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1) Promoting students to the next grade without them having a strong grasp on the concept
2) Lack of discipline for students who bully
You can't convince me that teachers don't know what's going on. Teachers know which students have been picked on. Students do the responsible thing and report it. I've even had teachers join in on the teasing. These children need to be charged with harassment and expelled from the school system. There's no need to constantly harass other people.
"If all or our teachers were excellent we would not be faced with failing schools!"
That was the comment from a friend of mine who was talking about the problem with schools and education today.
I tried to tell him that it was not really the teachers fault but the fault of unmotivated students, poverty, ignorance, teachers unions, a sick youth society, and government policies that says anyone who is interested in learning is a nerd, and a thousand other reasons. He would not buy it.
He went on to say: "If the teachers were any good they could get the students to listen to them and every student would excel. And if the teacher does not get results, fire them and bring in someone who can do the job."
Do you think my friend is right? Most of the fault is the teachers?
Sounds like your pal's an expert.
I think your friend should get a teaching certificate and show everyone how it's done.
It takes a village of people all wanting and working to achieve the same goal; the education of young minds. Unfortunately the village has become fragmented and everyone has their own agenda. Starting from the top on down; accountability has become driven and measured by numbers/dollars/charts/statistics. School boards have to answer to the public that elected them to office. Administrators are being questioned about every move, everything is public information, and people wanting the answers are entitled because of "Right to Know, Open Meetings". Everyone wants to point a finger (and some of it is merited), very few want or are able to accept responsibility (too busy rationalizing and explaining instead of "just do it")...students and learner's are wired differently because of the speed at which things change and the accessibility to instant answers and the expectations of instant gratification.
All I know is that the classroom I trained for in the 70's was far different than the classroom I was teaching in when I left in 2011. Are we effectively training teachers to deal with today's classroom? Judging by the number of teachers who leave teaching within the first 5 years, my guess would be no. Are we retraining or in servicing teachers to adjust/monitor to today's learner? Not thoroughly enough. Are we allowing Principals, department heads and master teachers to guide and direct/supervise/coach/mentor struggling teachers? Are parent's teaching their children that their job from age 5 until 18 is to go to school, do well, complete the assigned work, play nice in the sandbox? Are student's coming to school having slept well, had a good breakfast and with the security that they will return home to a safe house and family? Hard questions...
No. Some teachers have little chance of succeeding in low income districts with mainly ESL kids and test score goals. The goal of many of those kids is...get food, don't get beat up to/from school, help take care of your siblings, try to do well while getting NO help at home.
Another issue is that one can succeed as a teacher (and as a student!) and not have it be particularly noted or valued, depending on what relatively narrow parameters are used to categorize success, depending on given mandates, legislation, etc. at a particular time. I have worked with traditional, nondisabled/neurotypical learners, as well as with the profoundly developmentally disabled. Successfully guiding a classroom of students with extreme special needs to a noticeably higher level of personal independence and academic achievement than when they entered the classroom is a profound triumph...and one that is not particularly noticed or valued by those who make decisions about educational policy (though it is absolutely noted and valued by those who are succeeding). Some teachers will be fine with the level of personal satisfaction and knowing that they were able to help students succeed, others will get fed up and disillusioned with their students' successes and triumphs being minimized if they don't happen to correlate to a particular tier of standardized test performance, a winning basketball season, etc.
My mother-in-law is retired from one of the poorest urban districts in the country. She spent the majority of her classroom time correcting behavior issues and breaking up fights. Parents (well, the mothers since daddy was long gone by then) would only show up for parent teacher conferences when they had "beef" with the teacher or another parent. The problem isn't the teachers, it's parents who do not socialize their children properly or place any kind of value on learning. Garbage in, garbage out.
In my experience with three kids going through school now compared to my own school years, the teachers are better and the curriculum is more rigorous. However, I don't know if that's because my own education was sub-par, or that they took harder classes than I did.
It's a broad sweeping (shall we say stupid?) statement to say that teachers are the only cause of failing schools.
Moderator - Lehigh Valley, NEPA, Harrisburg, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Education and Colleges and Universities.
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