Public schools...a vent

Me too :( :( :(

I taught in middle school and *watched* too many good kids go bad. They’d get frustrated and act out a bit… expecting to be pulled back in the fold and told to straighten up, except it wouldn’t happen. They’d get more frustrated & start hanging wtih the “bad” kids… who would chew ‘em up and spit ‘em out, except they wouldn’t even know they were being masticated. The other kids were so much better at getting away with stuff…Made me a proponent of homeschooling. In the meantime I did my darndest to be an ally - somebody who *did* think the kiddo was worth something, who’d respect their intelligence and advocate for them with teachers, try to get them into classes with the best chance for at least survival… but I never tried to pretend that it was a fair system or that fairness ruled and in the end it would all work out.

The system is allowed to stay flawed because:

The inertia of Status Quo makes for a very hard ship to steer off present course.

The politicians who are responsible for funding it do not get enough “kickback” from people who would make education a top priority so as to cause the prostitutes we elect treat education as a priority.

The politicians who do understand and have proper priorities are too outnumbered to put substance into the lip-service the rest mouth to appear good guys.

The majority of people who consume the service of education do NOT want their money’s worth.

Teaching itself has become for too many people a “fall-back career”.

The emphasis of public education (as in all other depts. of our govt. bureaucracies) is to make through the next budgetary period, NOT to find long-term solutions to ongoing problems.

The “soft prejudice of low expectations” lends itself well to self-fulfilling prophesies of early plateau.

The continued reliance upon the 2-year discrepancy model allows malleable children to stagnate until they become far more difficult to reach teens before they get identified.

Too many parents are overwhelmed with fighting the system in all its forms to organize into a movement that could force change.

Self-important “experts” who are hooked on their pet theories are appointed to key positions of power and muddy the waters of understanding and consensus so the people in the trenches do not have clear guidance on what to do to have the greatest impact.

The lack of a Rosa Parks to stand up for all of us who actually give a damn and trigger a civil rights movement to make society address the unmet needs of a large subset of children.

As long as the Special Education organizations continue to tout “inclusion” as the best thing since sliced bread, a pancea for all our students’ areas of weakness and failures, and a goal for all students regardless of their abilities, disabilities, fragility, and strengths, kids who need support and extra guidance in a nurturing non-judgemental environment will end up not learning and tuned out in the back of the room because they are overwhelmed, the victim of abuse by his/her peers, and/or they will become the class clown or bully who covers up inadequacies by acting out.

Whatever the politically correct term is being used, kids with special needs have…special needs (surprise!) and they need a special environment to meet those needs and plomb their potential. My son had such an environment in preschool, which is why he blossomed and achieved so much. My mistake was putting him in public school later on where he was a victim of inclusion. Teachers refused to help, criticized him publically, and kids ostracised him. I regret that he didn’t have a place like the one in which I teach.

It really galls me that public schools try to lay claim to our students when we have had success with a child who was not learning in public school. After a year or two with us, in small classes, with individualized instruction, and a behavior support system, these kids learn to read and function socially. Then the district prances in and wants to take them back (where they had been failing) because they are doing so well now. They don’t realize that it is the environment along with the expertise of our staff that have helped effect the change. The environment of the public school, even with good teachers, does not permit the level of intense and personal remediation that we can provide, nor does the social milieu allow for the kind of guided socialization impulsive kids with perceptual difficulties need. Mostly, the districts think that because the numbers (test scores) look better, they can save all that money on tuition and the kid can join the rest of the gang, as if nothing had ever happened.

Fern

You know Fern, this is even happening in HS. There is a wonderful program (at least from what I have seen) for HS special ed kids. The kids get behavior support, one teacher to go to (instead of many), a nurturing environment, etc. I also think the kids in this are more mature than their “normal peers” because they work with them on goals, etc. Now we are hearing noises like “special ed is not a place”, __ program is not a place; etc. And these kids are pushed into taking regular ed courses which the teachers (with classes of 35+) can’t handle them in. They don’t know what to do with them. They have maybe an “inclusion teacher” who has 6 other classes to work with— prob. barely knows the kid and is just trying to keep it all straight.

