That's from the Wisconsin State Journal, linked and discussed here at Reddit. East High School is in Madison, Wisconsin.
I love Madison, I do, I even highly regard the MMSD [Madison Metropolitan School District], but the MO in this city is well intentioned with piss poor execution. I grew up in the Madison public schools, I saw how the district excelled in serving some students and I also saw how it utterly failed others, though I cannot put that blame entirely on the MPD [Madison Police Department] or the staff at the schools, to me it seemed like everyone in those buildings really does their work from the heart and do the best with what they have. Removing the SROs [school resource officers] was a knee jerk and downright ignorant move, especially without any kind of replacement as promised, when I graduated from West about a decade ago the SRO was an integral part of the school community, they really knew the students and looked out for them. I'm certain not everyone had a positive experience with the SRO, thats the nature of public servitude, however the thought of them not being present very much bothers me, especially in an era where a quick response is vital for maintaining the safety of students and staff. The city, for some positive press and optics, has taken the guardrails off and put the students and staff of our schools in danger. I know this issue is much deeper than an SRO in the school, however it's a start. I always thought I would want my kids to attend school in the MMSD, I am a third generation Madison West (and Central just to show you how far back it goes) graduate but here I am living in Middleton now, partially because of the schools.
Middleton is the next town to the west of Madison.
Another comment:
There are horrible problems with the Madison school system that go back decades. One of the biggest problems is that you can’t say this without getting attacked for being anti teacher.
This can’t continue. Well, that’s not true: it actually can continue, but will result in more of the best teachers and students leaving the system.
The teachers cannot be happy with the situation. I can't imagine teaching at East High School. I picture the teachers all afraid of the students and the students knowing it and the worst of them exploiting it.
I'm seeing at least 2 comments that say it's not just Madison and linking to this WaPo article from a couple weeks ago, "Back to school has brought guns, fighting and acting out":
Anecdotally, teachers and even some students say the level of disturbance this fall has gone far beyond years past. In some cases, students are unaccustomed to following the rules that govern a school building. They don’t grasp the expectations for their ages, teachers say, because the last time some were in school was two grades ago.
Dawn Neely-Randall, a fifth-grade teacher in Elyria, Ohio, has taught for more than 30 years and said she has never seen “so much defiance” from students, including children pushing each other and lobbing verbal attacks....
In Lysa Mullady’s elementary school in Suffolk County on Long Island, the behavior problems are small things: “No one can get along on the playground.” “The remote-learning kids who are coming back into the classroom have forgotten what it’s like to be with other children,” she said. “There’s a skill set that you need to problem-solve.” Those skills include talking it out and walking away, she said. “They haven’t had to navigate outside their homes for so long they’ve really forgotten how to do it.”...
At a recent meeting of the school board in the Addison Central School District in Vermont, Fawnda Buttolph said she has never seen such poor student behavior in some 20 years of teaching. This fall, she has worked as a substitute in four district schools. “The kids are in charge and they know it,” she said during a long speech in which she broke into tears. She described disrespectful students refusing to do classwork and “chaotic” hallways....
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81 comments:
They need more Glenn Ford teachers to kick the asses of the Vic Morrows.
That is, if you believe the cinematic reality of 50+ years ago.
“The remote-learning kids who are coming back into the classroom have forgotten what it’s like to be with other children,” she said. “There’s a skill set that you need to problem-solve.” Those skills include talking it out and walking away, she said. “They haven’t had to navigate outside their homes for so long they’ve really forgotten how to do it.”...
Blame the schools who shut down classrooms, and idiot parents who hysterically kept their children locked away rather than telling them "go outside and play with other kids."
Of course, I'm not so sure "talking it out and walking away" is always the best way to solve a problem. The world would be a better place if more bullies got a swift punch on the nose.
I'm a 2 issue voter: education & good jobs. IMHO for some time the Dims have not been working for either. Their #2 support group (after their need for AA votes)- teachers - have not worked for better schools/education. They've blatantly worked for themselves.
Yeah, right. They simply forgot they were supposed to behave, all thanks to the pandemic. I wonder, is there anything else that happened over the past 18 mos. that might have contributed to these students thinking they can do whatever they want and no one will stop them? Why isn't this situation being described (quite accurately, mind you) as "mostly peaceful?"
