Current Events > Teachers on CE.. What the hell is going on in schools?

(+) Yeah! (+)

I've been diving into this topic lately and it seems horrible. I originally thought it was just Teachers weren't being paid enough. Obviously that's true but I'm hearing things like the schools are afraid to fail students, that 7th and 8th graders can only read or do math at a 4th grade level, that no one gets has respect for the teacher, that if you call their parents about the kid's discipline issues that you would get yelled at for telling their kid what to do, etc., etc.

Is it really that bad? If it is, what can even be done? I can think of some things that can help but not help the discipline issues and the parents refusing to do anything. It sounds like a complete shit show compared to how most of us on CE grew up in school.

DepreceV2 posted...

7th and 8th graders can only read or do math at a 4th grade level

Feel like that's been a thing for a while. The average American can't do much beyond basic arithmetic.

This isn't new. At all.

The parent think has been said since the 90's when I was in school. I laugh now when people my age or younger say it like it's new.

I'm a generation X guy and sadly I blame a lot of my generation because I know tons of people I grew up with who turned into the "You can't talk to my kid that way, or treat my kid that way" kind of people towards teachers. It was mind boggling to me.

If a teacher had to discipline me as a kid and had to call my dad I would get disciplined so much harsher at home if the school had to do something. My dad gave 100% support to the teachers. I have always 100% gave support to teachers. But again I know so many who don't and treat every situation like their kid is being bullied when a teacher has to discipline them.

supergamerbret posted...

The parent think has been said since the 90's when I was in school. I laugh now when people my age or younger say it like it's new.

Has it? I dont remember that being much of a thing growing up and I was one in 89. My parents made it perfectly clear that I couldnt screw around like what Im hearing now in school and I remember the teachers mostly being respected. There were times when class rooms would start to get lounge but when the teacher cracked down on it, people would listen the vast majority of the time. I even went to 3 different high schools in 3 different states and that seemed to be consistent

The "The parent is always right" rhetoric has certainly grown a lot more, lately, under right wing rhetoric. Teachers have to tip toe with what they teach, now, for fear of pissing off certain nuts.

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Jesus

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I thought they had zero tolerance where you got instantly expelled from the school district for violence (even self defense) on the first offense?

https://foxbaltimore.com/amp/news/project-baltimore/city-student-passes-3-classes-in-four-years-ranks-near-top-half-of-class-with-013-gpa

This article is four three years old, but still accurate.

I dont know what its like in other states, but in Maryland we have high schools with one thousand freshman students and only five hundred sophomores, showing that students are arriving in high school without the skills and stay in 9th grade until they either figure it out or they drop out.

DepreceV2 posted...

Obviously that's true but I'm hearing things like the schools are afraid to fail students, that 7th and 8th graders can only read or do math at a 4th grade level

Yes I'm married to a teacher and that is 100% true. Truth is they want near-failing grades so they can get the government to throw more money at their failing institution and they can continue to misuse it. Schools are practically cabals in and of themselves. If you're there to actually do your job and raise children to be able to read and write so they can be successful in life, your work life is sure to be a living hell because teaching is not what they want.

DepreceV2 posted...

Obviously that's true but I'm hearing things like the schools are afraid to fail students, that 7th and 8th graders can only read or do math at a 4th grade level, that no one has respect for the teacher, Is it really that bad?

Yes. My wife teaches 7th grade. The other day one of her students spelled machine as "mishin".

Teachers aren't afraid to fail students. Because of the No Child Left Behind act, you can only fail a student once and still keep them in the same grade. After the second time failing, they'll get pushed to the next grade. Most students know this and would rather spend two years in each grade not doing work, than attempting their assignments and passing each year.

Also like another poster said, my wife's current school rounds up any failing grade to a 60.

I taught in the UK for several years and their school system is fundamentally broken on many levels but hearing about the US school system makes it seem like the UK one isnt that bad. Im very glad I left it though.

Idk, I have about 5-7 students in my second grade class who are reading at a Kindergarten grade level. Its really hard but Im trying. Two of them have already improved to a 1st grade level but the rest? Ohhh boy! gonna be a long year.

DepreceV2 posted...

Is it really that bad?

Worse

I teach at a Catholic school. Pay is even lower than public schools in my area but outside of that I dont have remotely same problems in scale as whats described here. Theres pressure from guidance to not fail kids but hold your ground and grade stands. Discipline is worse than 10 years ago but mainly cause current assistant principal in charge of discipline is lazy as fuck. Im still hopeful that can improve with new personnel.

