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intertribal[The job being: I'm a Project Assistant for a university professor who gets contracts from the state department of education to do research on whatever the department wants to know about. Last year it was the transition to a new testing program. This year's project, failing schools, is one I've been involved with the whole way.]
I don't have an education background at all, and all of this is of course based on a sampling of Nebraska schools that are classified as failing in some way, and not meant to be conclusive.
1. Failing schools have "difficult" demographics. Either there's a lot of minorities or there's a lot of poverty or both. Indian schools fail almost by default in this state. There is a crazy superintendent man who jumps from Indian school to Indian school, misusing funds and planning new buildings. Research says you can't fix most schools that chronically fail.
2. Principals harbor a lot of pent-up rage toward Hispanic students that move, because they don't want to have to implement an ELL program and the students bring down their scores and then move away. As a result, people will either build new school districts away from urban centers to stay away from all the minorities, or will force the minorities to stay in their own school district outside of the urban center. And by urban center, I mean like, 20,000 people. Some principals will tell Hispanic students to go to a different school. This is actually illegal.
3. It feels like there are a lot of kids being placed in special education, especially in small rural schools. Whether that's a jump in awareness, a jump in diagnoses, or a jump in actual prevalence of cases, I don't know.
4. Most parents don't get involved except to complain, or so teachers say. Many parents seem scarred by negative experiences when they were in school, and in any case are too tired from working thousands of shifts at finger-chopping meatpacking plants to sign little worksheets saying they read to their kids or checked their kids' progress. In "diverse" schools, schools invite white parents to be a part of parent committees.
5. Older teachers mock younger teachers for being panicky or "too creative." Younger teachers mock older teachers for having been there "since the building was built." Everyone will say that there is collaboration in their school, but I seriously wonder, considering all the passive-aggressive stuff that comes out in interviews.
6. A lot of times students need to be bribed to try to do well on tests with pizza parties and cupcakes. High school students.
7. Schools seem to think that an inability to do story problems in math can be solved by upping reading comprehension skills. I can say for one that this would not have helped me.
8. Some teachers want to be part of a unified curriculum, and some teachers want to be able to do whatever they want. If you bring up changes or research or anything, these latter teachers will say, "I've been teaching for X-years, I would hope that I know what I'm doing!" Few are comfortable being assessed, critiqued, criticized, or judged in any way. Principals say they assess teachers more than teachers say they are assessed. Schools are distrustful of outsiders, especially outsiders from "the government." Outsiders want the state to intervene in failing schools, possibly by firing principals that are judged to be ineffective, but neither the state nor the schools want this.
9. Education is something that the general public goes absolutely crazy on. It's getting close to the level of abortion et al. There's basically 3 perspectives: 1) "Public school is a black hole and public schools should receive no money. Why should I have to give them my hard-earned tax dollars when I don't have kids/my kids go to my super awesome ["exclusive"] private school?" 2) "Stop blaming the socio-economic environment. Tell those kids/teachers to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Motivate them harder!" 3) "I'm a teacher and I think you're being really mean to teachers, because they would give up body parts for their students and they love these kids more than their own parents love 'em and they are really trying the best they can!" Most of the people with the loudest opinions do not actually have kids in public school. See #4.
10. There is a minimum proficiency that all students, regardless of poverty, ethnicity, English-speaking status, or special education status, are expected to reach for the school to not "fail." It is the same standard for all these groups.
I don't have an education background at all, and all of this is of course based on a sampling of Nebraska schools that are classified as failing in some way, and not meant to be conclusive.
1. Failing schools have "difficult" demographics. Either there's a lot of minorities or there's a lot of poverty or both. Indian schools fail almost by default in this state. There is a crazy superintendent man who jumps from Indian school to Indian school, misusing funds and planning new buildings. Research says you can't fix most schools that chronically fail.
2. Principals harbor a lot of pent-up rage toward Hispanic students that move, because they don't want to have to implement an ELL program and the students bring down their scores and then move away. As a result, people will either build new school districts away from urban centers to stay away from all the minorities, or will force the minorities to stay in their own school district outside of the urban center. And by urban center, I mean like, 20,000 people. Some principals will tell Hispanic students to go to a different school. This is actually illegal.
3. It feels like there are a lot of kids being placed in special education, especially in small rural schools. Whether that's a jump in awareness, a jump in diagnoses, or a jump in actual prevalence of cases, I don't know.
4. Most parents don't get involved except to complain, or so teachers say. Many parents seem scarred by negative experiences when they were in school, and in any case are too tired from working thousands of shifts at finger-chopping meatpacking plants to sign little worksheets saying they read to their kids or checked their kids' progress. In "diverse" schools, schools invite white parents to be a part of parent committees.
5. Older teachers mock younger teachers for being panicky or "too creative." Younger teachers mock older teachers for having been there "since the building was built." Everyone will say that there is collaboration in their school, but I seriously wonder, considering all the passive-aggressive stuff that comes out in interviews.
6. A lot of times students need to be bribed to try to do well on tests with pizza parties and cupcakes. High school students.
7. Schools seem to think that an inability to do story problems in math can be solved by upping reading comprehension skills. I can say for one that this would not have helped me.
8. Some teachers want to be part of a unified curriculum, and some teachers want to be able to do whatever they want. If you bring up changes or research or anything, these latter teachers will say, "I've been teaching for X-years, I would hope that I know what I'm doing!" Few are comfortable being assessed, critiqued, criticized, or judged in any way. Principals say they assess teachers more than teachers say they are assessed. Schools are distrustful of outsiders, especially outsiders from "the government." Outsiders want the state to intervene in failing schools, possibly by firing principals that are judged to be ineffective, but neither the state nor the schools want this.
