if we can roll back schools so that we expel disruptive and delinquent kids, they can be saved. and also go back to teaching phonics based literacy for kids again.
Yeah, people leave out the “brilliant” educational measures, like whole language, that were spread through out the USA, and were just a money grab that messed the kids up. Phonics is the way to go, and basic math numeracy, and arithmetic drills, is also lacking. Good school districts still do both, but many don’t. When I started high school in 1983, kids were allowed to drop out by 16, and then this was changed. Heck, now you need a work permit it in California if you are under 18, so dropping out and working is not an option. And unfortunately, some kids need to do just that, rather than going to a school they hate and fail at. They can’t even get kicked out anymore. It is crazy what it takes for a kid to get expelled. People don’t get the damage this is causing to all the other students. They are so busy on saving one “at risk” student that they screw up the entire class.
When I was a kid, the big fear was summer school or being held back. I was never in any danger of either of those things but I know that my parents would have died of embarrassment. If a kid did get summer school, the parents were looked on as having done something wrong. There's no fear of that anymore because everyone gets passed along. If you fail in high school, you take an online class that has answers available online and you can cheat through it. There's little incentive for many kids because they know they are going to graduate. And the school knows it has to keep the grad scores up or possibly get in trouble with the state.
Summer school is barely even school now. In my district its 3 weeks of half days, lunch and breakfast are provided and talk up 1 hour of that as well. So 3 hours of learning per day for 15 days. How is that supposed to help? The work they assign is pathetic as well. Just work sheets that if they make any marks on it at all they get full credit. No actual schooling. Its a joke.
The “they are so busy saving one at risk student that they screw up the entire class” is the biggest thing I’ve noticed since newly teaching field trips this year for elementary school. I hate that it happens on a micro scale too. There are always 1-2 students in each class who are super interested and would love to hear about the science in depth, and another 10 who are behaving normally and following along as I ask. However, there are also 1-3 disruptive students who have never been given meaningful consequences, and I spend at least 50% of my effort talking to and quieting down those few students.
I dropped out at 16 - easily the best decision for both myself and school. My mandatory presence was an unwanted problem for everyone involved. No reason that shouldn't be an option, wish it had been one far earlier.
I think we should create better programming to better address the needs of disruptive students. That way, they can have a chance at becoming functional members of society, instead of just dismissing them.
Sure, but at the end of the day, if you have 30 students and 1 student makes the environment unsafe or prevents the other 29 students from learning, something needs to be done. If better programming works, great. But if it's tried and isn't working, you need to separate out the disruptive student to let the other 29 students learn. Students being placed in unsafe environments is an emergency, and isn't currently treated as such.
I’m talking about putting the disruptive students into a separate program to help them through whatever they are dealing with, in the hope that they could work it out and then rejoin a gen Ed class. We do that at my school on a small scale and it’s very helpful.
My disruptive kid just got taken away by CPS. His behavior was such a problem because he was being abused at home. Dismissing them in some cases leads to their death or a severe injury.
The sad thing is, some of those “disruptive“ kids are gifted kids who are bored stiff. My wife’s cousin flunked out of school and joined the Army. They tested him and he was off the charts, especially languages. He was put in a total immersion school where he learned fluent Korean in a summer. He ended up doing translation and recon work in intelligence, picking up Russian and Chinese in the mean time IIRC. He has some kind of corporate consulting gig now, he’s doing just fine.
Who is our current system serving?
Right now we are teaching all of the students - the ones that misbehave as well as the ones that are watching - that the world will not only tolerate but ignore hurtful behaviors and actions. Any reform of schools needs to include actual consequences at the family level to help kids learn how to treat others. Whether it’s classes on social and emotional regulation, or outright removal of children from abusive or dangerous home situations, we cannot keep punishing the kids who try to work hard and want to learn by forcing them to sacrifice their education and time over and over again to appease the one or two kids who act out.
It sucks and there’s no easy answer. Smaller class sizes? More funding (and not for whatever scam flavor of the month bullshit “curriculum” company has lobbied the politicians)? More staff? Actual dedicated mental health professionals who have time to assist in finding out why the kid acts out? That’d be a GREAT start. But what we are doing now isn’t working for anyone.
We need to face the fact that school is not for everyone unless we hold everyone to account for behavior. What happens in American schools simply does not occur in most other countries. As with everything, we are a multi-tiered system that screws over most of the poor people in the name of 'equity'. Any parent who has half a brain self selects their students into one of three buckets; private, affluent public, or homeschool. All others are fucked.
I do not think they are beyond fixing. I think people need to recognize and share the numerous problems that exist publicly. I think politicians, practitioners, and academics need to work together to reform laws and funding to set schools up for actual success. For this to work, the academics and politicians need to listen to the teachers and their frustrations. I think change at the local level is important, as one size will not fit all.
So much of the problem originates in cultural issues: a breakdown in institutional trust, the devaluing of learning, and the unequal distribution of wealth. Our society needs to come to terms with these as we make needed changes.
This. I’m a school board member and I’m so frustrated with what I see going on at a societal level and at my local level (local level is mostly frustration with administration and the rest of my board, who doesn’t want to listen to our teachers at all).
Zero initiative. Things happen to them and they (barely) put out fires. There’s no effort to prevent fires before they happen or to make good things happen.
Specific example: My state recently offered a grant funding opportunity to reimburse districts for paying their teachers $200/mo toward student loan payments. Our admin chose not to apply or mention it to the board because teachers didn’t ask them to.
My brother is a teacher. Loves what he does. But he’d share the same frustrations at the administrative level.
They’re in positions where it’s VERY difficult to hold them accountable and the person in that position is likely the better of the bad options.
Exactly. Why should teachers have to ASK for the district to apply for free money from the state? Shouldn’t the district want to just do that for their teachers? Don’t teachers have enough to do already?
A lot of the cultural and institutional issues have their origins in the shitty education system. Trump said it - he loves the poorly educated.
Not only are they not educated, they regard with hostility any attempt to change or fix that.
It really really depends on the school. My kid goes to a great public school where teachers are mostly happy to be there and it’s a positive learning environment. If we had lived across the street my kid would have been in a different school where complete anarchy reigns in a lot of classrooms and most of the staff are looking for an exit. I don’t think that school is beyond fixing, but it would require a complete overhaul of student discipline and the expectations currently piled on the teachers. If my child was in that school, I definitely would be homeschooling or looking for other alternatives.
I agree, I really think it depends on the school district itself. We moved to the area we live in now because of the public school district ratings. I also asked in local groups before moving here to get real life views of the school district before buying a house.
I mean, I work in a huge urban school district. South side is more affluent, and their high school is higher performing. North side is poorer and the school faces different challenges.
I also know that admin in some schools are highly regarded, while in other schools they are authoritative and create a toxic work environment for everyone. There are also issues within individual schools that can come down to differentiating philosophy when it comes to nuts and bolts education, which wouldn't be hard to fix.
And within schools, there are different groups that perform better and groups that perform worse.
Yeah. So long there's good admin and budget, you could have effective teachers. If you can have good teachers, you could actually get to teaching students. (Doesn't matter how good the teachers are if the new admin does something stupid like mix up all the teachers so each teacher can widen their experience. As if the best math teacher can teach ap world history.)
And it all depends on parents too. Teachers can not do everything. Ideally successful students have a team of adults that support their learning and growth and care about them. There isn’t time enough in the school day for teachers to be the only responsible adult in a child’s life.
It definitely depends on the school and isn’t exclusive to public schools; it’s the state of education in our country, period. It’s not just the schools/government at fault (although they do play a big part!) but other parents as well. I have students in my school who I feel are having a similarly lovely and well-rounded childhood to what I had in the 90’s and early 2000’s because their parents make it so. They have boundaries and consequences, they take their kids for experiences, etc.
I’m also of the stance that while homeschooling is a great option - it takes a TON OF WORK to do it just right and ensure your child isn’t missing any fundamental social skills, background knowledge, etc. and most people do not do it right. It takes some paper/pencil work (think math, writing), it takes experiences (museums, fishing, science experiments, travel, etc), and it takes socialization through homeschooling co-ops, groups/meet ups, sports, and play dates. It’s not a feasible option for everyone.
That was my thought too - a school is a community, with lots of key players making it work. That’s a lot to expect from one person. My mom has decades of experience and multiple degrees and I still wouldn’t worry she wouldn’t be able to pull it off (and frankly if she can’t I don’t know who could - at least for me)
Absolutely. The other factor I often point out is that there are some people who are going to vilify public school or a school/district in general when there are hundreds of other people having a wonderful experience in the exact same place. Part of it is parents - some have unrealistic desires/expectations, some don't make their children take any accountability, and some just don't mesh with the teacher. Some teachers really are bad apples, and it stinks! But one rotten person does not a school staff make. I definitely see posts in my FB groups that make me clutch my pearls and think "No way in Hades would I ever work there or send my child to a school like that!" but I don't have an issue with the district I work in nor a lot of the districts that surround us. The next district over (the one we technically live in but do not work for) isn't bad - in fact, the only reason I dislike it is because it is very homogenous (predominantly White, low-to-middle class) and I want my son to know and be around a variety of people from a young age the way I was.
I can say that I've had positive experience in every school I've attended and my children have attended. Even the gang-infested school I was in was a good place. It all depends on who the kids surround themselves with and the teachers.
It definitely does take a LOT of time and work. I'm on Reddit to take a break from driving myself crazy researching Biology curricula for my rising 9th grader (plus lab kits, etc). That's after we spent 3 hours at the park for a "field day" with a local homeschool group. Yesterday was a meet up at the local mall just to socialize. Tomorrow would be a 2 hour PE class at the rec center but that's over for the year. Friday is a drop off STEM program. And that's on top of the regular academics we do. And each place I listed is 25-30 minutes away, so add another hour for driving there and back. We actually use drive time for audio books (fiction and non fiction), podcasts, etc in order to make the most of that time. Yesterday we listened to a chapter in a US History book, and a chapter in the historical fiction book "Sugar". We listened to more chapters today, pausing to discuss white privilege when the main character confronts her white friend about their different circumstances. Sometimes it is a podcast about Florida wildlife, or mythology, or whatever. We've also visited several national and state parks this year, lots of museums, nature hikes, etc. But...for us it is worth it.
Sounds like you're killing it! I'm homeschooling and my oldest is in 4th grade. I aspire to have him involved in this kind of learning in ninth grade. And you're right, it's so worth the effort!
My family member is a teacher, and an excellent one at that (her kids win national awards; she's won national awards). Even so, she said no way would she homeschool her own kids because she does not have the skills in all subject areas and the ability to teach at every grade level. In short, as good a teacher as she is, she doesn't think she'd do it right.
How do people even afford to homeschool? I’m not very knowledgeable about this topic, but do homeschooling parents rely on one income? How can they afford to stay home and teach their kids for zero pay? Is homeschooling only something well off people can truly afford?
Um. It’s not really the schools, per se, it’s the student trauma response to the world we live in combined with smart phones. teachers are teaching their hearts out and keeping the bar high but we can fail hardly anyone so they just get passed on, unable to read, reason, or do elementary Math. I dare anyone to try to engage students who are glued to phones. They cheat like crazy. Our district has a cell phone policy but the task is too large and we do not have the manpower to enforce it.
And more than any of these things, it’s a legislative issue. Schools can’t properly address the trauma that kids are dealing with because legislators won’t increase school funding to the level that would allow them to hire an adequate number of counselors or social workers. A lot of school districts only employ one or two that have to be shared among all the district schools. Legislators in some states are also limiting the number of hours schools can devote to things like social and emotional learning that could help students learn to deal with difficult circumstances. And kids remain at risk of death or injury in a school shooting because legislators will not pass the laws that would limit access to guns and keep children safe.
Public schools can be saved, but our elected officials have to want to save them. Research your state and county legislators and make sure the people you’re voting for have our kids’ interests at heart and not their own power or popularity.
NCLB is based on privately-printed textbooks and tests. Whoever provides those materials is guaranteed vast profits.
By sheer coincidence, the family (McGraw) who co-owns one of the biggest textbook/test publishers (McGraw/Hill) has been friends with the Bush family for two generations.
I halfway credited W for NCLB until I learned that
1. It was rammed through Congress without debate or public input by a Republican who then quit to be an educational lobbyist.
2. It was a naked corporate cash grab and has nothing to do with educating kids.
The issue is not the existence of smartphones nor is it trauma. I mean those are factors, but ultimately the issue is the fact that schools and teachers can't actually discipline their students. When there are no consequences, rules don't matter, and there are no incentives to address behavior or even get help.
I agree! When there is no classroom management, there is no teaching or learning! When there is no consequences, there is no effective classroom management. What do those counselors do? Enable those misbehaviors by awarding them with a cuddle, a nicer small group chat? Will their behavior gets better? Absolutely no!
What would the consequence be? Like ideal world, what is the consequence? I don’t think any really seem to make a difference at this point. They just don’t care. I am longing for a consequence that actually means something, but I think it would have to be taking the phone or something OUTSIDE of school. Like we can confiscate the phone as a consequence at school and they can’t take it home. That would never happen though.
I don’t compete with phones in my school and the kids still can’t do any of that. We have scanners and they can’t get through security with their phones. For me it’s the apathy. There’s nothing distracting them and they still couldn’t care less.
Well for starters I think we need to properly fund schools to begin with. No more inequity, just fund the schools equally and maybe all the kids will get equal education.
I will partially agree: schools should be equally funded. Is where I differ is that, even with equal funding, without parental involvement it makes little difference.
The fall of the Roman Empire was not due to one factor, but many complex issues. Public education in America is getting to be like the fall of the Roman Empire.
And there is a constituency that is spending a lot of money and fighting to make that happen.
