Dailykos is plagued with the well-informed, thoughtful opinions of people like teacherken. Enough of that, I say!
In my ignorant, ill-formed opinion, public education sucks, Republicans are working hard to make sure it continues to suck until they get the chance to drown the system in Grover Norquist's bathtub, and Democrats are helping them promote the suckage.
Watch as in a single diary I attack:
- one of the building blocks of our democracy
- hard working public servants
- ideas that have spawned many heart-tugging movies of the week
- the kids on the short bus
Just let me get my patented three-sizes-too-tight Grinchy shoes on... okay, let me at 'em.
Here's an important warning: I am not a teacher (though I have played one in the classroom).
However, wife of Devilstower is a teacher. She's taught middle school kids at a public school -- six, seventh, or eighth grade -- for two decades, a fact that's certain to keep her on the fast track for sainthood. She's got enough letters after her name to have also spent some time teaching at a university, but she always goes back to the kids. It's in her blood. Her mother was an elementary school teacher for nearly forty years. Her sister is a teacher. Her grandmother was a teacher.
Our only son called from college the other day to say he's thinking of changing his major to education. I was not surprised.
All this is to say that I'm not an expert in education, but I am deeply interested in the issue and have just enough information to be dangerous. After catching an earful of my wife's experiences for the last two decades, my own whopping two years behind the big desk, and my invaluable experiencing TA'ing "Geology for Non-Science Majors" (better known as "rocks for jocks") I think I have an (myopic) idea of some of the problems.
So what's the dastardly Republican plot this time? It's called giving us exactly what we ask for at least half the time.
I outlined the wrecker strategy before. It works this way.
Dem: "You know, schools should really be required to provide special programs for helping kids to deal with this serious problem."
Rep: "sure, let's do that."
Dem: "and we'll need funding."
Rep: "What's that? I didn't hear you. I was just adding those new requirements and regulations you wanted. What other favors can I do for you?"
Face it, we're Democrats. The Republicans just know that eventually we'll come up with a "hey, schools should be required to..." As long as it doesn't involve condoms, they'll nod right along and give it to us. The more complex the requirements, the more burdensome the regulations on public education, the better. They will always go along with more regulations, and they'll always short us on the funding. Then they'll sit back and wait for us to ask for something else. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
Why do Republicans care about public education? It's the capsule summary of everything they hate. Good public education threatens their perch at the top of the social ladder. Good public education shows that government can be effective. Good public education actually might make people, gulp, educated and less willing to swallow right wing lies. So they're not having any of that. When Republicans complain about the "liberal elite," what do you think the "elite" part means? It's not rich. Republicans never complain about someone being rich. No, the liberal elite are otherwise known as "people who are too smart for their own good." Smart people don't sit down and take it like they should. Smart people sometimes try to rise above their station. Sometimes they even drag back the curtain and point out flaws in the system. So smart people must be ridiculed. Sources of more smart people are to be eliminated.
This isn't to suggest that Republicans aren't interested in educating their own children. Of course they are. They just don't want that education to be equal to what other children are getting. That's one of the reasons they fight any change to funding that would draw money outside of property taxes.
Even if the Republicans stopped playing "boy, these guys just never catch on," public education would still be in serious trouble. Here, in my opinion, are some of the culprits.
School Boards Are Bad
School boards are an awful idea. I don't mean just school boards that are trying to foist "intelligent design" onto schools, I mean all of them. I know, school boards are supposed to be enshrined with New England town hall meetings as one of the foundations of democracy, but I think that's pure bunk. By giving school boards an enormous level of local control, we assure that schools all over the country are anything but standard. Everything from grading systems to curriculums change drastically when you walk across the street from one district to another. If you're lucky enough to live in an area where local school boards don't control the nature of the subjects taught, count your blessings.
But wait, don't I believe that kids in Brooklyn, NY and kids in Brooklyn, KY (pop. 224) have different needs? No. I don't. At least, not when it comes to classroom curriculum and goals. Take a look at all those countries that beat the tar out of us on tests of math and science (and ignore the fact that many of those results are comparing apples to oranges). What do those other systems have in common? Consistent national standards for teaching and testing math and science, that's what they have. They do not let some local would-be politician decide that they should use phonics to teach multiplication or that science class should include mankind's creation by George the giant chicken. Without a standard curriculum, teacher training is all over the board, teachers are unable to effectively share ideas, and text books never match up with what's supposed to be taught. We've got federal guidelines, state guidelines, national tests, and then local school boards all swimming in the same pool.
The current system has turned every one of the tens of thousands of school systems in the country into its own unique little experiment. That wouldn't be such a bad thing if the system also allowed for a little cross-pollination, and Darwinian evolution leading to refinement of the process. It doesn't. This is an experiment where every case has six jillion and one variables. Good stuff is as likely to be thrown out as the bad. There's no control group, no baseline from which to judge. So most of the time people have no idea what's going on when something good actually happens. Odds are, whatever they point at, is not responsible. They'll just start a new experiment, based on what they thought worked last time, meanwhile letting another two jillion variables slip. It won't work.
