Reply to Graduates from low-performing D.C. schools face tough college road

Forum Index » DC Public and Public Charter Schools

Reply to "Graduates from low-performing D.C. schools face tough college road"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]There's a serious disconnect all around.  As a previous poster noted, not only are kids ending up woefully unprepared for college, they are ending up woefully unprepared for the job market and many other things after high school.  In adult life there are many skills needed regardless of whether you go on to college or not - basic math and English proficiency for one, but also a basic sense of responsibility and self-discipline - showing up where you're supposed to be on time, being organized, following instruction, getting your stuff done on time, patience and so on.  Many of the kids that do make it into college are a complete mess - they need a lot of remedial coursework to get up to speed, and don't at all have that sense of responsibility and self-discipline to keep it together and get things done - and the same goes for those who don't go to college and instead go straight into the job market.  That second set of soft skills is too often overlooked and in turn adversely impacts the core academic skills.[/quote]

What should high schools be doing to instill this basic sense of responsibility & self-discipline? Hold them back a year? Make them repeat classes? Not give second chances to make up missed work or failed tests?

[/quote]Poster who wrote about the unprepared high school student here. I think it has to start much younger and involve whole families.  Mandatory pre-k and more Head Start like programs that involve parents.  More anti-poverty programs focused on getting and keeping the parents in the work force.  Educating the parents so that they're better at educating the kids in the basic skills of life.

The kid I work with has a sense of responsibility - although she does some typically bone-headed teen stuff now and then but not any worse than what my dd did in high school.  She was also held back a year in elementary school.  But according to the reading specialist I have working with her now, she never learned the basic skills of reading so she has spent a lot of time guessing at words. And as I noted before, she has a hard time coming up with an independent thought because it basically hasn't been required of her by the school.

But here's the thing - her parents, while having made many mistakes at various times in their lives, have always insisted she go to school and she go to tutoring. But they're not going to go to the school and demand that they give her the help she needs. They don't have that sense of entitlement that comes with being an upper middle class professional and they also are not really in a position to help the kid find work after she graduates from high school.

Think about the things you teach your own kids - for example, we talked to dd a lot about what kinds of research she should do on colleges before making a decision and what was important to emphasize in applying to college. We talk to her about what she needs to do in order to find a summer job. BTW it's also clear that she has an edge getting a summer job because she's an upper middle class educated white kid in DC. We also emphasize the importance of thinking independently, evaluating evidence, making an argument and supporting that argument with specific facts - skills that are highly valued in the professional classes.

But poor and working class kids are not often getting that from their families or from their schools - so even the kids who follow all the rules, do their homework, and don't make waves have a hard time competing when they get to college.[/quote]

I disagree.  I was raised by a single mom, we were dirt poor.  And I'm a perfect example of a kid who followed (most of) the rules, but who worked hard and made it through college.  Mere fact of being poor or working class is not the barrier.  The barrier to leap over is a function of how hard you are willing to work for it.[/quote]

Before you break your hand from patting yourself on the back for bootstrapping, let's acknowledge that poverty and a single parent are used as shorthand for why children struggle but really the are just common signifies for children who are growing up with significant stress such as insufficient food, exposure to violence, sex abuse, drugs, being neglected. So I agree being poor is not a barrier to sucess but having a stable home life with a caring parent will give kids a huge advantage.[/quote]

At what point does the community get involved and condemn the violence, sex abuse, drugs, neglect, poor parenting, et cetera?  The exact opposite is what's out there, these low income kids are plugged into lyrics in fact glorifying all the wrong things - thug life, violence, crime, drugs, misogyny, and irresponsibility.  They are basically being programmed into a self-perpetuating cycle of all the wrong things.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics