So says The Editorial Board of the NYT in "The Startling Evidence on Learning Loss Is In."
Now, look at the top-rated comment over there — with over 2,000 up votes — by Upstate Guy in Albany, New York. I turned to the comments expecting to see people blaming Trump. But Upstate Guy takes things in a completely different direction:
1) In a bizarre quest for equity, we aren’t allowed to suspend black or brown students because the State says they are suspended too often. The kids know this and thus do whatever they want. They literally run the school. I was hit by a shoe in the hallway this week. I asked the student why she threw it and she replied, “Because I can.”
2) To protect their own jobs, school officials juke the state about academic performance, attendance and graduation rates. Students are not held back for failing a grade. Summer school is academically useless. My 8th grade students are 4-6 years below grade according to their NWEA test scores and my observations. Yet I’m ordered to teach 8th grade curriculum to them. How engaged are students who can’t even read the material? How does it affect their mental health to be humiliated day after day because they lack basic skills to engage the material? For example, none of my 8th graders can read the analog clock on the classroom wall.
These issues can be solved with much smaller student:teacher ratios and truly rigorous standards. Kids can’t be promoted until they have mastered the material. Poor behavior must have consequences.
Raising children without consequences is producing a generation of antisocial young adults, without drive, discipline or knowledge.
Posts
85 comments:
"So says The Editorial Board of the NYT,"
which was deliriously happy when the entire country was FORCED to shut down in the face of the left's hysteria.
Randi Weingarten is unspeakably awful.
1) In a bizarre quest for equity, we aren’t allowed to suspend black or brown students because the State says they are suspended too often. The kids know this and thus do whatever they want.
They started this crap over thirty years ago in Montgomery County Maryland schools. Our older son was able to cope but we had to put our younger son into Montessori.
Schools tried adding their indoctrination to the existing curriculum, but the reading, writing, and arithmetic took too much time away from DEI, anti-capitalism, and collectivism. So the existing curriculum had to go, and indoctination is all that is left in school. Now the kids can't read a help wanted ad, or make change for a $20, but they sure can follow the lead of social media.
Destroy the teacher's unions, and make the kids pass rigorous objective tests to move up a grade. Or kiss the kids goodbye.
As we read this, the apparatchik drones are now doing that they can to find Upstate Guy in Albany, New York. They reason, since he's a self-admitted cog in the leftist public school system somewhere, he'll be easy enough to find. And then to punish.
Poor Black student performance is the fault of the so-called Black leaders. These Black leaders should be promoting marriage, children after marriage, school study and hard work. Instead, we have 70%+ single parents, Black kids who think studying is "acting white", and disrupt school for everyone else. Gangs are endemic because Black fathers don't lover their byblow kids and Planned Parenthood (what an ironic name!) mission is to kill Black babies.
The result is disfunctional Black neighborhoods with rampant crime and kids that have no future. Not to mention, voters that vote only Democrat while being raped by the Democrat Party.
Embracing disparate impact may be the biggest unforced error in governing since the 17th amendment.
Upstate Guy nailed it. It also turns out that most Catholic schools returned to class sooner and continued teaching. They proved you didn’t have to go totally virtual but could have classes!
Every word he wrote is 100% correct. Ironically every change in policy he cited was backed 100% by the NYT and supported by the Teachers Unions nationwide. We didn’t get here in a day or a school term or over the extended virus panic of 2020-2023. In fact many of us commenters were or are now teachers and have pointed out the same truths this popular comment made. It can all be traced back to the erosion of standards and restrictions on discipline that have grown exponentially since the creation of the federal Department of Education in 1978. The more money and control over curriculum the Feds used to “influence” schools the less the actual local power parents and school boards had over educational outcomes.
Look at what the school board fights are over that have made news lately: trans policies, first amendment violations of student rights, safety, COVID insanity (masks, plastic “barriers,” remote “learning”), destructive DEI advocacy and of course strikes by teachers that shut down education completely even after the revelation that the WuFlu shutdowns hurt students badly.
