(Editor's note: As we go to the ballot box to vote on a parcel tax and state school funding measures, our columnist considers the many causes of public school failure -- and absolves one interesting choice.)
The purpose of this column is to give the average citizen a chance to view the day-in-day-out workings of the local high school—at least the portion I inhabit.
I try, whenever possible, to give a sense of the unfolding school year.
If you were a teacher in San Leandro's Korematsu ninth grade building this week you would probably be taking stock. Tuesday marked the end of the first quarter of the school year. Report cards are going out this week. That often stimulates a significant degree of angst among teachers.
Kids are failing. Forty-three (almost exactly one-third) of my students received F’s in English One. Only three of those failing kids avoided an F in some other class. Most had three or more F’s. Failure is widespread.
It’s like this every year.
Who is to blame for this?
Certainly I bear some of the responsibility.
My lessons were not good enough, interesting enough, or clear enough. I didn’t make enough parent contacts. I lost my temper too often.
And, most importantly, I didn’t always protect the good kids from the destructive ones. I live daily with the guilt that I can’t prevent noisy, vulgar, ill-disciplined kids from impacting the lives of well-intentioned children.
My grading system harshly penalizes students who refuse to make an effort—perhaps too harshly. Several times at teacher conferences over the past few years I’ve heard speakers suggest that the lowest grade for an assignment should be 50% so that a few missed assignments aren’t fatal to a student’s chances for a passing grade. It’s something I’ve been considering.
The School Board and the district bare some responsibility.
The curriculum they require us to teach is stale. Many of the books and stories we teach are comparatively ancient and have no chance of engaging a modern, urban kid--and you know my opinion of mandatory algebra.
The federal government has its hand in this problem. Methods dictated from Washington straight jacket teachers and prevent any real attempt to motivate the bottom third.
The wealthy parents of the district helped create some degree of failure. When some of us tried to keep tracking out of our new school two years ago (there is no tracking in middle school) parents of college-bound kids used their political influence to segregate troublesome kids away from the high-achievers.
I understand why they did this—I might have done the same if I were in their position—but lower-track classrooms are breeding grounds for failure.
Administrators play a part. They get so submerged with disciplinary issues and meetings that they have no time left over to lead.
Every year there is talk of new methods to reach out to students with multiple failing grades. Within a few weeks of the start of school any teacher can identify this population; and every year we watch, horrified, as this group marches toward life as a dropout. There isn’t the time or the money to do any meaningful intervention.
I’ve never been a parent so I feel out at sea when it comes to apportioning blame to families. When I do speak to parents of failing students I hear plaintive expressions of helplessness. Parents can’t be in the school (although occasionally one will visit my classroom), they often can’t infuse their children with the desire to succeed at the game we call school.
It is easy to pass most American high schools. Any young adult who cares can get a diploma. Which is why, ironically, I haven’t included students in my hall of blame.
It seems so self-evident that whatever the rest of us do, my students have the power to steer clear of failure.
Read other columns from the Entirely Secondary archive.
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Again this excuse? Because Huck Finn bore a resemblance to where/when you grew up? Or to me, a kid growing up on the South Side of Milwaukee, or to my Polish/Arab/Hispanic/Pakistani neighbors reading it? Beowulf? The Merchant of Venice? Were you a 16th century Jew in Italy at some point? A early medieval/Dark Age Anglo-Saxon chief? The Canterbury Tales? The Heart of Darkness? The Old Man and the Sea? None of these stories were in any way relevant to the time and space of my high school years. Yet we read them. Not only did we read them, but my middle class and lower urban classmates wrote literate reports on them, and it showed up on our tests of proficiency in the English language. Furthermore, if you think that at some point your job is to expand kids' horizons beyond E. 14th and some club in SF, it would behoove you and your students to read something different. Otherwise, as previously mentioned, you might as well just have them read the daily local newspaper.
A pathetic excuse. Some of the most incredible books I've ever read came from the classroom. It's sad that you think only people with silver spoons in their mouths can appreciate books like Animal Farm or To Kill a Mockingbird.
To be honest, I love armchair quarterbacking as much as anybody, but at the end of the day, "It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming..." (T. Roosevelt) Jerry's job is an incredibly important one. He is "in the arena" and has the guts to share where he comes up short. I appreciate that. Strident partisanship notwithstanding, nobody has a monopoly on good ideas. We need to implement best practices wherever we may find them, provide opportunity to our students, & demand accountability from everyone involved.