Middle School Parents

The BBQ Pit
101

[QUOTE=Rubystreak]
No, I think #2 on your list leads to elitism, because the kids who self-select into the class without or in contradiction of teacher rec usually do so not because of ability, but because their parents can’t stand the idea of their kid not being in the honors class. If we just went by class grades, test scores, homework completion, etc., objective criteria only, then ANY kid who was qualified to get in would be in. If your kid did A’s in the regular math class, maybe he could transfer in later.

I’ve also seen a phenomenon where a kid who can do the advanced work won’t self-select in, for the opposite reasons-- their peer group doesn’t support an interest in academics, they have no self-confidence, etc. That’s why it’s better if they are automatically recommended. Then they at least know that the teacher thinks they can do it.
[/QUOTE]

The only problem I could forsee with that is that it often hinges on a teacher’s subjective judgement, not just on quantitative criteria like grades. At the end of the eighth grade, they sent forms around with all the students to get a teacher’s recommendation for which classes they should take. My earth science teacher was one of my favorites, and I was one of the best students in the class. There were a couple of times when I had scored the highest grade in the class on a test. My science project ended up placing in the city-wide fair.

But I had one fault: I was socially immature. When it came to breaking up into partners for lab, I sucked. I never had a partner because no one asked me, and I was too shy and weird to ask if I could work with them. So I would do labs by myself, or I would hover from group to group. My teacher was tolerant of this particular quirk, but when it was her turn to fill out the form, she recommended me for me to take physical science in the 9th grade, rather than the more advanced biology. Neither she or I (or my parents) knew the horribleness that was known as high school physical science. Neither of us knew that it would essentially be a remedial class, and that all the other kids at my academic level would be placed in biology. While my twin was dissecting frogs and learning about the TCA cycle, I was learning from the gym teacher how oranges represent the four states of matter (What? You’ve never heard of orange gas? What’s wrong with you?). There were no labs or fun group activities. I was a “nerd” in a class full of slackers and delinquents. I would irritate the teacher because I was always asking him questions he couldn’t answer. By the time my parents realized what was up, it was too late to get me transferred. Science quickly ceased being my favorite subject.

Fast foward a few years later, and I would show them all by getting a Ph.D in biology. So I guess it didn’t kill me, but it did take some wind out of my sails. (I ended up having to “catch up” during my senior year by taking two science classes instead of one).

A standardized test could have been used in lieu of that single recommendation, but there wasn’t one available.

It’s actually amazing that I still managed to enjoy school. I think it’s because a lot of the crap I experienced wasn’t fully realized until way after I had graduated.

102

[QUOTE=silenus]
INo kid should be denied the opportunity to push themselves just because of their test scores or what somebody else thinks of their abilities.
[/QUOTE]

If there are only 15 seats in an advanced class, who decides who gets them? The parents or the teachers? If it were entirely up to the parents, then kids who don’t have parents to advocate for them would get bumped, which is terrifically unfair and keeps out kids who have the ability in favor of kids who have pushy mamas. This is why, in classes with limited space, I’d use objective criteria, for the sake of the dreaded social justice.

103

Objective criteria like what?

Thanks to some new software we have at school, I can see exactly how every one of my students scored on the NCLB tests and California Subject tests last year. Several of the students who flunked the class ranked “Advanced” according to the test. I wouldn’t have recommended them for APUS, but the test scores say they learned my subject quite well. They will probably flunk APUS as well, and learn the material cold. OTOH, a number of students who passed the class with "B"s ranked only “Proficient.” Which standard do you use?

104

[QUOTE=Manda JO]
3) Have no honors courses to level the playing field for all.
[/QUOTE]
I actually went to a school that did 3 (for the elitism reason and the dangers of tracking reason), and whined about it the entire time. Then I went to college and found out that our non-honors class that students of all levels were dumped into were actually just as strenuous and taught just as much as the classes that my college friends’ “honors classes” had. In fact, in a lot of cases, ours were more thorough.
So, I hadn’t been screwed after all, and the students who wouldn’t have gotten into (or gone for) an environment labeled “honors” got a better class than they would have in a tracked system.