Forced choice public education will end soon.
Parents are going to demand a choice in where to send their kids.
Good teachers are going to be in demand.
Shithead leftist maoists are going to be out of a job.
Sorry, but don't the teachers (and especially their unions) bear some responsibility for this?
You shut the schools down for the better part of two years, demonize and defund your own police, make kids wear nearly-useless masks when you finally allow them back, and fill their brains up with racial hate and guilt.
And then fights break out. Can you believe it?
Children are innocent, and the adults are evil. That's the eternal clickbait, at least if you add sex.
And the schools never needed to be closed. The science never showed that.
We all know which people appreciate SRO's and which people "have bad experiences" with SRO's.
But democrats are giving space to the thugs and bullies.
Because they are thugs and bullies.
it is part of their drive to build a system that values group identity more than virtue.
Because democrats fair poorly in a system that values virtue. They are stupid violent people.
I have several younger teacher friends in public ed, and many are bailing out of "brick and mortar" as fast as they can and working virtual/digital. They won't be specific as to why, but I suspect this is at the heart of it.
This is the vibrant "equity" and "diversity" that your state's voters have voted for.
And students are going to get a lot more of it.
Remember New York City schools of the late 60s and early 70s, where violence was endemic and teachers were even set on fire? That's what you're heading back to.
And if you speak out against it, you're going to be labeled a "white supremacist."
--- "Removing the SROs [school resource officers] was a knee jerk and downright ignorant move, especially without any kind of replacement as promised,... The city, for some positive press and optics, has taken the guardrails off and put the students and staff of our schools in danger."
Is there one political party that has been governing Madison for a long time?
THIS is what happens when you Insist on naming your highschools after RACISTS!!!
EAST was a RACIST!!! RENAME THIS SCHOOL!!!!!
(and don't get me started on WEST; that son of b*tch)
This is what the Democrats have given America: chaos in the public schools.
The Jesuits know how to keep order and discipline in schools. The public schools could learn from the Jesuits. There were no police officers at my Jesuit high school; just the Prefect of Discipline, Fr. Daniel FX Laughlin.
"Very concerning:
This school has big differences in the suspension rates of different student groups."
"Underserved** students at this school may be falling far behind other students in the state, and this school may have large achievement gaps."
White kids are doing better than Asians, which is unusual.
** Newspeak for "stupid".
So,a third of the students are not going to school on account of violence and unrest. Does staying home from whatever is going on at East High School make them awful people?
Notice how all of these activities are violent people trying to cow and suppress peaceful people.
And how the democrats and this regime are always supporting and encouraging the violent people.
Every single time.
Discipline went out of fashion thirty years ago or more, accompanied by a concurrent change in mission from teaching pupils how to approach and solve problems step-by-step to strange “approaches” or “methods of learning” that skipped the building blocks young minds need to process information: whole language replaced phonics, new math just jettisoned times tables and any rote repetition (you know, the only way one learns to do exacting tasks like play an instrument or memorize a soliloquy), social studies displaced civics, opting out completely eradicated PE, media consumption replaced art and play, and ethnic studies took the place of history. Common Core extended and accelerated this intentional movement away from learning to indoctrination. Any parent here tried doing what has replaced New Math? It’s even worse than I described.
So having dismissed discipline and teaching methods that worked awesome for 200 years and making the curriculum boring and impenetrable, with an obvious nationwide decline in performance putting America at the bottom of international rankings, the Educrat Establishment now wrings their hands and frets about the environment being an unsafe workplace and hellish environment? What did you think would happen as you systematically drove away all parents who could afford to send their children to private schools or do it at home. This last year was an eye opener for parents who had no idea how far schools had descended into this thoroughly progressive hell world of their own creation.
Ha, my oldest daughter just texted me and said half the school is absent today because someone on social media said they were going to shoot up the school today. We got the vague, corporate sounding email from the principal at the beginning of the week assuring us everything would be ok. I'm of the Columbine generation; I think most threats, especially posted on social media are just kids trying to get a day off. So my kid went to school.