If I read the NYT and it's comments I'd 'upvote' that comment, too. You can't have learning without discipline and standards. Both of these have been slipping for decades now but the latest crop of administrators and teachers don't seem to even nod toward enforcing either.
He left out inclusion of violent special ed students in the gen ed classroom...kids with an individual Education Plan can pretty much punch, kick and bite others at will because special.
Mind you, this discovery was made while feeling "like I was permanently hung over, drunk, high and in a brain freeze..." suffering from "long-covid".
We've gone from #itcouldbeworse" to #itsprobablyworse.
The lesson is:
Invest your time and efforts in small, poor private schools. The returns are great and inspiring.
Remember "Reform schools?" I'm so old I do remember them. That was a time when sanity was the rule. Schools were to teach. Long ago.
"Raising children without consequences is producing a generation of antisocial young adults, without drive, discipline or knowledge."
Rat-Tat-Tat-Tat
Upstate New York is VERY conservative. The problem is, the voters in NYC out vote them and the Democrats own New York which is why it sucks today.
Who would teach classes if teachers are sick, admins are sick, custodians are sick, subs won't sub ...no one ever addresses that.
Like it's just taken for granted sick teachers gonna drag their asses in to class no matter what.
What a putrid, thankless job.
Typo in the NYT comment, I think. Surely "juke the stats" (statistics, not juking the state)
Sidney Poitier in "To Sir, With Love" had the same problem with mostly white kids in a London school. He's expected to teach secondary (high school) grade level material to kids completely failed by the system in earlier (primary) grades. The movie portrays his ultimate "success" in surrendering the intended material and teaching kids how to make cheap healthy (salad based) meals, enjoy free entertainment at museums, and otherwise dig out of the poverty trap by embracing bourgeois habits of thrift.
At the other extreme is Edward Olmas in "Stand and Deliver" where the teacher reaches success by actually teaching MORE than the grade level material. He gets kids who didn't understand arithmetic to master Calculus. Sadly, after getting great test scores (twice!), the students still suffer limited opportunities ... no path towards success in life despite their better education.
I'm sure I'm making a point. I don't know what it is.
The Chi Com Fauci get Democrats Elected Virus. Lord it's a miracle!
The gift that keeps on giving.
making our nation dumb is just another brick in the wall.
This was all quite predictable once school was conducted by Zoom. The teachers’ unions run the school.
As to both the failed academic performance and discipline problems in the public schools, the answer is simple. Run the schools the way the Jesuits do it.
Maybe a tiny percentage of today's public school attendees (no longer accurate to use "students") know that today marks that day in 1863 when Lincoln delivered his famous 242-word address.
"The school closures that took 50 million children out of classrooms at the start of the pandemic may prove to be the most damaging disruption in the history of American education."
May?
"It also set student progress in math and reading back by two decades..."
They were already behind the rest of Asia by two decades, so now we've got a bunch of idiot children living in the '80s, which would normally be awesome, however...
Students with decent home lives came through this largely unscathed. Those without proper support at home were already a lost cause, but now even more so. I had sons at home missing school during the COVID shutdown. Both are now thriving and smart.
One of my Jesuit high school classmates taught, for a bit, at an Omaha public high school; a science magnet. He then got a job at our alma mater teaching science. He said that at the public school he spent lots of time breaking up fights. When he first started, some kids started a fire in the hallway.
Missing Gahrie. RI P
The article and comment assume "learning loss" is a problem.
Is it, for progs? They are achieving more important goals--"equity," catering to blacks, decolonizing the curriculum, imposing their power, protecting teacher-union interests, in-your-face policies to show the yahoos. They also create a new underclass that becomes a Big Brother clientele and voting block, solidifying prog power.
