Steve Jobs Blames Education Problems on Teacher Unions

Parents Forum
321

<p>"But issues about class size, planning, inservice days and generally civility (professional) issues were all straightened out. There was such anmosity from the top downward, that for a lot of educators that was the issue."</p>

<p>And perhaps that's what teachers in your area consider "working conditions," but the working conditions I'm talking about precede even that. It's the working conditions of the classroom itself -- not class size, either. I'd rather have 35 students, most of whom are on a similar grade level within a workable range (whatever that would be) and who aren't flat out psych cases or social misfits to the max, than a class of 22 where a minority of students are healthy enough to learn & be motivated to learn, & where my hands are tied via school policy to take action with regard to the others. Even more optimal is having a majority of the 35 speaking & understanding English, so that the high school (!) courses can be taught to them with any hope of success. Typically, the mid to low-rent site schools in my area fit the dysfunctional student profile & nonfluent picture, not the former. ("Small" class sizes being either possible or in many cases mandated by the State.) In the majority of non-charter site schools in my area, it would be best if most of the staff were certified ESL teachers, but there is no way that there are enough of those interested & certified to teach. The typical high school student, for example, is a URM with a 3rd-4th grade reading level (recognition & comprehension & pronunciation). In no <em>non</em> high-rent high school that I have visited lately is there a single Caucasian Anglo student.</p>

<p>In our homeschool pattern we inherit some of the above. However, we're glad to have them in our program, because there's the chance for individual attention & for diagnosis/intervention when necessary. Thus, the teacher, while paid embarrasingly little for her considerable work (far less than any certified site school teacher in any public system of any State), nevertheless has the satisfaction of weekly & monthly success through her efforts. In other words, she or he has the opportunity to actually perform at a professional level congruent with training & education. </p>

<p>In situations where the parent cannot or will not assist with that education (which is a contractual requirement), the student is eventually dropped from the program. The students who never enter our program in the first place (because the parent cannot or chooses not to meet such contract requirements), still could be helped in site schools if there were remediation academies designed for such students, of whom there is a massive amount. But hey, no, we must be PC about this. Can't separate them out from the on-grade & <em>reading</em> student because it will "stigmatize" them and make them "feel bad." (Hello? It won't make them feel bad when they can only get a job in low-paying occupations or in communities which exclusively speak their language?) The longer these students are shamefully kept for social & political reasons in inappropriate classrooms, the more their own real shame will solidify. (I'm reminded of the scene in Shawshank Redemption where the handsome, uneducated prisoner eventually throws in the towel & walks away from the education Tim Robbins' character is giving him, because of his frustration & humiliation.)</p>

322

<p>"who aren't flat out psych cases or social misfits to the max"</p>

<p>well, that I can't garantee..We do have our share. Are you only talking about students there or including parents? </p>

<p>"Can't separate them out from the on-grade & <em>reading</em> student because it will "stigmatize" them and make them "feel bad"</p>

<p>Do you mean reading leveling?</p>

323

<p>*truly for the professional pleasure & better working environment, NOT for pay,"</p>

<p>E,</p>

<p>Maybe that's true of your situation, but not everywhere.*</p>

<p>Which could be why teachers choose private schools- lower pay generally, certainly not an attractive pension that will allow them to retire with close to the same amount in working salary like govt workers inc. teachers.</p>

<p>The private school teachers were in the building at least 40 hours if not longer- and that doesn't include meetings, open houses, or other events.
They gave their home phone numbers to be contacted & did in home visits before the school year.</p>

<p>I realize that some public school teachers also go above and beyond- they sponsor clubs after hours, they testify at the state captiol and at board meetings, and they even stay after the PTA auction to help clean up.
Those teachers are treasured & it is a pity that we don't have more ways to acknowledge that.</p>

<p>But they stand out, because the majority in my experience & being in my daughters school building everyday- oftentimes all day, for years at a time, gave me a perspective that others in the community may not have, show up for work, and go home. If they have a free period after lunch they may leave early, even if they have a meeting scheduled.</p>

<p>IF they are late coming back from lunch, the kids in the classroom don't have a teacher and another teacher has to handle his classroom & hers too.
They can stay in the building as long as they care to. If managing a classroom, has proven too much for them, they can be assigned to take over the library and enlist parents to volunteer.</p>

