Posted on 03/25/2005 11:36:31 AM PST by NormsRevenge
Hey, a CA school administrator actually admitted several months ago that they were responsible for the lousy way they taught students to read. It might be the parents, but it might be the schools too.
At first I was going to challange your statement because of the lack of preperation of the modal student within the system.
On reconsideration however I think your statement is accurate. The LAUSD is designed to fail the immigrant student. The failure to educate is intended because the citizen administration (each school board) is unwilling to acknowledge the status of the civilization in the district and adjust teaching standards and methods to accomodate the third world preperation of the modal student.
Rather than prepare students for post secondary education LAUSD should strive to educate their students to the point that they are fairly proficient in intermediate math (trig and algebra), read and write English at a "high school level" and understand the basic concepts of the US Constitution (in English).
Yes, I was using white to refer to non-hispanic white and hispanic to refer to hispanic. I forget that hispanics are classified white in some categorizations.
Spend any amount of time in a school and it's pretty clear. Poor parenting skills ensure unmotivated kids lacking structure, boundaries, and proper social behavior. It's not rocket science. Respect, authority, and discipline have been taken out of the schools by parents and govt. How can learning even begin to take place? They just continue to talk about academics and blame those evil commie teachers.
I have been a teacher, ten years in the math dept of a major high school in San Mateo. The kids came in from three feeder schools. School one was from Hillsborough, where homes start at a million and go up from there. The kids from Crocker (named after the robber barron) had ten to twenty pages of math homework each night and hit high school at the geometry level and usually made it through calculas by the senior year. The kids from Foster City, solidly middle class, started in Algebra and made it through trig. The kids from Bayside, with the kind of home life you are talking about, had to be tutored in math skills to pass the grad requirement of eighth grade math. Now the kids had parents who gave them encouragement and good genes in the wealthier areas, in the poor neighborhood of Bayside the parents were seldom there and the kids were free to roam the neighborhood until supper time getting in trouble and the like, but not doing any homework. But the teachers in Bayside did not assign homework, because they knew it would not be turned in. So its a vicious circle.
In this district most of the teachers were pretty well prepared. I found a few math teachers who were PE majors or something else, but this was not the rule. In LA I would imagine many teachers are spanish speaking and had trouble with the teacher's entrance exam. I also doubt many math teachers have math degrees. Do I think teachers get blamed a lot? Of course, and like you I was very tired of hiding my profession. (I told people I played piano in a whorehouse so they would not think I was ruining their childrens' education.)
But the union is for the teachers, and would like to see more pay and less class room time. They frown on highly qualified people from outside, (like say local engineers from Lockheed coming in to teach math because they are not "qualified") this is silly. They would not take a jazercise instructor to teach PE because there was no credential. The teachers who are nearing retirement themselves and really retired the year before but did not tell the school do give the profession a bad name. Parents can make up for a bad teacher, and a good kid can educate him or her self but we do need a lot of energetic dedicated teachers if we are going to save the public school system. I personally think it is too late to save it.
As far as discipline is concerned, the teachers in my school were adamant that this was not their job and not what they became teachers to do. Put a few unprepared kids who think the world owes them something and they can put a classroom behind one week every month. So I understand how the parents and teachers union are failing the system as well. But many parents have absolutely no idea what goes on in school, and don't care. So it does come back to the teachers if any educating is going to happen.
I taught for LAUSD for one year. My enrollment was capped at 20, but I had 50 students roll through my room that year. I only had 8 students who lasted most of the year with me. I think less than four were on my original enrollment sheet. Kids just moved in and moved out, and the ones that came in never knew even the basics like sounds and letters or how to add 2+2.
Not that LAUSD isn't really messed up, but to be fair there are many circumstances out of the teachers' control.
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