Posted on 05/17/2015 1:58:28 PM PDT by PROCON
Caleb Stewart Rossiter, a college professor and policy analyst, decided to try teaching math in the D.C. schools. He was given a pre-calculus class with 38 seniors at H.D. Woodson High School. When he discovered that half of them could not handle even second-grade problems, he sought out the teachers who had awarded the passing grades of D in Algebra II, a course that they needed to take his high-level class.
There are many bewildering stories like this in Rossiter’s new book, “Ain’t Nobody Be Learnin’ Nothin’: The Fraud and the Fix for High-Poverty Schools,” the best account of public education in the nation’s capital I have ever read. It will take me three columns to do justice to his revelations about what is being done to the District’s most distracted and least productive students.
Teachers will tell you it is a no-no to ask other teachers why they committed grading malpractice. Rossiter didn’t care. Three of the five teachers he sought had left the high-turnover D.C. system, but the two he found were so candid I still can’t get their words out of my mind.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Another form of affirmative action. Better to face reality and fail the failures.
It’s better BECAUSE different states can take different approaches. Even if the same number of tax dollars funded it, the states wouldn’t be in fear of the Feds, having already confiscated the money from the state’s citizens, (and which may be lead by a Congress and an Administration contrary to the political values of the majority of those residents), threaten to withhold the dollars of the state’s citizens from being partly returned if the state refuses to kow-tow to the statist educational fad du jour.
From the same principles, it would be even better if it were funded and governed at an even more local area, lest a liberal majority in the state crap all over normal people (usually) in rural areas of the state.
Been going on for decades. Long ago, my first year in public school teaching, I was told by an older teacher in an elementary school that each teacher could only hold back 2-3 students max. each year. It threw off the class counts for the next year as they were near maximum, and the school district would have to hire ($$) a new teacher should a class size go over the count. An F/D in one subject meant the student had to attend remedial summer school, again governed by open slots, in order to be passed on to the next grade in the fall. The teacher told me you had to determine who benefited most from a repeat of the entire year or summer school in one or two subject areas. Some kids still wouldn’t get it if they repeated the same year for the rest of their lives. Those kids were passed on. Throw special ed (protected by law) and disruptive students (and their equally badass parents) into the mix, and the concept of passing a student to avoid conflict is common practice. Don’t forget the school administrators that won’t stand with the teacher when the parent’s complain.
I hate to say it, but the Soviets have won.
No-—Local control only. States are too big and too much of a bureaucracy that eats up millions. All local choices, local boards, local decisions of curricula, etc which should ONLY be Classical in the sense of the McGuffey Readers so the tools to be critical thinkers are given to all children.
The most brilliant “minds” in our history did NOT spend that much time in “group think” conditioning factories——they were Readers and spent no more than 4 or 5 years in institutions-—and they weren’t “social” experiments-—but taught hard facts and complex thinking skills (mathematics)-—like Ben Franklin, Washington, Adams, etc.——early childhood should be in the Natural Family until after age 7 AT LEAST—— like Pastor Bonhoeffer’s mother stated (personal tutors ONLY-—and no artificial institutions (Real Life interactions, mastering skills (true self-esteem) and emulation of mature, moral people, who love the child (so children are humanized and practice and observe Virtue).
Socrates-—the only purpose of education is to teach Virtue. (Without Virtue, there is no Freedom).
I wish it weren’t the case, but the same types of people work in state educational bureaucracies as work in the federal one.
I sometimes think those who think of state agencies as our potential saviors haven’t had much contact with any of them.
High school, even middle school, is way too late to be worrying about this. You’re never going to learn algebra if you can’t do basic arithmetic and you’re never going to read Shakespeare or even a newspaper if you can’t get through Dick, Jane and Sally.
There are very few jobs that don’t require at least minimal skills like these.
Bear?
Honest reporting from the Washington Post? That’s weird... This is NOT a PC subject...
Granted. But they’re closer to the voters and the people have a better chance of effecting a change in a state-level bureaucracy than a federal one. (Hence my comment about local control being even better) PLUS, it allows different states to respond to differing priorities in their respective electorates. PLUS, they keep all the tax money received, rather than pay a skim to the Feds (even if they comply with all the dictates). The Feds have to get paid for all that wonderful administrative work!
Bear?
AHA, I misspelled it on purpose to bring out the grammar/spelling police.
Now we know who you are :-)
Historically, local communities and churches kept this problem in check by offering both support and a clear set of societal norms that were in place for the betterment of all children. Unfortunately, the "War on Children" has been a matter of political convenience for the past 50 years, and we are reaping what we have sown.
Remember the 'gentle giant' and how he was turning his life around? Same story with all the black thugs... guess this is the well spring of that idiotic thinking... They 'teach it' in the public school system. "We can't teach math, but we can teach excuses..."
Then these kids go on to college where they get a remedial high school education for $40,000 a year...
Remember the 'gentle giant' and how he was turning his life around?
Same story with most black thugs... guess this is the well spring of that idiotic thinking... high school.
They 'teach it' in the public school system. "We can't teach math, but we can teach excuses..."
Then these kids go on to college where they get a remedial high school education for $40,000 a year...
“Parents”?? Of what are you speaking? Remember, this is the poorest ghetto in inner city America. If kids ain’t be lernin’ it is the teacher’s fault. Not the kid. Not the occasional adult “supervisor.”
It’s now considered micro-aggression for a white teacher to critique students of color according to the new order of such things.
“Math be rassist.”
You remind me of an article I read in some women’s mag years ago. It was about some Native American woman who had done something but I forget what, but there was some reason they wrote the article about her.
She had grown up on a reservation and she was a super lib, very against the white man, etc. She said that when she was in, I really don’t remember, but say about 6th grade or something like that, she came to the conclusion that everything she’d been taught in school was a lie.
Everything, that is, except math.
But they need to advance, so they can join the NBA or the NFL. If you fail them, teachers, they wont be on athletic teams.
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