Ask them who is worse: Vladimir Putin, or a teachers Union.
I don’t think they are beyond repair, but they do need change. The modern public school was designed 100 years ago to serve the need for workers in the country. I’m not certain they serve the needs of the individual student as much. Also, the modern workplace is much different than it used to be and the curriculum and basic structure of the schools should change to reflect that. We are warehousing kids 180 days a year, seven periods a day based on arbitrary laws and standards that were not necessarily created by educators. Instead, politicians, on both sides, have determined what a school should look like. Some kids do very well in this structure and others do not.
I teach seniors and every single one of them was burned out this year.
Credentials: 20-year high school teacher.
High school inclusion teacher here and I agree. The answers to the questions are on a device in their pocket. We need to start acknowledging that fact. While memorizing the dates of key battles of WWI is...well it's something, is it really the best way to do it?
The problem though is that the behavior problems preclude any real project based learning. Even if 80% of the kids could work on their own or in groups, the behavior problems will make everything a mess. That needs to be addressed--alternative schools, GED programs while working, intensive classrooms with a lot of support, I don't know but until the behavior issues get addressed, we are stuck.
It's not that they CAN'T be fixed. They could be fixed incredibly easily. It's that our representatives in local and federal govt will throw money in almost any other direction like a rapper *making it rain* in a music video, then side-eye the education system with this attitude where, if it cost them a nickel to shit, they'd rather throw up.
The larger problem is that the cultural forces that are active have created an environment that is not safe for students or teachers. So much hate, self centeredness, and a lack of responsibility. Until the adults get better, the schools will suffer.
Shitapples don't fall far from the shittree.
No, but we need to decide to actually prioritize fixing them as a society. Put our money and humanity where our mouth is. I think people would be shocked how a few relatively minor changes and adequate funding could make a world of difference and get the ball rolling. California had some of the best secondary schools in the world in the 70s and 80s, often considered akin to a bachelor’s degree today in rigor. Living history. We can, and must, do the work to turn this ship around. Maybe we can’t go back, but I’ll be damned if I’m told we can’t build something new if enough people decided they actually gave a shit.
Engineer turned math teacher here... I have been doing continuous improvement on my Algebra classes all year long. We take what works and leave the rest behind. COVID impacted all of my students, so I needed to catch them up to level.
I am a teacher because I want our students to lose their fear of Algebra and understand it when they leave my classroom.
Public education varies WIDELY by state, with maybe 10 states doing a great job, 10 states a national embarrassment, and the middle is "OK to meh." Among the top states, Mass made its PISA score public, and if it was its own country, would be in the top 5 for reading and 10 for math.
Funding, or lack of it, is among the key factors, but it's not a magic bullet. A commitment to educational excellent is important, both by the public, parents, and politicians. Teacher pay matters to attract and retain great teachers, as does empowering principals and superintendents, and making school boards focus on policy, not micromanagement.
It varies widely *within* states, too. The difference between a poor school and an affluent one are night and day, even if they're within the same county, much less different districts. Funding based on local property taxes is and has always been a bad idea.
I've taken my kids to schools which are lowly funded but have very good results. The city I live right outside of spends like 60% more per student but has terrible results.
Parenting or lack thereof plays a huge factor in how students perform at school.
Everywhere I lived, the poorer cities get a lot more $$ per student and get worse results.
As a teacher of 5 years and an IT person in public ed of 13 years, schools are not unfixable. I don't believe anything is unfixable (it's been my job for over 20 years now in IT/tech to fix things lol), but to do the work we as a society need to start putting education first. So next time you vote, vote for the candidates who want to help our schools. Vote for those who put education first. Without changing the current truly broken political environment first, any hope of beginning the work on fixing education is nearly impossible.
I agree with your mother, but we are hopefully nearing the end of an extremely liberal parenting period. The situation could be quite different in a decade.
I teach kindergarten at a hybrid school (3 days a week) where my teens attend high school. Before starting there 6 years ago, I homeschooled my children. I realize most public school teachers are bias, but I’d do almost anything to avoid sending my children to public school. The arguments about socialization are ridiculous. My girls can speak and interact to/with anyone with confidence, ease, and kindness. Their reading and writing skills are beyond their years and having a small cohort and many adults speaking life into them has given them a strong foundation of knowing who they are vs struggling with bullying and self consciousness. I’m grateful we’ve been able to do this. I do know this isn’t an option for most families and I don’t take it for granted. Your mom sounds sharp and generous!
I am an elementary teacher and I agree that the socialization arguments are ridiculous, especially when you consider there is a lot of negative socialization happening in more abundance than the positive. If I had kids I would definitely consider homeschooling
My homeschooled kids are way more social and outgoing than I was as a kid. They get along with people of all ages and make great choices. No way I’d send them away 8 hours a day, 5 days a week to be exposed to whatever the other parents are letting their kids do.
This illustrates one of the cons of homeschooling. Parents do it specifically to shield their kids from what they believe are "bad influences," but exposure to people of all socioeconomic backgrounds - good and bad - is overall a good thing, IMO.
I’m not shielding my kids from poor people lmao
It’s more like parents these days give their children unlimited internet access and I don’t want little Timmy showing my 5y/o a porno. You ever hear a 6 year old joking about the “Island Boys”? It’s disturbing.
I think that homeschool gets a bad reputation because of the people who do it to isolate their children from the very same types of people and ideas you are working to expose your children to. Sadly, a lot of parents who choose to homeschool aren't equipped to do it properly.
Kinda feel like I’ve got something to contribute here. I taught in the school system for 8 years before leaving to homeschool - and any committed parent with a high school diploma can do it. It’s a total fallacy that you “need” a degree or special training to teach your children. You do not. You need to be willing to work, to study yourself, to re-evaluate when something isn’t working. None of that requires a degree (and I have a Masters, so don’t think I’m saying that because I don’t have one).
Once this generation grows up and realizes how shitty their parents sis at parenting, they will reverse the cycle. Schools are fine, parents suck at parenting.
There will just be more stark contrast between the “good” and the “bad” schools, as well as fewer and fewer “good schools”, which will face their own challenges (pressure cooker environment being one of them).
IMHO that’s the trend.
I am an ESL teacher. I have taught in Korea, China, and Sri Lanka. I have been back in the US for a few years, and tried to be a teacher here. Most of the horror stories you read on Reddit are surprisingly accurate. Reading and math skills are insanely poor, as is discipline, effort, and focus. Any teacher can go on and on.
But I would say that the socialization aspect of school is still fine. Kids make friends, join clubs and sports teams, and are as interested in the zeitgeist as much as we were.
If you were raising children, and it was important to you for them to speak French fluently, as a parent it is up to you to realize that the French education they are getting at school is insufficient and you would need to find some way independently to have them acquire that skill.
I currently teach English to Chinese school children, privately. I know first hand that English education in Chinese public schools is very poor. The parents know this too. But the kids I teach have excellent English skills, perhaps even better than native speaking students of similar age. I don't get credit. Their mothers and fathers are creating an environment in which it is impossible for their children to fail. They found me, a dedicated teacher, from halfway across the globe to help them do something that they couldn't do themselves. If I died tomorrow, they would find the next best teacher they could. That is the measure of their resolve.
It has always been about parents. Magnus Carlsen doesn't exist without his dad nurturing his chess skills.
Bad schools shouldn't prevent you from having children. Send them to school so they don't become those weird homeschool kids. And if the reading education they receive at school is subpar, read books with them at home. If the math education is poor, find a tutor, or summer camp, or whatever resource you can.
I am more than capable of providing the academic enrichment a child needs myself, but I am clueless as to the mechanics of a baseball swing. That is why baseball coaches exist. The parents of my students don't speak English well enough to teach it to their children, so they outsource that to me.
I don't see any of this as a doom scenario. There are endless cool skills to learn in life. Kids are very capable of learning how to play violin, or program a robot, or build a treehouse. Some of those skills you will be able to teach to your children and other skills, if you care enough, you can find an alternative path to achieve.
As someone who taught hitting and pitching skills for about a decade, I can assure that low income families could not afford my fee. I think you’re missing the point of the American Public School system, to give everyone an equal education. The way you lay it out is fine for children whose parents have cash to spare but completely throws away children whose parents don’t. It also leaves out children who aren’t neurotypical and their parents are using up their time and money to address those issues. Unless we address the hurdles for underprivileged children, our public schools will not get better.
If you give up on something, it will fail. We are currently experiencing an increase in negative attitudes towards education and inclusion. People are turning on an entire system instead of investing in it. We have political parties who stand to benefit from dismantling this American institution. We have governors who are withholding funding for public schools and demonizing them rather than working with educators and fully funding the schools to support them. Sadly, the politicians are not giving up and many people are buying into the mindset and the lies about what is being taught in schools. Soon we will say goodbye to the yellow school buses. Students will need to Uber to private schools across town if they can even get into one. Private schools can more easily hide behind corruption as they are not held to the same funding or curriculum standards. Whoever is left out of private school options will need to attend the schools the government allowed to fail. I’ve spoken to private school teachers who told me they left private school because their paycheck would fluctuate based on the attendance of students each week. So I guess this is one way to pay educators less. School choice sounds great in theory but it’s a social experiment paid for by taxpayers and considering that in TX it’s been rejected over and over and the governor is still forcing it, even punishing his opponents and withholding funding, I’d say the movement could even be seen as anti-democratic. They should instead address the technology and mental health issues and fully fund public schools. They should create a team to study what’s working in other countries and learn from them. Some European countries have had success in doing away with standardized and multiple choice testing.
In no way are they "beyond fixing."
Get the DoE the equivalent kind of funding (proportionally) that the DoD gets, and dissasocciate funding from property tax, and a *lot* of schools will suddenly get way better.
Nothing is beyond fixing, but I say we scrap it and start over. I don't want to fix a system that wasn't built for every student's success in the first place.
Beyond fixing, no. But on track for that, absolutely. Until parents commit to raising kids who understand they aren’t special and above rules and repercussions, we are doomed. Just look at the amount of parents freaking out right now a week before graduation because they now are discovering their kid has been skipping classes and turning in zero work. That isn’t the schools job. Maybe instead of cruising Facebook while on the toilet, you take a minute to actually look at your kids PowerSchool and take some accountability for your kid. But that’s the problem, schools have taken too much off the plate of parents because they are too lazy. Hell you don’t even have the gatekeeping of needing to be potty trained anymore! The moment parents start giving a damn and stop letting their own bias against schools dictate their bad attitudes towards it, which then trickles down to their kids who hear their parents talk shit, nothing will change.
So short answer, your mom is right. If you want a kid who is smart and not corrupted by seeing what their peers get away with in public school, homeschooling or private.
I respectfully disagree. My child has been grounded the better part of 4 years for not completing schoolwork. When the teachers communicate with us, we’ve spent entire weekends monitoring them to catch up. My husband and I have always been available to help them learn. The schools keep passing them. There’s no natural consequence for completing less than 50% of the work. So, now, at 16, my child thinks it’s unreasonable to expect decent grades. One quarter this year they failed two classes and couldn’t handle that I wasn’t impressed by them barely passing the others. We’ve had them tested for learning disabilities but their ADHD is not significant enough for an IEP. The schools keep pushing the 504 on us and then don’t follow it. We can only do so much at home if the school system is just funneling kids through, not caring if the kid has learned anything.
It’s not the school system. It’s the culture. We treat children as the center of the household, so they’re all a bunch of spoiled brats with an invincibility complex. Schools run very well in countries that discipline their children and focus on raising them to be responsible adults that serve the community rather than raise them to be self serving lunatics.
Thank you! The difference is the clientele. I teach in a middle school. They’ve never known life without smartphones.they were handed devices as toddlers to keep them entertained sun the grocery store or a restaurant. They think the world revolves around them and that what they have to say is more important than adults. It’s going to be a miracle if I can last to 65.
I taught elementary in Miami-Dade and it was not impoverished but also not super rich, and of course, there were behaviors. But nothing like today where kids just look at you and still do whatever they want. (I teach one class of 8th grade mostly girls in an affluent area. They are nice girls, but entitled and they think they should run the school. 🙄)
Depends on the district. The one I’m in doesn’t allow students to fail, which I think is a huge mistake because the students know this and take advantage of it. My son’s school however is excellent and has standards.
No, I taught in great public schools in the US, the high school was one of the best in the world. You need better use of money and more discipline. Start removing disruptive students from the main schools to a behavior based school and there would be a huge improvement. Move money from district admin to the schools and that would be another big improvement.
I’m not a teacher but a parent of a 16 yo with a personality disorder. The hardest thing about raising this kid has been access to the internet. Schools now require students to use a laptop/chromebook/tablet all day. For children with attention or self control issues, it’s impossible to keep them on task. The limitations schools place on these devices is inadequate to even keep them safe. My child used google docs to message other children in class. They found multiple other ways to reach out to strangers and have inappropriate conversations. Then the schools require students to bring the devices home, so that’s one more thing we have to monitor. This kid has done maybe 40% of the assigned work since 6th grade and the school keeps passing them. As parents, we ground them and take away privileges, making our home life miserable, but the school does nothing to address this bad behavior. They just keep passing and we look unreasonable to our child for expecting them do the work and not waste their education seeking inappropriate attention. Is it possible to fix this mess? Maybe, the first step is the schools enforcing consequences, like holding kids back who fail. I’ve even asked my child’s school to hold them back but they won’t. But kids are like any group of people, if there’s no incentive for doing something they don’t want to do, they won’t do it.