Not a teacher but in my conversations with teachers in PTCs, it definitely seems like they tiptoe a lot more than I would have expected when I was growing up.

I can tell this because my third grader (who is, to a degree, special needs) objectively performs at about a kindergarten to first grade level and is often a pain in the ass behaviorally, and the teacher seemed so relieved when I was actually understanding that she is not an easy student.

Squall28 posted...

The average American can't do much beyond basic arithmetic.

it's all that's really required unless doing work that involves algebra or higher.
i know construction uses that shit.

As someone who got false allegations of harassment because a girl kept arriving late to class and I kept escalating things according to protocol: Yes, it is that bad.
Other than administrators growing a pair and teaching kids that actions have consequences, I don't see a way out

The stories I've seen coming out of Toronto the past few years have been crazy.

Curriculums are watered down. F-A grading has been replaced. Homework barely exists. Kids don't get held back. Hours are short. Days off have like doubled.

It's not like it was when were kids where you were almost guaranteed to have homework for social studies, science, English, and math every night, including weekends.

During my internship I taught a Grade 10 English class designed for students who couldn't read above a 6th grade level.

I would give them 3 days to read a chapter of Hunger Games and it seems like they'd have rather been in them than read a chapter.... and those chapters are like 12 fucking pages.

Probably need to extend the school year as well into the summer

Probably the COVID making a few years of schooling go online was a huge set back for students?

none of this sounds dramatically different from my highschool experience.

As someone who's been a substitute teacher for six years, giving everyone a lab-top made sense during Covid but...it has become such a massive....MASSIVE mistake to let just everyone have it as kids are just about cheating and watching videos or playing games every moment they can.

They try and send each other the answers every moment they can, and with Chat GPT keeping kids accountable has become a even steeper task.

Combined with parents insisting they are almost right kids can just about do anything before in fact harming someone and not get in trouble. Between that and most places not even allowing to fail kids the students KNOW that school is rapidly becoming just a fancy baby sitting gig, and most outright just assume that grades don't really matter compared to " how cool you are because charisma matters more then what you know since computers do all the work."

Many places the jocks are untouchable because sports results matter far more then the bad grads and behavior from them.

Something really has to be done with kids having phones, its deciding if we are just giving up on in fact teaching kids anything or not.

BlazinBlue88 posted...

Teachers aren't afraid to fail students. Because of the No Child Left Behind act, you can only fail a student once and still keep them in the same grade. After the second time failing, they'll get pushed to the next grade. Most students know this and would rather spend two years in each grade not doing work, than attempting their assignments and passing each year.

Sounds like the "No Child Left Behind" act failed and should be abolished.

Necronmon posted...

As someone who's been a substitute teacher for six years, giving everyone a lab-top made sense during Covid but...it has become such a massive....MASSIVE mistake to let just everyone have it as kids are just about cheating and watching videos or playing games every moment they can.

They try and send each other the answers every moment they can, and with Chat GPT keeping kids accountable has become a even steeper task.

Combined with parents insisting they are almost right kids can just about do anything before in fact harming someone and not get in trouble. Between that and most places not even allowing to fail kids the students KNOW that school is rapidly becoming just a fancy baby sitting gig, and most outright just assume that grades don't really matter compared to " how cool you are because charisma matters more then what you know since computers do all the work."

Many places the jocks are untouchable because sports results matter far more then the bad grads and behavior from them.

Something really has to be done with kids having phones, its deciding if we are just giving up on in fact teaching kids anything or not.

We need to ban Smart Devices & LapTops.

Go back to old schoool methods of Pencil & Paper.

Don't be afraid to fail kids, abolish "No Child Left Behind".

Sounds like the "No Child Left Behind" act failed and should be abolished.

Sadly No Child Left Behind morphed form trying to make kids smart enough to not fail...to just lowering the standards so that just about anyone can pass...and the damage of having so low standards can be...rather damning.

Also, as someone with horrible handwriting I can see why making everyone write in pencil would just be cruel, but I did just use a word processor back when labtops were not wide spread, and in the end such things are just about the only way to make sure students would not use the internet.

The problem is putting the genie back in the bottle...few ever take loosing a privilege well, its more about getting enough parents to realize its to insure the system is not forever broken...

masterbarf posted...

Curriculums are watered down. F-A grading has been replaced. Homework barely exists. Kids don't get held back. Hours are short. Days off have like doubled.

It's not like it was when were kids where you were almost guaranteed to have homework for social studies, science, English, and math every night, including weekends.

You have no fucking clue what you're talking about. Are you even a teacher?

FolkenRawr posted...