105

[QUOTE=silenus]
Objective criteria like what?
[/quote]

How has the student performed in that subject over the last couple of years? How were his test scores? What did his teachers think of his performance? Stuff like that. Most teachers have a good idea, after having the student for a year, which kids can perform in the advanced classes. Teacher rec also allows kids who improve a lot in one year to move up into advanced classes the next year. I realize that’s not completely objective, but it’s much MORE objective than “My mom wants me to take honors, even though none of my teachers think I can hack it.”

What used to happen when I recommended kids for 10th grade accelerated English was that most of the kids who were in 9th grade ACC stayed in it for 10th grade. A couple bumped down, either because they egregiously bombed the class or because they didn’t want the extra work, ie., they could self-select or be selected out, but it was tough to get a kid out once he was in if he/his parents wanted him to stay in. Moving a kid from regular English into ACC was harder. I got 2-3 picks and had to make them good. Usually I picked my top 3 students who I thought were bored by regular English and would thrive with the extra simulation. Not all of these were your typical honors students, and often they were kids whose parents might never push for them to do honors.

106

[QUOTE=Rubystreak]
If there are only 15 seats in an advanced class, who decides who gets them? The parents or the teachers? If it were entirely up to the parents, then kids who don’t have parents to advocate for them would get bumped, which is terrifically unfair and keeps out kids who have the ability in favor of kids who have pushy mamas. This is why, in classes with limited space, I’d use objective criteria, for the sake of the dreaded social justice.
[/QUOTE]

Why would there only be 15 slots? If you’ve got a teacher qualified to teach advanced classes, open up another section or expand the section you’ve got.

I mean, we don’t dump the least qualified regular ed kids on the street to keep those classes from being over-qualified.

107

[QUOTE=Manda JO]
Why would there only be 15 slots? If you’ve got a teacher qualified to teach advanced classes, open up another section or expand the section you’ve got.

I mean, we don’t dump the least qualified regular ed kids on the street to keep those classes from being over-qualified.
[/QUOTE]

At school where I taught high school, there was 1 section of ACC English per grade level. That’s it. They wanted to keep class size small, because as we all know, no matter how smart the kids are, the quality of education starts to deteriorate when there are too many people in the class. So the class size was supposed to remain at 15, and sometimes it went up to 20, but no more. There was no option to open up another section, period.

108

[QUOTE=Rubystreak]

What used to happen when I recommended kids for 10th grade accelerated English was that most of the kids who were in 9th grade ACC stayed in it for 10th grade. A couple bumped down, either because they egregiously bombed the class or because they didn’t want the extra work, ie., they could self-select or be selected out, but it was tough to get a kid out once he was in if he/his parents wanted him to stay in. Moving a kid from regular English into ACC was harder. I got 2-3 picks and had to make them good. Usually I picked my top 3 students who I thought were bored by regular English and would thrive with the extra simulation. Not all of these were your typical honors students, and often they were kids whose parents might never push for them to do honors.
[/QUOTE]

I don’t understand why you were limited to 2-3 picks? That means you can’t take risks, you can’t recommend kids that might crash and burn but might blossom, and it means that the bright slacker who will really benefit from the class but who will never get above a C in any course–regualr or advanced–because he just doesn’t value grades can never be moved up. It means the english-language learner who has no chance of passing the AP exam but wants a huge challenge to improve their language won’t have the option to volunteer for that challenge. It means the disgraphic kid with lousy spelling and worse handwriting will be overlooked because those kids always do more poorly with the lower-level curriculum. Sometimes it’s the parents, yes, but sometimes it’s the kids themselves that want to try.

You don’t want every kid that can pass the paper bag test or who has middle class pretensions in an advanced class regardless of ability, true. But the solution to that is to have the honors classes challenging enough that people with little ability and less drive can and do fail. The enrollment will self-correct, and the handful of kids who feel they just must be with their peers can go to summer school every summer. Sitting through summer school + sitting and failing an advanced class probably teaches them about what passing a regular class would have.