When you've lost the NYT's, you've lost leftie america
I grew up in the 50s and 60s, attending Catholic school. We had 50 kids in every elementary school class, and 40 in most high school classes. The segregation of kids by IQ was brutally obvious. All the kids knew which class was the smart one, which was medium, and which was for the dumb kids. Not pretty. But everyone had a chance to learn, and most of us went on to achieve in a manner commensurate with their capabilities.
This sort of thing is still happening in Catholic schools. It is, in most instances, parental malpractice to trust your child to public schools. I say this despite the fact that a substantial percentage of public school teachers are competent serious people.
There is no panacea. But school choice is a good start.
Sending a child to public school has become child abuse.
Mike of Snoqualmie said...
"Poor Black student performance is the fault of the so-called Black leaders" because America isn't a country with responsibilities to it's citizens, and/or itself, but a racist paradise that Southerners could only dream of, where blacks are left to our own devices as whites make post-D.W. Griffith extravaganzas - about themselves - saving us.
Americans can be so racist it's stunning sometimes.
mikee said...
Schools tried adding their indoctrination to the existing curriculum, but the reading, writing, and arithmetic took too much time away from DEI, anti-capitalism, and collectivism. So the existing curriculum had to go, and indoctination is all that is left in school
yep, people think that it's tiktok that's making kids adore Osama bin Laden and hate america..
it's Not tiktok; it's school teachers.. go to libsOfTicktok, and see the freaks..
THEN, notice that the freakiest freaks are ALL school teachers
examples
This is an actual elementary school teacher in @WhiteCoSchools
. She posted raging rants about hating America, Satan worship, being a drag queen, and calls herself a “certified sl*t.” She also has dark images about k!ll*ng people.
This looks like an ad for home schooling
but, but, spend more money
Uh oh. Sounds like some whiteness has slipped through the cracks up there in Albany.
My friend in X-state has been hit, kicked, punched and bitten by students.
And threatened by their equally illiterate parents.
She cannot complain or receive help until she is someday severely injured enough to need an ambulance or possibly receive disability from an injury.
She is fearful of losing her pension after so many years and so endures this, but it has destroyed her physical and mental health.
She is also not allowed to talk about it. She has managed to transfer to younger students so as to have a fighting chance to survive a few more years. This is not in a big inner city.
Other, liberal friends tried going the public school teaching route, imagining they would "change lives." None lasted more than a few weeks, at most. All now pretend it didn't happen. The hatred towards whites is especially extreme and never punished, though if she fought back or said something out of anger -- or defended her few white students -- she would face serious consequences.
It's here, folks. From what I saw last weekend, it's a crime to put your kids in school or college.
It’s been written that “a mind is a terrible thing to waste”.
A nation chock full of half-wits is a death sentence.
Diversity, Equivocation, Indoctrination (DEI). So, Atlanta, Georgia was not exceptional. I wonder if there is a pattern to the progress of democratic deficits, legal indictments, and social dysfunction.
"Startling".
They must get a real kick out of playing peekaboo.
The soft bigotry of low expectations is hardening into a permanent caste society.
Students routinely assault teachers, sometimes inflicting serious injury and wounds. Generally, the gibbering primate posing as a student escapes without any negative consequences. However, if a teacher defends herself or even attempts to restrain the felonious miscreant, she risks suspension, dismissal, criminal prosecution, and lawsuits.
We could solve 90% of the problems in education by mandating that public schools expel the bottom performing 3% of students each year. No other changes would be required.
'but a racist paradise that Southerners could only dream of, where blacks are left to our own devices...'
I would love it if the government would leave me to my own devices.
Lower taxes, fewer laws, no surveillance, etc.
Paradise, indeed...
Why did we have to run the experiment to know the result?
Assholes…fuck you all. Know what seppuku is?
This entire "class size is too big" excuse is just another way of increasing union membership and dues paid to DNC. I went back and looked at class pictures from my K-6 classes, late 40's-early 50's, Highest was 41 students and lowest was 34 students. I'd venture to guess the entirety of these classes were superior in the necessary skills for promotion than most of today's equity babies.