<p>Then they can decide that they want to attend field trips- like to the( inAshland)theatre district to see a play & not only get to do that & have their ticket paid for ( because on all field trips, including overnight trips- the students are paying for the teacher and their expenses- which of course limits the students who can afford to go- because it is more expensive than it needs to be- I was also the treasurer)</p>

<p>But what really iced my cake was that this "librarian" read a newspaper the entire trip, despite things going on that I could have used some help with & then disappeared as well while the kids were eating lunch.</p>

<p>Anyway- these things are not unusual & they interfere iMO with students getting as much of an education as they could/should.
But I don't hear- any solutions from those who would keep the status quo.</p>

<p>When we don't have administration inc principals doing the job of making sure teachers are competent ( should I go into teachers who were using substances- in the prescence of students even though it was outside the school day and no I am not talking about a glass of wine) is there anything parents or even students can do besides changing districts/schools?</p>

324

<p>"well, that I can't garantee..We do have our share. Are you only talking about students there or including parents?"</p>

<p>Ha, ha, very funny. Well, in some cases the parents are psych cases themselves. Most often, though, the students are psycho because of genetic defects to incredibly early & compromised pregnancies, drug use during pregnancy, and/or a violent home atmosphere or an atmosphere where the child is completed ignored unless he or she is providing trouble to the parents, in which case the students gets attention, albeit negative. There are many malfunctioning parents out there whose children attend publics. These children come to school with a significant rage component and have not the maturity or self-control, due to their age, to maintain their behavior. In privates, there are consequences for children who act out (usually, dismissal). And, as I mentioned on a much earlier thread, it might surprise some parents on CC to see what a wide rage of SES backgrounds & ethnic identification this includes, although generally the most compromised home situations economically generally present with some kind of adjustment difficulty at school, from minor to major. But there is a surprising contingent of well-off students with emotional problems of neglect, parental substance abuse, disruption of their daily progress due to travel & being left with nannies, etc.</p>

<p>Regarding your second question, I mean being honest about where the student is, reading-wise. He or she cannot read, let alone comprehend the terms in, World History or Science texts, let alone complete the assignments, if the reading level of the student is 4th grade, tops. So address the reading already. And since there is a LARGE contingent of these students, they would benefit from achievement grouping. And certainly the few students not on such levels would benefit from not being grouped with them. I feel so sorry for the few students who are capable of so much more than the public schools in my area have decided to provide for them. (Notice my deliberate use of an active verb there.) Bad schooling doesn't just "happen." It's the result of stupid decisions & priorities by adults.</p>

325

<p>(I meant "range" of SES backgrounds....)</p>

<p>but "rage component"</p>

326

<p>"And since there is a LARGE contingent of these students, they would benefit from achievement grouping"</p>

<p>They've been doing something I think is what your mentioning here. They are grouping for reading by ability during the class day (swaping rooms and teachers) to attempt to improve across the board district wide. The challenged get extra help and the exceptional get a bit more challenged. It seems to be working as scores are moving in the right direction. </p>

<p>You are right though, it takes the right people at the top to make it work. Something as simple as listening first and speaking second for the super has made a big impact. Now, I just wonder if we can keep him up here.</p>

327

<p>
[quote]
If merit pay is based on test scores it would clearly have to take into account student ability, ESL questions and improvement from the year before.[/quote[</p>

<p>It would have to take a number of factors into account. Unfortunately, every merit pay proposal I have seen has been centered around test scores.</p>

328

<p>Re Post 326:</p>

<p>Grouping for reading was standard operating procedure in the more enlightened educational practices of my earlier days. Sure, students would sometimes get "labeled" by other students ("ranked" according to their reading group, since you can't hide this information from other students). But you know what? Tough. We had a different philosophy back then. It was called: Learning from the hard knocks of life. Now, I think that one of improvements of today's schooling is that teachers are more upfront with their students about consideration of feelings, discussing respect for others & acknowledging differences, not marginalizing, and that's great: It's good to talk about those things, be a role model for inclusiveness, etc., not to tolerate in the classroom name-calling, and not to ignore it. (Cannot always control what happens on the playground, naturally.)</p>

<p>But insisting on respect is very different from denial. It's actually more hurtful (not to mention unprofessional) to deny or pretend. It hurts in the short time, and big time in the long run. Classroom after classroom is built on pretense. </p>