109

[QUOTE=Rubystreak]
At school where I taught high school, there was 1 section of ACC English per grade level. That’s it. They wanted to keep class size small, because as we all know, no matter how smart the kids are, the quality of education starts to deteriorate when there are too many people in the class. So the class size was supposed to remain at 15, and sometimes it went up to 20, but no more. There was no option to open up another section, period.
[/QUOTE]

Well, that’s a administrative problem, not a pedagological one, and it has no bearing on how things should be done–which is what we are talking about here.

110

[QUOTE=Rubystreak]
At school where I taught high school, there was 1 section of ACC English per grade level. That’s it. They wanted to keep class size small, because as we all know, no matter how smart the kids are, the quality of education starts to deteriorate when there are too many people in the class. So the class size was supposed to remain at 15, and sometimes it went up to 20, but no more. There was no option to open up another section, period.
[/QUOTE]

Well that’s just stupid. And if anything in this thread can be said to be elitist it is that.

One problem I have with your approach Rubystreak is that you keep coming back to this idea of “teachers know best”. I believe that what teachers want for their students should come third, after what the parents want, and after what the students want for themselves. Your ideas stem from a deeper problem I see infecting educators for decades now, a sickness that is moving on to the community as a whole. That is that schools are places for raising children in spite of their parents. That teachers and administrators know what is best for kids, what they should learn and how they should think. I see schools as tools for parents and students to use to achieve the education they desire. If a parent wants to push their kid toward greatness it’s their call, in spite of teachers who would rather see them dragged down.

111

[QUOTE=neorxnawange]
Well that’s just stupid. And if anything in this thread can be said to be elitist it is that.
[/quote]

I didn’t make that policy and I don’t endorse it, but if it’s in place, I have to work with it-- I have to have criteria for selection, don’t I?

Teachers are more objective than parents, very often. We also have specialized training that parents don’t. Teachers and parents need to work TOGETHER. I don’t know better than a parent, but I do know things about their kid that they don’t know, a concept that is often totally rejected by parents. I often experience a different side of their kid.

You don’t even understand what my ideas are, so your characterization of them is totally wrong, not surprisingly. You think kids are either good or bad, and that you know which is which, so your opinion means less than nothing to me.

Totally, completely wrong, and not what I ever said or thought. School is part of the overall upbringing of a child, and when kids are in school, teachers have to teach them, not just the cold subject matter, but also how to act in school, how to handle criticism from an authority figure who isn’t family, how to cope with large numbers of peers, how to be a student. That’s not raising the kid in spite of the parents. That’s doing your JOB regardless of what you might think of the parents.

I’m not trying to drag down kids. You’re the one who wants the ones with bad parents segregated into classes, ostracized, and judged, so you have no leg to stand on with this argument whatsoever.

112

It is true that I make judgments. It is impossible to make good decisions without doing so. I refuse to sacrifice acumen for emotional exultations. Sure it doesn’t always bring about good feelings for everyone, but I’m more concerned with results than with making everyone feel good about their inferiorities.

You again conflate separating students with punishing and ostracizing them, showing me that your motivations for teaching are driven by emotional empathy rather than by a desire to help students achieve. Separating students by ability and desire to learn is not ostracizing them, it is giving them exactly what they want and need.

113

[QUOTE=neorxnawange]
Separating students by ability and desire to learn is not ostracizing them, it is giving them exactly what they want and need.
[/QUOTE]

Perhaps Rubystreak shares my confusion about your specific position. Because I don’t think anyone disagrees with the above. I don’t think anyone wants to mix slow students with fast students.

But kids–especially middle school kids–are weirdos. Sometimes they show moments of brilliance and then other times, they act like dummies. Categorizing their intellect isn’t easy. A parent may only see a kid’s dim side, because of the way the household is run. For instance, a kid who grows up in a “children are seen, not heard” household are going to show different personalities at home than a child who’s engaged in regular discussions with his parents. A good teacher may see that quiet, timid kid in a totally way than his parents do. If the parents are too ignorant or indifferent to make sure that kid is pushed, it IS the teacher’s job to take notice. A teacher serves as an advocate for all of their students, not just the ones who have attentive parents.

