School choice is not enough to transform education, writes Sol Stern in the new edition of City Journal. Stern once thought that choice really was “a panacea.”
Looking back from today’s vantage point, it is clear that the school choice movement has been very good for the disadvantaged. Public and privately funded voucher programs have liberated hundreds of thousands of poor minority children from failing public schools. The movement has also reshaped the education debate. Not only vouchers, but also charter schools, tuition tax credits, mayoral control, and other reforms are now on the table as alternatives to bureaucratic, special-interest-choked big-city school systems.
But choice may have hit the wall, Stern writes. There’s little evidence competition is doing much to improve big-city school systems. He thinks the school choice movement needs “a realistic Plan B for the millions of urban students who will remain stuck in terrible public schools.” Instruction is the key to Plan B, he suggests, contrasting Massachusetts, which has seen significant education gains, with New York City.
The Massachusetts miracle doesn’t prove that a standard curriculum and a focus on effective instruction will always produce academic progress. Nor does the flawed New York City experiment in competition mean that we should cast aside all market incentives in education. But what has transpired in these two places provides an important lesson: education reformers ought to resist unreflective support for elegant-sounding theories, derived from the study of economic activity, that don’t produce verifiable results in the classroom.
Via Education Gadfly, which also includes a reflection on the tendency of consumers to equate price with quality: Are high-priced private schools the equivalent of Two Buck Chuck?
The preponderance of studies have shown clear benefits, both academically and otherwise, for the voucher kids. It’s gratifying that the research confirms the moral and civil rights argument for vouchers.
But sadly—and this is a second development that reformers must face up to—the evidence is pretty meager that competition from vouchers is making public schools better.
So what’s to face up to? Even meager evidence is better than none, and I have yet to see evidence that vouchers make public schools worse.
Well, I don’t even care if vouchers DO make public schools worse. All that matters is that the voucher schools are better. Only the NEA argues that “but you’re making public schools worse!” So what–then make more voucher schools.
The real issue, though, is that lots of voucher schools aren’t educationally better. For one, parents have happily chosen voucher schools simply because they are PHYSICALLY SAFER, and that alone makes them better, even if not educationally better. The point is not to stop vouchers, but not to end the reform battle at vouchers either–so that voucher schools are better academically. And if that sinks public schools, I don’t feel badly about that at all.
Voucher schools are pulling the motivated students and parents out, and leaving the unmotivated behind.
This helps the motivated, and doesn’t hurt the unmotivated, because they weren’t going to try anyway.
Why is so little attention being paid to the real problem in education: students and parents who are unwilling to put forth the necessary effort?
from gahrie –”Why is so little attention being paid to the real problem in education: students and parents who are unwilling to put forth the necessary effort?”
Isn’t this really the question? My younger son is in a academic magnet public high school (top 70 in the country or whatever). The complaint we here is all the smart kids are pulled out of the zoned schools. If we had the smart kids back the zone schools would not be failing. Well…under NCLB you would still have a mess…
So…why are parents and students not held accountable? Or why has educators who work with the students that are not engaged found a way to engage them?
Is lack of motivation the core problem?
Read this passage here about a kid called Alan being taught to read in a reasonably typical lower-income school.
Is it surprising that a kid like Alan would turn out to be unmotivated? Is it Alan’s fault, or his parents’ fault, or the fault of the school system which is meant to be the place with the professional knowledge on how to teaach kids to read?
Tracy W:
I will counter your anecdote with one of my own.
I have a class with 35 students in 8th grade US history. We have a six period schedule. Last trimester this class averaged 2.5 F’s. Two weeks ago I sent home 21 failing progress reports for the second trimester. Not one parent responded. Not one student shows up for after school tutoring. I get about half the classwork turned in (even after allowing them to finish at home) and less than a quarter of the homework turned in.
Yesterday I brought some samurai swords to school for a presentation to my 7th graders about samurai. Many of them still ignored me.
I freely admit I’m stumped. I can help students with learning problems. I’m great with students who want to learn. But I have no answers for those who willfully choose not to try.
My school has tried positive reinforcement for good grades. We have tried negative reinforcement for bad grades. But my students see suspensions as the cost of doing business, and simply ignore any lesser penalties such as mandatory tutoring or detentions.
They know there are no true consequences. They know they will not be retained.
When I am assigning detentions for not bringing books or misbehaviors, the students brag about how many they already have to each other.
Parents are either unreachable, or respond with “well what do you want me to do?”
This year I have had multiple parents actually ask me if I could have their child committed to juvenile hall!
So please…give me the answer if you have one. At this point I’ll try anything…..
For one, parents have happily chosen voucher schools simply because they are PHYSICALLY SAFER, and that alone makes them better, even if not educationally better.
This may be true, but it leaves me to wonder then why can’t the public schools throw the troublemakers out?
I don’t know how it is in other states, but here in Texas, throw enough kids out of school and you get labled a failure. Joe Clark of Lean On Me fame could not do what he does in the movie today. That would be a quick trip to the failure list.
You didn’t really counter my anecdote. I attributed lack of motivation to Alan being failed by his elementary school in kindergarten, first and second grade. 8th grade is 7 years after first grade. Your kids have had years of school so your anecdote cannot distinguish between student responsibility for motivation and school responsibility for motivation.
In the case of my ancecdote, Alan starts to really recognise he is having problems with reading in the third grade. So by the time an Alan like the one in the anecdote reaches your class he will have had five years of experience of failing at reading (unless some miracle has happened).
Reading is vital for school success. What happens to a child who struggles with reading, be that due to poor teaching or a learning disability? They are extremely likely to draw one of two conclusions:
1) I am hopeless at school, so there’s no point in trying - this is known by psychologists as learned helplessness.
2) I’m smart, but I can’t read, which means that reading (and by extension, all of school) must be a pointless waste of time.
There is the odd kid who will keep trying at something they can’t do or can’t do very well for years and years, but they are not statistically very likely.
I don’t know of any good scientific evidence about what you can do to fix this by eighth grade. However, there are some methods that can be used. Such as the “Teacher-Kid Game”. Basically you set up a game so if your students misbehave or don’t pay attention, you “win”. You have to boast about how good you are and how you always win, and act as if you are sulking if they get any points, and of course you have to set up the game so they can win reasonably easily. See http://d-edreckoning.blogspot.com/2007/10/how-to-effectively-manage-classroom-ii.html.
Another post on the topic of motivating kids is here at http://d-edreckoning.blogspot.com/2007/10/how-to-effectively-manage-classroom-iii.html
Mike in Texas wrote:
> This may be true, but it leaves me to wonder then why can’t the public schools throw the troublemakers out?
Because the people who can make the decision to boot a kid aren’t under any particular pressure to do so?
That’s my guess but since you make such a fuss about teaching experience you must have an answer as well. Care to share?
“ This may be true, but it leaves me to wonder then why can’t the public schools throw the troublemakers out?
Because the people who can make the decision to boot a kid aren’t under any particular pressure to do so?
That’s my guess but since you make such a fuss about teaching experience you must have an answer as well. Care to share?”
I may have misunderstood, but I thought Mike’s answer was, “here in Texas, throw enough kids out of school and you get labled a failure.”
My read is that Mike is claiming a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t situation:
*) Keep the unmotivated kids in school, they do poorly and the school is a failure.
*) Toss the unmotivated kids, and the school is a failure.
-Mark Roulo
As a parent, I can’t do much about the education system as it is. I can’t solve the problem of students burdened with mediocre early educations, I can’t force other students and their parents to care about their classes, and I can’t force the system to allow teachers the authority to throw out troublemakers. This system was created without me, by the “professionals” presumably, and does not allow for much outside direct influence except for one thing. I can pull my child out of a problem school and put him somewhere else or homeschool him.
Of course, I usually get the argument that I should first completely overhaul our society and culture in various impossible ways before I change my child’s school.
“Yesterday I brought some samurai swords to school for a presentation to my 7th graders about samurai. Many of them still ignored me.”
Well, seppoku does seem a bit excessive.
“Yesterday I brought some samurai swords to school for a presentation to my 7th graders about samurai. Many of them still ignored me.”
How do you avoid being arrested for violation of “safe schools” laws?
This may be true, but it leaves me to wonder then why can’t the public schools throw the troublemakers out?
Great question.
Joe Clark of Lean On Me fame could not do what he does in the movie today.
That movie was released just as I was beginning college; we watched portions in a few of my undergraduate classes. I remember a slew of my classmates deriding Clark. They claimed his behavior was abhorrent (and probably criminal) for denying education to those students. After all, those kids are guaranteed free public schooling. Back then, I just rolled my eyes. These days, I would probably punch them in the face.
We’ve been doing it bassackwards…if the public schools supported and maintained proper standards of order and achievement, then it would be the unmotivated and troublesome kids who would be discharged. The market for having a system to care for the “disadvantaged” would lobby hard for voucher programs to fund schools for les miserables.
Parents would still have choice, the public would be better served, and public education system would regain its due respect. I submit that targeting vouchers to support “alternative” education programs is a better use of tax dollars than funding charters.
“Yesterday I brought some samurai swords to school for a presentation to my 7th graders about samurai. Many of them still ignored me.”
How do you avoid being arrested for violation of “safe schools” laws?
I get written permission from my principal to bring them in every year.
I submit that targeting vouchers to support “alternative” education programs is a better use of tax dollars than funding charters.
I agree and I disagree.
I don’t agree with awarding misbehavior with access to additional resources.
However, I do agree with the development of alternative education programs. I think there should be a gamut that includes work camps and boot camps for the unwilling. The idea should be to give the kids an incentive to change their behavior and attitude so that they can rejoin the “normal” school environment.
How would that help them if the reason they are unmotivated is that they’ve never been properly taught in the first place?
You assume that all the kids need is incentives, that all the problems are with the kids. But incentives don’t work by magic. If a kid doesn’t know how to read because they were badly taught in the first place, threatening them with bootcamps is not going to help. In fact, it will probably make things worse.
Tracy W:
You keep missing my point. We have gotten pretty good at identifying students who can’t do the work. We have programs for students who can’t do the work. The programs work. Those kids aren’t my problem.
My problem is the kids who can read and write, who can do Algebra but won’t. Nothing we have tried, both positive and negative reinforcement, has worked.
Some of them care enough to come to me the last week of the trimester and ask for all the work they’re missing, but most of them won’t even do that.
Tracy W: To answer your earlier question:
Is it surprising that a kid like Alan would turn out to be unmotivated? Is it Alan’s fault, or his parents’ fault, or the fault of the school system which is meant to be the place with the professional knowledge on how to teaach kids to read?
I’d say the primary responsibility lies with the parents for two reasons:
1) Producing a child that doesn’t understand the words “between” or “and” when he enters school is neglect, plain and simple.
2) Failing to monitor their child’s progress, and demand that the school educate their child is neglect also. No child should enter the third grade unable to read.
Some responsibility lies with our schools of education, that produce teachers who think things like: teaching children earlier than the first grade will stunt them and even cause them to have strong antisocial behaviors later.
Some responsibility lies with the teachers, for not teaching Alan to read.
Much responsibility lies with society, for not imposing shame on the parents, teachers, schools and schools of education for all of the above.
How have you tested that they can do the work?
http://d-edreckoning.blogspot.com/search?q=motivation.
Sadly, the children who most need the expertise of schools are the ones whose parents failed to teach them the words “between” and “and”. Those parents are also not the sort likely to “demand that the school educate their child.” Some of these parents quite possibly do not know the meanings of the words “between” themselves.
But the schools are the place full of the trained and paid professionals here. The principal of a school generally has seen thousands of kids in their career, while even the most prolific of mothers will only have about twenty kids (dads can of course have more, but a dad who fathers a hundred kids probably isn’t a deeply-involved father with all hundred). The education professionals are the ones with the broad-ranging experience in education. Just because Alan was failed by his parents is no reason for him to be failed by his school.
Okay, this has been bothering me. How do you think society should impose shame on teachers, schools and schools of education? What levers do we have? What do you think I, personally, should do differently?
And why does the responsibility lie on society, and not with schools of education, who one would think would be the professionals in teaching teachers how to teach children from disadvantaged backgrounds?
Tracy W:
I agree that not all of the responsibility lies with the parents, which is why I pointed out where else the responsibility lies. However, the primary responsibility does lie with the parents, and I for one want to keep it that way. However I do agree that poor parenting is a problem…but only because society allows it to be. Society needs to start enforcing standards on parents…primarily with social sanctions such as shame, but civil sanctions such as fines when and where neccessary. Society needs to send the message that neglecting your child’s education is unacceptable.
We also need to rid society of self destructive notions such as “acting white”. I firmly back Ward Connolly and Bill Cosby in their efforts.
Society allows Schools of Education to mis-educate beginning teachers. Society pays for these schools and should demand at least as much accountability of them as it does the rest of public education. How about a NTLB (no teacher left behind) act? My experience has been that Schools of Education don’t teach you how to teach, they indoctrinate you in an educational philosphy, usually a useless one. I hit Piaget in every ed course, but never received any advice on motivating the unmotivated. Classroom management got the least amount of attention.
The levers that society has are parental involvement in their child’s education (an increasingly rare thing in my experience), Parental involvement in schools and school boards, and demanding accountability of Schools of Education.
Mark Roulo wrote:
> My read is that Mike is claiming a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t situation:
>*) Keep the unmotivated kids in school, they do poorly and the school is a failure.
>*) Toss the unmotivated kids, and the school is a failure.
I know that but Mike’s just complaining about it. He’s not interested in the sorts of changes to the public education system that might address the problem.
This disregard of students that are disruptive and/or unmotivated isn’t just a natural phenomenon like the direction of the prevailing winds but the result of the way public education is structured. If there aren’t substantive changes to the public education the solutions to this problem will necessarily be of the public relations variety.
If the parent doesn’t know how to teach their child properly, then sanctions are not going to help if applied to the parent, just as they don’t work if applied to the child.
The parents whose children most need a top-notch education are likely to be those that are least able to help with their kids’ education. If a parent can’t read themselves, then how can they teach their kids to read? How can a parent diagnose the problems with a school if the teachers can’t?
As for parental involvement in schools - listen to some middle-class parents talk about the stonewalling they get.
I do have some sympathy for accountability for Schools of Education. Perhaps some scheme could be worked up by which a education school lecturer could only be hired after they had shown a track record in teaching kids from schools drawing on low-socio-economic groups.
The parents whose children most need a top-notch education are likely to be those that are least able to help with their kids’ education. If a parent can’t read themselves, then how can they teach their kids to read?
A parent doesn’t need to know how to read in order to demand that the school teach his child to read.
However I am perfectly willing to admit that poor parenting skills are a major part of the problem. It is my contention however that schools cannot educate children without the active cooperation of parents. Legally and practically there is nothing that teachers and schools can do to force parents to be responsible. However society can. It can shame people into being responsible parents. (at least it used to) We already have laws that force parents to send their children to school, perhaps we can devise a way to force the parents to be actively involved also.
I also agree that the most difficult teaching jobs often get the least qualified teachers. That’s why I support “hazardous duty” pay to give an incentive to the better teachers to take the harder jobs. But most teachers will tell you that the working environment is more important than the money. Teachers want motivated well-behaved students whose parents are involved. That’s just human nature.
How can a parent diagnose the problems with a school if the teachers can’t?
First of all I think teachers can diagnose the problems in a school. We certainly do at my school. Everyone knows what teachers can’t teach, which teachers are phoning it in, which teachers need coaching etc. Everyone knows which administrator to go to to get results. We even know which families will support the teacher, and which families will blame the teacher. We know that the newest “great thing” (currently Professional Learning Communities) is not a panacea, and will be replaces in two or three years with the next great thing. The problem is, teachers don’t have power, and don’t make the decisions. Administrators and schoolboards do.
Secondly, the only diagnosis a parent needs to make is that the school is failing my child by not teaching him the three r’s and critical thinking skills. Then the answer is simple…get involved. Go the school and talk to the teachers. Talk to the principal. Talk to the schoolboard.
Changing the law so that schools aren’t penalized for expelling troublemakers is beyond his power.
Sanctions can get the parent to back up the message from the system, instead of contradicting it.
If active opposition to education can be defined as child abuse or neglect, that is another lever which can be applied. I think it would be a stretch, but it may pass muster with the courts. If failure to complete HS before having children can be defined as neglect, that would be a very big lever. Sure, you have a right to have children… but no right to neglect them if you do.
Coming late to this game…
I think that society has a lot to answer for. Look at the masses of single unwed mothers who’re clearly unfit to look after their children; at the so-called Children;s Services bureaucracy, staffed by rejects from the DMV; the court system, staffed by morons with masters and doctorates in Psychology and Underwater Basket-Weaving, who couldn’t find their behinds with both hands under a high bright sun; the “caring advocates” who perpetuate the system by telling the single mothers that “it’s not your fault”; at the broken families, broken by a system that makes divorce so easy and profitable for a female that there’s no reason to try to make a relationship - never mind a marriage - work; at the drivel that we see on TV, with its promises of perfect romantic love. And if you find out after a whirlwind courtship that your partner/spouse/lover isn’t quite perfect - Damn! she’s got a zit! or Dammit! he leaves the toilet seat up! - well, then, clearly it’s time to end the marriage and go searchin’ fer the right one.
Society is also guilty, IMHO, of deifying rubbish like self-esteem and similar rubbish. My 8th-grade son is taking a 10th-grade maths course in a private school, yet when I compare the textbook to Kiselev’s Planimetry, used in Russia for the 7th- and 8th-grades, Kiselev is so far ahead it’s unbelievable.
As for gahrie’s comment’s, I agree that parents must take an interest, but it ain’t essential:
“It is my contention however that schools cannot educate children without the active cooperation of parents.”
What about boarding schools? Uncommon in this country, true, but you can’t ignore them.
It is my contention however that schools cannot educate children without the active cooperation of parents.”
What about boarding schools? Uncommon in this country, true, but you can’t ignore them.
Boarding schools have adults who act in loco parentis and do a better job of supervising academic effort than most parents.
Ah, so it ain’t parents per se, it’s adult influence? Then you should have said so, don’t you think?
But in fact one doesn’t have as much contact with the masters as you might think.
It was primarily attitude, I think. It was a serious business, and there was no self-esteem crap; and the worst of the masters (”teachers”) took his job seriously.
Just curious, how much do you know about boarding schools?
1) When I used the term parents,I meant it in the broadest term of “supervising guardian”. I have many students who have older brothers and sisters acting as their parents, and many more who are in foster or group homes.
2)I agree about the self esteem crap…the best way to feel good about yourself is to succeed at something difficult.
3) I never attended boarding schools, but many of my friends did, and when I went to school (on an American AF base in England) I knew many American and English kids who attended boarding schools.
However, if a parent can’t read themselves, they are rather handicapped in teaching their child to read.
And it’s all very well for a parent to “demand” that the school teach their child to read, but if the school doesn’t know how to teach the kid to read and the parent doesn’t know how to teach the child to read, it ain’t going to happen.
Wrong. (unless by active cooperation you only mean getting the kids to school on time). There are successful schools serving disadvantaged areas. See
http://www.heritage.org/Press/Commentary/ED042700.cfm?RenderforPrint=1
http://www.amazon.ca/No-Excuses-Lessons-Performing-Poverty/dp/product-description/0891950907
http://www.prichardcommittee.org/Ford%20Study/FordReportJE.pdf
And your evidence for this statement is?
And the evidence that this has been effective for how many parents is?
I don’t follow the logic behind this. If merely talking to the teachers, principal and schoolboard will result in your kid learning how to read, then why don’t the kids teachers, principal and schoolboard teach the kid who to read without the parents talking?
This does not help if the message from the system is incomplete and contradictory from the child’s point of view.
I suggest you read this chapter here about a boy called Alan Jones from a disadvantaged background.
If Alan Jones is given reading material which allows him to “read” by describing the pictures then the school is giving him a contradictory message of what reading is about. Having the parent back up this contradictory message (which probably means assignments home for the parent to let Alan read to them, when the books Alan brings home have the same fault), simply enforces the confusion.
If Alan Jones is given books to read with words he hasn’t been taught, and Alan Jones’s parents, don’t know them either, then backing up the message from home won’t work.
However, the children of those people who have children before completing high school are not at all at fault for their parents’ bad decisions. Schools have a duty to teach all their kids, not merely the ones who had sensible parents.
Indeed, it is far more important that they teach the kids whose parents made bad decisions. And it can be done.
Ah, the only people in this country who are not responsible for the failures of schools are the trained and paid professionals who work for them, or train teachers to work in them.
Tracy W:
No one has ever said there aren’t bad teachers. In fact I explicitly admitted that there are bad teachers several posts above this.
However bad teachers cannot survive an environment in which parents won’t allow them to. Teachers have no power to weed out unmotivated parents or students.
To get back to the original topic, school choice allows motivated parents and students to escape classrooms dominated by the unmotivated. The schools dominated by the unwilling will continue to fail…and I have yet to see anyone suggest a solution that will fix them.
Allen wrote:
He’s not interested in the sorts of changes to the public education system that might address the problem.
Sure I am, you just aren’t interested in hearing it.
I’m all in favor of going Joe Clark on those kids. If they are refusing to learn and keeping others from learning, toss’em on their butts out the door.
If you had read my post a little more carefully you would have seen that I’m questioning why the politicians in power refuse to give schools the ability to do so, and in fact punish the schools for doing so (at least here in Texas).
What’s your answer for that one, Allen?
“Ah, the only people in this country who are not responsible for the failures of schools are the trained and paid professionals who work for them, or train teachers to work in them.”
Alas! Sarcasm from halfway around the world!
gahrie said:
“However bad teachers cannot survive an environment in which parents won’t allow them to. Teachers have no power to weed out unmotivated parents or students.”
Take a look at Kitchen Table Math and the story of the Irvington public schools.
Great blog! Very interesting read, and I’m glad I discovered this. i will recommend this blog to many of my friends and colleagues who are teachers.
I had already read it. It does not contradict my point, and I question your motives in bringing it up.
Nobody here has made excuses for this situation. I said nothing about it because I thought that nothing
needed to be added. That sorry excuse for teaching is a clarion call for no-excuses testing to make certain
that nobody falls through the cracks ever again. I’m sure Martin Kozloff would agree.
But that only takes care of the school’s end. What if the school takes Alan and puts him into intensive phonics, and his attitude is still “Why should I give a damn?” What if his mother comes to the school and rants and raves about the hard time the remedial teacher is giving her poor son, or how dare they hold him back a grade… or three?
That is when the law should show the mother (almost certainly not the father) what grade level he’s reading at, and tell her that if SHE stands in the way of getting him up to speed then HE will go to boarding school and SHE may go to jail for contributing to delinquency.
The same for the teenage unwed parents who lack not just the ability to support themselves, but the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic. Can we find a way to send them straight to boot camp, where the only way out is to pass at the 12th grade level? It may be punitive, but the culture of teenage parenthood would not long stand under such pressure, and that could only help everyone in the end.
Gahrie, okay, lets take the case of Alan Jones. He is failing to learn to read because, inter alia:
- the teachers at school use vocabulary he doesn’t recognise.
- he didn’t properly learnt the connection between letter sounds and letter shapes in kindergarten and first grade
- the first books he was given to read accidently gave him the impression that reading was a matter of describing the picture in the book.
- the books use vocabulary Alan doesn’t recognise.
So, according to you, if Mr and Mrs Jones trot along to the school and talk to the teachers, principal and school board, then Alan Jones will succeed at school. I presume this means that the school structure will immediately be revised so that:
- the teachers teach Alan the vocabulary they use at school that he doesn’t already know.
- the school will start supplying Alan with books that do not accidently give him the wrong impression that reading is about describing the picture in the book and they will correct his initial wrong impression.
- the teachers will teach Alan the vocabulary used in books before he reads them.
- the school will ensure Alan understands the connection between letter sounds and letter shapes.
- the school will do this despite the fact that Alan has several years of experience at failing at learning to read, and by now is rather unmotivated.
If the schools can do this simply because Mr and Mrs Jones talked to the teachers, the principal and the school board, why can’t they do this without the talking? Surely it would be simpler to teach Alan properly from the start?
And do you really believe that merely talking to the teachers, principal and schoolboard will get all the bad teachers fired?
I provided a set of links about high performing schools in low-income areas and yet you say “I have yet to see anyone suggest a solution that will fix them”. I guess you didn’t read them. If you can’t be stuffed clicking on a link and reading the material at the other end, what exactly do you want people suggesting solutions to do? I can’t come around to your house and read the material to you.
Reality Czech - I am sorry I did not pick up that you had already read the story of Alan Jones.
You say my bringing it up makes you question my motives, but I am afraid I don’t know what your question actually is. If you ask me your question openly, I promise to do my best to answer it, but I never took telepathy 101 so at the moment I don’t know what you are questioning. Can you please state your question explicitly?
Firstly, I hope the school would give Alan more remedial education than simply intensive phonics. A lot of his problem is a lack of vocabulary, being taught how to sound out words from letters will not fix that.
Secondly, there are a variety of methods for motivating kids. With children a simple trick is the “Teacher-me game”. Here is a description:
(From Your Child Can Succeed via http://d-edreckoning.blogspot.com/search?q=teacher+game).
The way the You-Me game works with a defiant child is by making use of the existing antagonism of the child against the teacher. The teacher should generally ham it up by boasting about how good they are when they “win”, pretending to be shocked when the kids first win, sulking and being a bad “loser”.
I hope the school would step into remedy the reading problem long before it got to the stage of holding a kid back a grade. A year is a very long time for a kid to be failing at learning to read. Indeed, I would say that if a school’s solution to a failure to read is simply to hold a kid back a grade then the school deserves to be ranted and raved at.
The boot camp had better have darn good teachers at it, given that they will be dealing with teenagers who have been failing at learning to read, write and arithmetic for all the years they were elementary kids.
Tracy W:
So you believe that every student who is failing to do their work and is a discipline problem in school, is doing so because they cannot read, write, or do math? There is no such thing as a child too lazy to do the work? There is no such thing as a child willfully refusing to do the work? There are no cultural imperiatives encouraging kids to fail?
I have students that can do Algebra, read a novel, and write a well reasoned essay. They have done so. Some were straight A students at one time. Yet they are failing multiple classes. They turn in no homework, little classwork and laugh about getting bad grades and detentions. Their parents make no attempt to contact me, and can’t be reached when I try to contact them.
But I’m the problem.
Tracy W:
So you believe that every student who is failing to do their work and is a discipline problem in school, is doing so because they cannot read, write, or do math? There is no such thing as a child too lazy to do the work? There is no such thing as a child willfully refusing to do the work? There are no cultural imperiatives encouraging kids to fail?
I have students that can do Algebra, read a novel, and write a well reasoned essay. They have done so. Some were straight A students at one time. Yet they are failing multiple classes. They turn in no homework, little classwork and laugh about getting bad grades and detentions. Their parents make no attempt to contact me, and can’t be reached when I try to contact them.
