Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
4. No support from admin, as their hands are tied. They HAVE to keep the numbers of misbehavior low since everything is analyzed. They get reamed for in school suspensions, OSS, etc...
"What gets measured, gets done." I think this is driving a lot of the things that don't work well with the public school system. Kids are kept in, at any cost, because expulsion, suspension, discipline will make the stats look bad. Doesn't matter what it does for everyone else in the classroom. Same with "teaching to the test". I suspect in most states there are also changes in state aid depending on attendance. My local HS had a raffle one year for all kids who were there 90% or more of the school days- there were two cars awarded as prizes. I asked a School Board member if the families were aware of the tax implications and that it might affect their eligibility for needs-based social programs such as EBT. He told me that they money they get from the state for good attendance figures was more than enough to give the winners a stipend for the tax liability.
I'm guessing that's also why the local grade school advertises "Free After-School Meal" on a banner over the door. Anything to get them into the building.
In my algebra 2 class I have 31, since the school is grown and they don't have the funding for more teachers. It's much harder to control now. I haven't had a class that big in close to 6 years. We were down to 17-20 kids in classes for the longest time, now it keeps increasing. For younger kids to have 27 in elementary for 2019, I think it's way too much. How can we give the needed individual attention? How can we get through the required material when we have to quiet down the class and have a higher ratio of misbehaved children? It's not good for our children, not matter how experienced the teacher is. It becomes more like a babysitting managerial time then getting through the required concepts.
Well since parents have stopped parenting, teachers now serve the dual role as parent too. But in your parenting role as teacher, you just can't discipline the kids because the admin ranks won't have your backs. Everyone is a winner, everyone gets a trophy, everyone gets an A+ and passed through, etc. And people wonder why educational rankings are plummeting........
I was always against the idea of homeschooling over the years, but in this day and age, I would 100% homeschool.
In my algebra 2 class I have 31, since the school is grown and they don't have the funding for more teachers. It's much harder to control now. I haven't had a class that big in close to 6 years. We were down to 17-20 kids in classes for the longest time, now it keeps increasing. For younger kids to have 27 in elementary for 2019, I think it's way too much. How can we give the needed individual attention? How can we get through the required material when we have to quiet down the class and have a higher ratio of misbehaved children? It's not good for our children, not matter how experienced the teacher is. It becomes more like a babysitting managerial time then getting through the required concepts.
You are absolutely right. I have 33 students enrolled in my 4th grade class. We can be capped at 34. Over the years, I have had classrooms as small as 24.
You are absolutely right. I have 33 students enrolled in my 4th grade class. We can be capped at 34. Over the years, I have had classrooms as small as 24.
Wonder why they are capping these classes up? Our education system sometimes!
I am a 4th grade teacher in my 27th year of teaching. Over the years, I typically have had about 4-6 students who have been chronic behavior problems. In my California school district, I have 34 students enrolled my classroom.
Some years I get a bad mix of students who are more talkative or challenging, and veteran teachers know that classes like those come in waves. But this year, I have noticed a big change. I have 17 students (50% of my class) who are out right needy, challenging, and flat out disrespectful. I have 3 students who are emotionally disturbed and when they become angry won't come into the classroom after recess breaks. Most of my day, I am putting out fires, and I literally can't teach when students get too unruly and just won't pay attention.
At first I was thinking that maybe I received the majority of challenging students. But after talking to my grade level team, they are telling me how unmanageable their classrooms are this school year as well.
That sounds brutal. My local Denver Public School Elementary has class sizes around 28 and has a para in most classrooms as well. It seemed fine when I visited.
I attended Catholic school. Class size was over 50 students.
50 is a lot of students. I find it’s not so much the number of students in a class, but rather what is expected as far as differentiation that makes it tough. For example, if 50 students are all sitting at desks doing the same thing at the same time it might be manageable. That may or may not have been the instructional method at your school, but as differentiation increases it gets tougher to mange larger classes.
Most of my day, I am putting out fires, and I literally can't teach when students get too unruly and just won't pay attention.
Unfortunately this is a nation-wide problem:
Classrooms in Crisis: Verbal, physical, sometimes violent outbursts plaguing Oregon classrooms
kgw.com/article/news/classrooms-in-crisis-verbal-physical-sometimes-violent-outbursts-plaguing-oregon-classrooms/283-490a6255-23d0-4bab-af74-895102734e78
Fargo educators share personal stories of classroom violence
Inforum.com/news/education/1097843-Fargo-educators-share-personal-stories-of-classroom-violence
Classroom chaos: Disruptive students force teachers to evacuate classes for safety
kmov.com/news/classroom-chaos-disruptive-students-force-teachers-to-evacuate-classes-for/article_5081e8b6-de3d-11e9-a190-2f410378bfe6.html
Specifically for California, it sounds like the rising number of special education students is making education more challenging:
Quote:
The majority of students have relatively mild disabilities like speech impairments and specific learning disabilities like dyslexia. However, the number of students with severe disabilities has increased substantially, doubling over the past two decades, according to the report.
The biggest increase has been in the proportion of children diagnosed with autism, which has risen from 1 in 600 students in 1997-98 to 1 in 50 students in 2017-18 — a 12-fold increase.
California spending over $13 billion annually on special education
edsource.org/2019/california-spending-over-13-billion-annually-on-special-education/619542
I wonder what effect this recently passed bill will have in that state?
Quote:
Senate Bill 419 will make it illegal for public and charter schools to suspend students for "willful defiance." According to the San Diego Unified School District, willful defiance is defined as “disrupting school activities or otherwise refusing to follow the valid authority of school personnel.”
New CA Law Bans ‘Willful Defiance’ Suspensions in Schools
Wonder why they are capping these classes up? Our education system sometimes!
I can give you some conspiracy theories. Some believe that the classrooms are deliberately capped at 30+ simply to prove how public education is failing. Therefore, we need to privatize education so that public money could be used to fund private schools who would otherwise do a much better job than public schools.
Another theory is that as teachers salaries rise, thanks to teacher union negotiations. and teacher pensions eating up a big chunk of state budgets, there's a move to put more kids in the classroom to offset the cost of paying for more teachers and their future pensions. Hiring more teachers forces states and school districts to raise their education budget.
Finally, inner city schools that have many more problems than your average school, are spending way too much money on policing, vandalism, counseling, and intervention programs that force inner city schools to cap class sizes, even though lowering the class sizes would help those students get the one on one attention they desperately need.
That's my take for all it's worth.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
