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

Great Debates
81

It’s going to depend on the degree of the difference. If we’re talking the children of self-made millionaires vs. the children of crack addicts, well obviously no educational system in the world will make up that difference very often.

But I would say it can make up a significant disparity. e.g. if a kid comes from the ghetto, with all that that entails, but gets the gift of a 12-year Jesuit education, I’d say his prospects are upgraded to about the level of the average working-class public school student.

My point isn’t that socioeconomic factors aren’t enormously important; they’re as important as rain to crops. But if you’re trying to improve the productivity of a farm, trying to fix the weather isn’t a sound strategy.

82

When I went to school, we were tracked after fourth grade or so. I think it made a tremendous difference. The teacher moved much faster in our classes, and I actually enjoyed school all the way through.

The big buzzword from the administrators of our district was differentiation: that a teacher should teach to the student’s level, and not do one style for a class of very different learners. Makes sense, but it seems hard to put into practices for all but the very best teachers. Tracking makes differentiation a lot easier, I’d think.

In Junior high we had 6 SP (special progress) classes for GATE equivalent kids, and 12 regular classes. The higher the number, the lower the level. Perhaps this would be helpful with parents, because if a parent has to admit his kid is in class 7-9, he is going to have a hard time pretending the kid is a misunderstood genius, and might actually do something to get the kid to move up.

What do teachers think about tracking?

83

The research on the subject that I’ve seen is, unfortunately, pretty heavily tainted by ideology. I have a pretty strong bias myself, having been tracked and having (I think) benefited tremendously from the tracking.

But as near as I can tell, drilling down pass the layers of biases, it works out like this:
-Kids who struggle in school benefit socially from tracking. If they’re in heterogeneous groups, they’ll always be the dumb kid in the group, and they’ll know that. If they’re in homogeneous groups, they’ll take an initial hit of shame when they realize that–but then they’ll have opportunities to be the smart kid, and that’s a benefit for them.
-Tracking tends to put the best teachers in the highest tracks. This is, at best, problematic. It suggests we’re giving up on the kids who struggle. At the same time, there’s a sort of logic to giving the best teachers to the kids for whom academics are most suited, in the same way that you’d give the best coaches to your all-star team. I don’t really know what I think about that.
-Kids who struggle in school benefit academically from a lack of tracking. Being in a heterogeneous group gives them more exposure to what academic proficiency looks like.
-Kids who excel in academics benefit from homogeneous groups. Their ideas go deeper, and maybe a little bit of competition encourages them to step up their game.
-AFAICT, the idea about how bright kids benefit from teaching ideas to struggling kids is mostly wishful thinking. Yeah, it can be a bit of help to them, but there are plenty of things they can be doing that are more valuable to them.

The upshot is that I think it’s worthwhile to mix it up. Sometimes I have kids in heterogeneous groups, and sometimes in homogeneous groups. They all need to figure out how to get along with a variety of people with a variety of skills, especially at the ages I teach; at the same time, if I can pull the good readers aside and teach them how to conduct meaningful literature circles, I don’t have to waste their time with lessons about how when two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking. My struggling kids desperately need the phonics lessons, and I can group them for that purpose.

84

My mom’s school handles this by giving the best teachers the highest *and *lowest groups in two different class periods. Every year in math, she’s got one group of “all-stars” and one group she privately and affectionately calls her “stones and mushrooms”. Yes, the all stars need a great teacher to stay all stars. But the stones and mushrooms often need her even more, and by the end of the year are often able to move up out of that group!

The other teachers in the “unit” get everyone else. Which kind of sucks for the average students, but there’s just no way that the best teacher can teach everyone. :frowning:

85

Well put. Usually it doesn’t take more than a day or so in class with an ES or MS student to get a very clear idea of what kind of home life he or she has–even if he or she says nothing about it. I don’t know why this isn’t obvious to everyone. Nor why the popular discourse clings to this idea of the “great teacher” who–as indicated by some API–has somehow transformed a whole class into an unmitigated success. Anyone who has ever administered a standardized test knows better, having seen the entire production line that produces this single, all-powerful number.

86

Can you say more about this? I’m not sure what ES or MS students are, but I do wonder what you can learn about a child’s home life by observing them in the classroom setting for a day or two.

Can you be specific?

87

My guess is ES=elementary school; MS=middle school.

Again, it’s a bit of a hyperbole. But look for the following traits:
-Coming in grumpy, looking to be off-task, sometimes very ill-groomed (e.g., smell of urine, clothes that are unwashed, etc.), checked out of school entirely: you may be looking at some problems at home.
-Coming in cheerful, well-groomed, hardworking, eager to please: there’s decent chance you’re talking about a kid whose parents are doing some good work with socialization at home.

Of course these are very broad generalizations, and they’re not worth anything as far as relying on them. But there’s a little bit of truth to them.

