A teacher's rant against the current educational system.

The BBQ Pit
21

This whole system is coming back to bite me in the ass. I worked hard in high school - work hard, play hard. All the hours of chem homework, English essays…and it worked out great, I got my 90 average and graduated with distinction. But now that I’m in the post-secondary system, I just feel like giving up. Why do a spectacular job for a 90 when I can do the assignment in 1/3 of the time and cut some corners and get an 80? I always make sure my assignments are in on time, but I just do most of them half-assed because I have no reason to make the effort. You hear these days that people can’t get fired from a job unless they do something totally outrageous. Why do overtime when you are going to get paid the same amount of money?

I wish that I wasn’t cynical and jaded and burnt out at 19. But I’m sick and tired of hearing about rich kids and their parents that are lawyer-crazy gliding through university.

22

Wow, that is pretty scary. Goddamn society thinks everyone is a little prince or princess, and deserves better then the ‘lazy teachers who only work 10 months a year, and then its only from 9-3’ marks. I am wondering do we have teachers from other countries here? Is this happening in Australia, the UK, France, Canada?

I am pretty sure its happening in Canada. When I was in University, 3rd year no less, a friend of mine who happens to be asian with a very ‘non-white name’ (Wu) but was born in England and knows nothing about Asian culture or language, handed in an assignment. On it, the TA wrote “obviously english isn’t your first language so I am not taking off any marks for poor grammar/spelling.” In fucking University! A good Canadian University as well. It was complete bullshit.

23

Well, my mother’s a (Canadian) special ed. teacher, and in her experience the opposite situation is more often the case: a student is learning disabled due to ADD, ADHD, FAS, or whatever, and needs special allowances - a special text-to-speech software program, Ritalin, a different stream in school, etc. But the parents can’t accept that their kid is anything but perfectly normal, and so the student ends up suffering needlessly.

Just goes to show that students can get shafted in all kinds of stupid ways.

24

And the worst part is, the good teachers leave the profession because of all the nonsense going on.

Cases in point:

  • in my (soon to be former) school district, no child can earn less than a 50. Period. That’s so if they completely blow off a six weeks, they won’t necessarily fail the semester and have to repeat it. Never mind that if they do blow off an entire six weeks, they’ve missed a very large chunk of material and probably won’t be able to pass the remaining two six weeks on their own.

  • special ed kids are simply not allowed to fail. In order to show that a special ed student has failed your class, you have to document every single assignment and the way you modified it for them. Miss one iota of paperwork, and the grade is reversed.

  • along with that, it’s impossible to discipline special ed students. The way the federal law is written, pretty much no disciplinary measures can be taken until it’s determined that the learning disability was not a contributing factor to the behavior that warrents discipline. I know this because the girl who assaulted me is back in class, as opposed to expelled, because she is special ed.

  • everything is now predicated on the yearly standardized tests. Everything. The school status, the principal’s job, the amount of continuing education a teacher must get, whether or not a teacher can transfer to another school in the district, the money for extracurriculars, the curriculum, everything. This year, teaching seventh grade Language Arts has been the Batan Death March, because the only thing I’m allowed to teach them is how to write an essay for the TAKS test. There’s no literature, no vocabulary, no spelling, and precious little grammar. It’s not even creative writing, because everything is scripted for the student so they stand the best chance of getting a II, III, or IV.

One of these days, I’m going to start a Great Debate thread on how to fix education, but the basic premise is: take control away from the districts and put it into the hands of the teachers, the students, and the parents. Students and parents pick the teachers, and teachers have total control over their classroom. Well, that and I want a button to push that summons two Marine drill instructors to haul away misbehaving students and make them do push ups.

25

They changed the junior syllabus at my sister’s school so that instead of having 3 hrs of Maths and 3 hrs of Science (3 hrs being the standard time for a course each week), they had 4 hours of something called “Science and Maths integration” Although I understand the two are related, there needs to be some separation. And I don’t remember Science in year 8, 9 and 10 containing much maths.
They don’t mark in A’s, B’s… like they did when I went there. It’s now a scale of 1 - 7 (which is fair enough) but 4 is presumably a pass, but they never say that. 4 is “student has acheived understanding”. 3 is “student has grasped the concepts” instead of student has failed.
My sister got 4’s and my dad thought it was fantastic! “Uhh, Dad, that means she’s just passing.” </rant>

26

May I ask a question? What does the course cover, in that case? How can you teach someone to write an essay without covering vocabulary, spelling, grammar and creative writing?

