How to fix our crisis
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Anonymous
| I’m so confused by the backlash against op. These are just truthful parts of American education and have been for quite some time. |
Anonymous
Yes, but there are people on DCUM from all across the country. That’s why I asked where the poster lives. There are still many highly segregated schools where one might not grasp the magnitude of the problem, but that is not the case in the DMV. |
Anonymous
Our social workers are great. They've already visited the homes of many of my students. They rarely get an answer when they knock at the door/ring the bell. If they do, they often find irate parents who they've woken up. Many work nights and sleep during the day but instead of taking their kids to school, the kids stay home on their devices. They al live within walking distance and the social workers have tried their best to have them walk with neighbors to school but if nobody answers the door when the neighbors come by... When an admin and/or social worker does go to truancy court (it takes years of chronic absenteeism before the cases go to court), the parents usually don't show up and nothing happens. |
Anonymous
PP, I’m the second 20:43 poster again. First, thank you for all you do for our kids. You sound like an incredibly caring and competent teacher. Second, I agree with everything you have proposed. Wish we could make this happen - it is not too late to start! I am not familiar with the Harlem Children’s Zone but look forward to checking it out. In MoCo, we have the “Parent Encouragement Program” that teaches positive parenting skills, which are obviously a precursor to school-readiness. Some participants are highly educated, “helicopter” type parents seeking information on child development, whereas others are remanded by the Courts to attend the classes, particularly for cases involving extreme anger. I wish this program was national - it is a fantastic way to approach the long road of parenting. |
Anonymous
Exactly! I suspect the backlash is coming from people invested in the current system. People like Lucy Calkins and her myriad certified instructors (now debunked) or DoE bureaucrats. I cannot understand how anyone would not agree that we need to improve our educational system and have ideas for doing so. |
Anonymous
Those in the trenches see that we need to improve mastery of basic skills first. Posters are going on about calculus when there are plenty of students who haven't mastered basic math. Everything after that is a waste of time for these students. If they can't read basic decodable books, no use in assigning them Chaucer. If they can't write a grammatically correct sentence, what good is assigning them essays to write? |
Anonymous
Wow, this is sad. Thank you for replying to my question. It sounds like we need to streamline the truancy process. I was raised by a single parent who worked night shifts as an RN. Often she worked midnight to 8 a.m., and sometimes when she arrived home, she would see that I had missed the school bus, so she would have to drive me to school. Or I could call a friend from church to take me to school, or I would simply walk and arrive late. In the cases you mentioned, where the kids are walking distance to school, there is just no excuse at all! |
Anonymous
Agree- why do kids take 7 classes each semester? It is one of the reasons males who lag in executive functioning skills fall behind. Too many deliverables to keep track of- better to work on larger, more meaningful projects. |
Anonymous
Second 20:43 again. This thread is fascinating (with the exception of the few name callers). I’d love to do a DCUM meet-up and continue the discussion and perhaps actually do something! (We used to do that when DCUM first started!) It seems often government, schools, and social services agencies don’t have an easy way to connect the dots. A good example of success is when I volunteered at a DC high school (Eastern). The school was dealing with truancy issues and the teachers and principal eventually realized that many of their students cut classes in order to work to help support their families. They then changed the hours that certain classes were offered to work around the most common work schedules. Obviously, that took a lot of commitment and was just one high school, but it’s a good example of what can be done. Going back to your example of the night shift parents who don’t get their kids to school…I wonder if some of these families are living in HOC housing or similar and if the truancies could be brought to the attention of the housing officials, maybe they impose a small fine if the schools report that the kids are not attending school. Obviously, you don’t want to end up with them being homeless, but there has to be some type of carrot and stick approach that could tie the issue of truancy back to other government-supported benefits going to these families. |
Anonymous
Excellent points! |
Anonymous
+1. What percentage of Americans need Calculus once they graduate? 5% ? Maybe. Why would you foreclose the other 95% of Americans from getting a high school diploma? I’m a JD and I have two semesters of college calculus because my college required it at the time— for my humanities major. And although I grinded enough to get As, I never understood its applications. And once I got through the classes I never used it again. For serious STEM tracked students, it’s necessary. In order to be an informed citizen, Stats and Discrete math/game theory and basic programming are actually more useful and relevant. I have a strong STEM kid (TJ grad) who uses calculus. And a strongly humanities kid who is doing IR and using stats, research methods and is signed up for game theory next semester. She is also using GIS for an internship and needs basic programming. She also has had no use for calculus once she graduated from high school. What we need is stronger civics and American government, debate (like a class that requires you to form arguments, arguing and rebutting both sides of an issue), English with a strong emphasis on reading nonfiction and coherent writing, basic chemistry bio and physics. Stats and discrete math and some level of programming for all students. And an economics and personal finance class with teeth— not modules you take over the summer. And then specialize from there. And we need to decide if we want to commit to having a bilingual population or not. 4 years of high school any language isn’t enough. If we want our kids to speak another language, it needs to be a core subject starting in ES. Or, we need to let it go. But, like Calculus, only a small percentage of kids actually use their high school language. |
Anonymous
Almost a thousand kids get a perfect score every year. That number used to be closer to a dozen. |
Anonymous
Calculus has been a benchmark for a student's ability to handle academic rigor for at least the past 50 years. If you can't handle calculus, you can't handle a lot of things. |
Anonymous
+100. DC’s school aligns Ap Us Gov, Ap Us History, and Ap Engl lit to follow similar themes and teach similar concepts at the e same time, because the exams and skills are so similar. They even sometimes coteach the classes. The issue rn is that we really have no way of improving course offerings for average or low income high schools when there’s so many ap exams out there. |
Anonymous
Game theory? We have so many issues to get through before game theory can even start as an opportunity for high schools; also anyone whose career is utilizing game theory should seriously be taking calculus and is a STEM student. |