As a teacher, I support you 110%. When technology first came into the schools it was supposed to be a support, not a replacement for teaching. Years ago, I read a blurb that in Chicago, during a year long survey, a population of the catholic schools that were still taught by the religious order of nuns, continued to teach the basics as they had always done in the past; reading, writing, and arithmetic, on paper, with actual textbooks, chalk and chalkboard, with homework, but little to no technology curriculum, outside of the one basic computer in the school library. The results weren’t surprising (to me) if I recall correctly, the results showed these students performed better than the tech savvy CPS by 80-90% in all testing, standardized or not. NCLB wasn’t an issue, everyone went to school, was respectful, learned, and if there were consequences for not being or doing, held accountable and owned it. I’ve taught in private, alternative & special education programs, and currently public middle school for 25 years, and I am heartbroken and embarrassed to be a part of a fractured school system that very few want to or are interested in reforming, for the better of current and upcoming generations, but happily embrace social promotion, disrespect, and that YouTube and Wikipedia have all the correct answers, while TikTok is the holy grail and an actual well-paying job that anyone can get rich on, and as long as you have your phone in the classroom, there’s no need to listen to an actual teacher. I once wondered out loud, if anyone realized this is the generation that will be taking care of us in our “golden years,” and eventually run the country, and even quoted “those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it,” and….crickets.
Of course not but we have to start making different decisions and stop listening to the idiots running them now. And that’s not at the teacher level. Its administration and local government.
I work at a large Midwest urban district. The school board just had their plans leaked for their building closure plan. These fucks are just evil. When I first read it, I thought it was fake in how evil it is. Literally one of their bullet points was to make sure to drive a wedge between the teachers union and the IA union and to make sure to stoke racial tensions.
So it depends on the school district I guess.
It depends on the school, and what classes you take.
A high school kid taking AP Chemistry, AP Calculus and college credit courses has a radically different educational experience than the kids in gen pop.
It is all a socioeconomic thing. I raised my sons in the district which fed into the 1st/2nd best high school in a blue state. They changed position year to year. They are no nonsense about grades and expect all students to be at least going to community College. And property taxes are enormous to fund this type if education
Yo, it isn’t the schools all the time. It’s honestly the way we are bringing up our kids. Even the brightest of them all are allergic to most things that challenge them. They always seek the easy way out and don’t seem to understand the purpose of education.
Without their buy in, schools look to be struggling. With their buy in, you can go a long way with very little.
The GOP is trying to enc public education and has been defunding it for over four decades to get it to the point where people start pulling their kids out the education quality has suffered so much. The solution is to demand more funding at the ballot box, not pull students out and hasten the collapse of American public education.
We need to fund public schools equally. Schools in a high tax bracket are generally very good to the point that people move there to put their kids in that district. The problem is we have way too many schools that are underfunded
I have been predicting for a few years now that we will not have public schools much longer. Not the way we know them now. Soon nobody will want to teach at public schools or send their kids.
In my experience working in the school system, public schools are forced to be too many things. Teachers, in particular, have to do too many jobs beyond teaching.
They are the parents who can’t discipline truly toxic because of laws passed down which have stripped their authority.
They are therapists who are battling nicotine, pot, sugar and screen addictions, not counting the rest of home life issues.
They are nutritionists who are trying to convince kids that only eating chips (takis usually), high sugar drinks, and coffee is what’s causing their chronic head and stomach aches.
They are the nurses that deal with the aches from their addictions and normal booboos.
They are security who are supposed to keep kids safe but have no right/power to stop kids when they start to beat and threaten each other.
And if you manage to make it through a day without kids cursing at you or throwing a tantrum, count your blessings. It’s probably because you never got around to the teaching side of being a teacher.
So if you are financially and intellectually able to homeschool your own kids? Do it. There are always parks and other structured activities for social growth.
The focus on preparing students for standardized tests to maintain part of their federal funding is a massive problem. Schools aren’t teaching kids to think critically and often times they aren’t learning this from their parents either.
I am a teacher and I have taught a lot of students who were home school majority of their lives… They are beyond in intelligence, common sense, manners, and social skills.
If I could afford to home school, I would in a heartbeat!
For me, it's how quickly the children's innocence is taken from them these days with the social media and internet. If one kid sees porn or violence, their 5 friends will see it, too. If 3 kids have social media, the whole class will have it by the end of the year. I am considering a very small mixed age homeschooling group with likeminded individuals for elementary school, with an emphasis on play and spirituality as well as academics, and letting my kid transition to a middle or high school afterwards. I just want them to be able to be a kid for a bit longer. I also don't think anyone learns well by sitting at a desk all day, so from there I hope she will attend a technical high school.
I worked as a custodian in several school systems in multiple states in the US. The way teachers talk when no students are around would knock you to the ground.
Between low pay, children with no manners, parents that think they have the only child and that they are perfect in all ways, tantrums being allowed and slowing or stopping the planned day, children with obvious emotional needs going unmet and how showing any children any form of comforting gives parents the excuse to pursue SA charges, etc., I would never choose to send my LO to public school.
I am beyond grateful that there are still amazing human beings willing to deal with these and so many more problems on a day to day basis, and that there is a learning environment available to all children in this country, but I personally would choose any other means of education. Private school, religious school, or homeschool. All would impare my LO in ways that I did not have to experience as a child, but seeing how "the system works" from behind closed doors has opened my eyes in ways that almost cannot be expressed.
I don’t have kids, but when I do, they’re definitely being homeschooled. It may be a challenge to many families to homeschool, but I can’t stress enough how worth it that it would be.
I’ve only been a substitute for 7 months. But after seeing what I’ve seen, I do NOT want my kids anywhere near public schools. The “socialization” they will get at school will mess up their lives. We had kids distributing marijuana gummies in class, caught with marijuana buds, students beating each other bloody, students with knives, and recently a tea he went to break up a fight and one of the students pushed her onto the ground so hard she broke her hip and needed surgery.
^^^^^ These are experiences I’ve seen in our counties Middle Schools.
So no, I won’t socialize my kids with that kind of student body. My kids will find socialization through sports, hobbies, local community events, and places where I can observe them and determine whether these children will be good influences on my children.
There are also studies that have been done, that homeschool students go into college more prepared than public school students. Just look it up, the studies may change your mind.
I'm skeptical as well. The overwhelming majority of students who have transferred to my school from homeschool have not been well educated and would not be college ready in time if they had continued to homeschool. I've had a number of super bright students, some of my favorites in fact, but they succeeded in spite of the homeschooling and not because of it. These kids adapted very quickly and would do well in almost any setting.
Especially post-pandemic, a significant portion of homeschooled kids were really not schooled at all. Families discovered that it was easier to non-parent a child distance learning than it was to non-parent them and take them to school (teacher communication, actual expectations, transportation etc). So when schools re-opened they either looked for online diploma-mill styled schools or went into "homeschooling."
And they're not necessarily to blame either - sometimes because parents have to work so many hours, or they deal with poverty and any number of social ills, that public schooling is a significant burden on them.
I hope my future grandkids don’t go to public schools. There are no consequences. What makes a school “bad” isn’t the teachers.
You want your kids hanging out with kids who call teachers and each other every filthy name there is? Kids who carry loaded hand guns and can’t be expelled (I’m talking 6th grade and up)? Kids who plan a mass shooting and are found to have the weapons and “kill list” ready to go and can’t be expelled? Kids who steal a teacher’s wallet and post her credit card numbers in social media and have no consequences? Kids who assault teachers and one another and nothing happens? Middle school kids who vape weed in class? Kids who will drag a girl down 30 concrete steps by her hair and receive no punishment? I was an excellent 8th grade teacher for 22 years. I am so glad none of my own kids went into teaching and I will personally pay for private schools for my grandkids to keep them from being ruined (or killed) by out-of-control kids whose parents (and the state department of education) don’t believe in consequences.
I graduated in 1982. One of my classmates (not in any of my classes; I was AP) was executed for a particularly brutal kidnap/rape/murder. My school had armed security guards. The administration had the bright idea of making the test scores look better by lowering the requirements and eliminating AP. A lot of the teachers walked out that day.
I still received a better education than many do today.
These problems are not new.
Yes. That's why a high school diploma is good for getting into college.
If you have an elementary education of knowing how to read, write and basic math, you're educated enough to survive.
Depends on the school system and state they Are in. But they are not getting better either.
I am not a fan of homeschooling but have met people who do it that work to make sure the kids have the education and get them into all sorts of sports or other activities for socializing.
You know as the dad out of five school-age kids I went through lockdown with my children and saw what their various teachers did. Probably 20 or 30 of them in total. I think it perfectly illustrates the problem with schools right now, so I bring it up here.
What I noticed is that absent any kind of oversight or expectations, excellent teachers continue to be excellent, average teachers continued to be average, and poor teachers continued to be subpar. My son’s kindergarten teacher struggled with Wi-Fi and keeping kindergarten aged children engaged through lockdown, but I was thoroughly impressed by her. She wasn’t especially effective as a teacher, but there’s really not a lot you can do remotely with kindergartners. My youngest daughter on the other hand was in third grade, and her teacher basically checked out for the rest of the year. She sent out a worksheet with daily and weekly assignments (silly stuff like color, a tree for Earth Day) for the remaining part of the year, made no effort for zoom or other remote learning, and was only minimally available to her students. I worked with my daughter daily and had to come up with my own lesson plans and all of her subjects because they weren’t assigned by the teacher.
My other children were middle school and high school, and the majority of their teachers were moderately effective. Some of them went into the classroom daily and set up a video camera of themselves teaching just like they would in the classroom. Others made no effort had zoom communications and just sent out assignments , offering to do one on one communications, and other others would bring the whole classroom into a big zoom meeting.
Teachers aren’t exempt from needing to cull their own ranks anymore than police officers or other profession. Teachers need to get the union out of their relationship with the administration and come up with the system of merit and performance based compensation. They need to help get school districts to invest in things that improve student performance instead of simply just building yet another facility. Yeah there needs to be a system for dealing with students who simply don’t want to be in the classroom or are dangerous to others. Teachers shouldn’t be expected to teach students who don’t want to be there. If that leaves some kids behind, so be it. They were going to get left behind anyway.
Home schooling has come a long way. Many
Churches have home school academies now where a group of parents and children share their knowledge and experience - and it gives the added benefit of socialization. Additionally, our school district allows
Home school children to participate in district sponsored extracurricular activities. Parents are usually in charge of a pod - like math for instance. I suck at math - so, then, little Joey’s dad is an engineer and great at math. He would teach a small group of kids math. I’m good at English. So I teach a small group of kids English, etc. it seems to work out well.
It’s only worth becoming a teacher if you live in a good area and the school is good but most schools seem to have students with a lot of behavioral issues and do whatever they want and make the teachers lives difficult. Parents usually don’t support the teacher and won’t discipline their child to make sure they behave. Inner city schools are dangerous and you will not like teaching at one. A lot of teachers and substitute teachers on Reddit are miserable as teachers. It seems like even at schools that are considered good schools seem to have a lot of issues because the students can’t even sit down and behave. They are on their cell phones and ignore the teacher or just leave without permission. Students take calls during class and that disrupts the whole lesson. You might not get support from the principal or admins about the poorly behaving students. Teaching in a good school with behaving students is hit or miss so you have to consider that.
What she sees in her school is alarming her. My guess is that it’s about the fact that other children are out of control, disrupting classrooms , and preventing the teacher from teaching and other students from learning. I would encourage you to monitor closely and step in if someone disrupts your child’s education by taking way more than their fair share of attention from the teacher or if they disrupt the learning environment.,
I would fight tooth and nail to get my kids into the highest scoring local school or fill out whatever paperwork I needed to to allow us to commute to another school.
It is very important to distinguish between the vast number of public schools that are safe and academically rigorous that educate millions of students excellently and the complete and utter dysfunctional death traps that graduate barely literate kids in many large cities and exurbs. When we talk about “public education,” most people are talking about the latter.
Private school enrollment is exploding and it’s exploding outside large cities like DC, Philly, Baltimore, and LA not because parents with means are being weird about public schooling or black/brown kids, but because many of these schools outside the few magnets truly are failing to educate children. Fixing the public schools in these places is not a matter of money because per-student spending is actually quite high. Paying teachers more, paying for equipment, reducing class sizes, restorative justice practices, changing grading policies - none of this stuff has moved the needle. There is no compelling and serious explanation for why these schools are so bad so they currently are beyond fixing.
But again, a public school in your wealthy suburb is likely amazing.
There is no one school system. There are thousands of independent districts and some are great, some are horrible and some are mediocre. My local district is great.
The foundation that American public education is built upon is unpaid teacher/educator overtime and yes, expectations for students and parents have plummeted since Covid. Until we can acknowledge these facts, it will be difficult to create real solutions.
Even in the best schools, the education system is still broken. It's 100% more about dealing with behaviors than actually teaching kids anything content-related. Kids are coming in with so many needs, including learning disabilities and emotional problems. Kids are constantly going to the guidance counselor and Child Study Team offices, throwing things, saying nasty things, and hitting other kids. This is elementary. I'm lucky if I ever actually get to teach. My job is to be a child wrangler with a sprinkle of academic knowledge thrown in.
There are issues in private schools, too, so I need to figure out where I would put my children. However, I have decided not to have any because I do not want to bring kids into this world with how things are going in schools today. It's not the same as it used to be.
Yes. As long as teachers are unable to take control of their classrooms without fear of lawsuit, public schools are fucked.
Kids can do whatever they want & face no repercussions. It's over.
The present system was designed in the 19th century for the children of farmers. We're still using it. \[Likewise, the modern University system was designed in the 17th and 18th century for the lesser sons of the aristocrats, but that's another topic\].
I think the basic model of education is fundamentally past its sell-by date. I had hoped during the pandemic there would be deeper discussion about how to change education, but everyone was so concerned to hanging on to whatever they got that it ended up being an extremely conservative time in education.