This isn't new. At all.

Supposedly it has started to get a bit better.

But yeah, for some reason, for a while and until very recently, a lot of schools ditched phonics in exchange for an idea of... some weird idea that they just need to recognize whole words instead. Like, what, English is not Kanji. English is based on phonics. Heck, even Japanese is based on PHONICS and then teaches Kanji with small phonics characters beneath them. Why the hell would you remove phonics for... "guessing and recognizing a word based on what you see without knowing sounds" or some nonsense like that?

Teaching kids what letters are at least supposed to sound like individually should be the most obvious thing in the world, even IF English in particular is really bad with it. ENGLISH IS NOT KANJI.

In 8th grade, I dialed almost every class. Hot a bunch of D's and F's, they still let me go to highschool. In highschool I barely passed with C's and B's but I had some failing grades, thanks to bushes no child left behind, I received a diploma. I think like 100 or so students that were supposed to fail, also got their diplomas.

Former teacher here. Taught 8 years in public school at a HS and MS.

I knew teachers were undervalued the entire time, but the pandemic REALLY showed just how little society cares about or thinks of teachers in a good light. Theyre seen as babysitters at the end of the day, and basically nothing more.

I left teaching for tech about a year ago, and have already doubled my salary compared to what I was getting as a teacher.

public schools in the US suck. Teachers get bullied by admins, and the higher ups are typically incompetent. The only focus is on good standardized test scores, and not on actually creating an environment where students want to learn.

Education in the US is underfunded, teachers are underpaid significantly, and theres no path for teachers to get paid decently for busting their asses.

my big fear is no one semi competent will want to be teachers in the future. Already massive shortages and teachers leaving the profession in huge numbers.

meatlesshotdogz posted...

Former teacher here. Taught 8 years in public school at a HS and MS.

I knew teachers were undervalued the entire time, but the pandemic REALLY showed just how little society cares about or thinks of teachers in a good light. Theyre seen as babysitters at the end of the day, and basically nothing more.

I left teaching for tech about a year ago, and have already doubled my salary compared to what I was getting as a teacher.

public schools in the US suck. Teachers get bullied by admins, and the higher ups are typically incompetent. The only focus is on good standardized test scores, and not on actually creating an environment where students want to learn.

Education in the US is underfunded, teachers are underpaid significantly, and theres no path for teachers to get paid decently for busting their asses.

my big fear is no one semi competent will want to be teachers in the future. Already massive shortages and teachers leaving the profession in huge numbers.

This, and the bolded also applies to a lot of other important jobs in addition to teachers. We're in for a very rude awakening.

I grew up and went to a private Christian school my first ten years and then public for the last two. I was completely dumbfounded by how few juniors and seniors couldnt use a comma* correctly (mindful I was writing at the time and involved in text based RPs so I got constant practice, so maybe unfair skill levels).

i felt bored those last two years though and burnt out, only classes I enjoyed were web mastery and helping work on the school website, and my A&P. Economics gave me far more issues than it should have, I blame the burnout on that cause it wasnt hard, just had do a 2nd try of it.

mad for my math, my algebra one got screwed over bad due to bad teachers so trying for algebra 2 actually forced me to take a in between class junior year, then algebra 2 senior which my teacher saw my effort and me helping other students that I got a skip on the final even though I was a point short.

texanfan27 posted...

I grew up and went to a private Christian school my first ten years and then public for the last two. I was completely dumbfounded by how few juniors and seniors couldnt use a coma correctly (mindful I was writing at the time and involved in text based RPs so I got constant practice, so maybe unfair skill levels).

i felt bored those last two years though and burnt out, only classes I enjoyed were web mastery and helping work on the school website, and my A&P. Economics gave me far more issues than it should have, I blame the burnout on that cause it wasnt hard, just had do a 2nd try of it.

do they teach you the difference between coma and a comma in private school?

those tens of thousands of dollars a year must be worth it

meatlesshotdogz posted...

do they teach you the difference between coma and a comma in private school?

those tens of thousands of dollars a year must be worth it

bravo, still waking up. Slightly mentally comatose at the moment.

a comma is what I meant. Never said my spelling was good

texanfan27 posted...

bravo, still waking up. Slightly mentally comatose at the moment.

a comma is what I meant. Never said my spelling was good

Just teasing you mainly. But private schools are typically for the elite and for the religious. Im a fan of neither.

most private school educations are no better than public school. Teachers at private schools tend to actually get paid less than public schools, believe it or not.

ECW_Originals12 posted...

my big fear is no one semi competent will want to be teachers in the future. Already massive shortages and teachers leaving the profession in huge numbers.

