In the end isn't the reason for academic problems more poor & ignorant parents vs bad teachers?

Great Debates
41

Untrue.

Unions don’t make it impossible to fire bad teachers, inept administrations just don’t do the work to fire bad teachers. Merit pay based on test scores does no good. Merit pay based on things like additional certifications currently exist; I’m working toward it this year.

Good teachers are rewarded by being able to be hired at school districts with more academically-inclined students. And that’s what they do, in large part, and who can blame them, given the way teachers are blamed for student failure? Of course they’ll go somewhere that they have a better chance of success. It’s as if we blamed doctors who worked with the indigent for the poor outcomes of their patients, and praised doctors who worked for athletes for their patients’ health.

To tie into this, we also pooh-pooh teachers who think they deserve pay commensurate with their skills, ensuring that people who can earn more money will tend to seek alternate employment, and that a high percentage of teachers are really in the profession where they can earn the most, a sad state of affairs. Yes, there are other advantages to teaching, e.g., the long vacations, but many of us would gladly give that up in exchange for a fair income, and others have left the profession or never entered it because they can’t afford to, given the low pay. Let’s expect more of teachers, and pay commensurately.

(If you need to tell me now that I’m crying or that I’m terribly selfish or that I want secretaries to be fired or some other such offensive straw-man nonsense, go ahead.)

42

You mean the R18 games?

43

I think the intelligence factor is more complicated than that. High intelligence children can have difficulties with academic achievement where less intelligent ones might thrive.

44

Ok, let me get this right: We have a system that works great for rich kids with involved parents and works poorly for poor kids with less involved parents.

You think the solution is to have schools compete where the richest ones (who can afford them) and the smartest of the poor kids (who get recruited with scholarships) are concentrated into the top tier schools and the poorest and least prepared kids will end up in the rock bottom schools that accept the government funding alone.

You think that will close the gap? It sure looks to me like it would widen it…

45

This is commonly repeated, but it’s simply not true. I just read a newspaper article a few weeks reporting on a study indicating that for the vast majority of students, homework loads have not changed significantly in decades.

I agree completely. I’m one of those people who would actually much rather be teaching than what I’m actually doing now (working as an engineer), but the pay gap makes a career change prohibitive.

I have a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in engineering. While in the Navy, I was assigned a job at a military school teaching chemistry and physics. I absolutely loved it, and as it turns out, I found that I had a knack for teaching. I was selected as “Science Instructor of the Year” twice, as well as “Instructor of the Year” for the whole school during my tenure.

Unfortunately, when I got out of the Navy, getting a teaching job was simply not feasible. I didn’t have a Ph.D., so getting a full-time career track job at a university was unlikely (and besides, teaching is disdained at most universities), and adjunct instructor jobs are generally part-time positions that don’t pay well. To teach in a high school, I would have to get certified through some alternate certification program (because I don’t have a useless education degree), all to start off at a pay rate less than half of what I make as an engineer. Private and charter schools pay even less than public high schools. (I knew a fellow instructor in the late 1990s who was offered a starting salary of just $18K at a private school. :rolleyes:)

No matter how much I loved teaching (and I miss it terribly), I simply can’t justify sacrificing my family’s well being to take such a huge pay cut. I am hoping to get back into teaching as a second career later in life–we’ll see.

46

In China, at least, this common misconception is simply not true. I hate to be like this, but I’m geting tired of this myth. For one, at least 1/3 of China college graduates will not get a college-graduate level job. They will be back to the farms and off to the factories like everyone else. The main determination of this is rarely merit- usually it’s having the right connections.

Furthermore, Chinese students work hard, but not in a way that we would consider useful. They will often spend hours on rote memorization, but written work (even at top universities) is often openly plagiarized. The sort of written and research work we consider essential to an education is rarely a large part of the curriculum. For example, my Chinese students told me they did not read one entire book throughout their entire high school career- instead they memorized summaries and a few key passages. Chinese friends who have studied abroad express shock and dismay at the amount of high-level reasoning (research and writing)required, not to mention that American college professors care if you actually show up to class.

You know what happens if you fail a class in Chinese university? You have to re-take the final exam. If you fail that? You do it again. Until you pass.

It may be different in bigger cities (though I have friends from Beijing Daxue that report it is not very different) and it may be different in other countries. But this myth that "Aisian education, across the board, is better’ is not true and it’s time to retire it.

