Re: 2012 Presidential Election - The Day after the Aftermath...
Its Rover Nation, not Roverworld, and welcome back from your board imposed "vacation".
You may have inadvertently hit upon something important, which is kids in public school who go to class solely for the purpose of dealing drugs or stealing from other students need to be turfed and quickly. Otherwise they're a disruption to the kids who want to learn. Problem is under your system, until these punks are shown the door they're disrupting class and getting all F's, but you would hold the teacher responsible for that. That's not fair.
So, drug dealing/drug possession = automatic expulsion. Fighting = two minutes in the box first time, second time 5 minute major. 3 strikes and you're out. Threatening fellow students = expulsion.
In the city I live near, I'll walk through a downtown shopping district occasionally and see about 100 school age kids hanging out at lunchtime during the school day. There's no schools around there. These kids are clearly skipping class, but its not the teacher's job to see to it that they attend. If the parents won't get them to go, kick them out. Only then will I sign up for these teacher evaluation metrics that you're advocating.
Teacher evaluation metrics? Where did I mention that? Look, teaching in big cities in this country is a complicated business. And teachers aren't the only problem. Maybe not even the biggest problem. But teachers are the only ones involved in the process who get paid with taxpayer money. And they are they only ones who have unionized, to protect and enhance their rice bowls, regardless of how good a job they do.
We persist in using words which have lost much of their traditional meaning. "Family" is right at the top of the list. Someone says "family" and many of us think of Ward, June, Wally and The Beaver. In far too many instances, the truth is much uglier and more difficult for the children. The various social pathologies in our big cities are resistant to change and certainly won't be ameliorated by paying teachers more. But that's the reality we live with.
Teachers unions, like all unions, are primarily concerned with increasing membership (which helps the bottom line and improves clout) and they focus on pay, benefits and working conditions. No direct correlation between improvements in those areas and improvements in learning has been shown.
Over the years we've tried various nostrums guaranteed to improve student performance. Remember busing? Professor Coleman at the University of Chicago was the pioneer. Sending kids from poorly performing schools to better performing ones would help their education. And introduce them to better off (read white) kids, which would have positive societal benefits. The problem was, busing advocates also wanted kids from good schools punished by being sent to bad schools. Boston Southies weren't too impressed. A mob of them nearly undressed Ted Kennedy. Eventually, free Americans voted with their feet, and moved out of the jurisdictions of big city systems. Busing advocates then demanded that forced busing across city lines was the "only" way we were going to solve the "problem." Nevermind the implicit notion that kids belong to the state, to be done with as educrats please. There was also the very real problem of kids getting up earlier and home later, and spending an hour or two in a bus. Every single day. Not to mention the expense. Detroit had to buy and insure and hire people to drive 300 buses! After studying several years of busing data, Dr. Coleman changed his mind and said he was wrong. He was immediately pronounced senile by people who had previously hung on his every word.
For a while bi-lingual education was touted as the solution for kids for whom English was a second language. Advocates suggested kids should be taught in bi-lingual classes K-12. Now when school districts began looking for biology teachers who could also speak Spanish (or any other language) which credential do you suppose became more important? Many underqualified people became "teachers" primarily because they could speak another language. I guess we've largely abandoned that particular will o the wisp these days.
Some years ago a federal judge took over the school system in Kansas City because, he ruled, the "white" schools had more whistles and bells than the "black" schools. He manadated a tsunami of spending, green houses, gymnasiums, swimming pools, etc. All with an eye toward getting white students to attend those black schools. Guess what? Didn't happen.
Of course the most outrageous "educational" notion (perhaps in world history) came from Oakland, where presumably serious public officials advocated "Ebonics" as an acceptable substitute for written and spoken English. Al Green, who was then president of the NAACP in Houston, who is now in Congress, once told me that every teacher of inner city kids should be an English teacher, too. Amen, brother Green. David Duke could not have advocated anything more destructive for the education or prospects of young black kids than "Ebonics."
I was working in Seattle a while back and they have a program which encourages executives to work in inner city schools, to give those kids some sense of what's possible. A very highly paid Microsoft executive was volunteering in an inner city school, and got himself into trouble. One of his black students referred to someone or something as being "faggy"(or something similar). The volunteer asked the kid how he would like it if someone called him an n-word. This touched off the customary hullabaloo from the NAACP, which accused the guy of being a racist (naturally), and he quit. I've always thought if he really was a racist, he probably wouldn't have been volunteering at a majority black school. This might have been an opportunity for one of those "teaching moments" we hear so much about. But no, this highly successful executive, who could bring a tremendous amount of real world experience and success to help motivate these kids was driven out by political correctness.
I've mentioned Marva Collins and West Side Prep. The Chicago teachers unions bitterly opposed her at every turn. And repeatedly made the argument about private schools being "selective." In fact, many of her students had flunked out of CPS but wound up flourishing at West Side. I've posted before about the 60 Minutes segment where Morley Safer asked a beautiful little girl who her favorite author was. "Chaucer," she said. Well, she may have been showing off. But the fact was, she knew there was a dude out there named Chaucer.
We've spent and are spending trillions of dollars on public education. Every state has mandatory attendance laws 'till age 18. We've invested untold sums in educational infrastructure. Yet, we aren't getting our money's worth. And the ones shortchanged the most are the ones who need the education the most. Single parent kids from tough neighborhoods. Kids who are more familiar with the ills of society than anyone should be. I'm selfish. I want every American kid. Every American kid, to get at least a first rate secondary eduction. An education that familiarizes them with computers and prepares them for the jobs they'll be competing for in the future. Selfish? Because as more of these young people become productive members of society, fewer of them will become criminals or inmates, thus reducing my tax burdon to house, feed and clothe them.