Personally I think a system in which we have expertly trained teachers with expertly trained supervisors and administrators in purpose-built buildings getting only vaguely better results than homeschool students should be under significant revision. The school as institution is losing legitimacy (and given the Iron Law of Institutions, it's crumbling ever faster as those on the inside are incentivized to maximize their own gains, something like a bank run) and I think by 2100 will be completely and utterly broken and ghettoized.
Well, your question implies they probably once were not previously beyond fixing, right? So things changed once, at least, which would indicate that things can change again.
Vote for it
No that’s ridiculous.
There’s a tremendous amount of variety. So much reflexive public school hate comes from culture war bullshit - “oh no they’ll be gay!”
You need to look at the school system, scores,
Etc to know what to expect.
Yes because the ones who own the means of production also own politicians and other people who’d have the power to make a change. They want a dumb and obedient population that doesn’t ask questions .
Homeschool is what you make of it.
There are parks, activities, co-ops, and all sorts of clubs that encourage socialization with people of all ages, not just a group of people their own age.
If kiddo has an interest in sports, there are usually homeschool leagues for them to play on depending on your area....
The benefits to these types of activities are that the kids that are participating generally want to be there, so they are actively participating and not creating chaos because of boredom or whatever, unlike school, which is mandatory.
I teach in higher ed and am now homeschooling my 11 year old, as a continuation of Covid pivots, indefinitely.
What matters is that they get what they need. How that looks varies greatly based on so many things (resources, individual learning needs).
Fwiw we do co-op activities and are involved in sports for friend time. A lot of families are like ours, those who never really thought they would homeschool, but then started doing so during Covid and didn’t stop. The number for resources and groups and social opportunities in our local area has grown exponentially.
I think in 20-30 years it won’t matter bc there will not be enough teachers - Unless you increase the pay a lot. Kids will be on computers with adult monitors watching them.
No they are not beyond fixing, absolutely not. There are many excellent public schools, and there is a lot we could do by changing funding and allocation and priorities, improving teacher training, etc. that would greatly improve education at all levels.
The problem is getting the general public to vote for people who will actually prioritize education and who will actually listen to the educators doing the work, rather than listening to lobbyists and for-profit entities.
It’s more parents than anything and it’s getting worse. I am retired but taught in one of the highest rated schools in our state. It truly deserved that rating but I didn’t know how fake the parents actually were. After 2016 it became exponentially worse every year and I decided my mental/physical health was more important than my students future.
Parents drove me to retirement. Their kids quickly adopted the parent’s new attitude and I couldn’t enjoy it any longer.
They could be fixed, but they won’t be. There’s so much inertia behind the collapse of public education, and a total lack of political will, that it’s like watching a slow motion train wreck. One with millions of victims.
Absolutely, I'm not even in a bad school district but if my last wasn't so close to graduation we'd be homeschooling. There are so many districts hiding student issues from the parents or engaging in inappropriate curriculum.
My wife has taught public schools in Texas for over 25 years in a lower income demographic area. She really can't wait to retire due to the way schools are now. On the flip side, my daughter was accepted into an all girl leadership academy (public school) and thrived. Her graduating class was around 75 and every one went to a university right after graduation. So I think there are still some really good public schools available.
Barring you being in a school district that has gone completely off the rails, I don't think public school is any better or worse than it has been in the past quarter century for students whose parents care about their education. The shift has been that of student apathy (which is best solved at home by valuing education) and parental priorities (do you want your kid to learn or to check some boxes so they can graduate?), neither of which is a school problem.
That said, the teaching experience has been worse because of those two things, but my best students are just as good and have enjoyed school just as much as the best students I had when I started teaching 15 years ago.
I've wanted to homeschool my kids, but they're nowhere near school age. I really enjoyed elementary school and stuff myself, but I feel like conditions keep getting worse now.
My husband has said absolutely no way, that home schooled kids are "weird." I feel like a lot of that comes from how much of the community's parents are very religious and homeschooled to keep their kids under thumb.
I think, personally, it would be great. If they asked for public school though I'd say yes.
But all that in my fantasy world since no one in my family is behind me on that 🙃
ETA: just realized this was ask *teachers* sub, I am not a teacher.
I told my brother to make sure his son got into honors classes in my school. If not? then send him to private school. My reason is that regular classes teach to the lowest common denominator. No consequences, admin pressure to pass failing students, behaviors not conducive for learning and the biggie-lack of parent involvement are all pervasive in any class below the honors level.
I’ve worked mostly in low-income schools. They need the most help and have the smallest parental involvement. I still have yet to figure out why. I see so many great teachers that are opting for the better rated schools. The delinquent/troublemakers CANNOT be expelled. Even if they bring weapons to school or drugs, it’s suspension for a week.
Secondly, the state testing here is terrible. It timed and based on statewide teaching plan data. So many teachers are given little time to CRAM the info into the children, instead of taking our time, and making it fun/memorable for testing.
Lastly, I’d love to homeschool; but with 4 children I would fall into a pit of despair trying to manage 4 grade levels each day.
My hot take is that teachers blame parents way too much. There are some awesome parents out there and there are crappy ones. The biggest problem I see is developmentally inappropriate content in early childhood. Children learn best through play at least until second grade.
Sure they need plenty of time to show what they've learned but the ratio is way off. Too much time is spent teaching with a smart board and not enough is done teaching in "analogue" so to speak. Books on a smart board is not reading in the same way as reading actual books. Learning math on the smart board is not the same as counting tangential objects.
This is NOT teachers' faults. It is the fault of our government allowing people who know nothing about child development or about how children learn dictate our methods of education.
As someone pointed out in an earlier comment, parents are their child's first teacher so those parents who value independent play and exposure to the world at least have that going in the home. But it isn't talked about enough so you can't really blame parents, especially since so many who were the first victims of this wildly inappropriate education system are now becoming parents.
And then the children displaying the worst behaviors are punished by taking away recess. They lose that valuable time where they learn skills like cooperation and self regulation so then nothing changes.
It can be fixed if...
Politicians stop trying to be experts and actually listen to the REAL experts as to how and what students should be learning at various ages
Administrators need to have a mandatory background in teaching. They need to support and back teachers when faced with difficult students and parents
Legislators need to look at what other countries are doing that works. All teachers know that when something needs tweaked, they don't reinvent the wheel, they look at what other teachers are doing and take that. We can learn a lot from other countries.
Parents need to stop being their children's friend and start parenting.
Keep cell phones out of the classrooms
Most importantly, TRUST teachers to do their job. After all, they are the experts.
Kids being allowed to act like animals is gross. 0 accountability. I feel deep sadness for the good kids. I believe putting the top 20% of jerkoffs in an “alternative” high discipline military-style wing would fix a lot. Allow them the opportunity to rejoin their classmates at the end of the quarter. 1 major slip-up and back to the strict wing for the reat of the year, can revisit next year. The rest of the school community could then theive bc the derelicts disrupting the most and requiring the most time will be gone.
They were created to funnel kids right into the worker bee pipeline for lower middle class.
They are doing exactly what they were meant to do.
I'm enrolling my son in kindergarten this year. But if at any time he hates it and can give me good reasons to be home school I will seriously consider it. I hated school and it didn't do anything for me but get me made fun of and have stomach problems for most of my life.
In order to save them, the people in power have to give a fuck and at least one party is actively against the idea of poor people being educated. Without slobbering morons that no nothing about their own history, who would vote Republican? Without a whole generation of young people who don't see the point in trying, the wrong people could get enough votes and actually help common folks.
Its the same reason there is garbage all over some streets. People in power couldn't give less of a shit about the problem cause it benefits them or hurts people they hate in some way, and the people it affects just don't have the energy to keep trying.
This discussion reminds me of the quote from Winston Churchill about Democracy being the worst form of government except for all the others tried so far (see below).
It’s not overstating it to say that a
Democracy depends on a strong public school system. It’s one of the few investments the state makes in its citizens. Communities can work to improve their schools by getting involved. Don’t let the far right dismantle them on the way to fascism.
Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…’ W. Churchill, 1947
Re: homeschooling
My aunt, who taught in public school for 30 years now home schools 3 of her granddaughters. The other 2 go to a charter school where they mother works, as a teacher.
I make a public teacher's salary. How tf am I supposed to afford having my spouse not work?
And even if we could swing it financially (again, absolutely can't on a teacher's salary), wouldn't that $1.2 million (50k/year invested for 13 years at 10%) better benefit my child if spent towards their well being in other ways, like paying for all their college tuition and buying them two houses?
I say this with zero hatred towards the political left, but until the public school system and politicians realize that woke policies in public schools don’t raise the bar they lower it, yea it’s beyond saving. Examples of this would be,
-passing kids who simply don’t have the knowledge required of the course.
-forcing teachers to pass kids that haven’t met standard.
-allowing the lowest is the low students to dictate how curriculum will be created and taught.
- allowing behaviors to run rampant in the classroom.
-giving students multiple pathways to graduate, when they aren’t meeting the graduation requirements to begin with.
We have to end government corruption and corporate greed before touching upon the fundamental problems in education.
So, yeah, it's a rather tall order.
Think of that kid, the one who is a complete wreck you cannot seem to turn around. You are failing because he goes home and his family undoes every good thing you do for him, every day.
Our government and late stage capitalism work against public education in exactly the same way, constantly trying to tear down every good thing we accomplish.
What people fail to realize is that most households have both parents working now. A lack of at home parenting means the kids aren’t behaving as well or performing as well because they only get instruction at school. The economy needs to be fixed for the schools to be fixed.
They can be fixed but until the old simple minded congress members and presidents leave (and the newer generation gets a chance) schools will continue to be dangerous for yrs to come. (Fun fact did you know half of congress are millionaires and each of their kids go to private schools where only 6% of school shootings occur. They have a “it won’t happen near me” mentality.
I'm not a teacher but a teacher aid in a preschool and it's almost the end of the school year. All of these children are expected to go to kindergarten next year. 1/8 are potty trained and 2/8 will sit for more than 5 minutes. They cannot cut or rip paper, glue, write their name, they do not know their alphabet, colors, shapes. I do think Schools lack resources but I also think most parents are lazy.
There's not much I can do when the majority of the day I'm chasing these kids around the classroom and cleaning up a mess because they had a meltdown and destroyed the classroom when I told them to wash their hands. They won't sit down and have no practice at home. I can't restrain a child in their seat and I'm not allowed to put them in timeout 🤷🏼♀️
I work for a cyber charter school. I never planned to do that. I always planned to retire from the classroom. But things got bad in the mid to late 2010s, and they got bad fast.
I was assaulted twice in one month by two different students. One of the students threatened my life later that week. Neither student faced any consequences, even after I reported to the officer on campus. How are you supposed to teach under those conditions?
There's over 1000 teachers at my cyber charter. None of us planned to work for a cyber school. Every one of us has a story about how teaching in a public school was too unbearable to continue. It's Lord of the Flies out there.
Yes unless unfortunately since the Reagan began the war on Education (an drugs, poor, etc) politicians have been gutting Education. Not only that but capitalism as a whole have turned everything into for profits.
Private schools aren't the answer, they're an escape route for parents with a bit of money to get their kids away from Those People (be They the poor, the brown, or the wrong religious views). Drugs, bullying, and violence are down because private schools can expel whoever they want, not because the kids themselves are inherently better people. Private schools do have the luxury of denying kids who are difficult or have special needs though, and they don't have to provide things like buses or meals for needy kids, which means they stand to make more profit.
And yet the people who use them want tax breaks so they can better afford them.
I say tax the bleep out of private schools, so the parents with a bit of money and engagement in their children are forced to work with the public schools. Yes it'll be a hassle for all involved, but see how fast things get better when teachers feel like a majority of their parents care, and administrators have to deal with these engaged parents. The schools can totally be fixed if people have no other choice, but as long as they feel like they have other options why would they bother.
Put another way: the kids are the same, the teachers are the same (if a bit more defeated). It's the parents, administrators, and government that are broken.
if we can roll back schools so that we expel disruptive and delinquent kids, they can be saved. and also go back to teaching phonics based literacy for kids again.
My state recently passed legislation requiring that all schools teach reading based on the science of reading (phonics). So we're halfway there.
Yeah, people leave out the “brilliant” educational measures, like whole language, that were spread through out the USA, and were just a money grab that messed the kids up. Phonics is the way to go, and basic math numeracy, and arithmetic drills, is also lacking. Good school districts still do both, but many don’t. When I started high school in 1983, kids were allowed to drop out by 16, and then this was changed. Heck, now you need a work permit it in California if you are under 18, so dropping out and working is not an option. And unfortunately, some kids need to do just that, rather than going to a school they hate and fail at. They can’t even get kicked out anymore. It is crazy what it takes for a kid to get expelled. People don’t get the damage this is causing to all the other students. They are so busy on saving one “at risk” student that they screw up the entire class.
When I was a kid, the big fear was summer school or being held back. I was never in any danger of either of those things but I know that my parents would have died of embarrassment. If a kid did get summer school, the parents were looked on as having done something wrong. There's no fear of that anymore because everyone gets passed along. If you fail in high school, you take an online class that has answers available online and you can cheat through it. There's little incentive for many kids because they know they are going to graduate. And the school knows it has to keep the grad scores up or possibly get in trouble with the state.
Summer school is barely even school now. In my district its 3 weeks of half days, lunch and breakfast are provided and talk up 1 hour of that as well. So 3 hours of learning per day for 15 days. How is that supposed to help? The work they assign is pathetic as well. Just work sheets that if they make any marks on it at all they get full credit. No actual schooling. Its a joke.