I know a kid who got suicidal because he was placed in a regular ed class, they experimented again with him this year before an alert teacher brought it up.

I think if I read one more thing about it is the teacher’s fault… (Yes there are idiots who are teachers just like there are idiot doctors— but we don’t usually blame the medicine’s problems on doctors.) When I worked in the private sector I honestly didn’t care what people said about teachers. But now that I am working in the public schools, it is just appalling how little support we get. I have to buy my own pencils and paper for the kids as well as a stapler, chalk, white boards, etc etc. not to mention more expensive supplies (unless of course it is some kind of packaged program— they buy those). If any problem comes up, you can pretty well know that the administration will side with the student in most cases. The principal may just come into tthe classroom and yell at you in front of the kids, I have heard of this. (She’s incompetent, that’s for sure.) Schools sometimes go to non-profits and bake sales to get supplies. BTW , I have seen some amazingly good teaching— even with them placing mental retarded and nonreaders in their classes with minimal support. No one ever recognizes that!

—des

Hmmm…. Dad, we could use that summary as the foundation for a mission statement - you’ve lined up the roadblocks like ducks in a row.

How sad to read the posts. Having been a middle school special ed teacher most of my career, these posts surely cause me to reflect. Where to begin with this problem? We have theories of teaching now which make no sense - unless you’re so far into a semi-Marxist point of view (how else could I label post-modernist thought?). We don’t as a society value education, nor do we seem to value the child in our institutions. Another shakeup is due - we now have a world in which to compete, just being an American is no longer enough - and our public schools are critical. Are we up to the task?? I fear we are not.

Ken Campbell

I think institutional inertia and resistance to change, along with a steadfast adherence to “one size fits all education” is the major part of the problem with public schools. I had my oldest in one and I lasted two months — I put him in a private school to get, among other things, some positive regard for him, a little more patience and a teacher’s aide. His public school teacher seemed nice, concerned and positive, but the principal, counselors and other teachers saw my child as a problem kid. I got tired of fighting. If he is in a school where the teacher, director and others care about him and are positive, that’s half the battle. Then together we can work on his ADHD and behavioral problems. It remains to be seen whether this private school will work out, but I’m just grateful they know about my son’s issues and are willing to try to work with him anyway.

Even when you have good teachers, nothing can really change if you have bad administrators (or those who support an inflexible one size fits all mode of education).

I can tell you that in my middle school, it began when Dr. X. walked in and got the principal’s job. Before that, there was a tyrant and I’m glad I didn’t have to work for her. However, there was order in the school. I don’t know how special ed kiddos did in that regime, but the all at least knew what the behavioral expectations were.

That’s *when* things started going downhill in my specific location, but I don’t think it’s all of “why” - the forces on Dad’s list contributed *hugely* to the rather swift decay of an orderly institution into one of relative chaos. It shouldn’t have taken three and a half years (during which rats fled the sinking ship while ducking the flying feces and trying to keep out of the fan blades) to get new leadership which was also uniquely but fatally flawed. (I don’t mean these folks weren’t good leaders, I mean they were indictably and consistently corrupt and/or mentally incapacitated.) The leadership really is a critical factor.

Leadership is the key. Forever I was accused of “rocking the boat” - my reply, “I’m only bailing.” Ken C

You know, dad, I take personal offense at your rant.

<Teaching itself has become for too many people a “fall-back career”. >

I am a teacher.

There are so many parents like you, who are so wrapped up in their own child, and his or her problems, that they become obsessed, as you sound like you have.

Before you and others on this board slam me, let me say I do feel compassion towards children with special needs. But the “typical” child is every bit as important, and I wish you wouldn’t so frequently insult the entire collective teaching profession. But I suppose the blame must be placed somewhere?

Let me clarify my comment that you took offense to a bit…

I did not say ALL or even MOST teachers could be described as being in a “fall-back” career, what I said was “too many”. There are still a number of good teachers practising their craft, and it is truly unfortunate that they suffer from the association with the bad.