What’s more important is the level of parental involvement, and the vicious circle created by poor parental involvement. Part of what we do to increase performance for kids who are having trouble in school is to write a personal education plan, or PEP for them. We’re not allowed to do it except with parental support (to be fair, we can still do the interventions in-class, just not formally, and without this paperwork it becomes harder to obtain additional services for the kid). Without going into details of specific kids, it’s very often the kids who most need these PEPs whose parents skip out on conferences, who don’t give us working phone numbers, who sleep late and get their kids to school either late or not at all, etc. So the low parental involvement results in a kid who’s not getting help at home, so it’s a kid who falls behind, and then we can’t catch the kid up because the parents won’t show up at the meetings.

It’s pretty frustrating. You do your best to work around it, but it’s pretty frustrating.

88

For one thing, you can always see how a child is clothed and accommodated, as well as how much rest he or she has gotten. But you also see how the child is prepared with homework, and you see how the child conducts him or herself with regard to the teacher (which is one thing), and with regard to other students, (which is another). These involve things like cooperation, leadership, willingness, tendency to interrupt, or lack there of. And if you have the chance, you can see what kind of food the child brings.

With time and experience (particularly meeting parents), you can tell a lot about the home environment. It’s not 100% informative–and you obviously can misjudge–but it makes sense that these things are apparent.

ES = elementary school, MS = middle school.

Perhaps I misspoke to say this about middle school students, because the teacher doesn’t see each one for long enough in the day. And with some kids it takes more time, so I have to say I could have made it seem simpler than it really is.
ETA: Sorry, posted before reading Left Hand’s previous post.

89

For many years politicians have talked about how teachers and police are such underpaid professions. I am not sure they ever believed it. They knew the public liked to hear it.
Teachers can not fix the damage that bad environments and neighborhoods can do. Why don’t kids look at education as a way out? Because they don’t see it. It their neighborhoods ,people who rob and sell drugs are the ones with fancy cars and money. They don’t live with the businessmen and teachers . They don’t share experiences with kids whose parents are successful lawyers and doctors. It may as well be another planet.
Look around and you can see what your life is likely to be. Then go to school and have a teacher tell you what great opportunities you have. They will laugh in your face.

90

Nearly half of all teachers quit during their first five years. Research shows that it is usually the best qualified teachers who leave because they can find better paying and less stressful employment elsewhere.

The meme about the worst teachers being assigned to inner-city schools is garbage. If a teacher has been with a school system long enough to get tenure, she or he also has a good chance of getting a transfer to another school if it is requested.

Most of the teachers that I have known when I taught in “tough” schools were there because they chose to be. They stay year after year because they love teaching and the rascals in those schools are just as interesting and challenging and worthwhile as any other school.

Would you think that the best doctors chose to do cosmetic surgery and the worst ones work with those with serious diseases? Don’t be so quick to make assumptions about those who teach in high crime neighborhoods.

These schools may be more stressful in some ways. We had a rash of car thefts from the teachers’ parking lot one year. The librarian was robbed at gunpoint inside the school when she arrived while it was still dark outside. Our students are more likely to shoot someone or be shot. But those incidents are not usually part of the day-to-day routine.

Some schools used to give “combat pay” to those teachers willing to work in those areas, but we didn’t live in constant fear.

Our biggest problem was that students would often miss two or three days a week. You can’t teach them if they don’t show up.

One of the guidance counselors would change the failing grades to passing grades. That was very much against Board policy, but we weren’t allowed to see the records of the students in our classrooms – only our homerooms. Many of us were unaware that grades were being “adjusted.”

No teacher wants to work with substandard teachers. It makes everyone’s job harder. So we don’t complain when the deadwood gets the boot. What we do insist upon is fair evaluations from administrators.

Teaching is actually much harder than it looks. The time we spend in the classroom is only about 50% of the time we actually put in. We are also asked to use out own money to buy paper supplies, room fans, computers, and office supplies.

Some of you have no idea what being a classroom teacher is actually like. We don’t have as many choices as you might think. The decisions come from the top down. The ones who have the most actual time spent with the students have the least say.

I still miss my high school kids after 21 years out of the school system.

91

I’ve never taught as a full time profession but I spent some time teaching at Princeton Review and Kaplan and it was obvious to everyone that there were some teachers that were able to copax more “AHA” moments from their students than others.

92

I think most people agree that there is more diversity in home environment and parentla invovlement than there is in school teachers but unless we are willing to turn the schools in our poor districts into holding cells for kids until they are old enough for jail or unemployment, what do we do?

What are these so called long term investments that we can make in the system that will REALLY make a difference (as opposed to paying techers better and taking away their tenure)?

93

Education in general is a political football which gets kicked around for just about every reason except the improvement of learning. The pay is only an issue when budgets get tight.

I think it’s the stress part that really matters.

The real issue is that some schools within a district require more resources if they are going to achieve the same success as other schools which have better support networks in the community (families, of course, in particular). However, these same resource-lacking communities typically also lack the wherewithal to exert pressure on the district to adjust allocation. The parents of less affluent families are much less likely to have the time and familiarity with the system to do so.