Kids today are learning from their elders that if you are progressive enough...you can do and say whatever you want without any consequences. This will not end well. We warned you. They learn from experience. When you have a Vice President who bails out rioters...WHAT do you expect??
"Back to school has brought guns, fighting and acting out"
Oddly impersonal phrasing. The reopening of school "has brought"? Who, exactly, did this? Might there be a reason to leave the actual agents out?
“The kids are in charge and they know it”
Which "kids"? All kids, some kids, what? Is there a problem imposing discipline on "the kids"? I know, I know . . .
What other school system in the world needs police to patrol its halls? Somalia?
It is time to recognize that public education no longer works. Past shortcomings are now magnified to the point of collapse. Educational outcomes continue to fall and are well below the levels required for graduates to be qualified for jobs in our post industrial economy. Why do we fail to understand the enormous pressures for unlimited visas for workers with technical skills? The so-called progressives of the tech industries act totally out of self interest in hiring (so much for stakeholder capitalism). The failure to educate students to even minimal standards has fueled the push by educators and the teachers unions to distract the views of citizens who are the key stakeholders of the public school systems.The issue can’t be a failed system. It must be inadequate funding, racism, presence of police on campus, etc. I don’t even see any leaders pointing to a model of improvement that has worked. Public schools have even failed in their mission of social harmony. It is time to introduce competition in education through a paradigm shift involving vouchers which are the natural extension of stakeholder thinking. There is no getting back to the illusion of 1950’s and 1960’s success. It turns out that that success rode on the back of an American culture that no longer exists. Success in spite of a failed model of public education, not because of public education. If we care about our children, it’s time to show it by making fundamental changes in how we provide for their education.
Just another formerly cherished community institution being torn apart by an indifferent elite. It's just getting worse.
There have been fights every day at my neighborhood high school. I have theories.
Leftists want this.
In terms of the younger kids "being in charge and they know it" -- I wonder if educators are underestimating both the children's trauma from losing a huge chunk of their lives to this scary, invisible monster that was walking around and killing people so that they had to hide in their homes and only communicate with screens, and to, now that they're back, being surrounded by face coverings?
The best elementary school teachers use a lot of non-verbal cues and facial expressions to keep order-- this is one reason why ASD kids have so many issues.
So, by removing that source of information to the students, now you've basically put ALL of them in the position of ASD kids-- at a time when they're also experiencing collective PTSD. (For kids, with limited understanding of statistics and the inability to parse media messages, COVID was much scarier than it was to adults, even when their adults worked really hard to shield them,)
This doesn't excuse the high school kids for feral behavior, of course, but I think that because educators DON'T want to admit how damaging first shutdowns, and now masks, are to kids, they're not able to get to root causes of the problems.
The Reddit link doesn't take you to Reddit.
Gosh. Sending kids home for an undetermined amount of time, calling virtual learning "just as good" as in-person, bringing them back to wear masks that cover 2/3 of their faces while you monitor them to make sure they aren't too close to each other, cancelling all or most fun activities, creating a neighborhood environment of extreme political unrest to the point that landmark statues are toppled in the community, demonizing the people tasked with restoring order...who would think that all of that would lead to unruly students? How utterly shocking.
It sounds as if the demise of our social fabric- the very foundations of a civil society- that have been broken in most of our major cities has also found it's way to the medium sized towns like Madison. Its not a coincidence that these cities with the worst problems are Democratic run cities with Democratic (i.e. 'progressive') policies. Policies put in place over many years, that eventually lead to where they will naturally go- like water flowing down a mountanside crevice. It should not be a surprise when water flows down a hillside.
"The kids are in charge" was stated or inferred years ago in Detroit, Chicago, Baltimore, etc. schools. It's now reached the bastions of our college towns where the more 'enlightened' and soft-pedaled approaches to handling bad behavior included removing those who stand between the bad behaving and the good. Nice move with obvious results.
Add in the prospect of kids out of touch with society at large for a year, communicating only in the language of Snark found on social media platforms. Add in the tense, hateful environment that they all find themselves living in daily- as the constant drumbeat of wokeness and correct speak hovers over all of them.
The result is that you have kids with no standards to follow and no barriers. No recognized authorities to tell them 'no'- or to take action and show them 'no'. No authority other than the number of hits their comments get, or a video of them tearing up a teacher might gain them on InstaZuck.