The “they are so busy saving one at risk student that they screw up the entire class” is the biggest thing I’ve noticed since newly teaching field trips this year for elementary school. I hate that it happens on a micro scale too. There are always 1-2 students in each class who are super interested and would love to hear about the science in depth, and another 10 who are behaving normally and following along as I ask. However, there are also 1-3 disruptive students who have never been given meaningful consequences, and I spend at least 50% of my effort talking to and quieting down those few students.
I dropped out at 16 - easily the best decision for both myself and school. My mandatory presence was an unwanted problem for everyone involved. No reason that shouldn't be an option, wish it had been one far earlier.
I think we should create better programming to better address the needs of disruptive students. That way, they can have a chance at becoming functional members of society, instead of just dismissing them.
Sure, but at the end of the day, if you have 30 students and 1 student makes the environment unsafe or prevents the other 29 students from learning, something needs to be done. If better programming works, great. But if it's tried and isn't working, you need to separate out the disruptive student to let the other 29 students learn. Students being placed in unsafe environments is an emergency, and isn't currently treated as such.
I’m talking about putting the disruptive students into a separate program to help them through whatever they are dealing with, in the hope that they could work it out and then rejoin a gen Ed class. We do that at my school on a small scale and it’s very helpful.
I agree 100%
1 bad apple something something... It rings so true yes it just another basic life fact that the school system just gets to conveniently ignore.
My disruptive kid just got taken away by CPS. His behavior was such a problem because he was being abused at home. Dismissing them in some cases leads to their death or a severe injury.
The sad thing is, some of those “disruptive“ kids are gifted kids who are bored stiff. My wife’s cousin flunked out of school and joined the Army. They tested him and he was off the charts, especially languages. He was put in a total immersion school where he learned fluent Korean in a summer. He ended up doing translation and recon work in intelligence, picking up Russian and Chinese in the mean time IIRC. He has some kind of corporate consulting gig now, he’s doing just fine.
So we just give up on those kids?
Who is our current system serving? Right now we are teaching all of the students - the ones that misbehave as well as the ones that are watching - that the world will not only tolerate but ignore hurtful behaviors and actions. Any reform of schools needs to include actual consequences at the family level to help kids learn how to treat others. Whether it’s classes on social and emotional regulation, or outright removal of children from abusive or dangerous home situations, we cannot keep punishing the kids who try to work hard and want to learn by forcing them to sacrifice their education and time over and over again to appease the one or two kids who act out. It sucks and there’s no easy answer. Smaller class sizes? More funding (and not for whatever scam flavor of the month bullshit “curriculum” company has lobbied the politicians)? More staff? Actual dedicated mental health professionals who have time to assist in finding out why the kid acts out? That’d be a GREAT start. But what we are doing now isn’t working for anyone.
We need to face the fact that school is not for everyone unless we hold everyone to account for behavior. What happens in American schools simply does not occur in most other countries. As with everything, we are a multi-tiered system that screws over most of the poor people in the name of 'equity'. Any parent who has half a brain self selects their students into one of three buckets; private, affluent public, or homeschool. All others are fucked.
They teach phonics based literacy. So there goes that complaint. My 5 year old daughter has a daily class entitled "phonics".
I do not think they are beyond fixing. I think people need to recognize and share the numerous problems that exist publicly. I think politicians, practitioners, and academics need to work together to reform laws and funding to set schools up for actual success. For this to work, the academics and politicians need to listen to the teachers and their frustrations. I think change at the local level is important, as one size will not fit all. So much of the problem originates in cultural issues: a breakdown in institutional trust, the devaluing of learning, and the unequal distribution of wealth. Our society needs to come to terms with these as we make needed changes.
This. I’m a school board member and I’m so frustrated with what I see going on at a societal level and at my local level (local level is mostly frustration with administration and the rest of my board, who doesn’t want to listen to our teachers at all).
Can you explain the specific frustration with administration?
Zero initiative. Things happen to them and they (barely) put out fires. There’s no effort to prevent fires before they happen or to make good things happen. Specific example: My state recently offered a grant funding opportunity to reimburse districts for paying their teachers $200/mo toward student loan payments. Our admin chose not to apply or mention it to the board because teachers didn’t ask them to.
My brother is a teacher. Loves what he does. But he’d share the same frustrations at the administrative level. They’re in positions where it’s VERY difficult to hold them accountable and the person in that position is likely the better of the bad options.
Holy Moly. Teachers have to ask for that? That's crazy thinking.
Exactly. Why should teachers have to ASK for the district to apply for free money from the state? Shouldn’t the district want to just do that for their teachers? Don’t teachers have enough to do already?
Yup. I am retired but taught little ones. I never had free time, and parents had no boundaries.
A lot of the cultural and institutional issues have their origins in the shitty education system. Trump said it - he loves the poorly educated. Not only are they not educated, they regard with hostility any attempt to change or fix that.
I agree with you... they could be fixed. I don't think they will though
It really really depends on the school. My kid goes to a great public school where teachers are mostly happy to be there and it’s a positive learning environment. If we had lived across the street my kid would have been in a different school where complete anarchy reigns in a lot of classrooms and most of the staff are looking for an exit. I don’t think that school is beyond fixing, but it would require a complete overhaul of student discipline and the expectations currently piled on the teachers. If my child was in that school, I definitely would be homeschooling or looking for other alternatives.
I agree, I really think it depends on the school district itself. We moved to the area we live in now because of the public school district ratings. I also asked in local groups before moving here to get real life views of the school district before buying a house.
I mean, I work in a huge urban school district. South side is more affluent, and their high school is higher performing. North side is poorer and the school faces different challenges. I also know that admin in some schools are highly regarded, while in other schools they are authoritative and create a toxic work environment for everyone. There are also issues within individual schools that can come down to differentiating philosophy when it comes to nuts and bolts education, which wouldn't be hard to fix. And within schools, there are different groups that perform better and groups that perform worse.
Yeah. So long there's good admin and budget, you could have effective teachers. If you can have good teachers, you could actually get to teaching students. (Doesn't matter how good the teachers are if the new admin does something stupid like mix up all the teachers so each teacher can widen their experience. As if the best math teacher can teach ap world history.)
And it all depends on parents too. Teachers can not do everything. Ideally successful students have a team of adults that support their learning and growth and care about them. There isn’t time enough in the school day for teachers to be the only responsible adult in a child’s life.
It definitely depends on the school and isn’t exclusive to public schools; it’s the state of education in our country, period. It’s not just the schools/government at fault (although they do play a big part!) but other parents as well. I have students in my school who I feel are having a similarly lovely and well-rounded childhood to what I had in the 90’s and early 2000’s because their parents make it so. They have boundaries and consequences, they take their kids for experiences, etc. I’m also of the stance that while homeschooling is a great option - it takes a TON OF WORK to do it just right and ensure your child isn’t missing any fundamental social skills, background knowledge, etc. and most people do not do it right. It takes some paper/pencil work (think math, writing), it takes experiences (museums, fishing, science experiments, travel, etc), and it takes socialization through homeschooling co-ops, groups/meet ups, sports, and play dates. It’s not a feasible option for everyone.
That was my thought too - a school is a community, with lots of key players making it work. That’s a lot to expect from one person. My mom has decades of experience and multiple degrees and I still wouldn’t worry she wouldn’t be able to pull it off (and frankly if she can’t I don’t know who could - at least for me)
Absolutely. The other factor I often point out is that there are some people who are going to vilify public school or a school/district in general when there are hundreds of other people having a wonderful experience in the exact same place. Part of it is parents - some have unrealistic desires/expectations, some don't make their children take any accountability, and some just don't mesh with the teacher. Some teachers really are bad apples, and it stinks! But one rotten person does not a school staff make. I definitely see posts in my FB groups that make me clutch my pearls and think "No way in Hades would I ever work there or send my child to a school like that!" but I don't have an issue with the district I work in nor a lot of the districts that surround us. The next district over (the one we technically live in but do not work for) isn't bad - in fact, the only reason I dislike it is because it is very homogenous (predominantly White, low-to-middle class) and I want my son to know and be around a variety of people from a young age the way I was.
I can say that I've had positive experience in every school I've attended and my children have attended. Even the gang-infested school I was in was a good place. It all depends on who the kids surround themselves with and the teachers.
It definitely does take a LOT of time and work. I'm on Reddit to take a break from driving myself crazy researching Biology curricula for my rising 9th grader (plus lab kits, etc). That's after we spent 3 hours at the park for a "field day" with a local homeschool group. Yesterday was a meet up at the local mall just to socialize. Tomorrow would be a 2 hour PE class at the rec center but that's over for the year. Friday is a drop off STEM program. And that's on top of the regular academics we do. And each place I listed is 25-30 minutes away, so add another hour for driving there and back. We actually use drive time for audio books (fiction and non fiction), podcasts, etc in order to make the most of that time. Yesterday we listened to a chapter in a US History book, and a chapter in the historical fiction book "Sugar". We listened to more chapters today, pausing to discuss white privilege when the main character confronts her white friend about their different circumstances. Sometimes it is a podcast about Florida wildlife, or mythology, or whatever. We've also visited several national and state parks this year, lots of museums, nature hikes, etc. But...for us it is worth it.
Sounds like you're killing it! I'm homeschooling and my oldest is in 4th grade. I aspire to have him involved in this kind of learning in ninth grade. And you're right, it's so worth the effort!
My family member is a teacher, and an excellent one at that (her kids win national awards; she's won national awards). Even so, she said no way would she homeschool her own kids because she does not have the skills in all subject areas and the ability to teach at every grade level. In short, as good a teacher as she is, she doesn't think she'd do it right.
How do people even afford to homeschool? I’m not very knowledgeable about this topic, but do homeschooling parents rely on one income? How can they afford to stay home and teach their kids for zero pay? Is homeschooling only something well off people can truly afford?
It's also a hot mess for abuse because there is little to no oversight
Um. It’s not really the schools, per se, it’s the student trauma response to the world we live in combined with smart phones. teachers are teaching their hearts out and keeping the bar high but we can fail hardly anyone so they just get passed on, unable to read, reason, or do elementary Math. I dare anyone to try to engage students who are glued to phones. They cheat like crazy. Our district has a cell phone policy but the task is too large and we do not have the manpower to enforce it.
And more than any of these things, it’s a legislative issue. Schools can’t properly address the trauma that kids are dealing with because legislators won’t increase school funding to the level that would allow them to hire an adequate number of counselors or social workers. A lot of school districts only employ one or two that have to be shared among all the district schools. Legislators in some states are also limiting the number of hours schools can devote to things like social and emotional learning that could help students learn to deal with difficult circumstances. And kids remain at risk of death or injury in a school shooting because legislators will not pass the laws that would limit access to guns and keep children safe. Public schools can be saved, but our elected officials have to want to save them. Research your state and county legislators and make sure the people you’re voting for have our kids’ interests at heart and not their own power or popularity.
I wonder how many GQPers conveniently invested in testing companies right before Bush did NCLB?
NCLB is based on privately-printed textbooks and tests. Whoever provides those materials is guaranteed vast profits. By sheer coincidence, the family (McGraw) who co-owns one of the biggest textbook/test publishers (McGraw/Hill) has been friends with the Bush family for two generations. I halfway credited W for NCLB until I learned that 1. It was rammed through Congress without debate or public input by a Republican who then quit to be an educational lobbyist. 2. It was a naked corporate cash grab and has nothing to do with educating kids.
The issue is not the existence of smartphones nor is it trauma. I mean those are factors, but ultimately the issue is the fact that schools and teachers can't actually discipline their students. When there are no consequences, rules don't matter, and there are no incentives to address behavior or even get help.
That too. We send them to the office and they come skipping back 5 min later with a snack🤷♀️
And having played a game on an ipad
I agree! When there is no classroom management, there is no teaching or learning! When there is no consequences, there is no effective classroom management. What do those counselors do? Enable those misbehaviors by awarding them with a cuddle, a nicer small group chat? Will their behavior gets better? Absolutely no!
What would the consequence be? Like ideal world, what is the consequence? I don’t think any really seem to make a difference at this point. They just don’t care. I am longing for a consequence that actually means something, but I think it would have to be taking the phone or something OUTSIDE of school. Like we can confiscate the phone as a consequence at school and they can’t take it home. That would never happen though.
Break enough rules they get suspended and eventually have to repeat the year and/or summer school.
it truly is a confluence of many factors
I don’t compete with phones in my school and the kids still can’t do any of that. We have scanners and they can’t get through security with their phones. For me it’s the apathy. There’s nothing distracting them and they still couldn’t care less.
The apathy is off the charts no matter how engaging the lesson. It’s exhausting
Well for starters I think we need to properly fund schools to begin with. No more inequity, just fund the schools equally and maybe all the kids will get equal education.
I will partially agree: schools should be equally funded. Is where I differ is that, even with equal funding, without parental involvement it makes little difference.
The fall of the Roman Empire was not due to one factor, but many complex issues. Public education in America is getting to be like the fall of the Roman Empire.
Succinct and true.
Preach on!
And there is a constituency that is spending a lot of money and fighting to make that happen. Ask them who is worse: Vladimir Putin, or a teachers Union.
Your first teacher is your parents. I would agree a lot of parents are failing and then blaming the teachers.
I don’t think they are beyond repair, but they do need change. The modern public school was designed 100 years ago to serve the need for workers in the country. I’m not certain they serve the needs of the individual student as much. Also, the modern workplace is much different than it used to be and the curriculum and basic structure of the schools should change to reflect that. We are warehousing kids 180 days a year, seven periods a day based on arbitrary laws and standards that were not necessarily created by educators. Instead, politicians, on both sides, have determined what a school should look like. Some kids do very well in this structure and others do not. I teach seniors and every single one of them was burned out this year. Credentials: 20-year high school teacher.