47

I think teachers are being scapegoated because it is an easy answer. I am sure there are bad teachers. But testing all kids will prove there are disadvantaged kids and uninvolved parents.
Keep testing and you find some years teachers results are good then if scores go down, he becomes a bad teacher? Some years the students are better than other years. Some years worse. Yet the teacher is being analyzed every year to the same standards.
I wish it were so simple. Lots of schools are terrible, some are dangerous, some are without computers and good facilities. Yet testing does not measure those differences.
Everyone is frustrated trying to find an answer. When I was a kid we had schools that taught non college students. They were taught auto mechanics, wood working , welding and other similar skills. They had a leg up on apprenticeships. It was a realistic answer for those who had no interest in college or just loved working with their hands.

48

I am, too, especially since it paints with such a broad brush a huge continent, with so many countries of such vastly different cultures, economic and educational systems. The Chinese international student who actually gets to an American university campus is hardly representative of Chinese society’s overall student population. And in any case, his or her educational experience will probably be completely different from that of a student from Korea or Japan or Thailand.

…What we generally refer to as “critical thinking.” Nor is it emphasized in Korea, despite the national obsession there with U.S. higher education and the social status it’s supposed to bestow upon Koreans who can swing it.

In Thailand, Korean and Japan, you mindlessly memorize things throughout high school with the goal of getting into a prestigious university, which is supposed to have you set for life. Once you get into the school, you spend your college days mostly playing pool in the many arcades across the street from campus.

49

If they fire the “bad” teachers there will be . . . . . fewer teachers, and the “good” ones will wind up with more kids kids in their classes than they can handle effectively.

It is not like smart, talented people are lining up in huge numbers to be teachers, and work their hearts out for crappy pay and the disdain of society. (Well, perhaps at the moment they are lining up. But in “normal” economic times…)

50

This is conservative cant, and it’s horseshit. My wife fails many students every semester; many students fail the whole year at her school. The teachers deal with parents who can’t believe their child failed, and they get told very directly that Johnny skipped X classes, simply didn’t turn in Y assignments, and got failing grades on these tests.

One of my wife’s most effective tools, actually, is to take the student to a phone and have them call their mother or father right then and there and tell them “I’m failing this class because I didn’t turn in this assignment.” From apparently absentee parents, she quite frequently gets a very apologetic response and a promise to discipline their child or co-operate fully with my wife’s measures.

The idea that schools have become self-esteem factories is a right-wing legend.

51

Your wife is probably a *good *teacher then. I’m not sure of that, though. I think a *good *teacher has logical consequences for not doing homework, like failing the student, without dragging the parents into punishment mode. If my kid breaks a teacher’s rule, it’s the teacher’s job to punish them. Mine is to back her up while remaining sympathetic to my kid and letting him know I know he can fix this mess he’s created.

Not the subject of the thread or Sam’s rant, either way. One teacher is not a system.

He’s got a point, conservative or no. There are indeed plenty of bad teachers who still believe in social promotion. There are bad parents who demand teachers promote kids who shouldn’t be, and bad teachers who cave in to that pressure. There are bad parents who don’t care if they get that phonecall despite what they say to the teacher, or who beat the crap out of their kids when they get home because that phonecall interrupted Jerry Springer.

There are bad parents who are TOO INVOLVED, too. Parents who helicopter around their children, drive missing assignments, lunches and permission slips to school, stay up late doing their children’s projects, write false notes alleging illness to get a lazy kid an excused absence and storm into the principal’s office the first time “they” get a C on a report card. These parents take all the worry and trouble away from the kids, and the kids never learn to be responsible for themselves.

It’s all about balance. Y’all know I’m a fan of Love and Logic Parenting. Guess what? It works in schools, too. That’s actually how I found out about the book - from my mother, a literally award winning sixth grade teacher, who uses it in her classroom. Teaching kids to be responsible for themselves by letting them learn from the natural consequences of their actions, means we don’t need to worry about good parents, bad parents or no parents. It’s the *kids *who are in school and the *kids *who need to be made responsible for their education. Does that mean parents shouldn’t get involved? No. It means they should involve themselves in parental things, not student things. Help build a set for the school play, organize a fundraiser, help out in the classroom, provide a time and place at home for the kid to study and the tools (pens, paper, light, a calculator, etc.) he needs to do it. But lessons and homework are between a student and a teacher, and parents need to butt out…unless they intend to be writing quarterly earnings reports for their little darling’s boss in 20 years.

Frankly, I think a “butt out” lesson would improve schools more than an “increase involvement” lessons. Most of those “involved” parents are frightening. They’re stunting their kids’ growth like you wouldn’t believe AND they’re scaring off more moderate parents. They’re involved, all right, but in all the wrong ways.

Telling the “uninvolved” parents *exactly *what we need from them, and reassuring them that not only does it not have to be academic, it’s better if it’s not, might go a long way to getting meaningful parental involvement in the schools. Jack might freeze at the idea that he’s supposed to help his kid with fractions and never show his face at school again. Instead we should say, “Oh, no. Jack Jr’s math homework is *his *work, not yours. But studies show that if Jack Jr. sees you at the school, he’s more likely to be interested in his school work and he may get better grades. Would you come help hang banners for the Pep Rally next Monday?” Jack can breathe a sigh of relief. No fractions in hanging banners. He can do that, and help his kid, and his kid’s school…and maybe even feel good about himself doing it.