This is not a surprise. You get more of what you cultivate, what you nurture. We've been growing this environment for decades now. That Madison is just getting its dose is almost surprising considering how poorly the adults in that town seem to act at times. I would not be surprised to see similar stories coming out of other 'progressive' college towns.
About 30 years ago, I moved to the East Village in NYC. One morning in September, a friend who had lured me there was driving us to work. At the end of the block, I noticed ~15 men in uniform standing in front of a nondescript building.
Me: I didn't know there was a police station so close.
Him: That is a school. They are the guards.
Go to the next school board meeting of your district and ask them how many students have been expelled from the district over the last ten years. Then ask them how many students were suspended from each school.
We no longer enforce school discipline.
So having dismissed discipline and teaching methods that worked awesome for 200 years
All in an attempt to avoid the truth that Black kids do worse academically and behave worse than White kids.
"The public schools could learn from the Jesuits. There were no police officers at my Jesuit high school; just the Prefect of Discipline, Fr. Daniel FX Laughlin."
I went to a public school. We didn't have a Prefect of Discipline but there was Vice Principal Weber. He had a wooden paddle and if you ended up in his office too often, he acquainted you with it. Interestingly enough, even though the school didn't have any police officers, it also didn't have any of the nonsense you hear so much about today.
@Althouse, based on your previous posts the Madison School Board long ago instituted a discipline policy where discipline became stricter as the children’s’ skins lightened, and conversely, more and more lax as the children’s’ skins darkened. Add removing the SROs to this policy, and violence in the schools is the inevitable result.
It has not escaped my notice that discipline policies like this, coupled with the soft bigotry of low expectations, means that there really are white people sabotaging black children — but they are the white teachers indoctrinated at their universities, and the white administrators who enforce race-based discipline policies that are stricter for white and Asian students than black students, and, ultimately the white members of the Madison School Board.
Let’s get honest. The teacher’s union INSTITUTED the national drive to kick cops out of schools. They’re getting what they deserve for that and also for voting Democrat, and also for lying and trying to downplay the reality of violence and chaos because they’ve been trained to be good little Democrats and not blame the dysfunction and thugs.
So, they reap what they sow now, and so do the good students they claim to care about so much.
Modern K-12 teachers are, on the whole, either stupid or liars or brainwashed or all three. Or they know they don’t dare tell the truth or they will be punished. It’s a grotesque charade.
Deirdre and Cheryl: it’s not COVID.
It’s parenting. And stupid Democrat leadership. And the total takeover of the NEA by actual Maoists. And the hatred and division these sweet little teachers eagerly disseminate.
Not a little piece of fabric. I had students who acted out so badly in community college that we had to call security. There were no consequences for them, of course, just for the hard-working kids and adults who were paying their own way.
It’s literally crazy to believe this garbage about facial expressions being more important than lack of parenting.
Of course the teacher broke down in tears. Teachers look forward to the weekend and dread Mondays. They have problems sleeping, especially Sunday nights, because they know what hellholes they work in. And yet, most of them will continue to vote for Democrats. They don't understand cause/effect, but they have ed. degrees.
"Forced choice public education will end soon."
It's obvious they're deliberately wrecking what they have. The scary part is what they're thinking they'd like to replace it with. Don't ever assume that there will be a choice offered.
As economists have argued for time immemorial, incentives works. When you don't punish aggressive bad behavior, you get more bad behavior. When you punish good behavior, you get less good behavior.
"The kids are in charge and they know it,” - Bingo. They should have led with this. This is a failure of the education establishment, which is a politically one sided affair.
Again. As a retired inner city social studies teacher I'll repeat myself in the comments - sending your children to public schools should be considered parental malpractice. I sent mine to Catholic school and I'm not a Catholic. When a student throws a desk at another student because their sneakers were disrespected they are never seen again in a Catholic or Episcopalian school classroom. In a public school the student is given a time out, the assault and battery with a weapon is the often sleight of hand covered up and they are back in classes after lunch
“The remote-learning kids who are coming back into the classroom have forgotten what it’s like to be with other children ... ”
If true, whose fault would that be?