I had the unmitigated pleasure of attending a large “teachers” college about 15 years ago (one of only 2 fully accredited colleges for education in my state). The school of education accounted for nearly 1/3 of the school’s enrollment and routinely graduated just under 1,000 new teachers each year. A sizable proportion of those students followed a path like this:

Entered school as a Bio major (intent on entering the field of medicine).
Found the 300 classes too difficult.
Took an extra year and became a science teacher.

or

Entered school working on pre-law.
Couldn’t hack Constitutional Law.
Took an extra year and became a history teacher.

There are other examples like this

This occured so frequently that the prfessors took to refering to education as the “5-year degree”.

[CAVEAT: the teachers at my alma mater were not alone. I went through the school of busines (represented about 1/4th or the enrollment there, also fully accredited, and our fall-back was the BS in Management, which was unofficially known as the “6 year degree”. The only difference is that the Business world has no tenure, and talent (lack thereof) is self correcting, sometyhing education has lacked until NCLB].

I am sorry you took personal offense to my words. However, look around you at your peers and see how much deadwood you can spot. Perhaps you are in a very good school, or even a very good district. If that is the case I envy the students your school/district serves.

I do not feel that I personally am “so wrapped up in my child” I cannot see the bigger picture (by the by, I do have 4 children only 1 of which is disabled). Indeed, I think for the most part the public schools are failing the top 10 percenters along with the bottom quartile. Of course, I had one of those too ill-derved by my LEA, so perhaps my opinion there is also tainted…

And I think if you reread my “rant” again, you will find I placed more of the blame on the higher ups than I did on the grunts in the trenches.

Many education programs are, in fact, often structured so that a student *can* successfully meet requirements without a great deal of analytical thinking, intensive reading and writing, or extensive acquisition of knowledge even at the memorization level. (Not all, of course.)

Well I didn’t think much of most of the education program stuff I took. (Not the special ed coursework, many of it was topnotch— didn’t include the reading portion though.) In fact, most of it was easy. But it doesn’t exactly follow that all (or even most) people go in because it is an easy area and easy grades. I would have liked a more rigorous (and interesting) program of study.

OTOH, we all know that there are many people who are not going into education because it is a very underpaid profession. I am finally working in a public school program (in a very poor state) and am just shocked at how little I am making.

I know there are many teachers who aren’t the most motivated and some very bad ones (as there are unmotivated and bad anything). I don’t think teaching is particularly higher in the amount of incompetency than any other profession. It’s just too bad that that incompentency is felt so much by some fo the more vulnerable people.
(BTW, I’m not sure my hs students are among the more vulnerable. ;-))

—des

I’m having a soapbox moment…

I agree that the degree of incompetency in public education is probably not much higher than in any other sector of the economy. The difference for me is that tenure allows teachers to coast after the first few years of teaching. In contrast, while it is hard to fire less productive workers in a business environment, it’s much easier than with a tenured teacher.

I personally know teachers who wrote their current lesson plans as long as ten years ago. They just change the page # of the lessons when new textbooks are adopted. This in itself is not a problem, but it does indicate that they are not trying to reach their students, but instead just to cover the curriculum. Those students who are good at catching on do just fine, but those who need special attention, or a modified method or delivery of information in these classroom fail miserably, and the teacher feels justified in blaming the student rather than owning the lack of progress. If these teachers were not tenured, I doubt that they would be so complacent.

Stepping down now…

Karyn

P.S. And now you know why I don’t discuss education or politics with my brother-in-law, a public high school principal

Karyn,
He’s exactly the person you SHOULD be having this discussion with!!! He’s an adminstrator and in a position of influence. He can raise the bar of expectations for his staff and see great things happen!

Please have that conversation!

I’m sure there are such teachers. And I wouldn’t doubt that the system even encourages it. You know that creativity and imagination are not the things that are reinforced or even encouraged. That paper work finished (and lots of really silly stuff imo)— and even more silly stuff since NCLB— so that a lesson plan finished is just as good (or better) than one half done where the teacher uses imagination in reaching students.

The other thing is that more and more inappropriate students are put in the main stream. The people pushing inclusion with the most vigor are those who come out of the civil rights movement (I mean for blacks), and apply the same general standards for disabled kids as though self-contained classes were some kind of separate (and not equal) situation for children to be liberated from. I have heard such people. The schools feel obligated (and are by law to a great extent) to follow on, knowing there are many kids who will never fit in a regular classroom or even school.

