I like to think of our school as an affordable college prep school. Will and Mary both diagram sentences, write book reports, memorize their math facts, learn about chemistry and astronomy, and read much of the day. Practical skills are covered as well, this morning Will is making Christmas cookies all by himself. While they don't enthusiastically rush to their schoolbooks each morning, they will do extra work for fun and help the younger children learn their letters and colors. The curriculum reminds Tim of his elementary school years at good old St. Paul's. In addition, I have high standards because I am responsible for teaching them and they are responsible for learning. There is little room for blaming someone when the teacher is also the parent. Failure is not an option.
After teaching for a few years in the public school system I refused to put our children in that atmosphere of apathy and general stupidity. (and that was among the staff) Few children are encouraged to do their best and many otherwise smart kids are told to suppress their talents to fit in with their peers. This article gives us a hint of the racist and economic prejudices of the administration that wants to dumb down the material so more children will pass the tests while not expecting them to work any harder. The attitude of blaming someone else, usually parents, is very common in the public schools.
"If you are not passing more than 65 percent of your students in a class, then you are not designing your expectations to meet their abilities, and you are setting your students up for failure, which, in turn, limits your success as a professional. Most of our students come from the lowest third percentile in academic achievement, have difficult home lives, and struggle with life in general. They DO NOT have a similar upbringing nor a similar school experience to our experiences growing up."
If you read between the lines it says: Our little minority students are too stupid to get good grades. They have parents who just don't care and so that lets us off the hook in terms of educating them. They are doomed to a miserable life.
Excuse me? Many studies have shown that parochial schools, given the exact same students, can turn out educated children. Many children who were deemed hopeless and in need of special services have been pulled out of the schools by their parents and excelled in homeschooling.
Public school creates its own failure by its existence: low expectations combined with an environment which stifles excellence leads to 65%+ failure rates. If I could say something to these parents it would be, "Pull your kids out of these schools that are failing your children. Pull them away from evil and destructive influences and fill their minds with good things." This may be difficult or almost impossible for many parents to do, but I find it hard to believe that a loving parent could do a worse job than the schools which assumes so little responsibility.
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2 comments:
If 65% of the kids *who are showing up to class, completing assignments, and in general working hard* are still failing the class, that *MAY* be a sign that the bar is set too high for them.
My senior year honors calculus class was like that. We were all working our tails off but had this teacher who gave insanely hard tests. The analogy that best described this class was to imagine a French language class. The textbook is written in French, all the problem sets are in French, and the students learn French. Yet the exam tests the students' understanding of Latin. The students go up to the teacher and ask what the deal is. The teacher replies, "Well, French is derived from Latin so if you *REALLY* understand French you should be able to figure out the Latin."
He refused to grade on a curve but instead set the highest score in the class to 100% and the graded us against that. Unfortunately, there was one math genius in the class who always managed to solve most of the answers. The teacher had no qualms about giving 1 A, a handful of C's and D's, and F's to most of the class.
I'm all for having high expectations, but they need to be realistic ones. If the majority of those who are working hard still aren't passing the class, it's time for a reevaluation of the course's requirements.
"Teachers at the school stand to receive $3,000 bonuses if their school improves."
This is a failing inner-city New York public school. It is not a fancy French class that needs to be toned down- this is a school full of kids who can't pass the standardized tests, otherwise they would not be offering bonuses to teachers.
I can understand your point. I recall being kicked out of Honors English in 8th grade because I refused to read Silas Marner. I was likely the top reader in the school in terms of volume and speed. My after-school job was at the local library just so I could get first dibs on new books, but I didn't want to read some dry, dull book, just because it was assigned. I read the Cliff Notes, which were painful as well, but didn't test well and went back to English for average folks within 3 weeks.
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