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My wife is retiring after this year, after teaching in public schools for almost 40 years. The reality is that the black children ARE the most disruptive and active children in most classes. Not all, but there are a good percentage that have NO INTEREST IN LEARNING. They know they will not have to get a job or be responsible for their own support.
This last week, she was giving out the class instructions for the learning task. One third grade male child, would not follow instructions. He was refusing to do anything. When she asked him why he wasn’t doing the assignment, he said very loud.. “I don’t take orders from no old white woman.”
Students like him, with failing grades, are why the teacher is held responsible for the students having such low general academic scores. My wife has had enough of being blamed for his kind of failures.
The inmates are running the asylums. The parents don’t care either.

You're wife should be applauded for all the good that she has done over 40 years. It isn't her fault to clean up every sin of every family.

The parents don’t care either.

A few months back, there were hundreds of black kids who descended on a shopping mall and created mayhem (fighting, stealing, vandalism, etc.)

The mall PR department responded by saying it had "asked parents not to drop off their children unsupervised."

We all had a good laugh at that one. There ARE NO PARENTS for most of these kids! At best, there is a Baby Mama who is taking drugs, is drunk, or could give a damn about her spawn. And no one was "dropping them off." They opened up a bus line to the mall - and viola! Instant riot.

One third grade male child, would not follow instructions. He was refusing to do anything. When she asked him why he wasn’t doing the assignment, he said very loud.. “I don’t take orders from no old white woman.”

This is exactly what I mean. Not only do they refuse straight out to stop doing something which is disruptive to the class, but they learn at an early age that they should not recognize whites as authority figures. Another excuse to do no work: "She white". And yet the TEACHERS are held responsible for this mess.

My sister is still teaching math to inner city black kids in Baltimore. Been teaching for 40 years, too. She lives with the exact same things your wife describes. Funny thing is she gets through to one or two students every year and makes a big differences in their lives. It makes it all worthwhile to her and she keeps going back every year. She has kids stop her ten, twenty and thirty years later and tell her what a difference she made to them.

I liken teaching to playing golf. Somewhere, just once in those 18 holes, you are going to hit that perfect, sweet, straight long drive that lures you back next week.

Congratulations to your wife on 40 years in public education. It takes exceptional talent, grit and determination to last that long in that environment. I come from a family of teachers; both of my step-sisters and one brother-in-law spent their careers in the classroom. To a person, they are stunned by the changes in student behavior—and school policies—they saw over the course of their individual careers.

The discipline issue is the 800-lb gorilla in American public education. Visit the websites of the Department of Education, the NEA or the AFT. If there’s a mention of school discipline, it is only in the most generic terms imaginable and there is no mention of the problem as it affects specific minority groups.

It is true that black students have more discipline problems, and not because of racism, but due to the pathologies listed by others on this thread. Growing up in a single-parent home with no father figure or positive male role model is the breeding ground for what we see in today’s schools. The refusal of politicians and school officials to deal with it is nothing more than cowardice ad political correctness run amok.

After retiring from the military, I spent three years as a middle school teacher in a couple of poor districts in Mississippi. My last school was 80% African-American; every kid in the school, regardless of ethnic background, was on the federal school lunch program and participation was essential to the district receiving all the federal aid it was entitled to. So, we interrupted class every morning at 7:50 to march everyone to the cafeteria for breakfast. Many of the kids got a free snack after school as well.

Conditions in the school were chaotic, at best. Mississippi allowed corporal punishment, and we did a thriving business. Most of us hated to use that technique, but it underscored that actions had consequences and some of the kids actually learned that lesson, the hard way. Parent-Teacher conference day was always the slowest date on the school calendar, since most of the parents were (a) absent, (b) addicted, (c) uninvolved in their children’s lives, (d) incarcerated or (e) all of the above. Not surprisingly, the few parents who showed up had kids who were the best in our school—the few who showed up on time, knew how to behave, put forth an effort every day and were headed for success, despite whatever obstacles were in their path.

Sadly, those kids in the latter column were a distinct minority in our school. Fifteen years later, I can only imagine how many of the kids in the “other” category are in jail, on welfare, or dead.