This is not evolution -- it's Brownian motion.
Finally, because the ratio of school board members to parents interested enough to show up regularly at school board meetings is about 3:1, any parent that does find their way into a meeting gets as much weight as Moby Dick at a sardine convention. Want to get some stupid program into your school? If you show up and ask for it -- especially if you look like you might be angry enough to make the evening unpleasant -- school board members will fall over themselves to make it so.
Sure, this is a problem shared by every local political entity -- and often times, it's not a problem -- but in the examples I've seen, the "concerned parents" showing up at the board are rarely there because their little kiddo is an angel who isn't getting enough calculus to make it into Harvard. Uh uh. Instead, it's parents like the one who went to the school board and got a order exempting her son from all disciplinary measures (yes, that really happened).
One last thing (this time, I mean it): many school board members seem to openly dislike not only teachers, but the whole idea of learning. Even in neighborhoods with a good general education level, it often seems as if the school board election is intended to chose those who didn't make it past third grade and are suspicious of anyone who did. Getting on that there school board gives them power over the smart folks, and they likes it, they do. They'd just as soon your kids didn't learn anything. It'll only ruin 'em for watching wrasslin' while wasting tax dollars. America needs sanitation workers, and they're ready to sign your kids up for the job.
Special Education Is Bad
Special education sucks. Big time. It hurts the kids involved, hurts the teachers, and hurts the rest of the kids. Oh, I feel for anyone trying to do it right, because it has to be one hell of a difficult task. But in 99.9% of the cases I've seen, no one is trying. They're too busy with the paperwork.
Of the 155 kids my wife is teaching this year, more than 30% have letters after their name. LD. BD. ED. Some of these kids really need help. They're not getting it.
They're not getting it because the system is not structured to help those with educational difficulties. Instead, it's saddled with more regulations than the IRS, all of them put in place by Democrats saying "you know, the school out to really make sure that..." The result is designed to make it look as if these kids are advancing so they can be moved on down the pipe. Each one of these kids is accompanied by a folder (by law, roughly equal to their own weight) filled with endless evaluations and reports -- enough paper to make applying for a home loan seem like a memo.
This is where the wrecker strategy has worked so beautifully for the Republicans. They've acquiesced to every request for special classifications, added heaps of regulations, and then stiffed us on the funding.
Rather than actually teaching anything, the special education teachers spend all their time slogging through this mass of paper and issuing impossible demands to the other teachers. They make a pretense of following the thousand special rules that attach themselves to each special kid. In reality, they have two choices: warehouse the kids and rubber stamp them along, or shove them into regular classrooms and watch them drown.
Kids several years behind their compatriots get tromped into the classroom to stare blankly for four days of the week. During this time, teachers do their level best to reach them (and get two dozen "Johnny says your class is not stimulating him" calls from other parents as a reward). At the end of the week, the kids will be marched out and the special ed teacher will dictate to them the answers on the test (or write them himself).
If you stick kids with a reading level of two into a sixth grade classroom, they will not learn. Strike that. They will learn, they just won't learn their school work. What they'll learn is that the system will boot them along regardless of their success or failure. Not one in a hundred of these kids will actually fail. Count on it. Because to "hold back" these kids would screw up the school's statistics. Next year, they'll be in seventh grade, they'll still have a second grade reading level, and they'll have even less interest in learning.
The situation for kids with ED or BD labels is even worse. These are the kids the system has already abandoned. Sure, their bodies are bussed into the place come morning, and bussed out again at night, but the tacit agreement is this: we will pretend you are not here. Having determined that these kids are damaged goods and having given up all pretense of enforcing discipline, the school has decided that nothing can be done about it. So it leaves them alone.
Last year, a kid with the BD label began to trip, punch, and spit on other kids as they came into my wife's class. She sent him to the office. He came back and spit some more. She sent him again. The principal gave her a note saying that he was BD, and she was not allowed to send him to the office. When my wife asked how she was supposed to hold class for the other thirty students, she was told to hold her class in the hallway, allowing the one kid to have the room (she did not follow this order).
Since this is a personal rant, let me get to two very personal points: What really hits me in the gut is watching kids who are trying their darndest, kids who sweat their little brains out, only to get a C or D, while kids like the spitter get handed an A so they'll move along. Yeah, maybe it's silly to get upset about letter grades on a piece of cardboard handed to an eleven year old -- but it shouldn't be. Last year, my wife had a little girl in her class who was probably a little below average on a standard IQ test. Maybe even significantly low. For this kid, getting through standard classroom material was a real struggle, but she didn't have any letters after her name. Why? Because she was "working to her potential." Letters were reserved for those whose IQs suggested they could do better. Watching this kid stay after school night after night, staying in the room at lunch, and sweating every detail of her homework -- all to earn a D -- was an education in itself. That D was a triumph. It made me resent the heck out of a system that gives others a bigger reward for doing much less.