"For example, none of my 8th graders can read the analog clock on the classroom wall."
Come now, is this really true? I don't believe it. And if teachers are being physically assaulted or cannot maintain discipline, then where is the Teacher Union? It would seem that remote learning is the answer. Have the students show up and have the teachers teach via Zoom. The only adults in the school would be uniformed safety officers, cafeteria workers, and PE teachers. Plus, a school nurse and a clerk.
The school closures that took 50 million children out of classrooms at the start of the pandemic may prove to be the most damaging disruption in the history of American education.
There is no "may" about it. Nothing else even comes close. I was in the classroom on 9/11. Students actually improved for a few years because shit seemed real.
I taught Physics for decades in a better suburban school. The top-commenter is correct. Public education was on the decline prior to the Covid lock down. All of the equity in discipline, dumbing down the curriculum, student accommodations and learning gap problems were there, but it was happening slow enough that the pendulum might swing back.
The lock down seemed to drop every district down a socioeconomic level.
Startling Evidence?
The thing that most conservatives have been saying for years?
My solution remains: give every brown and black kid a college degree at birth. Preferably Ivy League. Then let them come to school to learn or not. Equity on stilts. If they prefer stupidity so be it. No need to tell time.
"Students are not held back for failing a grade."
20-25 years ago, this was the last straw for my mom in the public education system. She was teaching (going on memory) 6th grade and put in her end of year recommendation that Student A be held back as the student was really struggling even with numerous support services being provided. It broke her heart to write that, she told me later.
But a newly minted principal wanted no part of that, saying that the student would be ostracized, mocked and ridiculed if held back. She denied the recommendation. My mother went to the Superintendent and he wanted now part of holding her back either.
That was it for my mom. She filed for retirement effective at the end of the next school year. The student that was advanced ended up dropping out 2-3 years later. The principal resigned when she became aware she would not be getting tenure.
My mom went on to tutor numerous students at the kitchen table for the next 15 year. But she was done with public education. She always expressed sadness at the one student dropping out - I always told her that maybe the student got their GED.
I graduated from high school in the 70's Things were sliding even then. 15 years later, my kids started school. Even Pre-School was messed up. The first did the pre school thing. 2 years later the second went to the same pre school. Things had changed. They dumbed down pre school! No more writing their own name on papers was gone. Coloring was gone. Some kid were much better at those things. So instead of working with those that need help. Nobody got help. Equity donchyano.
The youngest in 1st grade was just guessing at words in print. We told the teacher about it and said we would stop and help her sound the words out. The teacher informed us, the proper way was just let them go. Stopping and correcting caused the kids to not like reading. We told she was nuts and doubled down on monitoring her reading abilities. She read for pleasure with a voracious appetite, all through school. We had helped, not hindered. Not bad for two hillbillys with no college degrees.
Covid did not start the problem. Covid exposed the rot in public schools.
ps
all the grandkids go to public schools and are at the top of their respective class.
The Crack Emcee:
Americans can be so racist it's stunning sometimes.
Hey, you set the bar.
rcocean:
It would seem that remote learning is the answer. Have the students show up and have the teachers teach via Zoom.
Despite its recent abject failure and teachers complaining that parents could see what they were teaching.
Remember "the soft bigotry of low expectations"? That insight belongs to a person of the wrong political party. But I wish we hadn't ignored it in 2011 -- nearly 15 years ago.
rcocean said...
"For example, none of my 8th graders can read the analog clock on the classroom wall."
Come now, is this really true? I don't believe it. And if teachers are being physically assaulted or cannot maintain discipline, then where is the Teacher Union? It would seem that remote learning is the answer. Have the students show up and have the teachers teach via Zoom. The only adults in the school would be uniformed safety officers, cafeteria workers, and PE teachers. Plus, a school nurse and a clerk.
***************
You assume that the kids who would benefit from remote learning have a PC at home and their parents know how to use it. You further assume that such homes have a parent present to make sure their kids participate in the remote lessons.