Your cold-hearted black-and-white thinking put into action would cause many good kids to fall through the cracks.

I’d also like to echo what Rubystreak said about teachers knowing best. They don’t always know best, but they have insider information about school that many parents are not privy too. They know how kids of certain demographics get railroaded onto mediocre tracks. They know there’s a big difference between “general English” and “honors English” when it comes to college acceptance. They know that if a kid doesn’t take algebra in the eighth grade, he won’t be able to take calculus when he’s in high school. A parent, even one who cares, doesn’t necessarily know these things. They may see “general English” on their child’s schedule and think nothing of it, because that’s what they took when they were in school. Teachers can’t just cater to parents who know these things.

I’d rather have a teacher who errs on the liberal side and occassionally recommends weaker but ambitious students to advanced classes than have a teacher who takes one look at you and decides you can’t cut it, since your parents don’t go to PTA meetings.

114

[QUOTE=Rubystreak]
(T)he school is probably worried about their test scores. There is a lot of pressure to make sure every kid passes-- No Child Left Behind says they all HAVE to. I’m sure your kid will, but the school doesn’t know that. Maybe if she gets an A in the class the first quarter, you can go to the principal and point to that grade, saying something like, “I think my daughter is taking up a seat in a remedial class that would be put to better use by a kid who is failing. Please use that resource for someone else. My kid can be in the regular class.” It would probably work if you have the leverage of an A grade to show.
[/QUOTE]

I understand completely what you’re saying and if she hadn’t been a straight A / a few B’s student prior to Grandpa’s death, I would tell her to suck it up. But she was, and, as I noted, brought her failing math grade up to an A-. She has applied to the International Bachelaurate program twice, and we told that while she has the grades, she doesn’t have the discipline - she’s a magnificent procrastinator. When she was rejected the second time I told her it’s up to her to change. I talked to the admissions board the first time and they clearly outlined what she needed to do. She didn’t. She wanted me to talk to them again, but I wouldn’t. When she’s 21 and applies for a job but is declined, am I supposed to call the employer to find out why? All of her classes have been the quasi IB type (not AP, as no AP in her school.) Sadly, most of her friends are in IB and she assists them with their homework.

My college major started elementary education. Realized I did not have the patience to teach Johnny WHY 1 + 1 = 2. I know the practicums I experienced did not help - I aways ended up placed with lousy teachers. I switched to secondary ed (English/Humanities/Theater) and while the practicums were much more beneficial, the restraints placed upon teachers by the school boards / prinicpals frustrated me. So I left. Gave up.

I give credit to secondary ed teachers who have to deal with the writhing balls of hormones and attitude. Before I contact a teacher I think back to what I dealt with not only when I was a student but what I experienced in classrooms. I look at how some of the other parents behave. I remember they have hundreds of kids a day to deal with, the whole NCLB crap, shrinking budgets - then I think of what’s best for my daughter. It never quite aligns well.

When her Grandpa died, I e-mailed every teacher explaining what happened, when she would be returning to school, stating I would be willing to pick up homework, asking for patience while she worked through her grief enough to rejoin the world. (It was terribly difficult - we pretty much was by his bedside the entire last week - watching the guy you love most in the world die is NOT easy for a teen who had not been around death before that she remembered).

Of her seven teachers only three replied. One sent a card to her, which was absolutely wonderful. The other two asked what they could do to help. I called the remaining four. One commented on how my daughter had been absent so much, basically who cared? I do, asshat. I asked another if may I pick up the work she’s missing? Since she’s able to do work, she should be able to come to school. The other two bascially said “Bummer”.

The three that responded were the types of teachers I aspired to become when I was in college. The remaining four are why I think parents DO need to fight for their kids. I understand that not every Biff and Tiffany should not be in AP or IB and that parents who push it can cause harm to their kids (“Oh look, you have Tiffany on your roster - warning, her mother is a rampaging bitch. You’d be best off just passing her and ignoring her fits”) but at the same time when you know your child can’t fight for him/herself and there is a pretty darned legitimate cause for action, a good parent will do what needs to be done.