I have all the sympathy in the word for the kids with difficult issues, and for the parents who have to deal with them, but the system as it stands is only designed to see that they fail more spectacularly. Oh yeah, and some of those kids with a BD or ED label are kids that need to get a kick in the pants (metaphorically). Getting a "you can't disciple Billy" note is practically a death sentence for the education of these children. In fact, I can't think of a single case where going easier on these kids was actually helpful.
Last point (I seem to be saying that a lot): putting kids into a classroom for pure "socialization" is almost always a dumb idea. I don't care how many times it works out for valiant teacher Mel Harris or good-hearted parent Pam Dawber on a Lifetime special. Sticking kids into the classroom who can't effectively defend themselves or even communicate with the other students is a recipe for a South Park episode, not education.
Big Schools Are Bad
Schools are too large. Too large by an order of magnitude. Maybe two.
My wife's school has nearly 2000 kids. Think about that -- 2000 kids between eleven and fourteen (don't think too long, the screaming will scare your neighbors). The average class size is around thirty, and the average principle has nearly 700 kids to worry about. There's no way the principal can even learn these kid's names, much less have a relationship with them. I'm amazed that my wife gets to know the 130-180 thrown in her direction each year, but she does. (By year's end, she knows every one of these kids, the name of their siblings, the instruments they play in band, and what kind of candy they like -- showing conclusively that she'd make a much better politician than I. We watched the Macy's parade this year, just because a kid she had two years back was dancing around some float. Some time this summer, I am sure to be dragged to a concert where someone from this year's class is playing, or a high school graduation where some valedictorian who passed through her class six years ago has named her the "most influential person in my life.")
Personal anecdote time: I attended a school so small that it didn't have enough boys to field a football team. Yet we also produced more National Merit Scholars than many much larger schools. The year I graduated there were two of us (yes, I was once a smart person, back in the distant past before much of my brain went to mush. I think the other winner my senior year was that uppity Gilgamesh kid.)
Not too many years later, my school was closed and rolled into a much larger, brand-new, county-wide uber-school. Nicer facilities. Keen science labs. A built-in McDonald's. A much broader array of classes. Lots more activities and opportunities of all kinds. Even a football team.
And merit scholars? Eh, not so much. They had five times as many kids, but actually produced fewer winners.
A big school fails for the same reasons that big housing projects fail: there's little sense of ownership or participation for the average student. A school like this grooms kids to be cogs. It's breeding for mediocrity at best.
Besides, I think 2000 middle school kids was the description of the fifth circle, second bolgia.
How to Stop the Sucking
So, when I'm named czar of all things teacherly, what will I do about it?
Small schools with a low teacher to student ratio: yes, each school might have fewer options, but by offering more specialization among the schools, even more options could be represented overall. What's the number one thing rich parents are buying when they send their kids to private school? A low student to teacher ratio. So give this to every kid. It's the best thing you can do to actually help, teachers really are one of the cheapest parts of the system, and as a bonus this will really piss off the Republicans.
Much more reading, much (much) more writing: in every grade, students should be writing almost as much text as they're reading. If a student goes through a year of high school and doesn't have enough text to form their own personal copy of War and Peace, they're not writing enough.
Teach these kids some grammar! Sure, I know I ignore half the rules of English in every diary, but at least I know the rules before I start breaking them. My son made it through high school without every diagramming a sentence. He wouldn't know a predicate if it clamped onto his nose. That's a crime, people.
Standard national curricula on science, math, English, and history: Other classes can vary by school specialty, and if you absolutely have to, you can toss in some local flavor. Let local school boards hang around, but put some real limits on their ability to affect what goes on in the class room. Heck, it'll give them more time to figure out how to steal money from the soda machine contract. That's what they're good at anyway.
Grades must mean something: no one, but no one, should get a diploma as an attendance prize. And no one should get an A -- not even in Kindergarten -- if they didn't earn it. It might make someone feel better to mark a higher grade on the card of some kid who's tried, but failed. It won't help them. Grading and graduation requires that each principle be at least 24% pure cold-hearted bastard.
Advancement comes by achievement: no "moving kids forward to keep them with their age group." A kid that's behind does not benefit from being put more behind, and whoever thought of that idea needs to be kicked where it hurts.
Pay the Teachers, darn it: I've seen way too many good teachers leave because they weren't making enough money (and I'm not counting me). Sure, you get some people like my wife, who was valedictorian of every class she ever attended, once made six figures as a VP at a computer company, could have done anything she darn well wanted, and still chose to martyr herself on the altar of public education. But you don't get many.
Will this fix things? In my ignorant, ill-formed, myopic opinion, these ideas would at least be a start. There will still need to be some fiddling with the system to discover better methods, but before that can be done, we have to put the schools on something like a standard. Otherwise, we're just guessing.
Oh, and many of my solutions are encompassed in some of the plans put forth by the Small Schools Movement, which has been spectacularly successful in both urban and suburban settings. However, I'm sure they would disavow any association with me or my stupid rant.
Okay, recess. Class dismissed. Besides, these shoes are killing me.
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