Note: This is obviously not an exhaustive study to the many abhorrent practices that are happening in our schools that cause the American Tax Payer to get no return on his investment.
I have been a public school teacher for 17 years. I have only worked in low income schools. Throughout my career, I have had the privilege to teach some truly wonderful students who have gone on to become accomplished adults in such fields as doctors, nurses, lawyers, and engineers. Some of which have even earned scholarships to Ivy League schools.
But I must say as the years pass and new regulations are instituted, I see fewer and fewer of these types of students. But, it is possible to get a good education in a low income school if one takes advantage of the opportunity and they have the right teachers. There are always a few teachers in these schools who are eager and go out of their way to encourage, support and mentor the child who wants to learn.
However, those students were not the norm in low income schools. A large majority of students in low income schools are willingly throwing away their opportunity to become educated and are in many instances, stealing the opportunity of education from others due to their hectic behavior. So, how do some students escape becoming the ever growing percentage of those who refuse to be educated and never become productive members of society? We all know the answer; good parenting or mentoring, choosing the right crowd, hard work and having an understanding of the value of education to their future.
In contrast, these are the very factors that are lacking in those students who refuse to be educated.
There are also other contributing factors that empower these students to stay uneducated. One of which is the pressure by administration on teachers to lower the standards. Of course that would never be said directly but it is done in ways that intimidates teachers to comply with the desired goals of the administrators. This is because the administrator’s evaluation by the county is determined by how many students fail, how many and what kind of discipline referrals there are as well as student test scores. This causes the actual reality of what is happening in the schools and the reported data to be skewed. What is happening in our Public Schools is a crime against the taxpayer who trust that children are learning how to become productive and competent citizens. There is an outcry for accountability, usually at the detriment of the teachers, but the system is full of fraud because the truth about what is happening is hidden by unreported data.
For instance, if you have a failing student in your class, you are expected to fill out a mountain of paper work, conduct daily interventions (document all misbehaviors while teaching the class), call parents regularly to discuss poor behaviors, meet with parents, his other teachers, counselors and administration at least three times before you are allowed to fail that student. If the process has not been completed, teachers are called into be questioned. Because teachers may have several of these students in a given class and they teach 5 to 6 classes, it is an impossibility for them to effectively keep up all the required paper work. As a result most teachers choose not to even begin the process and decide it is easier to give a passing grade even if the child has not earned it. For those students who have teachers who won’t pad their grades and he fails several classes, the school usually offers what they call “course recovery” for those subjects. Somehow, in a two to four week time period, these kids earn enough points to pass the course for the year even though they have done nothing except disrupt other students’ learning. The underachieving kid has already figured how the system works. There is no real consequence for his behavior and it teaches him he doesn’t have to comply with rules or standards so then the unacceptable behaviors continue the next school year.
Another contributing factor is that a lot of behavioral problems do not get reported in our public schools. Administrators try to mitigate the reporting of certain instances to protect the reputation of the school and county. And serious incidents get down played through creative means. Teachers get reprimanded if they write too many referrals even though the offence is clearly on the discipline matrix. Many school administrators look at the teacher as unable to manage his classroom if several referrals are written. While it is true that teaching in a low income school requires a very “with it” type of teacher, the behaviors that teachers are forced to tolerate are unimaginable. Another issue is that students like to get referrals so they can be with their friends in Internal Suspension. They use this as an excuse of why they didn’t complete their work. It also gives them a certain acceptance into the “bad ass” crowd that these students eagerly seek. I have seen these kids roam the school like little gangsters harassing and threatening good students with nothing done to remediate their behavior. The peer pressure to conform to bad behavior is especially strong in low income schools because of fear.
Many teachers understand that referrals are meaningless. Willing to risk there being a major disruption to the learning environment, they choose rather to try to work with the child to keep him in the room in hopes that he will complete some work. Frustrated with the situation, many good students lose their focus and ambition and are the true victims in the low income school. And the vicious cycle continues.
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