27

This is very true. I’m considering the same thing–and I absolutely love teaching. I take a lot of pride in my work, and I want kids to actually learn. Teachers who really care about whether or not their students learn something are the ones feeling sick over this situation.

28

I was at school (in SA) as recently as 5 years ago. I got kicked out and failed year 12 because I was acting out, and didn’t do any work, or hand in any assignments or even turn up for several weeks while my mother was in the US. There was no “focus group” to find out why I was acting out, no excuses or makeup work. I didn’t show, I didn’t get graded, I failed. But even back then they were starting to bring in the “Don’t hurt their feelings” methodology of grading. In SACE (the South Australian Certificate of Education) there were no A, B or C grades. You got a number grade up to 20. Any number below a certain level was regarded as “Insufficient Evidence of Work”. Not a fail. You just didn’t quite hand in enough assignments. Have a cookie. And if you had a (recognised) learning disability, like ADD or dyslexia, you couldn’t fail if you tried. Which, yeah - disabilities deserve support (scribes, extra writing time on exams, makeup work). But there were kids doing the same as me, not even turning up to classes for weeks at a stretch, and they were being given a free pass and extra marks for what little work they did do.

It’s not quite as bad as people are saying the US education system is, but it’s certainly on its way there.

29

Yeah, 10 years ago I failed grade 11pre-tertiary maths under the Tasmanian Certificate of Education. But my record didn’t get a fail on it, it got a really good grade in the maths class of the level below the one I was in. Even though for all anyone knew I could successfully have failed that one too. Silly.

30

I’d really like to see a student or two start to agitate for worse grades. Assuming s/he deserved them, I mean. I’d love to read the news story about the 10th-grader who knew s/he failed the class and demanded to receive an “F” instead of a “good try!” or a C for a lower-level class.

Frankly, I’m surprised it hasn’t happened yet. Or that I haven’t heard of it if it has.

31

How common are these types of problems?

I’ve been considering returning to school to get a teaching certificate to teach middle school science for awhile now and my husband has suggested that I would enjoy engineering (what I do now) more than teaching because of these types of problems. He taught physics for a year in Dallas, but quit due to similar problems (I talk about some of them here).

Is there really little flexibility on what material is taught and how?

32

Not to take this out of pit territory, but there is a solution for this. But it’s kind of unintuitive. Bear with me for a moment.

Get rid of grades.

Still there? Grades, as we’ve learned, don’t really reflect learning. Not only are they too easy to manipulate, but they don’t really account for people who are brilliant at a subject but don’t do their work. Or people who improve a lot but wern’t that bright to begin with. There is just too much to be said about a person’s performance in a class to boil it all down to a letter.

I went to a college with no grades. Classes were scored on a pass/fail system with lengthy evaluations written about each class. A typical eval would talk about the quality and content of each paper, test performance, classroom participation, and work habits.

As a bright student, this was heaven to me. An “A” in school is a limit. Once you get that “A”, you are done. When you sit down and write an essay you stop thinking “I wonder if this is an ‘A’ essay yet.” Without grades, you are instead encouraged to delve deeper, push yourself harder and write the best essay you can. Furthermore, this way of learning really puts the education into the hands of the student. The student is there to learn, not to eek out a certain percentage. The goal of the class is to learn the material and do your best, not to earn points and percents. This is empowering to students and encourages them to learn by making learning it’s own reward, not threatening them with ugly letters.

For lazy students, instead of a universal putdown, they get some constructive advice on what they did wrong. Future teachers can use these evals as a tool to learn what to look out for. And don’t get me wrong, these things can be scathing. A friend of mine worked up an impressive collection including comments like “Bob’s performance in this class was wholey underwhelming” and “Bob, on the rare occassions he came to class, is a bright and engaging student. However…” When a student isn’t working- even if their test scores are good- it shows. And when a student is working- even if some score are bad- this can also be conveyed.

