Politics No math. No problem

PPS have been dog shit for 30 years.

 

I taught myself to read before I started school. I am very good at math. Never took proficiency test. Only ones who had trouble recognizing I am good at reading and math were some MCPs who insisted women can't do math even though I got better grades than they did.

 

Grade School, Middle School, and High School were all critical to my ability to read and comprehend and for my ability to understand mathematics. Standardized testing most assuredly is important for universities to identify potential students who qualify for their programs.

 

It seems like instead of removing tests, I dunno, maybe do a better job teaching all kids, everywhere, regardless of income or location. Fix the actual problem, not the tests.

 

The problem is the parents who are not involved. Teachers can only do so much. If parents don't make kids do any work at home, don't make kids go to school or are not involved, it is kind of hard to schools to get kids to do any work. Even in elementary school, there is a high percentage of kids who don't do anything. another issue is the no child left behind and all inclusive. Teachers cannot remove trouble kids from their rooms, the rest of the kids just have to deal. My wife is a teacher, she had a child who would just start screaming, she would have to take the rest of the kids out of the classroom. There are so many issues involved, it is not just the teachers not doing their job.

 

All true. But we need to be able to teach enough between 8-3 that kids can pass math, English proficiency tests. I’m not saying everyone goes to Stanford. Just have got to do better with our education. The solution cannot be “kids aren’t passing these tests so let’s stop giving them”. It’s literally dingbat Trump saying “stop testing Covid and we don’t have the virus”

 

It still goes back to the parents. The teachers and schools can only do so much. As the old saying goes, " you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink." When I was a kid failing led to consequences, mainly at home. Now the schools can't even remove a kid from the classroom, much less anything else. To many parents see school as just daycare and are not involved in anyway with their kids. They have no idea what grades their kids are getting, or even if they are doing homework . Then the end of the term comes, the kids fails and the parents get mad and blame the teachers and school, when in reality, the parents are the ones failing their kids.

 

Proficiency tests aren't the same thing as proficiency. Of course education should be as good as possible, but if the tests are deemed poor at actually assessing proficiency, they should be removed (and better ones should be designed). Getting rid of those tests doesn't change whether the education is good enough or not.

 

Brick meet wall.

 

Exactly this. Teachers should be paid like doctors, or at least dentists.

 

But we (as a society) can't blame random parents. That's not a solution.

The solution is to set up a better education system which more effectively deals with the children of those parents.

 

How can the school hold them accountable? They can't make kids go to school, They can't make kids do the work, they can't discipline kids if they are acting up. My wife is a teacher, I see it, I hear it all the times. Teachers and schools are handcuffed in what they can do. Until we( as a society) start taking education serious it will always be like this. Until Parents step up and take some responsibility nothing will change.

Just last night here in town, they had a school board meeting about the mask mandate. It was said if schools and teachers do not enforce the mandate they can loose their jobs and licenses. No one cares. Until society as a whole takes education serious, which won't happen anytime soon, this problem will only get worse.

 

I totally get what you're saying. but we can either throw our hands up (as we have been doing for the last several decades) or try to come up with a better system.

Any other suggestions?

From my perspective we need to make those kids WANT to be there. forcing them to be there only exacerbates the problem. There are people who know how to do this. But how many of those people are saints who will trade their incredible gifts for teacher wages and the lack of respect that comes along with it?

The first thing we need to do is up teacher wages and benefits to drive the best people toward teaching.

The next thing to do is find out the best method to teach children in these circumstances. This will likely include mentorships from people who have found success while growing up in similar situations. These mentorships have been shown to help significantly in poverty stricken areas. These people would be teachers as well, and could be paid as such.

The next thing is holding teachers accountable and flushing the less capable ones out. It only takes one bad teacher to make a kid hate school.

Just my thoughts.

 

Where is the money coming from for these new positions, class sizes are already high because of lack of funding.

How are you going to hold teachers accountable? test scores? That won't work. to many teachers have ESL students, special needs students and others in their classes who will draw down the score. Some of the best teachers are the ones who get the most troubled students, which is going to have a negative impact on their test scores. That is not fair to these teachers.

If the parents are not supporting the schools and teachers, no matter what the schools do, it will never be enough. No matter what schools do, it takes parent involvement which is missing in a large part of kids lives.

 

Nationally 25% of kids are born into single parent families and that represents a real challenge for that parent and the school. As a society we need to use creative talents to address issues in the public school system. There needs to be incentives for all teachers regardless of tenure. Young people are very creative and smart and they should be given the opportunity and incentives to help address area's in the system need improving.

 

I completely agree with you here.

However, having 3 kids in school right now - I'd say the majority of my kid's teachers have made it at least somewhat difficult to be an 'involved' parent. Most have said that they'll do all the work at school - and we only need to support our kid at home.

Teachers are like most professions (or people in general)... The top 20% are fantastic. The middle 50% are reasonably adequate. The bottom 30% are terrible.

 

I get what you are saying, but a lot of teachers are not sending home work or anything home any more because such a large percentage of kids didn't do the homework and the teachers just had to make time for it in class anyways, so why send it home. As a parent if you can't even check in and ensure your kids do their homework, how are you going to keep them engaged in school, this is not pointed at anyone one by the way. I know a lot of teachers and not many of them, especially those who teach younger kids, that don't always need help in their rooms.