When I worked at a private center for autistic adults (they used to have a children’s program) they would almost weekly get calls from desparate parents looking for an appropriate setting for their child. But the center had been closed for children for a decade. At least there *are* private schools for ld kids (though that sort of eliminates low income kids from the mix.)

—des

One time I had a job in a school of 1,000 students (6th grade only) and I was able to pull kids in small groups of 6-8 after testing them for skill needs. We made phenomenal gains. That lasted for two years; then that principal retired and SPED director took another position. It has been down hill ever since.

I can’t take it anymore. I’m leaving public education after this year. I had hoped to be able to make a difference for kids whose families cannot afford private school, but the system will not allow it. I see a great majority of teachers who care and want to help kids (the money isn’t good enough to out weigh the hassles). They either don’t know how (inadequate teacher education/training) or their district will not let them do the things needed to provide appropriate instruction. To top it all off, the trend is now to have every regular education teacher teaching the same thing on the same day—with electronic grade books that track what one is doing. That really makes for instruction tailored to student needs. God help the teacher who uses alternative strategies or the student who needs them.

I agree with most of dad’s thoughts and have a few more of my own milling around: public school has gotten too big to differentiate itself into meaningful instruction for a widely varied populace. It is time to dismantle it and begin anew. So much wasted money…and they’re afraid of losing it, to be sure!

[quote:dee2202b82=”susanlong”]One time I had a job in a school of 1,000 students (6th grade only) and I was able to pull kids in small groups of 6-8 after testing them for skill needs. We made phenomenal gains. That lasted for two years; then that principal retired and SPED director took another position. It has been down hill ever since.

I can’t take it anymore. I’m leaving public education after this year. I had hoped to be able to make a difference for kids whose families cannot afford private school, but the system will not allow it. I see a great majority of teachers who care and want to help kids (the money isn’t good enough to out weigh the hassles). They either don’t know how (inadequate teacher education/training) or their district will not let them do the things needed to provide appropriate instruction. To top it all off, the trend is now to have every regular education teacher teaching the same thing on the same day—with electronic grade books that track what one is doing. That really makes for instruction tailored to student needs. God help the teacher who uses alternative strategies or the student who needs them.

I agree with most of dad’s thoughts and have a few more of my own milling around: public school has gotten too big to differentiate itself into meaningful instruction for a widely varied populace. It is time to dismantle it and begin anew. So much wasted money…and they’re afraid of losing it, to be sure![/quote]

Thank you!!! A system that caters to and serves only the children who get it quickly and pushes the rest into Special Ed or into failure is what angers me about public school. My son has some special needs that I believe can be served in a regular classroom with a dedicated aide. But his school is pushing for an IEP and Special Ed because they are not equipped to provide what he needs. Meanwhile, he and his parents are blamed. For the students who do well and get it, is that because of good teaching? I think not necessarily, because those students will very likely go well and get it anywhere. The real challenge is those students who don’t fit that mold.

Des, I believe that theoretically, a variety of students can be taught in one classroom, with the right supports and resources. Public school does not have enough and refuses to lose the inertia and try something different, for Heaven’s sake. So no, inclusive classrooms, with that attitude and lack of what’s needed, can’t really succeed. As for the inclusiveness coming from the civil rights movement, I take exception to that to some degree. Inclusiveness is a good idea and it should work. But I also think that the knee-jerk labeling that often occurs (ADHD, ODD, CD, ED, etc.), running to Special Ed for a panacea and decrying inclusion came after the school desegregation/civil rights movement. Some folks are determined to have preconceived notions about some kids, and if they can’t be kept back through segregated classrooms and schools, then they’ll be kept back through labels. One-size-fits-all education just doesn’t work. Our public schools are proof of that.

>Des, I believe that theoretically, a variety of students can be taught in one classroom, with the right supports and resources. Public school does not have enough and refuses to lose the inertia and try something different, for Heaven’s sake. So no, inclusive classrooms, with that attitude and lack of what’s needed, can’t really succeed.