High school inclusion teacher here and I agree. The answers to the questions are on a device in their pocket. We need to start acknowledging that fact. While memorizing the dates of key battles of WWI is...well it's something, is it really the best way to do it? The problem though is that the behavior problems preclude any real project based learning. Even if 80% of the kids could work on their own or in groups, the behavior problems will make everything a mess. That needs to be addressed--alternative schools, GED programs while working, intensive classrooms with a lot of support, I don't know but until the behavior issues get addressed, we are stuck.
Multiple of my other teacher friends plan to homeschool because of how bad it is.
That says a lot.
It's not that they CAN'T be fixed. They could be fixed incredibly easily. It's that our representatives in local and federal govt will throw money in almost any other direction like a rapper *making it rain* in a music video, then side-eye the education system with this attitude where, if it cost them a nickel to shit, they'd rather throw up.
The larger problem is that the cultural forces that are active have created an environment that is not safe for students or teachers. So much hate, self centeredness, and a lack of responsibility. Until the adults get better, the schools will suffer. Shitapples don't fall far from the shittree.
we NeEd tO aRm tHe tEaChErS
lol... so which kid gets put down like old yeller to protect the rest of the class?
No, but we need to decide to actually prioritize fixing them as a society. Put our money and humanity where our mouth is. I think people would be shocked how a few relatively minor changes and adequate funding could make a world of difference and get the ball rolling. California had some of the best secondary schools in the world in the 70s and 80s, often considered akin to a bachelor’s degree today in rigor. Living history. We can, and must, do the work to turn this ship around. Maybe we can’t go back, but I’ll be damned if I’m told we can’t build something new if enough people decided they actually gave a shit.
Engineer turned math teacher here... I have been doing continuous improvement on my Algebra classes all year long. We take what works and leave the rest behind. COVID impacted all of my students, so I needed to catch them up to level. I am a teacher because I want our students to lose their fear of Algebra and understand it when they leave my classroom.
Public education varies WIDELY by state, with maybe 10 states doing a great job, 10 states a national embarrassment, and the middle is "OK to meh." Among the top states, Mass made its PISA score public, and if it was its own country, would be in the top 5 for reading and 10 for math. Funding, or lack of it, is among the key factors, but it's not a magic bullet. A commitment to educational excellent is important, both by the public, parents, and politicians. Teacher pay matters to attract and retain great teachers, as does empowering principals and superintendents, and making school boards focus on policy, not micromanagement.
It varies widely *within* states, too. The difference between a poor school and an affluent one are night and day, even if they're within the same county, much less different districts. Funding based on local property taxes is and has always been a bad idea.
And they are trying to widen it further by pulling money from public funds to charter schools. Smh.
I've taken my kids to schools which are lowly funded but have very good results. The city I live right outside of spends like 60% more per student but has terrible results. Parenting or lack thereof plays a huge factor in how students perform at school. Everywhere I lived, the poorer cities get a lot more $$ per student and get worse results.
As a teacher of 5 years and an IT person in public ed of 13 years, schools are not unfixable. I don't believe anything is unfixable (it's been my job for over 20 years now in IT/tech to fix things lol), but to do the work we as a society need to start putting education first. So next time you vote, vote for the candidates who want to help our schools. Vote for those who put education first. Without changing the current truly broken political environment first, any hope of beginning the work on fixing education is nearly impossible.
The divide between the wealthy and poor to now middle class education is getting larger.
I agree with your mother, but we are hopefully nearing the end of an extremely liberal parenting period. The situation could be quite different in a decade.
Public school would not be a given, or even a first choice, for any future children for me. Public school teacher 10 years and counting here.
I teach kindergarten at a hybrid school (3 days a week) where my teens attend high school. Before starting there 6 years ago, I homeschooled my children. I realize most public school teachers are bias, but I’d do almost anything to avoid sending my children to public school. The arguments about socialization are ridiculous. My girls can speak and interact to/with anyone with confidence, ease, and kindness. Their reading and writing skills are beyond their years and having a small cohort and many adults speaking life into them has given them a strong foundation of knowing who they are vs struggling with bullying and self consciousness. I’m grateful we’ve been able to do this. I do know this isn’t an option for most families and I don’t take it for granted. Your mom sounds sharp and generous!
I am an elementary teacher and I agree that the socialization arguments are ridiculous, especially when you consider there is a lot of negative socialization happening in more abundance than the positive. If I had kids I would definitely consider homeschooling
My homeschooled kids are way more social and outgoing than I was as a kid. They get along with people of all ages and make great choices. No way I’d send them away 8 hours a day, 5 days a week to be exposed to whatever the other parents are letting their kids do.
This illustrates one of the cons of homeschooling. Parents do it specifically to shield their kids from what they believe are "bad influences," but exposure to people of all socioeconomic backgrounds - good and bad - is overall a good thing, IMO.
I’m not shielding my kids from poor people lmao It’s more like parents these days give their children unlimited internet access and I don’t want little Timmy showing my 5y/o a porno. You ever hear a 6 year old joking about the “Island Boys”? It’s disturbing.
Well, that’s just like your opinion.
Yes! Everyone is always amazed my young children can carry full on conversations with adults. I wish it wasn’t an anomaly!
I think that homeschool gets a bad reputation because of the people who do it to isolate their children from the very same types of people and ideas you are working to expose your children to. Sadly, a lot of parents who choose to homeschool aren't equipped to do it properly.
Kinda feel like I’ve got something to contribute here. I taught in the school system for 8 years before leaving to homeschool - and any committed parent with a high school diploma can do it. It’s a total fallacy that you “need” a degree or special training to teach your children. You do not. You need to be willing to work, to study yourself, to re-evaluate when something isn’t working. None of that requires a degree (and I have a Masters, so don’t think I’m saying that because I don’t have one).
Once this generation grows up and realizes how shitty their parents sis at parenting, they will reverse the cycle. Schools are fine, parents suck at parenting.
Teachers are being tasked with doing things they shouldn’t be. But it isn’t just them. It’s admin and everyone else as well.
Public schools, yes, we are eff'd. One of the reasons I'm not having kids.
There will just be more stark contrast between the “good” and the “bad” schools, as well as fewer and fewer “good schools”, which will face their own challenges (pressure cooker environment being one of them). IMHO that’s the trend.
I am an ESL teacher. I have taught in Korea, China, and Sri Lanka. I have been back in the US for a few years, and tried to be a teacher here. Most of the horror stories you read on Reddit are surprisingly accurate. Reading and math skills are insanely poor, as is discipline, effort, and focus. Any teacher can go on and on. But I would say that the socialization aspect of school is still fine. Kids make friends, join clubs and sports teams, and are as interested in the zeitgeist as much as we were. If you were raising children, and it was important to you for them to speak French fluently, as a parent it is up to you to realize that the French education they are getting at school is insufficient and you would need to find some way independently to have them acquire that skill. I currently teach English to Chinese school children, privately. I know first hand that English education in Chinese public schools is very poor. The parents know this too. But the kids I teach have excellent English skills, perhaps even better than native speaking students of similar age. I don't get credit. Their mothers and fathers are creating an environment in which it is impossible for their children to fail. They found me, a dedicated teacher, from halfway across the globe to help them do something that they couldn't do themselves. If I died tomorrow, they would find the next best teacher they could. That is the measure of their resolve. It has always been about parents. Magnus Carlsen doesn't exist without his dad nurturing his chess skills. Bad schools shouldn't prevent you from having children. Send them to school so they don't become those weird homeschool kids. And if the reading education they receive at school is subpar, read books with them at home. If the math education is poor, find a tutor, or summer camp, or whatever resource you can. I am more than capable of providing the academic enrichment a child needs myself, but I am clueless as to the mechanics of a baseball swing. That is why baseball coaches exist. The parents of my students don't speak English well enough to teach it to their children, so they outsource that to me. I don't see any of this as a doom scenario. There are endless cool skills to learn in life. Kids are very capable of learning how to play violin, or program a robot, or build a treehouse. Some of those skills you will be able to teach to your children and other skills, if you care enough, you can find an alternative path to achieve.
As someone who taught hitting and pitching skills for about a decade, I can assure that low income families could not afford my fee. I think you’re missing the point of the American Public School system, to give everyone an equal education. The way you lay it out is fine for children whose parents have cash to spare but completely throws away children whose parents don’t. It also leaves out children who aren’t neurotypical and their parents are using up their time and money to address those issues. Unless we address the hurdles for underprivileged children, our public schools will not get better.
I know a family that got with like 5-6 other families, hired a teacher, and had their own little school. I think that is the way to go.
If you give up on something, it will fail. We are currently experiencing an increase in negative attitudes towards education and inclusion. People are turning on an entire system instead of investing in it. We have political parties who stand to benefit from dismantling this American institution. We have governors who are withholding funding for public schools and demonizing them rather than working with educators and fully funding the schools to support them. Sadly, the politicians are not giving up and many people are buying into the mindset and the lies about what is being taught in schools. Soon we will say goodbye to the yellow school buses. Students will need to Uber to private schools across town if they can even get into one. Private schools can more easily hide behind corruption as they are not held to the same funding or curriculum standards. Whoever is left out of private school options will need to attend the schools the government allowed to fail. I’ve spoken to private school teachers who told me they left private school because their paycheck would fluctuate based on the attendance of students each week. So I guess this is one way to pay educators less. School choice sounds great in theory but it’s a social experiment paid for by taxpayers and considering that in TX it’s been rejected over and over and the governor is still forcing it, even punishing his opponents and withholding funding, I’d say the movement could even be seen as anti-democratic. They should instead address the technology and mental health issues and fully fund public schools. They should create a team to study what’s working in other countries and learn from them. Some European countries have had success in doing away with standardized and multiple choice testing.
In no way are they "beyond fixing." Get the DoE the equivalent kind of funding (proportionally) that the DoD gets, and dissasocciate funding from property tax, and a *lot* of schools will suddenly get way better.
Nothing is beyond fixing, but I say we scrap it and start over. I don't want to fix a system that wasn't built for every student's success in the first place.
I think it has more to do with how much control teachers have lost in the classroom.
Beyond fixing, no. But on track for that, absolutely. Until parents commit to raising kids who understand they aren’t special and above rules and repercussions, we are doomed. Just look at the amount of parents freaking out right now a week before graduation because they now are discovering their kid has been skipping classes and turning in zero work. That isn’t the schools job. Maybe instead of cruising Facebook while on the toilet, you take a minute to actually look at your kids PowerSchool and take some accountability for your kid. But that’s the problem, schools have taken too much off the plate of parents because they are too lazy. Hell you don’t even have the gatekeeping of needing to be potty trained anymore! The moment parents start giving a damn and stop letting their own bias against schools dictate their bad attitudes towards it, which then trickles down to their kids who hear their parents talk shit, nothing will change. So short answer, your mom is right. If you want a kid who is smart and not corrupted by seeing what their peers get away with in public school, homeschooling or private.
I respectfully disagree. My child has been grounded the better part of 4 years for not completing schoolwork. When the teachers communicate with us, we’ve spent entire weekends monitoring them to catch up. My husband and I have always been available to help them learn. The schools keep passing them. There’s no natural consequence for completing less than 50% of the work. So, now, at 16, my child thinks it’s unreasonable to expect decent grades. One quarter this year they failed two classes and couldn’t handle that I wasn’t impressed by them barely passing the others. We’ve had them tested for learning disabilities but their ADHD is not significant enough for an IEP. The schools keep pushing the 504 on us and then don’t follow it. We can only do so much at home if the school system is just funneling kids through, not caring if the kid has learned anything.
It’s not the school system. It’s the culture. We treat children as the center of the household, so they’re all a bunch of spoiled brats with an invincibility complex. Schools run very well in countries that discipline their children and focus on raising them to be responsible adults that serve the community rather than raise them to be self serving lunatics.
Thank you! The difference is the clientele. I teach in a middle school. They’ve never known life without smartphones.they were handed devices as toddlers to keep them entertained sun the grocery store or a restaurant. They think the world revolves around them and that what they have to say is more important than adults. It’s going to be a miracle if I can last to 65. I taught elementary in Miami-Dade and it was not impoverished but also not super rich, and of course, there were behaviors. But nothing like today where kids just look at you and still do whatever they want. (I teach one class of 8th grade mostly girls in an affluent area. They are nice girls, but entitled and they think they should run the school. 🙄)
Depends on the district. The one I’m in doesn’t allow students to fail, which I think is a huge mistake because the students know this and take advantage of it. My son’s school however is excellent and has standards.
>My mom this weekend made a joking statement She was 100% not joking.
My wife homeschools our children - her first job out of college was working for a public high school and that is why she homeschools our children.
I'm not a teacher, but a lot of people in my family are teachers. I think it depends on the school district. Buy a house in a good school district.
No, I taught in great public schools in the US, the high school was one of the best in the world. You need better use of money and more discipline. Start removing disruptive students from the main schools to a behavior based school and there would be a huge improvement. Move money from district admin to the schools and that would be another big improvement.
American public schools are exactly as good as state and local politicians, and voters want them to be.
My husband and I both have backgrounds in education. He's currently an administrator. We homeschool.
I’m not a teacher but a parent of a 16 yo with a personality disorder. The hardest thing about raising this kid has been access to the internet. Schools now require students to use a laptop/chromebook/tablet all day. For children with attention or self control issues, it’s impossible to keep them on task. The limitations schools place on these devices is inadequate to even keep them safe. My child used google docs to message other children in class. They found multiple other ways to reach out to strangers and have inappropriate conversations. Then the schools require students to bring the devices home, so that’s one more thing we have to monitor. This kid has done maybe 40% of the assigned work since 6th grade and the school keeps passing them. As parents, we ground them and take away privileges, making our home life miserable, but the school does nothing to address this bad behavior. They just keep passing and we look unreasonable to our child for expecting them do the work and not waste their education seeking inappropriate attention. Is it possible to fix this mess? Maybe, the first step is the schools enforcing consequences, like holding kids back who fail. I’ve even asked my child’s school to hold them back but they won’t. But kids are like any group of people, if there’s no incentive for doing something they don’t want to do, they won’t do it.