9. Education is something that the general public goes absolutely crazy on. It's getting close to the level of abortion et al. There's basically 3 perspectives: 1) "Public school is a black hole and public schools should receive no money. Why should I have to give them my hard-earned tax dollars when I don't have kids/my kids go to my super awesome ["exclusive"] private school?" 2) "Stop blaming the socio-economic environment. Tell those kids/teachers to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Motivate them harder!" 3) "I'm a teacher and I think you're being really mean to teachers, because they would give up body parts for their students and they love these kids more than their own parents love 'em and they are really trying the best they can!" Most of the people with the loudest opinions do not actually have kids in public school. See #4.
10. There is a minimum proficiency that all students, regardless of poverty, ethnicity, English-speaking status, or special education status, are expected to reach for the school to not "fail." It is the same standard for all these groups.
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no subject
Date: 2010-05-10 09:57 pm (UTC)RE: Parental involvement--beyond academic booster clubs, very little, which is pretty much a common cultural/societal issue.
no subject
Date: 2010-05-10 11:07 pm (UTC)Yeah, I'm not sure how high parental involvement is ever going to be outside of a certain subset of small upper-middle-class schools. But there seems to be a lot of pressure on schools to involve parents - part of this I think is because of the perception that parents need more autonomy (to choose charter/voucher schools and such), and part of it is because parents do need to be involved in order to encourage kids. It's a conundrum.
no subject
Date: 2010-05-11 01:16 am (UTC)We'll be graduating the seniors in two weeks. In a sad many cases, that'll be one of the few times a parent has been able or willing to show up at a school in support of the child's educational pursuits. [sarcasm] Outside sports, of course. [/sarcasm]
no subject
Date: 2010-05-10 10:41 pm (UTC)I couldn't agree more with what Berry said about rural communities losing their best and brightest. This has an even uglier side too. My old HS and Elm, once Blue Ribbon schools, have drastically cut programs. The local businesses benefit because the kid's test scores and resources have been preventative in getting kids into decent colleges.
Now their best and brightest have no choice in the matter.
no subject
Date: 2010-05-10 11:14 pm (UTC)For a less extreme example I remember when I was in high school (in the state capital) all the top kids in the high school being courted HEAVILY by the University of Nebraska - and none of us stayed (though some of us, including me, have temporarily come back), for various reasons (from academic to psychological).
What I have found with these failing schools in very poor, very rural parts of the state is that you can't even tell who the best and the brightest are. As in they're not even provided the chance to develop. Which is why we always ask, "what are you doing for the gifted students?" But they're too busy worrying about getting students to pass state test cut scores.
no subject
Date: 2010-05-10 11:22 pm (UTC)As a working parent, I really, really resented all the special activities and check-the-box stuff, and things that made you feel guilty, like "your third grader is going to be singing with their class today at school; we hope you can come." Yeah, no. I thought it was just this crazy town, which somehow seemed to assume that there'd be a parent free to do all that stuff--but now I know it's a common thing everywhere. One reason I went freelance was actually to be able to handle all that stuff (admittedly, not the main reason).
Part of a problem that I see in society at large, and it comes up with education, is an inability to talk about problems or to give or receive criticism without it escalating to a duel to the death. If it were possible for people to be a little wrong without the consequences being super dire, then they might be able to meet critics halfway and work to improve. But whether it's teachers feeling criticized, or small-town school district administrations, or parents, or even state education departments, NO one is able to give an inch for fear all the blame will be heaped on them. ... I'm not saying all those parties are equally guilty, by the way. It varies from place to place. But it's crazy that as a society we have no way of admitting problems and failings and dealing with them.
no subject
Date: 2010-05-10 11:34 pm (UTC)My mom was the same way (with my elementary school in Jakarta) - she hated that parents were expected to make costumes for the kids' school plays, contribute food to the school bazaar, etc., because she and my dad both worked but all my friends had stay-at-home moms who had seamstresses on retainer, etc. (crazy situation, really). There's a constant struggle going on with regard to who's "responsible" for kids, it seems to me.
I totally agree on that - and you can stretch the metaphor of not being able to admit problems/failings and dealing with them pretty far, I might venture. The other issue is that everyone is also liable to get frustrated very fast with everyone else - teachers with kids/parents/administration, administration with teachers/school boards/state government, parents with teachers/administration, etc. So at the same time that all of these people are afraid of repercussions (my mother has said if she was interviewed she'd be afraid that I would be punished for any criticism she gave, but again, that actually happened when we were in Indonesia), they're also very quick to get fed up with the people they need to cooperate with. Not to mention how fed up students get, of course.
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Date: 2010-05-11 03:41 am (UTC)And yes! People's frustration! Did you see "How the Karate Kid Ruined the Modern World" at Cracked.com? (The tall one showed it to me.) It talked about "Effort Shock": Accomplishing worthwhile things isn't just a little harder than people think; it's 10 or 20 times harder.
no subject
Date: 2010-05-11 04:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-11 04:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-11 04:07 am (UTC)And when it comes to schools, of course, there's a lot of that "if you just WILL IT to work," or "if you actually TRIED," then somehow everything will fall into place. I've detected that attitude in my own opinions on occasion, and it's just total B.S.
no subject
Date: 2010-05-11 04:45 am (UTC)And yeah, I think people like to insist that if [others, generally] just tried, they'd succeed--and sure, I've been guilty of that too, sometimes.
no subject
Date: 2012-07-08 05:30 pm (UTC)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6M_6qOz-yw