I think theoretically many can. I am not opposed to inclusion, as I have seen it work sometimes. It is just that I don’t think it always will work— even given supports. Some kids do not have the skills or emotional capiticity to handle a high school situation where the kids transition every hour, which is the norm. There are just too many kids that can’t do this. Inclusion is not going to fix this particular problem, or various others.

> As for the inclusiveness coming from the civil rights movement, I take exception to that to some degree.

No I didn’t say it. But I might have implied it somehow. I just know of people who have gone into the inclusion “movement” with those sensibilities— that special ed. is somehow “segregation” in the way that racial discrimination is. I don’t even think all people come into it that way, but there are people that have those ideas.

> Inclusiveness is a good idea and it should work. But I also think that the knee-jerk labeling that often occurs (ADHD, ODD, CD, ED, etc.), running to Special Ed for a panacea and decrying inclusion came after the school desegregation/civil rights movement.

I think disabled people having rights came after the civil rights movement and about the only thing in this discussion actually related.

>Some folks are determined to have preconceived notions about some kids, and if they can’t be kept back through segregated classrooms and schools, then they’ll be kept back through labels. One-size-fits-all education just doesn’t work. Our public schools a

I agree with that. So that there should be a range of options. I know that some needed programs are being/ have been disbanded to due people getting on the inclusion bandwagon. So it can go as much one way as the other. I don’t believe in special ed. classes as a be-all and end-all either. I think they are bad for many kids. Initially IDEA really supported the idea of a full range of programs from full inclusion to total residential treatment. I think the extremes are mostly there still with many gaps in the middle. Too many schools also use inclusion as an excuse to not provide services. I know what they say on purpose, but it isn’t what is actually happening. The needed supports sure are not happening here.

—des

I enjoyed this article that appeared in the Washington Post today, and I thought I’d share it. It relates to this discussion but speaks to solutions. With regard to the suggestion of giving principals more power, I’m not sure I agree with this solution, mainly because I find my son’s current principal to be rather lacking (she’s new and she doesn’t seem to deal too well with difficult situations) and so I have a bias. But the Edmonton model sounds great overall.

‘The Best School System in America’

By Jay Mathews
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 8, 2005; 9:38 AM

Unless forced to, I don’t write about school systems. They are often too big and bureaucratic for me, and the school board meetings — hour after hours of minuscule rule changes and pointless discussion — are torture. I tell everyone I am a classroom reporter. I pride myself on my very infrequent contact with superintendents and school board members.

Unfortunately, despite my ignoring them, school systems are still with us. I have come into possession of two studies of what helps them succeed that I feel obliged to discuss, as long as everyone understands this is not going to be a regular thing.

The broader of the two studies, “Power to the Principals: Decentralization in Three Large School Districts” by UCLA business management professor William G. Ouchi, comes out this spring in the journal Organization Science. The narrower study, of great interest to Washington area readers, is a short book, “Education Empire: The Evolution of an Excellent Suburban School System,” ($21.95 at amazon.com) by University of Virginia education professor Daniel L. Duke.

Both studies say one way to improve student achievement in large systems is to give school principals more power. Duke’s book is about Fairfax County. The Virginia jurisdiction has had remarkable success educating both rich and poor students by decentralizing the education of students with disabilities and letting schools choose demanding programs. Ouchi’s article goes much, much further than that. He praises a radical decentralization program invented in 1976 by Mike Strembitsky, the superintendent of the Edmonton, Alberta, schools in Canada, and reports significant improvement in two American urban districts, Seattle and Houston, that adopted the Edmonton model.

Please take a moment for a brief note of caution from me, the reluctant reporter of school systems. It is very difficult, indeed often foolhardy, to compare school systems to each other and declare why some are doing better than others. They have so many factors affecting achievement — poverty level, cultural background, administrative habits, state funding formulas, union strength, taxing authority, school board politics — that it is impossible to decide conclusively what changes have had what impact. That is why I prefer to focus on individual students and individual schools.

But Ouchi and Duke are serious scholars presenting their results, not making claims. What they say about why these four systems have done well deserves close examination, even if I don’t have any great hope that they have found what will cure the ills of whichever urban school system is in your neighborhood.

Duke makes no secret of the most important reason for the high achievement of Fairfax County students — most of their parents have good jobs and good educations. As he notes on page 1: “Fairfax County, of course, is not just any suburban area. It is one of, if not the wealthiest counties in the United States.”