Put a PC into every apartment in the Projects and you'll see a booming business in stealing those PCs and selling them on the street.
gspencer said...
“Maybe a tiny percentage of today's public school attendees (no longer accurate to use "students") know that today marks that day in 1863 when Lincoln delivered his famous 242-word address.”
He must have subscribed to Twitter Blue to fit it all in 1 tweet
"In a bizarre quest for equity, we aren’t allowed to suspend black or brown students because the State says they are suspended too often."
Are you "distressed" that the NYT made you think about this? Try thinking about this.
Teach a kid to read. Teach em in such a fun way they learn that reading is fun. Then you can teach them anything.They will learn. First to seek your approval. Then they will learn because they are curious.
It sounds like part of the problem is finger pointing, whataboutism, and I told ja so.
I'm utterly unsurprised that some teachers wanted to keep teaching over Zoom - you can mute the troublemakers (if they even show up). Unfortunately that pedagogical model ruins the entire concept of public school as a universal public good.
I was thinking about the humongous rise in mental illness among kids, which Haidt and Lukianoff chalk up to, and which no doubt is in great part due to, social media and particularly (they said) the inclusion of comments and particularly threaded comments. An interview I was listening to recently on the kid trans epidemic brought up an interesting point about priming: one of the interviewers, a former nurse who had worked in a multiple city, said among her Korean patients, who came from a culture in which belief in ghosts is mainstream, there were lots and lots more ghost sightings than among other populations. The Korean patients and their families were primed to interpret their experiences as supernatural. This priming result has been pretty robustly supported in psychology, I think - experiments about reading a passage in a book with a particular theme and then taking a word association test, stuff like that.
So what happens when you tell kids that:
* Society is actually white, no matter what you see around you, and optimized for white people, and therefore you can't succeed unless you're white?
* All cultures are equally valuable, and when you see statistical differences in outcomes between members of one culture and members of another, what you're seeing is not the result of different cultural values but rather of racism against the unsuccessful cultures?
* You can't be blamed (or "held responsible") for your bad behavior, because your behavior is only and entirely a byproduct of a society that hates and is out to get you, black or brown person or girl or gay person, going all the way back to the beginning of time?
* Everyone has a "gender identity" and frequently people's gender identity doesn't match their physical body?
* "Lived experience" is a good and indeed the only proper substitute for now-discredited-because-they-emanate-from-white-society verified historical facts, statistics, real-world tested logical inferences, experimentally tested hypotheses, etc. - and some people's lived experiences rank above others' in terms of their explicating power and importance - that is to say, which person has to defer to which other person in all matters - because some people experience their lives as victims?
* Victimhood is a positive good and is self-defined, with the validity of that self-definition judged by others in a descending hierarchy depending on how light your skin is, whether you have a penis and are inclined to use it to have sex with women, and whether you speak English at home?
If priming works - and it does - then is it any wonder that kids who have been primed as above grow up anxious, depressed, "non-binary," aggrieved, and ignorant?
And also, seconding MayBee - I miss Gahrie here.
This is the prelude to either:
1. A grand renaissance in honesty, "can-do" attitudes, respect for achievement, and finding satisfaction in hard work.
or
2. Wealthy billionaires and oligarchs recruit bought-and-paid-for protection forces for neo-warlordism and 3rd-world walled-communities. Some of the slow learners (and shoplifters in the next post) will be among those bought and paid for.
The outcome follows from whether the wealthy and powerful continue to offer financial support for the do-nothing, dead-end, tribal, myopic, short-attention-span social-media lifestyle.
I agree 100% with Upstate Guy in Albany….
My sister was a LAUSD school teacher for years. By the end of the first week of every school year she knew which kids were going to struggle — the ones whose parents (usually single) were uninvolved in meetings, always running late, had kids eating "breakfast" in the car, kids didn't have a regular bed time and were always tired, where chaos reigned at home.