And, in the end, every student will get exactly what they deserve- a clear and fair description of what they did in the class. It’s pretty hard for a pushy parent to argue against that.

33

RYBTP, I completely agree with everything you’ve said (and most of what others have said, too).

From what I’ve seen here in the US, we have an absolute need to revamp our system, and more standardized tests ain’t gonna do it. (Neither is evaluation of teachers based on those test scores.) Everything I have seen about the policy makers’ decisions makes me question whether they actually have any knowledge whatsoever about statistics or actual teaching. (BTW, I am a TEACHER, not a friggin’ educator; I don’t “educate” my students about doctrines, I teach them about friggin’ science. Get it straight. Godsdammit, the next person who calls me an “educator” shall feel my wrath!)

I have seen first hand how teachers will pass a student (who does jack-squat-bipkis) rather than have to worry about (baseless) lawsuits. The parents don’t even have to get a lawyer, sometimes they just have to say they will (and sometimes, not even that much). And parents apparently don’t understand what progress reports mean when they say “failing/in danger” and then are shocked to find out that Johnny has failed for the quarter. Or, my real favorites, the parents that are shocked, shocked I say, in April/May to find out that Susie has no chance what-so-ever of passing when she hasn’t passed a single quarter to date. (These are usually the parents who don’t respond to requests of meeting to discuss Susie’s progress, or lackthereof.)

And calculators? Most of the time, when I see students reaching for a calculator, I want to slap it out of their hand. We give these kids carte blanche access starting in the lower grades, then we can’t understand why the students don’t grasp more complicated concepts. (Hint: It’s because they have not fully grapsed basic number theory.) They do not relate those squiggily things on the paper to concepts that mean anything to them.

One of the big reasons (in my experience) we have so many children with learning disabilities is that we are not teaching them the subjects they need / would acutally be useful to them / they are interested in. Kids who learn differently don’t just need “assistance” in classes, they need classes designed for people like them. It shouldn’t be “let’s ask the teachers to change around a couple of things in their class so Timmy can learn xxxx better.” It needs to be “Timmy needs an environment where his kind of learning is an asset, instead of a handicap; then, when he takes course yyyy (which is basically course xxxx, but put together by someone who actually understands how Timmy learns and is not graded by the same standardized test of dubious measurement ability anyway), Timmy will stand a chance of gaining more material from course yyyy than he ever would from course xxxx.” But this would need not just one teacher differentiating within a classroom, but entire school districts to differentiate their kids. (But they can’t do that because that’s discrimination!) The US teaching system shot itself (possibly fatally) when we decided that we couldn’t place kids in totally different learning environments based on the way they learned, but instead, we must force every teacher to try to teach to several different learning styles, many of whom the teacher will never truly understand how the students obtain, store, and process new information. One of the peaks of this folly (that I have seen, retroactively, as it were) was when my brothers were in school. The law came down that it was “bad” that students should be in different classes of different abilities, so the classes were remixed so that there were no Honors programs. When the students read, say Robinson Caruso, some read the novel, some read an abridged novel, and some read what was basically a comic book based on the novel, in the same classroom, at the same time. The only thing this was able to accomplish was to increase the teachers’ workloads.

Then there’s standardized testing. Under No Child Gets Ahead, every state has to reinvent the wheel. I’ve been teaching in Mass*. Could somone please explain to me why the Mass DOE feels the need to disrupt more than a week to assess the skill level of students? (Early Spring 2006 MCAS Testing schedule) When we run these tests (because they are “high stakes”), nothing gets done that week. We can’t do major projects or have tests of our own (even for the kids not taking the tests). Tests are given in the morning (and, oh yes, we cheat by giving the kids snacks - the sugar boosts their scores, donchaknow) and the afternoon class schedules aren’t changed so that the kids don’t have to worry about a different schedule so they can concentrate of their tests (which, of course, they don’t, because they are Sophomores and don’t really think about graduating). Could someone please tell me why we are giving the students the test to determine competency for graduation at the end of their SOPHOMORE year?!? Then, we also have the concept of AYP (Annual Yearly Progress). Every school is expected to improve their test scores every year. Does anyone else see the problem with this? Oh, and don’t even get me started on the quality of the testing or appropriateness of the material being tested.