<p>Students, when required to be both honest & respectful, can manage each other's differences much better (often) by themselves than adults give them credit for. They will quickly learn that Johnny may be in the lowest reading group, but man, how he can engineer that Lego bridge in group activity. The other students are well aware of his superior ability in that regard, and the astute teacher knows how to advantage that both for Johnny's pride & for classroom learning via the physics demonstration Johnny has just given us.</p>

<p>At some point in the 1970s it was decided that it was un-PC to group, because of "hurt feelings." Some of this was teacher-led, based on an ill-advised switch from academics to the psyche. Some of it was a push from the public, via boards, ec. The problem is that once that trend became the standard, and the ill effects of illiteracy began to display themselves in middle & high school, it became politically very, very difficult to reverse that again. When schools tried to segment, group, track -- however it was approached -- <em>parents</em> then became up in arms. (This was new to them, and many were less interested in honestly dealing with their student's failure to progress than in their child's "feelings.") But it was the educational establishment (the decision makers) that led the charge originally, & in my opinion deserves most of the blame. And boards, districts, superintendents, principals, Dept's of Education, and teachers, should have had the courage of their convictions to face the results of their previous PC decisions, and decide for the <em>child</em>.</p>

<p>So we've had many more years of ignoring The Elephant in the Room. High school students who are illiterate are being allowed to take AP's & even given passing grades in these. (Don't know what such exam results are, if taken.) But they are so lacking in basic math & ELA skills that they cannot pass the High School Exit Exam (which is easy, by any measure). And when they don't? The reaction is, My child must be allowed to graduate now, period.</p>

329

<p>And Post 327 is correct. There is not the adjustment for factors, such as I think Renee or wharfrat may have mentioned (The greater # of LD's in one room, etc.) The public (especially) cares mostly about scores. But guess what, folks? Those scores are actually built on something, called learning, and the variables in that learning are several, & include the parents. So the moral of all this? Stop agreeing with the school system, parents. And stop blaming the teachers who are actually hired to implement a system (versus using their professional training & intuition to teach your child most effectively). Go to your boards, your principals, your supes, your D.O.E.'s and demand structural change & honesty within the system. Sure, fine, fight against union control in whatever way that is holding back education & inappropriately rewarding the incompetents (which doesn't look to include the teachers on this thread). But the problem is bigger than unions. (Mr. Jobs)</p>

330

<p>"Pay-for-Performance" is not a formula that can be applied with much logic UNTIL TEACHERS REGAIN TRUE AUTONOMY, which is far from what they currently have, & much, much less than teachers previously had.</p>

331

<p>Sorry to appear to be hogging the thread, here, but I wanted to draw out the autonomy concept a little. Indeed, this is one of the advantages of Privates, particularly those that are secular and those that may be "religious" but not tied to a larger system such as a diocese (such as titularly Catholic but independent schools). I'm not being disrespectful by putting quotation marks around religious; it's a way of distinguishing these schools because the academics at them always supercedes the religious content, which cannot be said for many or the parochial schools.</p>

<p>Any school that is part of a system (such as publics, such as diocesan Catholics) has an allegiance to the system first. Even great teachers who manage to overcome system limitations are often ultimately evaluated (& retained or not) depending on how well they accommodate & support the system, not on how effective, energized, inspiring their classroom teaching is. I can cite dozens of example of this in both public & traditional Catholic schools. </p>

<p>That does not mean that there are not published (& nonpublished) agendas at secular privates -- whether those are mission statements, hiring practices, etc. There are. No teacher anywhere has complete autonomy (obviously) unless hiring oneself out as a totally private teacher, working one-on-one, or unless one teaches & owns a school. For example, in my daughters' private, one of the school's primary orientations is to encourage girls in math & science -- that would be even the artsy & humanities types. So every girl is required to take 4 yrs. of math, & every girl is encouraged to challenge herself in both math & science, to the level of her ability. This is a school-wide policy.</p>

<p>There are also negatives to some of the (nonpublished) agendas. Because of internal politics, there is an administrator that wields way too much power & makes hiring decisions that prefer coaching to teaching. So the unlucky students can and do wind up with a lousy science teacher who is a great coach in one sport. (So much for the science priorities.) But <em>overall</em>, teachers at independent privates have far more autonomy than any teacher in a "system" school. They often choose their own curriculum, decide their own classroom standards of performance & behavior, etc. This encourages (does not guarantee, but encourages) better teaching. The teacher has greater control over her or his teaching; the teacher's motivation & morale are high, etc., and the teacher's time is consumed with teaching, not administering, not engaging in psychiatry, social work, or police work.</p>