The ones who were going to thrive were the ones whose parents were deeply involved, organized, got their kids to school early, intermingled with the teachers and other parents, picked them up on time, made sure homework was done, etc.
Just like law enforcement can't solve all problems, there is only so much a public school system can do to make up for parents who aren't devoted to their children's education and growth. They can't love kids, give them the attention a parent should, nurture them.
The major problems she saw — fighting, absenteeism, shrinking enrollments — have far less to do with the "system" and absolutely everything to do with the family's response to it.
"School choice" is a euphemism for government funding of private schools and home schools. That will just spread the rot. What government funds, government controls. Instead, privately help people homeschool or send their kids to private school. And push for lower taxes to help them. Homeschooling can be done well for very little money if parents are motivated, even if the parents were not well educated.
The problem stems from a debased culture that does not value families. This is most especially evident in the black community and poor whites. It's another example of upper class misbehavior spreading to the lower classes who can not afford to copy it. If you are rich and smart, you can get away with "non-traditional" family structures, drug use, and bad behavior. When you are poor and low IQ, this sort of life doesn't work out so well. And yes, I am noting that IQ's have considerable variation between populations.
This is the plan of the rich elite Democrats. Their goal is the establishment of generational wealth and power. They want to all be Kennedys. This will make it easier for little Dylan and Gwendolyn to get into Harvard. They are hamstringing the competition. Don’t worry minorities, they will gladly work a few hours a month to save you, and you will never stop hearing them tell you about it.
For once I agree with Rich. These problems begin and end with the family, such as it may be.
Are those causes correctly named in the popular comment associated with any particular political party or ideology?
Just askin'.
Soon the US will be ignorant enough to be governed by a voting population of baby killers, antisemites and open border advocates.
What? What's that you say?
Homeschooling has a low teacher to student ratio.
Love of learning begins at home.
"You assume that the kids who would benefit from remote learning have a PC at home and their parents know how to use it. You further assume that such homes have a parent present to make sure their kids participate in the remote less"
Can you read? How you can read what I wrote and come up with this is beyond me. The plan was to have the teachers do zoom from a satellite location, and the Kids to be at school. The comment was a response to teachers being unsafe. Evidently, you've never had the experience of being in a room of people watching a big screen that shows the instructor.
I was sitting at the back of the sanctuary after worship one Sunday, and a young boy came up to me, looked at the clock on the wall above my head, looked back at me and asked, "What time is it?" It was an analog clock. I no longer assume children can read analog clocks.
For once I agree with Rich. These problems begin and end with the family, such as it may be.
This is pretty much inarguable.
What to do about it is very arguable indeed. I am in the camp of, "Urban black communities, you're right, it's not fair that you're, what, three generations into generational poverty thanks to the Great Society, but no one can save you but you."
Celebrating the deterioration of black families and the abandonment of the formerly high aspirations of black Americans - aspirations that by and large didn't center on sports and entertainment any more than they did among white kids - and valorizing the attitude that working hard at unglamorous things is "acting white" and bad - these things do nothing to help kids succeed in school. Any kids, since we've apparently decided that if some defined groups of kids fail at school, the right response is to detonate standards for everyone.
It's utterly tragic because the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the first victims of the Great Society have not just been denied the tools they need to succeed, they've been told that those tools are bad for them, are disrespectful of their "unique culture" and "lived experience."
Some things work. Some things don't. Whole language reading instruction doesn't, for example, and the educational establishment knows it - but darn it, like the viral multiculturalism that teaches that all cultures and therefore all cultural values are equally good, the theory just sounds too nice and clean and pure to toss out, no matter how much evidence indicates that it's doing harm.
"You assume that the kids who would benefit from remote learning have a PC at home and their parents know how to use it. You further assume that such homes have a parent present to make sure their kids participate in the remote less"
Can you read? How you can read what I wrote and come up with this is beyond me.
