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Anatomy of the Collapse of a Failed City

Deacon923 said:
how much time have you actually spent in a public school classroom?
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It was two hours a week for three and a half years before I walked away in frustration and hoped my own children would come out okay. Guilford county NC, I thinkyou are familiar with the area.
 
People need only read the Atlanta Braves stadium move thread to understand white flight.
 
olddke said:
It was two hours a week for three and a half years before I walked away in frustration and hoped my own children would come out okay. Guilford county NC, I thinkyou are familiar with the area.
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well, I appreciate your volunteerism. What is it about that experience that led you to believe too much "social engineering" was going on? My own experience, and my wife's, is that there is way too much "assessing" (aka testing) of little kids, and a whole bunch of kids are not getting the social services they need to be successful.
 
Deacon923 said:
well, I appreciate your volunteerism. What is it about that experience that led you to believe too much "social engineering" was going on? My own experience, and my wife's, is that there is way too much "assessing" (aka testing) of little kids, and a whole bunch of kids are not getting the social services they need to be successful.
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I think you mean parenting not social services.
 
silk, what type of education do you think children without adequate parenting deserve?
 
PhDeac said:
So we face a situation in which educational disparities can be directly traced to socioeconomic disparities, yet public education shouldn't be focused on doing what is necessary to bridge those gaps and educate the public. Sounds like you're mad the teachers spent too much time with the poors than your kids.
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My issues are with the children who had no business in a middle school class room the system had already failed them. Some of them could not read as well as my children could read in the third grade. They needed additional help and they could not get what they needed in a sixth, seventh or eight grade class. So what did they do, they acted out and stopped the learning for all the children. Then since some of the higher end children were bored they acted out. I do not have a solution but children should not just be pushed ahead because of their size or age. There needs to be multiple tracks or much smaller classes to address some of the massive disparity I was seeing that I believe was leading to disruptive classroom behavior. I feel that given what I saw with the class sizes the way they were and the huge gaps between the current levels of the children the teachers were screwed. So no, the children at the top were not being adequately served nor were the children at the bottom, nor the children in between. I volenteered to work with some children on their reading or math depending on what the teacher wanted me to do, but as stated before I eventually gave up.

As far as public education being 'focused on doing what is necessary to bridge the gaps', what they were doing was not working. I am not an educator but how can one person manage a class of 30 or more children with vastly different needs and abilities. I personally do not think the two political extremes will ever be able to work together to come up with a solution to fix public education.
 
Deacon923 said:
well, I appreciate your volunteerism. What is it about that experience that led you to believe too much "social engineering" was going on? My own experience, and my wife's, is that there is way too much "assessing" (aka testing) of little kids, and a whole bunch of kids are not getting the social services they need to be successful.
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I was dealing with middle schoolers and I did not see tons of 'assessing' I saw huge disparities in the level of work the children were capable of doing which led to, in my opinion, disruptive classroom behavior which distroyed the learning environment for all the children. The administration would not support the teachers in their efforts to control their classrooms, I had a principal tell me she had been told by 'downtown' that she could not suspend anymore children. She may have been lying but I was hearing a lot about discrepancies in suspention rates between groups from the school board members during this same time frame.
 
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What good does suspension do for a kid disadvantaged in his home life?
 
PhDeac said:
Sounds like you're mad the teachers spent too much time with the poors than your kids.
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As for this part of your statement, this is the type of selfrightous crap that spews forth from the mouths of peopleon the left that makes it hard to think you have any interest in finding a soution other than the one you have aready identified. My kids were going to be fine no matter what because we had the means to assure they got the opportunities they would need, we made a conscious decision to send them to a more integrated public school so they would be better citizens, but when I hear crap like this out of mouth pieces like you for the left I think I am wasting my time trying to help and maybe the people who move into gated communities and send their children to private schools have it right.
 
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silk said:
I think you mean parenting not social services.
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Here's my perspective on that. My kid has learning problems. In response, I could afford (a) several sessions with an educational psychologist to diagnose the issues; (b) a private school environment where his learning problems could be accommodated, and (c) plenty of flexible time to deal with all this during the work day because I have an autonomous professional job. I also have a wife who is an education professional and we both are well-read and have a high degree of education about learning issues.

There is no way that a single mom, with a high school education, working two jobs to make ends meet, could do what we did to help our kid. As a result, a poor kid with issues like mine is going to be in the public school environment, and it's going to be up to the schools to diagnose and deal with the problems. You can blame that on poor parenting, I guess, but the simple fact is that "parenting" involves not just love and devotion but also a concrete set of goods and services delivered by parents to their children. Wealthy parents have the time and money to deliver more of those goods and services than poor parents. Does that make poor people "bad parents"? Should the schools do nothing to address the kids' issues that directly impact the learning environment, because their parents can't spend the money and time I can?
 
PhDeac said:
What good does suspension do for a kid disadvantaged in his home life?
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olddke said:
Might help the 30 other children learn something for a few days.
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You are both right. The answer is in-school suspension. Out of school suspension is stupid, but removing a disruptive kid for the good of the rest of the class sometimes needs to happen.
 
olddke said:
As for this part of your statement, this is the type of selfrightous crap that spews forth from the mouths of peopleon the left that makes it hard to think you have any interest in finding a soution other than the one you have aready identified. My kids were going to be fine no matter what because we had the means to assure they got the opportunities they would need, we made a conscious decision to send them to a more integrated public school so they would be better citizens, but when I hear crap like this out of mouth pieces like you for the left I think I am wasting my time trying to help and maybe the people who move into gated communities and send their children to private schools have it right.
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Your post made your argument for gates communities and private schools. It basically confirmed my post was right.
 
Deacon923 said:
You are both right. The answer is in-school suspension. Out of school suspension is stupid, but removing a disruptive kid for the good of the rest of the class sometimes needs to happen.
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Pay teachers the most to work with the kids who have the most needs.
 
PhDeac said:
silk, what type of education do you think children without adequate parenting deserve?
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Social services is a poor substitute for parents.

I ain't got the answers. But, as I have suggested before I think kids that need better parenting or are low performing need to be in smaller classes. Maybe 8 or 10. Give a teacher a chance to provide more one on one. Kids who are performing get larger classes.

I think trade skills can be started in middle school.
 
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silk said:
Social services is a poor substitute for parents.

I ain't got the answers. But, as I have suggested before I think kids that need better parenting or are low performing need to be in smaller classes. Maybe 8 or 10. Give a teacher a chance to provide more one on one. Kids who are performing get larger classes.
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This is one possible solution. For a lot of these kids, changing the school environment and leadership to one that exudes disciplien and high expectations and isn't set up like a prison can make a lot of difference.
 
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