<p>To bring back autonomy to the teaching profession would be to remove it from its system constraints. Because essentially public education in many states (particularly the larger ones) has become a function of government: defined by government, controlled by government, limited by government, and mimicking government in various ways. So when I say "privatize" schools, it is in this spirit that I suggest it. And it is for this goal that charters develop: they're privatizing their school, to some degree. However, since they're dependent on public funds, the degree of the privatization is limited. Chartering is merely a desperate attempt by parents & teachers to regain some legitimate power over the teaching of children. Public charters are also in my region extremely underfunded vs. non-charter publics(whether site or homeschool, but particularly for homeschools). A more effective solution would be a complete "privatization" in the sense of decentralization. It would create 100% "charters" (or some form of self-governance). It would also put a lot of administrators out of business, which is why "the system" opposes charters, vouchers, or anything resembling privatization.</p>

<p>End of rant. LOL, I'll try to shut up now.:)</p>

332

<p>I think the learners' families should be able to shop around for a suitable situation for each learner. The learning environment that is suitable for one child may not be suitable for another--I think every parent of more than one child already knows this.</p>

333

<p>Re Post 332:</p>

<p>to me, it's never been a question of "should." Theory is fine, but it depends on what is really available within the geographical reach. There are definitely not enough quality publics & quality privates to meet demands of any universal voucher system in my State. It would mean that every family would end up with a voucher but far less than 100% would end up with better options than currently. What it would do is to allow those who meet private school admissions requirements to be partly publicly funded for that choice. Those who cannot meet admissions requirements would stay in their lousy publics or their poor-stepchild charters. Now, homeschooling is an "option," but only to those families that can afford or are willing to make the personal & financial sacrifices to stay at home at least part-time to supervise that education. I don't have a problem with States who believe that vouchers will level the playing field in their particular case (that they <em>do</em> have enough quality publics & quality privates for every student, and for that experiment to become a test-case which might encourage other States to adopt vouchers and/or to scare the dickens out of traditional publics, lest they run out of enrolling students. But I'll tell you right now that in very large States with large immigrant populations and large poor populations (who vote!) it will be very difficult to get such a proposal to pass. It will be seen as furthering non-equity and class warfare. I'm not commenting on that; I'm just predicting the most likely response (based on past similar efforts, as well).</p>

334

<p>Like I really need to say this as if it hasn't been made painfully clear in many posts. I am fundamentally opposed to tax revenues being used to fund a private school education.</p>

<p>I am far less opposed to the idea of open enrollment within public schools provided that a parent is willing/able to provide transportation to a school outside of their district.</p>

335

<p>As with the union question, a la steve jobs, I see other pitfalls in believing that vouchers are the be-all and end-all. I needn't repeat reasons I've stated. But I'd like to add that two of the biggest reasons for student's failure in K12 publics (again, in my State) are these: failure to address the radical effect of massive immigration on a mainstreamed school system, and a refusal to actually "fail" students who are failing.</p>

<p>For those of you who may be physicians: which one of you would find it ethical (let alone practical) to dodge communication of a serious diagnosis, with your patient? You would think it more important -- for the sake of the patient's "feelings," or the feelings of the patient's relatives -- to tell the patient that he's o.k.? That there's nothing potentially fatal on the horizon? That you are not seeking aggressive, even emergency, measures for him? That if he is to survive he, the patient (& patient's family) should become partners with you in his restoration & continued efforts at optimizing his health? Of course you wouldn't! This would be a violation of your oath. Yet every day, in every public classroom that I know of, teachers are being asked to do the equivalent, for the sake of the most vocal members of the public, who would rather make nicey-nice.</p>

<p>And in case you think I'm making this up, or exaggerating based on televised, raucus school board hearings, etc., I regularly run across parents from my educational level who often complain to me that a teacher was honest with them about their child's performance in a particular class. (Such as, "He/she told me that my child was failing!" <em>gasp,gasp</em> Or even, "He/she told me that my child will need some intervention/tutoring/summer school based on this year's academic performance, despite one-on-one teacher efforts, because the student has not put out a <em>reciprocal</em> effort, & thus not progressed to meet next year's grade level." <em>the nerve of that teacher!</em>)</p>