“The remote-learning kids who are coming back into the classroom have forgotten what it’s like to be with other children,” she said. “There’s a skill set that you need to problem-solve.” Those skills include talking it out and walking away, she said. “They haven’t had to navigate outside their homes for so long they’ve really forgotten how to do it.”
My kids were remote learning their whole lives and yet never had any problem navigating outside their home. My guess is that schools taught them dysfunctional coping skills that they could not learn at home. My kids didn't learn those and seem to have turned out very well.
Schools took away the only tool they had 30 years ago and now we have Lord of the Flies everywhere. Prisons are safer than some schools.
To MJB Wolf and all the others who say America is near the bottom in student achievement, we actually rate near the top in each ethnic category.
A wonderful color-coded graphic showing this
A key part of the solution will be to insert into the school a lot of recent "migrants" from Central America.
They reap what they sow.
>roughly 37% of the student population, were counted absent from East....after anonymous social media posts late Monday warned of potential threats at the school and urged students to stay home.<
Look on the bright side: Their educations won't suffer much.
There is a thread running through these comments, though not explicitly stated: the kids who are fighting, who are "in charge and they know it", who won't do homework, who cause chaos in the hallways, are Black. This is the result of euphemisms and media protection of favored groups. When there is a terrorist attack, and the names or descriptions of the terrorists are missing from articles, readers assume they were muslims. When there is a police shooting, and the race of the officers and suspects are not stated, people assume that the officers were Black (or the suspect was white). Academics are supposed to work to close "achievement gaps", but if a law professor explicitly notices there is an achievement gap, by saying the the Black students in her classes are too frequently at the bottom, she gets fired.
The so-called disadvantaged groups are ill-served by this situation.
What's so troubling is that it is so easily fixed. Bad kids go to a school for bad kids. Good kids get to learn. Problem solved.
I am grateful my kids are out in the working world, and not going to Madison Public Schools any longer. I would be very alarmed as a parent to send them to school. I wonder what the next School Board meeting will be like -- if this will even be mentioned.
What's the Demographic breakdown? How many of the School teachers and Administrators send their kids to public schools?
Anyhoo, my suggestion would be give everyone a gun at the start of the school day, and then collect them at the end of the day. In between, with everyone armed, no one will start anything. Hattip: Archie Bunker.
@Ferdinande:White kids are doing better than Asians, which is unusual.
Only if you think "Asians" are an undifferentiated mass. Asians in Wisconsin and Minnesota are a very different population from Asians elsewhere, because a very large proportion are Hmong. 33% of Wisconsin's Asians are Hmong. In other state Hmong are a miniscule fraction of the Asian population.
What's so troubling is that it is so easily fixed. Bad kids go to a school for bad kids. Good kids get to learn. Problem solved.
The problem is that one of those schools will be filled with Black kids, and the other will be full of Whites and Asians.
Don't send your kids to public schools.
But if you must, you should have a voucher to send your kids wherever the hell you want, public or private.
The Catholic schools don't let the inmates run the jail.
To MJB Wolf and all the others who say America is near the bottom in student achievement, we actually rate near the top in each ethnic category.
A wonderful color-coded graphic showing this
That's definitely a handy chart of information "They" would "pray does not become widely known", but the same effect applies to other countries; for instance Pakeha students in New Zealand score 20 to 40 points higher than white kids in the US(!), about the same as US Asians.
NZ's country average scores are reduced by the Maori and Pasifika kids, who are about 25% of the population and score about 1-stddev lower than the Pakeha, which is slightly higher than US blacks.
Fun fact: Pakeha and Pasifika are Maori words for "Europeans" and "Pacific Islander"; it's funny that they use their words in academic papers written in English.
'Good teachers are going to be in demand.'
There is a HUGE opportunity for good teachers to make serious money, especially post-pandemic.
Around here, a good Catholic school charges $15k or so.
Get 10 students together in a 'pod' and a teacher could double their salary, and have plenty of money to fund their pension and health care.
A lot of parents in my area would pay it without blinking...
Has anyone noticed that all recent built school buildings are constructed very similar to prisons, complete with towers? Entry and exit are heavily controlled. They were built for "safety" of the students by keeping others out. But now, are all designed to keep the "inmates" safely locked inside.