OK, many parents can’t afford to appear and such. I grew up in the inner city. Parents showed up. My daughter goes to school in a first ring suburb with many ASL and open district kids. Many kids are being raised in single parent homes at or barely above poverty. Parents still show up. More than a few kids who are in the IB programs are free-lunchers. Their parents show up. At the school’s open house this year two of her new teachers DID NOT show up. Want to guess what my opinions of them are? The school district has a parent website to check grades / homework etc. The teachers are required to keep up to date with info on the site and grades are automatically posted. One of the absent teachers has nothing listed. I asked The Kid what she’s been doing in the class - nothing. So I guess I will have to e-mail or call that teacher to find out what’s going on. Now I will probably be labelled as a bitch parent by him. Heh, bummer.

115

This whole thread is the reason why I’m against government involvement in schools.

If you don’t like your kid’s doctor, dentist, barber, pharmacist, or almost any other person in his/her life, the option is available in the free market to change.

In education, a parent is, in most states, forced to put up with whatever crappy school or teacher that they are assigned by the local school board.

Could you imagine that in other areas? They tell you that since you live at such and such address you have to shop at the local Winn Dixie. If you lived across town, you could shop at Publix? You would be outraged.
So why should our kids be forced to live with rules enacted by a bureaucrat at the county, state, or federal level? Why shouldn’t we CHOOSE (because it’s not like I don’t pay enough in property taxes) what type and what kind of education our children receive?

And just because parents want to make informed choices for their own children, we have schools filled with administrators who think that THEY should make the choices, and whine about PARENTS for actually demanding what they want!

If they had to compete in the free market, such whining from teachers and administrators would stop. You would have a customer base to not only please, but to deliver RESULTS! And right now you fail in both aspects. School choice will help everyone…

116

[QUOTE=jtgain]
School choice will help everyone..
[/QUOTE]

Except for the kids whose parents either don’t care at all or are too ignorant or low-functioning to effectively pursue their child’s best interests.

117

[QUOTE=Manda JO]
Except for the kids whose parents either don’t care at all or are too ignorant or low-functioning to effectively pursue their child’s best interests.
[/QUOTE]

In which case, at best, the state might choose for them if someone convinces a judge to. And then we’re right back to square 1: kids whose parents care get a good education, and kids whose parents don’t care get a crappy one.

118

[QUOTE=Manda JO]
Except for the kids whose parents either don’t care at all or are too ignorant or low-functioning to effectively pursue their child’s best interests.
[/QUOTE]

So because some kids have bad parents we should punish all kids to even the playing field?

119

[QUOTE=neorxnawange]
So because some kids have bad parents we should punish all kids to even the playing field?
[/QUOTE]

As a society, we want to encourage the development of self-sufficient, fuctional people as much as possible. You have yet to show that kids in a self-selected honors classes are at a disadvantage because not all their peers are on the same level. I teach these courses. I don’t see it as a problem. The ones that can’t cut it fail and drop. I’m a good teacher and I know my kids better than most–small school and I am around a lot–and I know my ability to predict which ones will succeed and which ones will fail is at best flawed and imperfect.

120

[QUOTE=Manda JO]
As a society, we want to encourage the development of self-sufficient, fuctional people as much as possible. You have yet to show that kids in a self-selected honors classes are at a disadvantage because not all their peers are on the same level. I teach these courses. I don’t see it as a problem. The ones that can’t cut it fail and drop. I’m a good teacher and I know my kids better than most–small school and I am around a lot–and I know my ability to predict which ones will succeed and which ones will fail is at best flawed and imperfect.
[/QUOTE]

I think there may be a misunderstanding. I support allowing parents and students to self select into honors courses. The punishment I refer to is forcing students to stay in lower level courses just because the teacher thinks they know better than the students or parents what’s best for them.