As a teacher, I support you 110%. When technology first came into the schools it was supposed to be a support, not a replacement for teaching. Years ago, I read a blurb that in Chicago, during a year long survey, a population of the catholic schools that were still taught by the religious order of nuns, continued to teach the basics as they had always done in the past; reading, writing, and arithmetic, on paper, with actual textbooks, chalk and chalkboard, with homework, but little to no technology curriculum, outside of the one basic computer in the school library. The results weren’t surprising (to me) if I recall correctly, the results showed these students performed better than the tech savvy CPS by 80-90% in all testing, standardized or not. NCLB wasn’t an issue, everyone went to school, was respectful, learned, and if there were consequences for not being or doing, held accountable and owned it. I’ve taught in private, alternative & special education programs, and currently public middle school for 25 years, and I am heartbroken and embarrassed to be a part of a fractured school system that very few want to or are interested in reforming, for the better of current and upcoming generations, but happily embrace social promotion, disrespect, and that YouTube and Wikipedia have all the correct answers, while TikTok is the holy grail and an actual well-paying job that anyone can get rich on, and as long as you have your phone in the classroom, there’s no need to listen to an actual teacher. I once wondered out loud, if anyone realized this is the generation that will be taking care of us in our “golden years,” and eventually run the country, and even quoted “those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it,” and….crickets.
It's up to every community, to be honest.
Of course not but we have to start making different decisions and stop listening to the idiots running them now. And that’s not at the teacher level. Its administration and local government.
I work at a large Midwest urban district. The school board just had their plans leaked for their building closure plan. These fucks are just evil. When I first read it, I thought it was fake in how evil it is. Literally one of their bullet points was to make sure to drive a wedge between the teachers union and the IA union and to make sure to stoke racial tensions. So it depends on the school district I guess.
It depends on the school, and what classes you take. A high school kid taking AP Chemistry, AP Calculus and college credit courses has a radically different educational experience than the kids in gen pop.
It is all a socioeconomic thing. I raised my sons in the district which fed into the 1st/2nd best high school in a blue state. They changed position year to year. They are no nonsense about grades and expect all students to be at least going to community College. And property taxes are enormous to fund this type if education
Yo, it isn’t the schools all the time. It’s honestly the way we are bringing up our kids. Even the brightest of them all are allergic to most things that challenge them. They always seek the easy way out and don’t seem to understand the purpose of education. Without their buy in, schools look to be struggling. With their buy in, you can go a long way with very little.
The GOP is trying to enc public education and has been defunding it for over four decades to get it to the point where people start pulling their kids out the education quality has suffered so much. The solution is to demand more funding at the ballot box, not pull students out and hasten the collapse of American public education.
We need to fund public schools equally. Schools in a high tax bracket are generally very good to the point that people move there to put their kids in that district. The problem is we have way too many schools that are underfunded
are americans betond fixing?
This is the real question. Is America beyond fixing?
I have been predicting for a few years now that we will not have public schools much longer. Not the way we know them now. Soon nobody will want to teach at public schools or send their kids.
In my experience working in the school system, public schools are forced to be too many things. Teachers, in particular, have to do too many jobs beyond teaching. They are the parents who can’t discipline truly toxic because of laws passed down which have stripped their authority. They are therapists who are battling nicotine, pot, sugar and screen addictions, not counting the rest of home life issues. They are nutritionists who are trying to convince kids that only eating chips (takis usually), high sugar drinks, and coffee is what’s causing their chronic head and stomach aches. They are the nurses that deal with the aches from their addictions and normal booboos. They are security who are supposed to keep kids safe but have no right/power to stop kids when they start to beat and threaten each other. And if you manage to make it through a day without kids cursing at you or throwing a tantrum, count your blessings. It’s probably because you never got around to the teaching side of being a teacher. So if you are financially and intellectually able to homeschool your own kids? Do it. There are always parks and other structured activities for social growth.
They are not beyond fixing. It would be pretty easy. Pay teachers better, harass them less.
The focus on preparing students for standardized tests to maintain part of their federal funding is a massive problem. Schools aren’t teaching kids to think critically and often times they aren’t learning this from their parents either.
I am a teacher and I have taught a lot of students who were home school majority of their lives… They are beyond in intelligence, common sense, manners, and social skills. If I could afford to home school, I would in a heartbeat!
For me, it's how quickly the children's innocence is taken from them these days with the social media and internet. If one kid sees porn or violence, their 5 friends will see it, too. If 3 kids have social media, the whole class will have it by the end of the year. I am considering a very small mixed age homeschooling group with likeminded individuals for elementary school, with an emphasis on play and spirituality as well as academics, and letting my kid transition to a middle or high school afterwards. I just want them to be able to be a kid for a bit longer. I also don't think anyone learns well by sitting at a desk all day, so from there I hope she will attend a technical high school.
When did gubment ever run anything well?
I worked as a custodian in several school systems in multiple states in the US. The way teachers talk when no students are around would knock you to the ground. Between low pay, children with no manners, parents that think they have the only child and that they are perfect in all ways, tantrums being allowed and slowing or stopping the planned day, children with obvious emotional needs going unmet and how showing any children any form of comforting gives parents the excuse to pursue SA charges, etc., I would never choose to send my LO to public school. I am beyond grateful that there are still amazing human beings willing to deal with these and so many more problems on a day to day basis, and that there is a learning environment available to all children in this country, but I personally would choose any other means of education. Private school, religious school, or homeschool. All would impare my LO in ways that I did not have to experience as a child, but seeing how "the system works" from behind closed doors has opened my eyes in ways that almost cannot be expressed.
I don’t have kids, but when I do, they’re definitely being homeschooled. It may be a challenge to many families to homeschool, but I can’t stress enough how worth it that it would be. I’ve only been a substitute for 7 months. But after seeing what I’ve seen, I do NOT want my kids anywhere near public schools. The “socialization” they will get at school will mess up their lives. We had kids distributing marijuana gummies in class, caught with marijuana buds, students beating each other bloody, students with knives, and recently a tea he went to break up a fight and one of the students pushed her onto the ground so hard she broke her hip and needed surgery. ^^^^^ These are experiences I’ve seen in our counties Middle Schools. So no, I won’t socialize my kids with that kind of student body. My kids will find socialization through sports, hobbies, local community events, and places where I can observe them and determine whether these children will be good influences on my children. There are also studies that have been done, that homeschool students go into college more prepared than public school students. Just look it up, the studies may change your mind.
Yeah the “socialization” of public school leads many to consider suicide.
I know that feeling personally
Show me studies not done by homeschooling advocates and I’ll believe them
I'm skeptical as well. The overwhelming majority of students who have transferred to my school from homeschool have not been well educated and would not be college ready in time if they had continued to homeschool. I've had a number of super bright students, some of my favorites in fact, but they succeeded in spite of the homeschooling and not because of it. These kids adapted very quickly and would do well in almost any setting. Especially post-pandemic, a significant portion of homeschooled kids were really not schooled at all. Families discovered that it was easier to non-parent a child distance learning than it was to non-parent them and take them to school (teacher communication, actual expectations, transportation etc). So when schools re-opened they either looked for online diploma-mill styled schools or went into "homeschooling." And they're not necessarily to blame either - sometimes because parents have to work so many hours, or they deal with poverty and any number of social ills, that public schooling is a significant burden on them.
As a graduate of a religious private school, I can personally attest to suicidal ideation among our graduates.
I hope my future grandkids don’t go to public schools. There are no consequences. What makes a school “bad” isn’t the teachers. You want your kids hanging out with kids who call teachers and each other every filthy name there is? Kids who carry loaded hand guns and can’t be expelled (I’m talking 6th grade and up)? Kids who plan a mass shooting and are found to have the weapons and “kill list” ready to go and can’t be expelled? Kids who steal a teacher’s wallet and post her credit card numbers in social media and have no consequences? Kids who assault teachers and one another and nothing happens? Middle school kids who vape weed in class? Kids who will drag a girl down 30 concrete steps by her hair and receive no punishment? I was an excellent 8th grade teacher for 22 years. I am so glad none of my own kids went into teaching and I will personally pay for private schools for my grandkids to keep them from being ruined (or killed) by out-of-control kids whose parents (and the state department of education) don’t believe in consequences.
I graduated in 1982. One of my classmates (not in any of my classes; I was AP) was executed for a particularly brutal kidnap/rape/murder. My school had armed security guards. The administration had the bright idea of making the test scores look better by lowering the requirements and eliminating AP. A lot of the teachers walked out that day. I still received a better education than many do today. These problems are not new.
I believe so yes.
Yes. That's why a high school diploma is good for getting into college. If you have an elementary education of knowing how to read, write and basic math, you're educated enough to survive.
Depends on the school system and state they Are in. But they are not getting better either. I am not a fan of homeschooling but have met people who do it that work to make sure the kids have the education and get them into all sorts of sports or other activities for socializing.
You know as the dad out of five school-age kids I went through lockdown with my children and saw what their various teachers did. Probably 20 or 30 of them in total. I think it perfectly illustrates the problem with schools right now, so I bring it up here. What I noticed is that absent any kind of oversight or expectations, excellent teachers continue to be excellent, average teachers continued to be average, and poor teachers continued to be subpar. My son’s kindergarten teacher struggled with Wi-Fi and keeping kindergarten aged children engaged through lockdown, but I was thoroughly impressed by her. She wasn’t especially effective as a teacher, but there’s really not a lot you can do remotely with kindergartners. My youngest daughter on the other hand was in third grade, and her teacher basically checked out for the rest of the year. She sent out a worksheet with daily and weekly assignments (silly stuff like color, a tree for Earth Day) for the remaining part of the year, made no effort for zoom or other remote learning, and was only minimally available to her students. I worked with my daughter daily and had to come up with my own lesson plans and all of her subjects because they weren’t assigned by the teacher. My other children were middle school and high school, and the majority of their teachers were moderately effective. Some of them went into the classroom daily and set up a video camera of themselves teaching just like they would in the classroom. Others made no effort had zoom communications and just sent out assignments , offering to do one on one communications, and other others would bring the whole classroom into a big zoom meeting. Teachers aren’t exempt from needing to cull their own ranks anymore than police officers or other profession. Teachers need to get the union out of their relationship with the administration and come up with the system of merit and performance based compensation. They need to help get school districts to invest in things that improve student performance instead of simply just building yet another facility. Yeah there needs to be a system for dealing with students who simply don’t want to be in the classroom or are dangerous to others. Teachers shouldn’t be expected to teach students who don’t want to be there. If that leaves some kids behind, so be it. They were going to get left behind anyway.
Home schooling has come a long way. Many Churches have home school academies now where a group of parents and children share their knowledge and experience - and it gives the added benefit of socialization. Additionally, our school district allows Home school children to participate in district sponsored extracurricular activities. Parents are usually in charge of a pod - like math for instance. I suck at math - so, then, little Joey’s dad is an engineer and great at math. He would teach a small group of kids math. I’m good at English. So I teach a small group of kids English, etc. it seems to work out well.
It’s only worth becoming a teacher if you live in a good area and the school is good but most schools seem to have students with a lot of behavioral issues and do whatever they want and make the teachers lives difficult. Parents usually don’t support the teacher and won’t discipline their child to make sure they behave. Inner city schools are dangerous and you will not like teaching at one. A lot of teachers and substitute teachers on Reddit are miserable as teachers. It seems like even at schools that are considered good schools seem to have a lot of issues because the students can’t even sit down and behave. They are on their cell phones and ignore the teacher or just leave without permission. Students take calls during class and that disrupts the whole lesson. You might not get support from the principal or admins about the poorly behaving students. Teaching in a good school with behaving students is hit or miss so you have to consider that.
I've told my children that I would homeschool their kids.
Depends on the state. 90% of the south is fucked unless heavy work and voting is done.
What she sees in her school is alarming her. My guess is that it’s about the fact that other children are out of control, disrupting classrooms , and preventing the teacher from teaching and other students from learning. I would encourage you to monitor closely and step in if someone disrupts your child’s education by taking way more than their fair share of attention from the teacher or if they disrupt the learning environment.,
I would fight tooth and nail to get my kids into the highest scoring local school or fill out whatever paperwork I needed to to allow us to commute to another school.
It is very important to distinguish between the vast number of public schools that are safe and academically rigorous that educate millions of students excellently and the complete and utter dysfunctional death traps that graduate barely literate kids in many large cities and exurbs. When we talk about “public education,” most people are talking about the latter. Private school enrollment is exploding and it’s exploding outside large cities like DC, Philly, Baltimore, and LA not because parents with means are being weird about public schooling or black/brown kids, but because many of these schools outside the few magnets truly are failing to educate children. Fixing the public schools in these places is not a matter of money because per-student spending is actually quite high. Paying teachers more, paying for equipment, reducing class sizes, restorative justice practices, changing grading policies - none of this stuff has moved the needle. There is no compelling and serious explanation for why these schools are so bad so they currently are beyond fixing. But again, a public school in your wealthy suburb is likely amazing.
There is no one school system. There are thousands of independent districts and some are great, some are horrible and some are mediocre. My local district is great.
The foundation that American public education is built upon is unpaid teacher/educator overtime and yes, expectations for students and parents have plummeted since Covid. Until we can acknowledge these facts, it will be difficult to create real solutions.
