re: Spinoff - re: Paying teachers to teach at bad schools........Soapbox #3

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1)OK. We'll start. Yes, the starting problem of most bad schools is the reality that they are filled with a population that sucks and doesn't give a shite about schools. BUT, that's WAY too general.

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1) I don't know if it's too general. It's a major problem and a specific problem that has direct consequences on the learning environment of the entire school.

Take for example when I taught at a suburban high school in Birmingham, AL. I had a student transfer in after the first month. From Ensley, one of the worst neighborhoods in the city. His dad was murdered by a cousin. Mom was on drugs. Kid was arrested for something awful and ended up moving in with an aunt who lived in my school's zone.

He disrupted EVERYTHING. In every class. Took 7 months, but by the end of the school year, he was sent to the alternative school. While people would gasp at the major issues he had (fights, throwing a desk across a room because he was mad at a teacher, and the one that got him kicked out: sexual harassment against three girls including actually sexually assaulting one), it was the day to day bullshite that caused the most problems.

Such as refusing to do his work on a daily basis. Throwing tantrums over the silliest shite. Blatant disrespect that was so egregious his classmates, who were by no means used to seeing someone act that way, would lose focus in class. The number of times he had to be removed from the classroom, which delayed everything because we'd just sit there and wait until an AP or SRO got to the room to take him out. The disruptions and distractions when he would do shite in other classrooms and my students would come in talking about him. The issues in the hallway. The language.

Everything all on one kid.

Now imagine instead of one inner-city kid with that kind of home life and those kind of issues, you have 50% of your roll being that kid. Or even more.

I think it's impossible for motivated kids (and let's be honest, only a select few of the brightest students are actually motivated. teenagers in general are apathetic and moody) to learn with those kind of disruptions in the classroom.

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3)The above are JUST THE BEGINNING! Now, let's talk about what happens to teachers. Teachers are human too. They like to work in a pleasant environment just like most of the rest of us. When confronted by the huge populations of don't give a fricks, many of them just want to go find kids they can actually reach.

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You're hitting on something important here, but I think this is actually where you're getting too general.

Yes, teachers enjoy working in positive environments, and the good ones will tend to move on to better pastures just like in any other profession.

But it's not just the kids that cause teachers to leave. Hereis a case of a teacher of the year leaving the wealthiest public school system in the state of Alabama for an inner city school. She didn't leave because of the students; she left because the Birmingham school system didn't pay her because the state wasn't sure she was "qualified" to teach. She didn't have enough state test bullshite, so even though she was the best teacher from the best school system, she wasn't qualified.

I have lamented my lack of evidence of this for years, but I can also point to a story I read years ago about a physician who retired at 58 years old and wanted to teach biology at a high school for the last part of his career. He was turned down not only because he didn't have the Praxis scores or other test scores to teach, which I'm sure he could have passed in an instant, but also because he didn't have a student teaching experience that was required by NCLB at the time.

3) Which brings up the biggest issue of all: tests, standards, curriculum, and definitions that do not match the culture or environment of the school.

We are kidding ourselves if we think that Ensley, Alabama should be held to the same standards at this time as Mountain Brook, Alabama. But every year we see in the news which school systems are succeeding and which are failing. We're defining bad schools based on tests that some schools will never pass - at least at this time - and all we're doing is setting them up to fail.

We can continue to bitch about their work ethic and behavior, but in my opinion, we will not start fixing these issues until we relinquish our hardened stances on what an inner-city African American kid should be able to do by the time he's 18. Vocations, tracking, and rewriting standardized tests and curriculum should be considered when developing a school system. Some hate this because on the conservative side, they see this as rewriting standards to appease particular races and ethnicities. Some hate this because on the liberal side, they see it as identifying particular races and ethnicities as being unable to succeed based on their race and ethnicity.

I simply see it as a reality: we've been doing this for years and the same strategies aren't working. It's time to admit that if the students are failing and/or dropping out year after year, it may not be just them that are at fault.

So after all of that, I would say that paying teachers more will do little to curtail the real issues. The best solution is to provide an education that reaches the community based on its needs and goals. Common Core for example is majorly tailored towards preparing students for college despite its claim that it's tailored towards both college prep and careers. Are those kids in Ensley going to college? Maybe a few. Mostly won't and will feel frustrated at the "pointless" topics they're having to learn especially when all they do from day one in elementary school is feel like a failure when trying to learn those topics.

You want students to feel successful in school? Provide an environment that teachers want to work in and stay in despite the pay?

Give them a curriculum that is designed to serve the community, which means removing curriculum and standards from the hands of the federal government and allowing each individual school system to develop its own. And yes, this means removing those awful standardized tests that do little to help students and teachers and more to determine which schools get funding and notoriety and which ones don't.