But I’m the problem.
Actually, Gahrie, I suspect the principal of your students’ elementary school, and your students’ elementary school’s administration, and the training schools the elementary teachers attended were the problem. I understand you are teaching seventh and eighth graders. It’s hardly your fault that you have inherited seven or eight years of problems.
I blame the elementary schools’ principal and the administration because it seems unfair to me to blame teachers if they are unsupported by the administration and/or received inadequate training.
For the case of your students who can do the work, but don’t, did you investigate the links I provided earlier? See http://d-edreckoning.blogspot.com/2007/10/how-to-effectively-manage-classroom-ii.html.
Another post on the topic of motivating kids is here at http://d-edreckoning.blogspot.com/2007/10/how-to-effectively-manage-classroom-iii.html
Now can you please answer my questions? Do you believe that if Alan Jones’s parents simply talked to his teachers, principal and schoolboard, the school would start teaching him effectively? And do you really believe that merely talking to the teachers, principal and schoolboard will get all the bad teachers fired?
Just to repeat myself, I don’t think you are the problem.
I would agree, but we are talking about Alan Jones here. If he is going to learn to read with students at his level, he is going to be back in elementary school.
The boot camp would supply something that those teenagers had obviously never perceived before: incentive. The boot camp should be punishment too. We throw deadbeat parents in jail, and a teen with a baby and no possible means of support is as bad or worse.
“Why is so little attention being paid to the real problem in education: students and parents who are unwilling to put forth the necessary effort?”
Because 1) this has always been a problem, and 2) it will always be a problem, because 3) there isn’t a damned thing that can be done about it. Any discussion is nothing more than meaningless hand-wringing that will do nothing but make the contributors assuage their guilt.
[Because 1) this has always been a problem, and 2) it will always be a problem, because 3) there isn’t a damned thing that can be done about it. Any discussion is nothing more than meaningless hand-wringing that will do nothing but make the contributors assuage their guilt.]
There is value to at least acknowledging the problem. As it is, the problem goes unacklowdged. This lack of ackowledgement has consequences. It leads educationists to come up with endless and costly pseudo-solutions, like endless PD, reconstitution, etc. All based on misdiagnoses.
Instr
Many of us parents certainly do acknowledge that many students and parents are unmotivated or apathetic. That’s why we want to distance ourselves from them. We also cannot do anything about other people not interested in getting a good education. I don’t want my children stuck in classrooms with those kids with those parents. How does that help anyone? As for the poor teachers stuck with these students, I don’t know what the answer is. But that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t have the right to find somewhere else to put my kids.
Many teachers’ arguments seem to ignore the parents and kids who are very motivated to learn. We get pushed aside in the rush to rationalize why so many parents and kids are apathetic.
[I don’t want my children stuck in classrooms with those kids with those parents.]
I totally sympathize with your predicament. The answer is to group those willing to learn, i.e. homogeneous grouping. It will never be done because it runs counter to a powerful, unshakable educationist dogma.
gahrie,
What sort of an area (urban, inner-city, suburban, rural, etc) do you teach in?
Mike in Texas wrote:
> What’s your answer for that one, Allen?
That you’re not interested in the sorts of changes to the public education system that might address the problem.
There are already schools in Texas that can do just that, eject sufficiently troublesome students. They’re charters and you’ve complained bitterly about the option enjoyed by charters to eject those students. Maybe you should have been a bit more honest and admitted that, far from being opposed to the removal of disruptive students you were jealous of the option.
So the answer is that all you have to do is get rid of the comforting status quo of the school district and you can get rid of the anti-educational considerations that are peculiar to school districts.
I teach in Fontana California…an old steel town that is now being rapidly developed with $500K to $800K houses because it straddles four freeways that head into Los Angeles and Orange County.
Large numbers of poor Hispanics, Blacks and Whites gradually being priced out of their neighborhoods.