<p>Schools & districts have caved in to the feel-good, overly protective mentality that eventually backfires. While some of the fear is real (such as I just mentioned) much of this is based on imaginary consequences. Let me tell you that recently I had occasion in our school to be honest with a parent. I have been diplomatic with her -- waiting for her to possibly see that her child was not making it. I had a one-on-one with her in which I gently reviewed her child's progress, which is frankly not much. The reason: both single mother and child are new immigrants and ESL. He is being "taught" at home without English immersion, & this is clearly not working, which I could have predicted. (I would not have enrolled the child, but I am not empowered with that decision-making.) Having established trust with me, she asked me upfront if it would be better to bring the child to a site school. "Yes," I said, "most definitely. He will not make progress where he currently is unless you bring him to a site with resources & language immersion." Her response? "God bless you. Thank you so much." (I should add that I had to tell her not to quote me, as I could get fired for not encouraging his continued enrollment, because naturally we will lose money for disenrolling him. But my conscience always gets the better of me in these many situations I encounter, and I do like to sleep at night.)</p>

<p>So the truly caring parents give a damn about hearing the truth, and excuse my French, but the hell with the rest of them; they just want to be flattered & not be inconvenienced. If an educational institution or system can't do this, they have lost their ethical spine & their credibility. So now we have a generation of students, many of whom have Self-Esteem quotients off the charts, based on popping hot air. You see, many of them are failing, but the important thing is, that at least now they Feel Good about being academic failures. Such delicious satire our public schools have become (too many).</p>

<p>"In my day," if you failed your senior year of high school, you did not graduate. You went on to something called Continuation School. There you could obtain a G.E.D. Sometimes also these schools were partnered with Vocational Schools, providing concrete job training. Students who feared that social "stigma" (and there was one), would work hard not to fail their senior year, particularly if they believed themselves capable of an eventual AA or BA/BS degree.</p>

<p>The second thing that should be addressed is the education of immigrants. Since immigration is a national department, not a state one, there should be federally funded ESL <em>schools</em> in areas with school populations that overwhelm the native population. The reason is, they are becoming majority populations in publics in some areas, which severely impacts the native students. It means that surreptitiously classes are being conducted in languages such as spanish or arabic, which (surprise!) the nonimmigrants do not understand. Bringing this to the attention of public officials has not succeeded in changing anything.</p>

336

<p>In our system we do in fact fail students. Not only that but unless their averge is at least 50% for any given class they are not permitted to make it up in summer school. Likewise if they have more than a certain number of absences. I believe the number is 10 but I'm not 100% sure of that.</p>

<p>Students are not held back in elementary school and rarely in middle school.
I have really mixed feelings about not failing students in middle school. I understand the reasons in elementary school when frequently poor performance results from developmental issues.</p>

<p>The down side to not failing students in middle school is they often come to high school with no work ethic and believing that we are bluffing when we tell them they will repeat a course they have not passed. On the other hand, many 6th graders are 10 and 11 years old when the year begins. Do we really want 15, 16, or 17 year-olds who have poor attitudes toward learning and frequently behavior issues as well? State law will not allow a school system to expel a student who is under the age of 16. Some sort of alternative setting must be provided so that's only a partial remedy at best. Even if you could expel them, the law only permits them to be removed for the remainder of that year. They would only return to the same school the following year, a year old with another group of 10 or 11 year-olds to potentially prey on.</p>

<p>I don't have the answers for these problems.
I do know however that the answers aren't as cut and dried as many would like to believe.</p>

<p>
[quote]
I regularly run across parents from my educational level who often complain to me that a teacher was honest with them about their child's performance in a particular class. (Such as, "He/she told me that my child was failing!" <em>gasp,gasp</em> Or even, "He/she told me that my child will need some intervention/tutoring/summer school based on this year's academic performance, despite one-on-one teacher efforts, because the student has not put out a <em>reciprocal</em> effort, & thus not progressed to meet next year's grade level." <em>the nerve of that teacher!</em>)

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Here is evidence of something else I genuinely believe. Many parents claim to want excellence from the public schools when what they truly want is mediocrity. They want high academic standards and high standards for behavior until it is their child who fails to meet them. Then the same parents wants the standards changed or an exception made. As an A.P. teacher I see this all the time. (Though personally I have been spared these kinds of things for the most part, it has happened once or twice.)</p>