Yeah, anyone is a fool to have their children in a government school system at this point.
The only thing that surprises me is the apparent surprise of the education community (teachers, administrators). Where did they think their permissive, dumb-downed policies would lead? Are they really that clueless or are they venal?
I'm Not Sure said...
I went to a public school. We didn't have a Prefect of Discipline but there was Vice Principal Weber. He had a wooden paddle and if you ended up in his office too often, he acquainted you with it.
And I bet it was a cake walk compared to what you got from Dad when he got home from work.
It's parenting, pure and simple.
Anyone else read where the Loudoun County Bathroom Rapist's mother gave an interview and said her baby didn't do anything wrong, the victim was asking for it?
Madison brought all this upon itself. Cry me a river. Oh, its going to get worse.
On the plus side, they needn’t assign “Lord of the Flies” anymore.
Smart kids are going to learn what they need to know anyway. Schools exist to teach the dumb ones to do as they’re told. That is what they are failing at.
1. Agree about Catholic schools: grade school nuns brooked no BS, belt-wielding Carmelite priests ruled HS classes and intellectual Jesuits challenged college asshats like myself.
2. Twitter, not familiarity, breeds discontent.
Proper Reddit link.
Roger Sweeny said...
To MJB Wolf and all the others who say America is near the bottom in student achievement, we actually rate near the top in each ethnic category.
A wonderful color-coded graphic showing this
The author of the piece says:
"I’m not sure I believe these high scores for the U.S., but at least I don’t ignore them like everybody else does."
Seems like a reasonable takeaway.
Lots and lots of chickens returning to the roost. Also whirlwinds.
The Madison School District way of handling black students versus white students when it comes to disciplining students who are disruptive has come to my school district. Essentially, if you are black, it’s not your fault for being disrespectful and disruptive because historically blacks “have had harsher discipline handed down against blacks” (allegedly). I don’t know if that is true, historically, but discipline should be equal AND skin color blind. Anyway, for the time being, we still have SRO police officers at the high school. In October, there was a large fight at the high school that overwhelmed the SRO’s. I don’t know the race of the combatants nor do I care. I do care about order and if students know that they can get away with disruptive actions without real world consequences, they will do it. What does that mean in the real world? We are actually seeing that in large cities such as San Fransisco where people are brazenly shoplifting items that are valued under $1000, since they know they won’t be held accountable by the government for their clearly illegal actions. This is the start of the breakdown of our civilized society turning into anarchy.
er...and contempt!
@Ferdinande:"White kids are doing better than Asians, which is unusual."
Only if you think "Asians" are an undifferentiated mass.
I'm quite aware that "Asians" includes a lot of territory and Asia has the same sort of North-South IQ gradient as Europe, perhaps more so.
I thought it was unusual it is unusual for Asians in US schools to do worse than White kids.
NorthOfTheOneOhOne said...
And I bet it was a cake walk compared to what you got from Dad when he got home from work.
It's parenting, pure and simple.
You got that right. Dad had a belt. And as far as "parenting" goes, that was a neighborhood thing where I grew up. If somebody else's mom caught you doing something you shouldn't be doing, she let you know about it. Then, she let your parents know.
In my hopping around for knowledge, I went from a Peterson to a Praeger video. I’ve never heard Dennis speak- only to interview Peterson. He had much to say- he isn’t bashful. Especially about Leftists and the love affair Liberals have w/them.
Liberals need to seek a safe house. No joke- enabling abusive behavior gets u badly beat. I may be speaking metaphorically- but: “there’s a little bit of truth in everything you say.”
My momma says that.
An afterthought- I come from a small town, so small we have villages. Not the kitschy or bourgeois types, either. The kind where last names don’t change- or never used to… and we all had our own churches and schools- garages and gas pumps… yeah? But $$$, for the lack or love thereof- bigger became better. And all individuals became lost in the funneling of our valuable, unique children into such large classes in factory schools where only the best and the worst are known on site/sight.
Same/same w/grocery stores and butchers and- who the fuck fixes microwaves anymore since the lifespan is 5yrs?
And farms….
Too big to fail?