52

This is a ridiculous statement that so poorly reflects reality that I am not quite sure how to address it.

Let’s do a little thought experiment. Say I wanted to guess how good a student someone is without knowing anything about them. You can either choose to meet her teachers, or her parents. Which meeting do you think would be more useful?

53

One of the other awesome things I see being done here in NY is advertisements towards being a better parent. They don’t scream, “Suck less!” or anything, they are generally pretty gentle, but they do encourage people to be aware of the way the choices that they make impacts their children.

For example, on the subway there is a picture of a father and his daughter sitting on the bed with a caption that says, “I read to my daughter every night so that she knows I love her and that she is important to me.” It doesn’t say that you don’t love your daughter if you don’t spend much time with her. It doesn’t say that you are a bad parent if you don’t read to her. It just says that hey, here is a way to show love and bond that you might not have considered. I think they have 7 or 8 different messages that they post like this in both english and spanish. If it encourages even a small handful of people to be more proactive in their children’s lives in small ways I think it is well worth the money spent on the program.

54

When I was a kid, the teachers I had grew up in the Depression, where they saw their teachers as one of the few people who didn’t have to worry about losing their jobs. That motivated lots of them. Also, teaching was one job women could get into with relatively little discrimination. (Though there was a big shortage of female principals when I was in school.) So, you got the best and the brightest.

Today, there are more opportunities, teachers are not as protected, and the best teachers do it out of love. (And we’re lucky there are so many of them.) In addition, the conservative government hating screed has been concentrating on how horrible teachers are, how Johnny can read if they take a pay cut to go to a private school, and how for-profit schools will solve the problem, just the way for-profit colleges have worked so well. :rolleyes:
But I wouldn’t want to give the impression that the right blames teachers. There are always poor people to blame also.

55

I’d speak to her teachers, of course. They’re the only ones who have met her as a student. Her parents may know how she behaves at home, but that’s often got very little to do with how she behaves at school.

I have absolutely no idea how your “thought experiment” relates to children holding children, and not their parents, responsible for their own school work, however.

56

Contend all you want, but unfortunately research is not on your side. There’s mountains of data indicating that some teachers are more effective than others, and plenty of that research is done in environments with loads of shitty parents.

Of course the best school in the world isn’t going to overcome shitty parenting 100% of the time; just as good parenting isn’t going to overcome shitty schools 100% of the time. It’s a highly complicated dynamic involving a nigh-infinite number of variables, many of which are nearly unmeasurable, nearly all of which are matters of degree and not absolutes, and most of which reinforce each other.

However, the title of your thread suggests you’re looking for a lone gunman: THE (singular reason) is ignorant parents, not bad teachers. Therefore we shouldn’t do anything about bad teachers and instead just eliminate poverty and ignorance.

('cause after all, the latter is so much easier)

57

While Head Start is seen (and is in many ways) a very good program, the real life long term impact of Head Start over time is debatable as the early gains tend to vanish quickly once the child ages out of the program.

With respect to things like the Children’s Zone and similar programs it’s quite possible to get academic gains by adding enough social and economic supports that a child from distressed circumstances is effectively living a near middle class, or even upper middle class, existence "social capital’ wise. The problem is that doing this is incredibly expensive and is not sustainable or even possible over the long term under the vast majority of real world school budgets.

58

And to nitpick - these do not FIX bad parents, they instead make up for poor parenting. Head Start feeds kids when parents can’t or won’t for example. This is what I meant by the need to modify the education program for those students without the benefit of quality parenting.

59

Re the thread title

"In the end isn’t the reason for academic problems more poor & ignorant parents vs bad teachers?’

'More" obviously implies looking at relative weightings, not trying to pin singular blame.

With respect to your larger point are you seriously contending that teacher quality (however measured) is a more powerful predictive variable of a child’s academic success than their parent’s socioeconomic status and educational background?

60

No one is claiming that all teachers are created equal. Any study of the type you cite had better hold the socioeconomic conditions of the students more or less constant. Thus, they would not say anything about the relative contribution of parents. I don’t know if anyone has done a study comparing schools with different levels of parental support, but it would hardly seem necessary.

Now, if you are claiming teachers are primarily responsible for outcomes, you must also claim that by some magic the good teachers migrate to school districts with lots of money and educated and involved parents, and that any such movement measured has nothing to do with parents (as voters) attracting teachers through higher pay and better working conditions. Is this what you are claiming?