I made the same mistake on quick reading. During the lockdown, "showing up" was the way we all talked about kids logging in, so I think it's a fair interpretation - on quick reading.
Upon rereading, I see what you were saying. I think it's a terrible, Lord of the Flies-adjacent idea, security guards notwithstanding. How many more times do we have to solve Problem B (teacher safety), which was caused by ignoring or even advancing Problem A (a policy of not disciplining students), by creating Problems C, D, and E (even less interpersonal interaction among kids who already barely talk to other people, especially adults; even more student violence because you can't hire enough security guards or trust them to respond appropriately; even worse learning outcomes because many, many kids do not learn well from staring at a screen, as this whole article points out)?
Or were you being sarcastic? Even upon rereading, I can't tell.
It can be fixed by ridding schools of DEI, longer school days, longer school years. Fewer holidays and shorter summ and Spring breaks.
Startling no one but the NYT
Where the hell did I put my shocked face?
If kids can't read an analog clock and they're incapable of doing the work assigned, perhaps this teacher should teach them how to read an analog clock. And to read. Probably a better use of time. There's a book called Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. It works.
Birches:
If kids can't read an analog clock and they're incapable of doing the work assigned, perhaps this teacher should teach them how to read an analog clock. And to read. Probably a better use of time.
Unfortunately, they can't. They are handed a curriculum and can't deviate. Add to that the kids don't even listen and the instructor cannot make them. Calling down help is not responded to, shouting gets you into trouble and how dare you lay hands on the larger and aggressive student that has their hands on you.
My daughter started her career in an inner city school and she almost quit before she got her charter school job. Then an online, private school where she teaches Physics and Forensic Science.
She said the parental reflex (when they showed up) was to start with sentence one screaming, shaking fists at you and blaming their 'good child's' problems on you.
The Crack Emcee:
And, of course, NewAge was Hitler's religion, taking the world over a cliff, forever.?
Didn't he also believe in sins of the father?
Hey, my apologies as well, rcocean. I too read it incorrectly.
It too would still not address the parental lack of give a shit but I have a harsh opinion about that so...
Otherwise, that's my daughter's modus. They tap into her expertise, not her 'disseminating' it. And the parents can see what she's teaching, zero restrictions.
There are priorities in education.
They used to be reading, writing, and arithmetic - being taught things the kids would need to know and were actually testable.
Now the priorities are different. You abandon the things that work in favor of what sounds good, you teach the cause of the moment, you obey the dictates that come down. If that's that you don't discipline black or brown kids - you don't discipline them. You don't mark them down for non-achievement. Diversity, Equity, Inclusion - you'll go with that because it's NEEDED to keep your job whether you believe in it or not.
The knowledge the student actually gets isn't a priority. And it's pretty damned sad, setting up a generation for failure. The proposed solution is to do more of it, spend more on it, and go further with the things that aren't working.
It's not surprising that homeschooling and private schools are taking off - the parents know the kids are likely to get a lot more of an education than they would in public schools.
In a bizarre quest for equity, we aren’t allowed to suspend black or brown students because the State says they are suspended too often. The kids know this and thus do whatever they want.
Not only that, but under zero tolerance policies, any white or Asian kids who attempt to defend themselves from being injured by thugs of other backgrounds will universally be suspended, and gleefully, because it improves the racial balance for the bean counters and grievance mongers.
Imagine what it's like these days, being a shrimpy, bookish Asian punching-bag in a predominantly black or Hispanic school, knowing full well that if you even attempt to push a violent thug away from you before he breaks your nose, you will be suspended and he won't.
Why Asians still vote for Democrats is a complete mystery to me.
The US is a feudal society. Any analysis must begin from that.
Crack stop your nonsense. In many states more is spent per black student than any other demographic and yet their test results are well below grade. I personally don’t believe it’s because blacks in general are of inferior intelligence. I believe poor black student performance is due to lack of proper parenting and role models in the community.
"may prove to be the most damaging disruption in the history of American education."
No sh*t.
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