Watch it burn
A wonderful color-coded graphic showing this
Wonderful unless you are in the ethnic groups of America that do rank near the bottom. Wonderful if you ignore PISA's own conclusions under that separated by race list:
‘It Just Isn’t Working’: PISA Test Scores Cast Doubt on U.S. Education Efforts
An international exam shows that American 15-year-olds are stagnant in reading and math even though the country has spent billions to close gaps with the rest of the world.
The achievement gap in reading between high and low performers in the United States is widening.
Pew puts USA just above the middle of the pack. National Center for Education Statistics ,using the same PISA stats, has USA in the middle (worse than 30, better than 39, no statistical difference among 8).
I stand corrected. The USA, the wealthiest large country on Earth, can do no better than middling even though we spend more than the top countries do per pupil. Y'all really crowing about how white students almost do as well as some other entire countries? Pitiful.
Y'all really crowing about how white students almost do as well [better, actually] as some other entire countries? Pitiful.
Not at all. If you're going to compare education systems, you have to compare students of the same race since race is the biggest determinant of school performance for a group (less so for individuals), far more-so than SES, etc. The same racial pattern plays out in every school system in the world which has the same races in their schools because it depends on characteristics of the student populations which can't be changed. That's the main reason why "closing the racial education gap" has never worked and never will work in the foreseeable future. It's a pipe-dream, and also a major reason why the US spends, er, wastes, so much on education.
Everything is going swimmingly.
When the public schools disconnect from self-discipline and self-improvement and abandon simple courtesy (the schools should go with the Golden Rule--and ignore the ridiculous neologism of the so-called "Platinum Rule*", which is a formula for dissatisfaction and grievance), you get all sorts of problems.
*Do unto others as they would have done unto them.
There's checklist which is up on the Virginia Department of Education website at the Anti-Racism tab. The goal of a Virginia education is to end disparate educational outcomes among groups and this checklist covers the actions needed to achieve that goal meaning that if the checklist is implemented systemic racism in the schools will end and no one will be able to show differences in group achievement. I call this list Sow the Wind, Reap the Whirlwind. Here's the main point as I see it: the checklist requires that a named punishment exist for administrators in whose schools educational disparities continue to exist after next year. So even if the schools abolish discipline so that there are no disciplinary disparities, that's not enough. The schools have to have the same percentages of all groups signed up for AP classes and math classes - AND all the results have to show equal percentages from every group getting each mark from A to F. So this is doomsday for the teaching establishment. The checklist requires it. Yet it simply won't be possible to get equal enrollment and equal marks in AP and calculus classes especially among high school students where there now is a cumulative educational deficit that absolutely nothing can overcome. The solution is to enroll equal numbers in calculus, AP and so on, not teach, and give everyone A's. But this will trash the all schools and the middle class will not let all the schools be trashed like that. Schools in middle class communities have to be kept up. So - this is end game. By the time it's over football teams will be calling themselves The PTA.
(Now the Wisconsin website does not at present look like the Virginia website. But the Wisconsin educrats want what the Virginia educrats have - and they'll get and regret it. Can't they see that they're painting themselves into a corner? In my experience, they despise Republicans and they have a smug, impenetrable conviction that all critics are Republican/racists and there's no need to listen. So there's no warning system. Doesn't mean the storm isn't coming. )
All shall have prizes.
Who has encounters with SROs? Good question asked above.
I wouldn't know. I graduated HS in suburban NJ in 1973- none of schools ever had an SRO.
I now live in ruralville NY. My last two childen went through all 12 years until HS graduation in this district. School never had an SRO. My older 3 went through school in Virginia Beach, , San Diego, Brunswick ME, and the Capitol region of NY. Never had a school resource officer.
So- do schools need SROs? Or are they a panacea for schools with a large percentage of parents not doing their jobs?
Wow. We are so careful not to talk about the elephant in the room, aren't we?
Because we know if we did, we'd be banned, doxed, and cancelled.
Problems that can't be defined properly can't be solved.
I don't think this problem is going to be solved until society collapses around our ears.
Had a conversation with a high school teacher in a medium sized town in Maine. The Assistant Principal told her "Don't worry Kathy, we're going to take back the school".
She did not find this encouraging.
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