337

<p>wharfrat2, I totally concur. I teach an advanced level class that attracts many freshmen whose parents believe they are all going to Harvard because of their performance in middle school. Oh, pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeez! And believe me, even in second semester, they still don't believe that I mean it when their zeroes will stick and about a third dropped at first semester. Unfortuantely, in order to avoid having 50% failures, I, too, have had to bail the kids out with curves, etc., but I limit it to 2 per semester, on the toughest tests. But when kids can't even get the matching portion of a vocabulary quiz correct, there is a problem. I pass out a sheet at the beginning of the year that has hints on how to study, how to take tests, etc., and tell them to use htese tips all the way through college. I might as well be talking to the wall. I tell them that they need ot review new and old vocabulary every night for 15 -20 minutes, and do they do it? In parent conferences, I ask the parents if the kid has been doing this, and they look puzzlked, like this is the first time they have ever heard this. Of course, I go over this at Open House, but those parents that attend aren't the ones I see in conference. Oh, well...
I once read an article that made tremendous sense to me. The reason kids aren't doing as well in school in our area is because the kids have cars. In the day, we went to school, went out to play a bit, ate dinner, then did homework, and sometimes we just did homework around dinner. Now, the kids are told that they can have the car, but they have to make the payments and pay for the insurance, so they go to work. I don't know how many times I was told that the kid didn't have his work because he had to work. When I ask if there was a problem at home with finances, I am told that he has to work to make the car payments. Now, I am not talking about kids who have ot work to bring in income into the family. That is another issue. I am talking about kids who normally would have succeeded in the day, but whose grades slide once that car and its responsibilities hit them. Unfortunately, too many parents don't take away the car - they feel they are punishing themselves because they will be back to doing chauffer duty.</p>

338

<p>wharfrat,
While I agree that "cut and dried answers" are not apparent,I strongly believe (& have evidence in my State) that answers to failing, retention, misbehavior, absenteeism, and predatory behavior have not been genuinely & aggressively tried - not on the school level, not on the legislative level. Or at least not recently.</p>

<p>If a student is being kept back year after year for not making reading progress, then aggressive intervention (or the right style of it) has not been implemented. Or whatever the school or district calls intervention is not effective, & a different approach is needed. This usually means going outside of the traditional school structure, by requiring in-school, after-school, weekend, & summer remediation & progress for the student which is <em>monitored</em>. I think there should be a limit to this, too. The student/family either takes advantage of these free (!) resources, or they don't (within a specified time frame; it's not eternal). At some point, a family that chooses to remain illiterate if really offered other options must face less comfortable settings than what they want socially. </p>

<p>It is not appropriate to keep a 15 year old in a class with 9 year olds, but I guarantee you in my region that there are a whole class of such 15 yr olds on a 9 yr old level in every public low-rent/mid-rent high school. (A small class, at least.) That "class" can & should be taught separately or supplementally in the needed area/areas. There may be another small class of 15 yr olds in the same school that have a range of better reading levels, from 6th - 10 grade level.)</p>

<p>On the more general topic of elem. & middle retention, I depart from you, believing that academic progress is actually entwined with social standing, & that an illiterate 11 yr. old hanging out with literate 11 yr. olds is marginalized regardless of age. We have not served that 11 yr old well by having advanced him in 4th & 5th grade. (At 3rd grade max, is where the honesty should have started, via requisite intervention.) If such intervention does not succeed (often, in my area, because the essential problem of <em>language</em> -- ESL, etc., has not been confronted), then there need to be alternative institutions, such as a temporary enrollment in an ESL institution, or ESL classes to which the family must legally report & where attendance is binding. Knowing that that will be the next step is sometimes motivation enough to encourage progress before forced removal from social peers. (This is why honesty with a family, going in, is important. Anything else is not professional, i.m.o.)</p>

<p>The first step is to provide sufficient alternatives for those who are failing -- for whatever reason the failure. Sometimes it's native language barriers; sometimes it's not, but is similarly home-based, home-challenged with regard to motivation & reinforcement & resources, interest in reading, etc. I've never known a fluent, educated household to have a child stuck for years with a reading problem, unless there is a dyslexia component or other LD or physiological component (visual, auditory, etc).</p>