But there are many affluent school systems that have not done nearly as well as Fairfax in educating their low-income and minority students. Some of the county’s schools, such as Stuart and Mt. Vernon high schools, have high poverty levels and yet their students do very well in demanding programs such as International Baccalaureate and Advanced Placement. Fairfax has seen good results from giving its low-performing elementary schools more resources and longer school days, and 92 percent of its students with disabilities graduate with traditional diplomas.

Duke titles one section of the book “The Best School System in America,” using the quotation marks to emphasize that this is just an opinion (although one that I share). Although he singles out Fairfax, there are a few other districts that rival Fairfax’s quality, such as its Maryland neighbor Montgomery County, and many others that would do well too if they had Fairfax’s $1.8 billion annual budget.

But Duke’s analysis of what else sets Fairfax apart is interesting. He says that Fairfax’s administrators and school board members have high expectations for the school system, read the latest research and are often ahead of most districts in embracing new and promising methods. The school system benefits from being relatively stable, with few crises or political battles, and thus more willing, Duke says, to make serious changes and stick with them. Fairfax leaders’ approach to change, Duke emphasizes, is usually well-balanced. “They understand that the end result often must be judicious compromise, a balancing of competing interests,” he says.

Ouchi ignores the middle-of-the-road approach and investigates a policy shift most systems could not even imagine. In part because of his books and articles on Edmonton, that oil and agriculture center with 80,000 students has appeared on the travel expense accounts of many U.S. educators.

Edmonton’s superintendent Strembitsky was a visionary who loved to analyze budgets. He created a remarkable accountability system a generation ago in which schools are rated not only by test scores and budget performance, but by satisfaction surveys of their employees, students and parents. Parents are allowed to send their children to any school in the system, and the system in turn funds each school based on a formula that gives more money to schools that have more children who are poor, gifted, have learning disabilities or are not native English speakers.

That means that some students, sent to the school by their parents, bring five times as much money with them as other students, and the principals and their staffs decide how to spend it. If the students don’t come, they have nothing to spend, so they become very sensitive to what parents want from their school, and their annually published test scores and satisfaction results are key to their survival.

Ouchi says that Houston and Seattle had impressive results when their school boards and superintendents adopted this approach in the 1990s. The principal of the John Hay Elementary School in Seattle, for instance, controlled only $25,000 of his funds before the change, and $2 million after. The John Hay principal and teachers reorganized the school day, invested in part-time reading and math coaches, and saw math scores go from the 36th to the 62nd percentile and reading scores from the 72nd to the 76th percentile in four years.

In Houston, the school system went from having only four schools reaching one of the two top categories in the state’s test-score-based rating system in 1993 to having 123 in those categories in 2001. Ouchi says he has looked into the much publicized misreporting of graduation rates and test scores at some Houston schools and says “our review of the evidence convinces us that the district has made real and dramatic improvements in student achievement.”

There are many powerful reasons why so few school systems have followed the Edmonton model. Money is power, and most school board members and superintendents of systems where spending decisions are made at headquarters don’t want to give it up. But if these results hold up, and academic achievement becomes, as the reformers promise, the basis on which school administrative decisions are made, they may have to.

And if giving parents a choice of schools, assigning different dollar amounts to students based on what it costs to teach them and giving principals the responsibility for spending that money consistently produces better student achievement, I may have to start taking school systems, and what they do, more seriously.

[quote=”Dad”]The system is allowed to stay flawed because:

Teaching itself has become for too many people a “fall-back career”.

Yes, I agree. and due to the teacher shortage states are going out of their way to create “alternative certification routes” for those that don’t have Education coursework, instead of actually paying teachers what they are worth.
This completely undermines the time and effort that many of us spent getting our degrees in Education.
For example, I have a MASTERS DEGREE in special education. My school just hired an elementary teacher with a Bachelors degree in journalism who is pursuing alternative certification. This teacher can always fall back on her “other” profession if teaching doesn’t work out. However, this is the only thing I have ever wanted to do, so therefore went to college for it and have nothing to fall back on.
It goes without saying that this teacher and I are on the same payscale…..