Reply to How to help MCPS' lowest performing students?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Some of you should visit the homes if an opportunity allows of a student who may be low performing. Some need help. Help them.[/quote]

You may be surprised to learn that schools aren't able to police the life choices of private families. [/quote]

Does each elementary school have adult reading volunteers (or [i]enough[/i] staff) who can come in to read with students who are struggling? Maybe that could help the lowest performing students.[/quote]

Our ES didn't allow parent volunteers.[/quote]

You would be surprised to see how skilled and knowledgeable a teacher has to be for any child who doesn’t pick up reading quickly. Mild dyslexia is extremely common and probably a huge part of the problem here. The good news is the mcps curriculum is much better for this now. However, random volunteers wouldn’t make a big difference without intensive training and ideally years of experience. In fact, lack of training can sometimes make the problem worse. [/quote]

Teaching reading isn't harder than neurosurgery. [/quote]

I'm not sure that is the right comparison. Teachers don't get the luxury of working 1-1 with a child who can't read, the way neurosurgeons completely focus on one patient at a time. They are also trying to treat and triage the other 24 students at the same time while following a curriculum, preparing kids for standardized tests, attending SO MANY IEP meetings, dealing with behaviors, etc. I think if a teacher were assigned to just remediate one kid's reading struggles at a time, they would be more successful...you know, like parents can. Even neurosurgeons would struggle if they had to operate on a brain while helping 20 other patients with a variety of issues at the same time.[/quote]

Most teachers don’t care nor do school admin.  We’ve been trying to get an iep for years and do one every year and are told no because the kid is smart and has involved parents.  This year we had to get an attorney.  The vp basically only allows kids of specific races and other factors.

Kids aren’t getting the foundation.   They don’t teach the basics anymore.  They don’t flag learning disabilities till later and even so they regularly refuse ieps or don’t follow them.  For esol, start teaching the kids in their language so they can keep up whike having intense English classes.  [/quote]

There are plenty of ESOL vacancies now. How to you think they could fill them with teachers who speak every language the ESOL students speak?[/quote]

You can start with Spanish, or use translators—lots of options.  You cannot complain that students are struggling with low test scores or not attending school when you consider why they would attend school if they have no idea what is being said and cannot complete the work due to the language barrier.  Get rid of the immersion programs and use those teachers.  You can give all kids 1-2 day a week specials in Spanish instead.[/quote]
Oh it’s the immersion program attacker again  :roll:

Immersion teaching is different than ESOL. If they wanted to teach ESOL they would be doing it. They are in demand and would not put up with an involuntary transfer.

How do you go from talking about helping ESOL students to trying to get 1-2 day a week specials in Spanish? You sound envious. Not healthy.

1-2 day a week specials in Spanish is not going to move the needle to fluency, and even if it did, there are not enough immersion teachers to equitably allocate them to every school.[/quote]

I'm not envious.  We didn't want immersion and mine started in MS and are fluent.  Specials are for exposure and they start in MS.  The immersion teach a half day in english and a half day in spanish.  Save those teachers for the spanish speakers who are only getting classes in english and don't speak english.  That's the only way to improve things.[/quote]

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