<p>Would aggressive remediation cost a lot more money? No. I.m.o. tons of money are being wasted daily in my local public schools, going through the motions of learning pretense, where 10-15% of learning is taking place, relative to the amount spent on <em>academics</em>. (And the amount spent on academics itself is marginal, often.) There is a pretense of being on a high school level because they're in a high school class, but the students are not comprehending much of the material, and cannot do so on their own because of compromised reading competencies. Our own schools need targeted money, less for general classroom use & more for the specialized & specific, but particularly in basic math and ELA skills. Many of these schools have taken the first good step by removing themselves from the public system via establishing a charter: that at least allows them to enforce behavior rules, etc., & establishes a more uniform style of school, which is more efficient. However, they often stop there, meaning that their 12th graders will "graduate" next year, & their functional literacy will be at the 5th-7th grade level -- a few steps up from the 3rd/4th level at which they began 9th grade or 10th grade, but certainly not the 12th grade level. </p>

<p>By contrast, the similarly uniform-population charters that establish long mandatory days, including assisted homework periods on-site after school, etc., are making considerably more progress, graduating fully literate students to at least the average standard of what should be expected in a public school in the <em>First</em> World. And again, they are doing so efficiently with the public dollar. These are no-frills schools with <em>low</em> administrative overhead.</p>

<p>The consequences of failure to confront the truth about extended illiteracy is that not only is the failing student not served, the capable student (if, & usually, the minority percentage) is cheated, big time. So there is waste twice.</p>

<p>I slightly disagree with you on the parent situation: I don't think they even secretly want mediocrity -- those parents that complain about truthful teachers. I think they want high standards & assume their children do meet that standard. That's based on hanging out as a parent with those parents: they reveal themselves more to other parents naturally than to teachers. They're effronted that a teacher suggests to them that they're child is not gifted, brilliant, perfect, etc. (Academically or behaviorally) And these are not the parents of brilliant children because I've known their children well for 9+ years. Their children are anywhere from D students to B+ students. But the teacher should of course be handing out straight A's & giving undivided attention to each of their children.</p>

339

<p>A follow-up on the alternative options for students not making progress within a specified time frame:</p>

<p>If the problem is (& it often is) that English is rarely spoken in the home, and the family is a new arrival, then federal ESL funds should be made available for the whole family -- to be taken advantage of within a limited time frame. (Adult language immersion or ESL school for the parents, ESL on-site in publics for the student.) Once a certain student competency is reached, then the child can be mainstreamed; before then, it is unfair to those who are fluent to be ignored in the classroom because the teacher must target to the overwhelming number of non-learners. Again, this should not cost local or State money, or the building of new buildings. Almost every city in my state has a publicly funded adult school which costs a local resident a few dollars to enroll in. Federally funded ESL teachers could be hired (if there were enough of them, which I admit, there are not!) to teach at existing adult school sites. There are ESL teachers currently working, naturally, but i.m.o. there use is not being efficiently maximized. Not enough of them are really working in core areas of literacy; they are dispersed in many subjects, ages, functions. They could, for example, receive a supplemental (federal) salary on top of the standard local salary as an incentive to work in clustered population centers.</p>

<p>For a student who is a native speaker but not making reading progress because of low literacy in the home, the family should be told upfront that the alternative to the student's fluency is separation from his peers in a remediation situation (extended hours, separate site, summer intensive, whatever), and the time frame for that should be clearly stated to the family. In our charter school we try (naturally) to stress the positive first, by using incentives, encouraging the whole family to get involved & excited about reading. But you can only bring the horse to water. Consequences have to follow for the horse that will not drink, and it's the consequences (social separation, the stigma of "failure," etc.) that we're so afraid of in our society.</p>

340

<p>epiphany wrote:</p>

<p>
[quote]
I slightly disagree with you on the parent situation: I don't think they even secretly want mediocrity -- those parents that complain about truthful teachers. I think they want high standards & assume their children do meet that standard.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>I have personally witnessed too many instances of parents complaining that teachers are being unreasonable, that an exception should be made for their child "just this once." </p>

<p>One recent example I can draw on is a phone call I received from a parent of one of my A.P. students who disagreed with the fact the exams I give my students consist of 80 Multiple Choice questions in 55 minutes. She wanted to know why her son was performing so poorly on my exams. I suggested that he was rushing through the exam because of the time element and as a result he wasn't thinking his way through the questions. Mom's response was that if my tests were causing that much anxiety then I needed to change them. I explained to her that this was the exact format of the A.P. U.S. History exam in May and that my purpose was to prepare the students to be successful on that exam. Even then she maintained that I was expecting too much. </p>

<p>As I said in an earlier post, I have been fortunate in that my encounters with parents such as this one have been minimal. The same cannot be said for many of my colleagues. I could recount stories such as these for hours.</p>