is still possible.</p>
<p>Unfortunately so much of the school budget has to be spent on things outside of education. In a suburban schools, there is a much smaller, if any at all, budget for metal detectors, repairing vandalism, extensive security, etc. It is sad for the students who want to learn and do not destroy property that they have to sacrifice educational opportunity to pay for those who cause the problems . </p>
<p>In addition to that, there are more students with parents who are unable to help them with homework because they don’t have the skills necessary, time available or just don’t value education. It is just creating a vicious cycle. If anything is going to change, somehow the cycle has to be broken. Obviously this is nothing new but trying to only fix one prong of the problem will never help. </p>
<p>It is interesting to note, that the cost per student in our suburban, highly rated district vs. Philadelphia is actually lower. The problem goes much deeper than money, and just throwing more and more money at the under performing districts won’t fix the problem. We need to look at why they need so much more money and try to fix those problems. But, good luck with that.</p>
<p>I feel bad for the students who want to learn. My DD also taught in one of the Philly schools and it was very sad to see the academic level of what they considered their top students . It was also terrible to hear about the troubles that they had just trying to learn in that environment.</p>
<p>It’s really sad. This is the city where our government was born. Don’t they govern the city anymore?</p>
<p>I think they should stop teaching reading. They’ve never been any good at it anyway. Have plenty of books around, but the teaching of reading is unnecessary. What is necessary, if you are going to warehouse kids 6-8 hours a day involuntarily, are nurses, guidance counselors, art, music, and recess. And some decent food.</p>
<p>I’m going to have to agree with mini! Sounds like they should be spending money on basic life skills. I’m sure they could also use a lot of mental health professionals. Poverty is what ails urban districts.</p>
<p>Violence, gangs, fatherlessness and social system that says anything goes is what ails them. I travel in Africa and see deep, deep poverty in very educated people. The kids in Africa are disciplined, thrive in school and are all learning math, reading, English and manners despite deep, daily deprivations. Poverty is not the problem in inner city schools. Anyone who says that is problem some bleeding heart, guilt ridden rich person. </p>
<p>I grew up poor and lived through all the cons, schemes, deals, hustles and gigs. There are plenty of folks smart enough and able to bilk the system out of all it will give and live well doing it.</p>
<p>News from our city district this week: high school girl is raped in the school by two boys (ages 14 and 15) in the middle of the school day, after being dragged through the hallway crying for help. . .Mother enters elementary school and violently beats kindergarten teacher after her son came home with a small scratch on his neck (kid said later that the scratch wasn’t caused by the teacher.)
I teach at a hybrid (2-day co-op) school less than 2 miles from the school where the rape occurred. (Cars were vandalized in our parking lot the first day of school.) Our students cannot afford private school tuition, but their parents are highly involved and the kids want to be there and know how to behave.</p>
<p>Madaboutx: I agree with you–I taught in Africa for two years. I could easily control and keep the attention of a classroom of 45 teenagers in 100* heat–with nothing but a book and a piece of chalk.
It’s the lack of parents/parenting, lack of discipline of any kind, lack of morals, lack of work ethic, lack of civilized behavior, lack of interest in education, lack of worthwhile goals, lack of personal responsibility, etc. that ruins our schools --not a lack of money.</p>
<p>Mad… You can’t compare poverty in Africa with poverty in the US, that should be obvious. Our " poor" children have free lunch (and breakfast) and most likely a smart phone. What is the incentive to do better? Your story is an anecdote and hardly representative of the majority of the students who grow up in poverty.</p>
<p>You’re comparing people who have been kept at the bottom a caste system for 300 years (and the historical trauma that comes with) with folks who are simply poor. (and usually not for very long: in 1940, 75% of sub-Saharan Africans were above the poverty line; since the entry of the World Bank, IMF, university educations, and a trillion dollars in foreign “aid”, 11% are above the poverty line.) Very, very big difference. Schools among Dalits in India may not be as violent, but for the most part they are no more successful.</p>
<p>If you want to look for the comparison group for those who seem forever to be “problems” in schools, try the Batwa/Pygmy people in the Congo-DRC. Virtually every school I know that has been set up for them has failed miserably. And with good reason. Besides being always at the bottom of the social heap, they were hunter/gatherings, and started getting kicked off their lands some 150 years ago. Their culture, both as hunters and in living a precarious existence on ever-shrinking landmasses, has meant they’ve learned that it is useless to “think about tomorrow”, since a better tomorrow, either for individuals or for the group, almost never comes. </p>
<p>My organization just completed a clean water training program in a Batwa/Pygmy community that has one of the world’s highest child mortality rates (580 deaths before the age of five for every 1,000 children born.) The local chief told us that it was useless to teach them to clean their own water, but, surprisingly, that is exactly what worked, because of the immediate satisfaction of having clean water to drink for the first time in their lives. It wasn’t a matter for them of saving children’s lives, but rather the immediacy of clean water to drink.</p>
<p>To me it just proves that poverty isn’t the problem. Unless there is something that classifies the different types of poverty.</p>
<p>And you’re right that they are unfair comparisons when you look at the social structure. In African nations with tribalism, violence and fatherlessness and no social structure to reinforce good education, manners and self respect then it looks like a violent inner city.</p>
<p>In African nations where fathers are present, the people have self respect and national pride and see education as important, you see very little of the problems that look like the inner cities of America despite poverty that far exceeds it.</p>
<p>And America does not have a caste system so I don’t know where that comes from. Try working hard, getting educated, staying off drugs and relating well with people of all colors and see if you can keep yourself in your economic class. Almost anyone one in the lower rungs would move up the economic ladder just doing those things. Ask the folks who don’t speak the language yet succeed in business or come from Africa and send their kids to elite Ivy League schools. It’s almost impossible to keep someone down that practices those habits.</p>
<p>You missed the point.</p>
<p>Learned helplessness is a real and reproducible psychological phenomenon.</p>
<p>Well, I looked at the list of questions that parents had for the Philadelphia meeting. I didn’t see anyone commenting on lack of academics. The questions were about safety–who is patrolling the halls, counselors to take care of special needs students, nurses to take care of MY son, safety concerns about getting MY kid to school etc. Sounds more like a baby sitting service than a place to learn.</p>
<p>Split classes and up to 40 kids in a classroom were the norm when I went to school. One of the main differences I see is that trouble-makers were near to non-existent. They were expelled. At least everyone else was left to learn in peace. Behavioral problems/emotional problems (one of the Philly questions) were the parent’s responsibility–not the school.</p>
<p>And “many principals feel unequipped to educate”?!! Maybe there was more to this question–that’s just sad on its face. Sounds like they need new principals who are given the responsibility to achieve some set goals rather than playing social worker all day.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>I am curious about Mini’s idea to do away with reading teachers. Of course some kind of instruction is necessary for toddlers but maybe educators and we stakeholders should soberly evaluate such an idea.</p></li>
<li><p>While I too believe that the impoverished American vs. impoverished African (or impoverished Bosnian, Albanian, Guatemalan etc.) comparison is an imperfect one, it seems to me that there are aspects in contemporary U.S. culture that might as well be stone weights around our children’s necks, as opposed to pebbles to step around and overcome.</p></li>
<li><p>It’s time to acknowledge that failure has many parents, so to speak. Our public school systems, the poorly performing ones, are going to have to take the heat as well parents and the government in general for our problems in education. That means that we have to put “sticks” in place to let the bad public school system administrators know that things cannot continue unabated. Michele Rhee had it right.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Lake Washington, since EVERY problem that people can identify in this thread comes from the social structure surrounding the kids OUTSIDE the school, I simply do not see the point in continuing to berate and punish the school for being unable to fully make up for those things.</p>