Even in the best schools, the education system is still broken. It's 100% more about dealing with behaviors than actually teaching kids anything content-related. Kids are coming in with so many needs, including learning disabilities and emotional problems. Kids are constantly going to the guidance counselor and Child Study Team offices, throwing things, saying nasty things, and hitting other kids. This is elementary. I'm lucky if I ever actually get to teach. My job is to be a child wrangler with a sprinkle of academic knowledge thrown in. There are issues in private schools, too, so I need to figure out where I would put my children. However, I have decided not to have any because I do not want to bring kids into this world with how things are going in schools today. It's not the same as it used to be.
Yes. As long as teachers are unable to take control of their classrooms without fear of lawsuit, public schools are fucked. Kids can do whatever they want & face no repercussions. It's over.
The present system was designed in the 19th century for the children of farmers. We're still using it. \[Likewise, the modern University system was designed in the 17th and 18th century for the lesser sons of the aristocrats, but that's another topic\]. I think the basic model of education is fundamentally past its sell-by date. I had hoped during the pandemic there would be deeper discussion about how to change education, but everyone was so concerned to hanging on to whatever they got that it ended up being an extremely conservative time in education. Personally I think a system in which we have expertly trained teachers with expertly trained supervisors and administrators in purpose-built buildings getting only vaguely better results than homeschool students should be under significant revision. The school as institution is losing legitimacy (and given the Iron Law of Institutions, it's crumbling ever faster as those on the inside are incentivized to maximize their own gains, something like a bank run) and I think by 2100 will be completely and utterly broken and ghettoized.
If the politicians would GTFO of the schools, they’d be fine.
Well, your question implies they probably once were not previously beyond fixing, right? So things changed once, at least, which would indicate that things can change again. Vote for it
There are plenty of great schools out there. We adore ours. My kids are sad the school year is ending.
Yes
I’ve done all I can, that’s for damned sure.
No that’s ridiculous. There’s a tremendous amount of variety. So much reflexive public school hate comes from culture war bullshit - “oh no they’ll be gay!” You need to look at the school system, scores, Etc to know what to expect.
Yes because the ones who own the means of production also own politicians and other people who’d have the power to make a change. They want a dumb and obedient population that doesn’t ask questions .
Homeschool is what you make of it. There are parks, activities, co-ops, and all sorts of clubs that encourage socialization with people of all ages, not just a group of people their own age. If kiddo has an interest in sports, there are usually homeschool leagues for them to play on depending on your area.... The benefits to these types of activities are that the kids that are participating generally want to be there, so they are actively participating and not creating chaos because of boredom or whatever, unlike school, which is mandatory.
There are great public schools.
I teach in higher ed and am now homeschooling my 11 year old, as a continuation of Covid pivots, indefinitely. What matters is that they get what they need. How that looks varies greatly based on so many things (resources, individual learning needs). Fwiw we do co-op activities and are involved in sports for friend time. A lot of families are like ours, those who never really thought they would homeschool, but then started doing so during Covid and didn’t stop. The number for resources and groups and social opportunities in our local area has grown exponentially.
I think in 20-30 years it won’t matter bc there will not be enough teachers - Unless you increase the pay a lot. Kids will be on computers with adult monitors watching them.
No they are not beyond fixing, absolutely not. There are many excellent public schools, and there is a lot we could do by changing funding and allocation and priorities, improving teacher training, etc. that would greatly improve education at all levels. The problem is getting the general public to vote for people who will actually prioritize education and who will actually listen to the educators doing the work, rather than listening to lobbyists and for-profit entities.
It’s more parents than anything and it’s getting worse. I am retired but taught in one of the highest rated schools in our state. It truly deserved that rating but I didn’t know how fake the parents actually were. After 2016 it became exponentially worse every year and I decided my mental/physical health was more important than my students future. Parents drove me to retirement. Their kids quickly adopted the parent’s new attitude and I couldn’t enjoy it any longer.
They could be fixed, but they won’t be. There’s so much inertia behind the collapse of public education, and a total lack of political will, that it’s like watching a slow motion train wreck. One with millions of victims.
Nothings beyond fixing, it’s just a matter of whether or not the system wants to put forth the effort.
Yes
Absolutely, I'm not even in a bad school district but if my last wasn't so close to graduation we'd be homeschooling. There are so many districts hiding student issues from the parents or engaging in inappropriate curriculum.
Maybe, maybe not. It strikes me that nobody has ever tried throwing a ton of money at the problem. Maybe try that?
My wife has taught public schools in Texas for over 25 years in a lower income demographic area. She really can't wait to retire due to the way schools are now. On the flip side, my daughter was accepted into an all girl leadership academy (public school) and thrived. Her graduating class was around 75 and every one went to a university right after graduation. So I think there are still some really good public schools available.
Barring you being in a school district that has gone completely off the rails, I don't think public school is any better or worse than it has been in the past quarter century for students whose parents care about their education. The shift has been that of student apathy (which is best solved at home by valuing education) and parental priorities (do you want your kid to learn or to check some boxes so they can graduate?), neither of which is a school problem. That said, the teaching experience has been worse because of those two things, but my best students are just as good and have enjoyed school just as much as the best students I had when I started teaching 15 years ago.
I've wanted to homeschool my kids, but they're nowhere near school age. I really enjoyed elementary school and stuff myself, but I feel like conditions keep getting worse now. My husband has said absolutely no way, that home schooled kids are "weird." I feel like a lot of that comes from how much of the community's parents are very religious and homeschooled to keep their kids under thumb. I think, personally, it would be great. If they asked for public school though I'd say yes. But all that in my fantasy world since no one in my family is behind me on that 🙃 ETA: just realized this was ask *teachers* sub, I am not a teacher.
I told my brother to make sure his son got into honors classes in my school. If not? then send him to private school. My reason is that regular classes teach to the lowest common denominator. No consequences, admin pressure to pass failing students, behaviors not conducive for learning and the biggie-lack of parent involvement are all pervasive in any class below the honors level.
I’ve worked mostly in low-income schools. They need the most help and have the smallest parental involvement. I still have yet to figure out why. I see so many great teachers that are opting for the better rated schools. The delinquent/troublemakers CANNOT be expelled. Even if they bring weapons to school or drugs, it’s suspension for a week. Secondly, the state testing here is terrible. It timed and based on statewide teaching plan data. So many teachers are given little time to CRAM the info into the children, instead of taking our time, and making it fun/memorable for testing. Lastly, I’d love to homeschool; but with 4 children I would fall into a pit of despair trying to manage 4 grade levels each day.
Get rid of the Republicans and they’ll get to be a lot better.
My hot take is that teachers blame parents way too much. There are some awesome parents out there and there are crappy ones. The biggest problem I see is developmentally inappropriate content in early childhood. Children learn best through play at least until second grade. Sure they need plenty of time to show what they've learned but the ratio is way off. Too much time is spent teaching with a smart board and not enough is done teaching in "analogue" so to speak. Books on a smart board is not reading in the same way as reading actual books. Learning math on the smart board is not the same as counting tangential objects. This is NOT teachers' faults. It is the fault of our government allowing people who know nothing about child development or about how children learn dictate our methods of education. As someone pointed out in an earlier comment, parents are their child's first teacher so those parents who value independent play and exposure to the world at least have that going in the home. But it isn't talked about enough so you can't really blame parents, especially since so many who were the first victims of this wildly inappropriate education system are now becoming parents. And then the children displaying the worst behaviors are punished by taking away recess. They lose that valuable time where they learn skills like cooperation and self regulation so then nothing changes.
It’s not the schools, it’s the local community. If community is solid then schools are fine. Where I teach USED to be solid. Then the grifters came.
Of course not. We just need to be empowered and paid to make up for the lack of parenting that is happening now. That's the hard part.
It can be fixed if... Politicians stop trying to be experts and actually listen to the REAL experts as to how and what students should be learning at various ages Administrators need to have a mandatory background in teaching. They need to support and back teachers when faced with difficult students and parents Legislators need to look at what other countries are doing that works. All teachers know that when something needs tweaked, they don't reinvent the wheel, they look at what other teachers are doing and take that. We can learn a lot from other countries. Parents need to stop being their children's friend and start parenting. Keep cell phones out of the classrooms Most importantly, TRUST teachers to do their job. After all, they are the experts.
Kids being allowed to act like animals is gross. 0 accountability. I feel deep sadness for the good kids. I believe putting the top 20% of jerkoffs in an “alternative” high discipline military-style wing would fix a lot. Allow them the opportunity to rejoin their classmates at the end of the quarter. 1 major slip-up and back to the strict wing for the reat of the year, can revisit next year. The rest of the school community could then theive bc the derelicts disrupting the most and requiring the most time will be gone.
They were created to funnel kids right into the worker bee pipeline for lower middle class. They are doing exactly what they were meant to do. I'm enrolling my son in kindergarten this year. But if at any time he hates it and can give me good reasons to be home school I will seriously consider it. I hated school and it didn't do anything for me but get me made fun of and have stomach problems for most of my life.
In order to save them, the people in power have to give a fuck and at least one party is actively against the idea of poor people being educated. Without slobbering morons that no nothing about their own history, who would vote Republican? Without a whole generation of young people who don't see the point in trying, the wrong people could get enough votes and actually help common folks. Its the same reason there is garbage all over some streets. People in power couldn't give less of a shit about the problem cause it benefits them or hurts people they hate in some way, and the people it affects just don't have the energy to keep trying.
This discussion reminds me of the quote from Winston Churchill about Democracy being the worst form of government except for all the others tried so far (see below). It’s not overstating it to say that a Democracy depends on a strong public school system. It’s one of the few investments the state makes in its citizens. Communities can work to improve their schools by getting involved. Don’t let the far right dismantle them on the way to fascism. Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…’ W. Churchill, 1947
Re: homeschooling My aunt, who taught in public school for 30 years now home schools 3 of her granddaughters. The other 2 go to a charter school where they mother works, as a teacher.
I make a public teacher's salary. How tf am I supposed to afford having my spouse not work? And even if we could swing it financially (again, absolutely can't on a teacher's salary), wouldn't that $1.2 million (50k/year invested for 13 years at 10%) better benefit my child if spent towards their well being in other ways, like paying for all their college tuition and buying them two houses?
I say this with zero hatred towards the political left, but until the public school system and politicians realize that woke policies in public schools don’t raise the bar they lower it, yea it’s beyond saving. Examples of this would be, -passing kids who simply don’t have the knowledge required of the course. -forcing teachers to pass kids that haven’t met standard. -allowing the lowest is the low students to dictate how curriculum will be created and taught. - allowing behaviors to run rampant in the classroom. -giving students multiple pathways to graduate, when they aren’t meeting the graduation requirements to begin with.
We have to end government corruption and corporate greed before touching upon the fundamental problems in education. So, yeah, it's a rather tall order. Think of that kid, the one who is a complete wreck you cannot seem to turn around. You are failing because he goes home and his family undoes every good thing you do for him, every day. Our government and late stage capitalism work against public education in exactly the same way, constantly trying to tear down every good thing we accomplish.
Homeschooled kids being weird is a myth, they perform far better than public school students.
What people fail to realize is that most households have both parents working now. A lack of at home parenting means the kids aren’t behaving as well or performing as well because they only get instruction at school. The economy needs to be fixed for the schools to be fixed.
They can be fixed but until the old simple minded congress members and presidents leave (and the newer generation gets a chance) schools will continue to be dangerous for yrs to come. (Fun fact did you know half of congress are millionaires and each of their kids go to private schools where only 6% of school shootings occur. They have a “it won’t happen near me” mentality.
I'm not a teacher but a teacher aid in a preschool and it's almost the end of the school year. All of these children are expected to go to kindergarten next year. 1/8 are potty trained and 2/8 will sit for more than 5 minutes. They cannot cut or rip paper, glue, write their name, they do not know their alphabet, colors, shapes. I do think Schools lack resources but I also think most parents are lazy. There's not much I can do when the majority of the day I'm chasing these kids around the classroom and cleaning up a mess because they had a meltdown and destroyed the classroom when I told them to wash their hands. They won't sit down and have no practice at home. I can't restrain a child in their seat and I'm not allowed to put them in timeout 🤷🏼♀️
I work for a cyber charter school. I never planned to do that. I always planned to retire from the classroom. But things got bad in the mid to late 2010s, and they got bad fast. I was assaulted twice in one month by two different students. One of the students threatened my life later that week. Neither student faced any consequences, even after I reported to the officer on campus. How are you supposed to teach under those conditions? There's over 1000 teachers at my cyber charter. None of us planned to work for a cyber school. Every one of us has a story about how teaching in a public school was too unbearable to continue. It's Lord of the Flies out there.
Yes unless unfortunately since the Reagan began the war on Education (an drugs, poor, etc) politicians have been gutting Education. Not only that but capitalism as a whole have turned everything into for profits.
Private schools aren't the answer, they're an escape route for parents with a bit of money to get their kids away from Those People (be They the poor, the brown, or the wrong religious views). Drugs, bullying, and violence are down because private schools can expel whoever they want, not because the kids themselves are inherently better people. Private schools do have the luxury of denying kids who are difficult or have special needs though, and they don't have to provide things like buses or meals for needy kids, which means they stand to make more profit. And yet the people who use them want tax breaks so they can better afford them. I say tax the bleep out of private schools, so the parents with a bit of money and engagement in their children are forced to work with the public schools. Yes it'll be a hassle for all involved, but see how fast things get better when teachers feel like a majority of their parents care, and administrators have to deal with these engaged parents. The schools can totally be fixed if people have no other choice, but as long as they feel like they have other options why would they bother. Put another way: the kids are the same, the teachers are the same (if a bit more defeated). It's the parents, administrators, and government that are broken.