It’s a catch-22, because—on the one hand–if you want someone to commit a lifetime to a profession that requires years of “in-the-trenches” experience to become competent, you really need to offer some kind of assurance that they aren’t going to be screwed over after ten years by a petty, vengeful, politicking administrator. (Administration attracts petty, vengeful, political people.) On the other hand, there are people who get into teaching who either simply don’t have the insight or who just lack the commitment to really do what needs to be done, and they take advantage of the tenure system. Some are people who just get burned out, too, often because of inadequate support, either district-wide on on-site. But as you indicated, gonzo, most teachers resent the incompetent ones who just skirt along. It’s even more maddening when they don’t even realize how incompetent they hare. As a coordinator, I’m not responsible for removing any teachers, but I can think of at least one occasion when we actually danced a jig after one teacher announced he was quitting.

I think it’s safe to say that the kind of student who ends up in Princeton Review or Kaplan is not the kind we’re worrying about here.

That’s really the question at hand, and, in my district, at least, I think teacher pay is fine. What kind of investment, you ask? Gonzo implied it with this comment:

The people who spout off about “good” teachers and “bad” teachers (that is, politicians, administrators, misguided parents* and self-righteous “reform” activists) usually have no idea what they’re talking about, because they spend so little time in the classroom, if any. They rely solely on simplistic statistical idexes of something that is perhaps the most complex and least understood thing on the planet: the development of the human mind during childhood years. Unfortunately, new teachers are expected to be guardians of this complex charge with little or no classroom experience.

Teaching is something that should have the same kind of apprenticeship requirements as trades like electrical work, plumbing, and carpentry have. EVERY new teacher should spend at least half a year in the classroom, all day with a mentor teacher. That’s where the money needs to go (not higher pay, usually), but most administrators just refuse to see the need for this. They just see this as paying twice as much for what they’re “already getting”–a warm body in the room who fills out the forms correctly and avoids lawsuits. In fact, the typical administrator is so obtuse, that he or she will more readily spend twice as much money on computers or software—or a new, marketed methodology gimmick—on something that he or she doesn’t even understand–thinking that such a purchase will be the magical answer to all of his or her problems.

*I say this because, while a parent obviously knows his or her child better than anyone else, the parent usually has no idea what it takes to be a competent guardian of his or her child in the same room with 19 other children, and to educate his or her child at the same time, along with those 19 other kids.

94

I like this. I’ve had a few friends complain their kids weren’t doing well in school and found they were just not providing a good environment for them. It just hadn’t occurred to them to do the following:

1, Turn off the tv/radio when the kids are studying.
2. Make sure the table is clear and available to them.
3. Don’t disturb them yourself.
4. Don’t expect them to study for hours, half an hour, then a break, then another half hour should do it.
5. Don’t punish them by not allowing them to play sports if they don’t do well.

95

As a parent with no teaching experience at all this rings very true. There were times when my kids seemed much less interested in school and not very excited about learning, and other school years when they seemed to light up when they talked about what they’d done in the classroom that day. This was usually because they didn’t have a real connection with their teacher that year, and it took a bit of supplementing at home to get them through. But that was just us, our family, and of course I selfishly only worried about the school experience of my own kids.

I can’t imagine what it’s like to try to connect every day with 19 kids, much less the 30 that are usually in an elementary classroom these days. It must be terribly difficult.

One thing that would have helped us a lot would have been a higher level of candor at the conferences. I remember once being told that my son was very creative, and I’ve since learned that that is code for disruptive (or not very smart). I wish she had just told me straight out so I could have done my part as the parent to put a stop to whatever it was, but I was not given the opportunity. I seriously thought she meant that he was artistically skilled :smack:

Probably it would help a lot if every parent had to spend some certain number of days in the classroom every school year so they’d get a clear picture of how things work, but that doesn’t happen in public school.

96

Well, shoot, I thought my point was that there are some teachers who can cause more learning and enlightenment amongs students and others who just can’t 9or can’t be bothered). Not every teachers is good enough to be teaching.

Unless you can come up with a better answer for what to do to solve the problem don’t stand in my way when i propose a solution that steps on some toes but seems to work becauswe you’re jsut sure that there is SOME other way to address the problem other than removing teacher tenure and paying them a lot more. Its like when republicans say “we’ll balance the budget on spending cuts” and then can’t identify spending cuts that even come close to bridging the gap.

I’m not saying that all improvement must come off the backs of our teachers, I think we can throw carrots into the mix but unless we are ready to start puinishing parents for being bad parents, we are stuck with one place where we can exert leverage.

If you want to make apprenticeship part of the program, then fine but lets allow the states to be the laboratory for the different ideas. Teacher’s Unions have no idea what will work but they are really fucking sure that anything that screws around with tenure (even if it improves teacher pay) is a horrible idea.