Reply to Started working at an elementary school last week. Shocked and sad. AMA

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]No child left behind REALLY screwed so many kids. It hasn't helped kids avoid being academically left behind. And "least restrictive environment" isn't helpful when the kid is verbally disruptive.  [/quote]
+1 Very rarely will non-teachers admit this. But NCLB/IDEA/FAPE ruined public schools in the US. The Federal Government and Congress like the publicity of “helping everyone” but provided no funding. So then all children suffer.[/quote]

I’m so sick of people claiming there’s “no funding” or “not enough funding” in our schools. Schools in DC spend literally more than $22k per year per kid, average. Some are obviously a lot more. Schools in Florida spend $9k and that’s still high, relatively speaking. Other Western countries spend WAY less than we do in the US. People need to start acknowledging that if an average of $22k/year isn’t enough to get all students meeting a basic grade level standard then money is NOT the problem and more money is NOT the answer.

They can start by getting all the disruptive kids out of our classrooms and back into special facilities that are equipped (no scissors, yes metal detectors, yes guards) and trained (staff with personal defense training plus deescalation techniques etc plus aides floating around) to handle them.

The problem is the students and the parents. Not the schools. Schools don’t need more money or more anything. They need less of the thing that’s destroying them, which is disruptive students.[/quote]

It's really a little bit of both. The system is based on the hypocritical assumption that everyone, no matter their intellectual endowment and motivation, is going to learn essentially  all the same things at the same time for 13 years. Some idiots even push the notion of college for all when the reality is that by high school, the only function of school for the bottom quarter is to keep them off the street and out of trouble. They see no purpose in being there and spend their time trying to escape or causing trouble inside the institution.
One thing we do need is solid vocational tracks in lieu of college prep high school for a substantial part of the population. That would avoid a lot of baristas and receptionists with 50k in college debt that they then want the government to forgive.
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