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR! Every time I hear about a new “mandate” from the Department of Edimucation I feel like going on a rampage! I wholey agree with the pit of our system!

Can I get an AMEN?!?

*(off this year to finish a masters program)
Ok, you found my real sore point. ID/Evolution or Human Rights debates get me involved; Science education and this crap gets me pissed!

34

gooftroopag, sorry I didn’t see your other thread. (I don’t generally visit IMHO.) To answer your question, it completely depends on where & what you teach. I’ve been teaching up in Mass. I was handed my textbook and told: go to it. My cousin down in Maryland was handed her textbook, cirriculum, tests, assignment books, and told “your kids had better pass.” (At least, she would have been told that if she taught higher than 2nd grade.) What you really need is the input from more Dallas area teachers.

35

As opposed to sitting down and saying, is this a ‘pass’ yet?
I don’t see how your system is so much better than the system that exists.

36

But, you know, that probably sent a pretty strong message to the girl :stuck_out_tongue:

Western Australian high schools don’t seem to have this too bad yet. Then again I went to a pretty good high school so I don’t know about the rest of the system. Teachers at our school were more than happy to give out D’s, E’s (E’s are the equivalent of F’s here), U’s and Z’s and what have you. I’ve had run-ins with A students who typed like retarded clowns online (including one girl who got the highest possible TER - scary) but I think that’s more a problem with the students than the system. Some people are just never going to realise that school actually has a purpose.

Now… in a few years the grade system will be overhauled and replaced with “outcomes-based education”, which is every bit as bullshit as it sounds. What sort of education ISN’T outcomes-based? Piffle. Now the kids get several “outcomes” for each subject, which are split into levels 2-8 or something like that. We helped our maths teacher mark some outcomes-based maths tests once. We ticked the correct answers but weren’t allowed to put (score)/(score) on the paper because the teacher had to go through each question with a marking key and write which “level” they got on the question in a little box. And then on their report cards they get a detailed breakdown of what they did for each outcome. Parents can’t criticise their kids for bad reports anymore because they have no idea what the reports are saying. Way to go, education board :rolleyes:

I fear the creeping tide of horrible education might be reaching our state though. One girl in our year got into three (out of four) special academic extension programs (despite getting C’s and D’s in all of them) because her parents wrote to the school, and the school let her in where she sat around and did nothing and pissed everyone off for the next two years.

37

Yeh? You really think any “my child deserves the best and I’ll sic my lawyer on you to see that s/he gets it” parent will meekly accept a write-up that isn’t burbling with praise? “What? How dare you write that my precious lacks organizational skills? Are you trying to ruin my darling’s life? You’ll be hearing from my lawyer!”

An essay assessment is subjective, a letter/numeric grade looks as if it’s objective (note the qualifier). If you think defending the latter from irate parents is hard, try supporting the former, and good luck to you.

38

Ah yes, Robinson Caruso, the tale of the shipwrecked tenor :wink:

On a more serious note, adding more high stakes testing and increasing the stakes of those tests is damaging education. The tests themselves take out huge chunks of instructional time. The emphasis on teaching to the test eliminates the enrichment that the better students need.

There are schools now that use so-called “teacher proof” curricula, where every word the teacher says is scripted. This deskilling allows hiring of less qualified teachers, but bores teachers with any creativity right out of their skulls.

39

Well, I’m not any kind of teacher, but I have an ugly anecdote if you’d care for it. My daughter grew up attending class at a US-curriculum school in Saudi where they will definately flunk a student. The same school from KG through 11th grade. I recently took her to a suburb or San Diego to finish her last year of HS and prepare for college.
Kiddo has always been average, "A"s happened only occasionally. To my amazement, once she got into school in California, she started blowing the roof off of the tests. When I congratulated her, she told me: “Dad, I had all this stuff in my sophomore year. The teacher I have now wouldn’t have made it through my junior year.”
I expected better.

Regards

Testy

40

Well, I don’t want to hijack this thread any further, but if anyone wants to debate this further I’ll definitely show up.