This is a good bit due to politics too. While one side definitely hates education more than the other, the other has not done enough to support it.

Oh, and if you go around reading posts in just about anywhere, even if you have a good eye out for the bot posts, you can just tell when its a younger human who clearly doesn't know how words are supposed to work.

meatlesshotdogz posted...

Just teasing you mainly. But private schools are typically for the elite and for the religious. Im a fan of neither.

most private school educations are no better than public school. Teachers at private schools tend to actually get paid less than public schools, believe it or not.

I understand that, I think honestly I was blessed with good teachers who gave me good basics. And looking back, I do feel that the comma and proper grammar issue likely existed in the private school, just wasnt as pronounced back then.

I will say that high school doesnt in anyway truly prepare you as much as it could for college. That was a wake up call. Wonderful time, wonderful teachers and experiences, you better time manage or it going murder you though.

The system by it's very nature was designed to cater for the "Line of Standard Deviation". (Basically, it teaches to the student that fits on the line that counts as 'average' even if their peers fall above or below that line). Theoretically it would ensure that no one student is given an advantage over another regardless of their academic achievements or inclinations. However, what ends up happening, at least where I live, you get kids that are barely able to to identify the numbers put before them put in the same classroom as students that are able to explain the logic behind why a negative multiplied by a negative equals a positive.

"All are equal" is the mantra that seems to run Admin, and it's nonsense. I'm atrocious at Math, but good at other subjects. What it should be is "All have strengths".

In order to avoid the blanket solution, it requires money, resources and time. None of which governments have or are willing to spend. I'm not saying every student needs and IEP (individual education plan), but it would make lives easier if we weren't trying a "one size fits all" strategy.

Just my thoughts as an educator of three? Years

Goldenguy posted...

Not a teacher but in my conversations with teachers in PTCs, it definitely seems like they tiptoe a lot more than I would have expected when I was growing up.

I can tell this because my third grader (who is, to a degree, special needs) objectively performs at about a kindergarten to first grade level and is often a pain in the ass behaviorally, and the teacher seemed so relieved when I was actually understanding that she is not an easy student.

Yeah my kid is in 1rst grade and he's a bit behind on some stuff, mostly emotionally, but can perform well enough on tests. Well we had a reunion with the principal and two teachers and I remember the principal telling the teachers about us "dont worry, theyre pretty receptive to feedback".

Made me think how many parents must be confrontational about anything said about their kids.

meatlesshotdogz posted...

public schools in the US suck. Teachers get bullied by admins, and the higher ups are typically incompetent.

That's private schools as well.

NetMafiaGospel posted...

The system by it's very nature was designed to cater for the "Line of Standard Deviation". (Basically, it teaches to the student that fits on the line that counts as 'average' even if their peers fall above or below that line). Theoretically it would ensure that no one student is given an advantage over another regardless of their academic achievements or inclinations. However, what ends up happening, at least where I live, you get kids that are barely able to to identify the numbers put before them put in the same classroom as students that are able to explain the logic behind why a negative multiplied by a negative equals a positive.

"All are equal" is the mantra that seems to run Admin, and it's nonsense. I'm atrocious at Math, but good at other subjects. What it should be is "All have strengths".

In order to avoid the blanket solution, it requires money, resources and time. None of which governments have or are willing to spend. I'm not saying every student needs and IEP (individual education plan), but it would make lives easier if we weren't trying a "one size fits all" strategy.

Just my thoughts as an educator of three? Years

There should definitely be baseline standards among all subjects that every student should meet. That's what Common Core attempted to do but states, school boards, and admins interpreted it as "teach literally this and only this".

Covid fucked everything up since most schools were not prepared for an emergency shutdown. Kids are socially and educationally stunted as a result and instead of doing anything about it, governments and communities just expected us to pick up where we left off. Never mind that some (many) kids are 3-4 years below their grade level now.

Gotta let them all pass through. Don't, say, revise the system to give these kids the years they missed out on back to them. Don't invest in smaller class sizes, higher salaries, stronger curricula, para and special ed support, or programs that make up for the socio-educational deficit.

I'm not disagreeing with you, btw. Just venting.

Skimming the topic so this might have been mentioned, but two serious issues are funding tied to performance and fear of lawsuits. On the former, schools are incentivized to lie about kids performance because it boosts how much money they get. On the latter, you sometimes get issues where if you actually enforced the rules you'd have a case where one group is almost entirely the one getting in trouble and schools are so afraid of ending up in the news that they'll just let kids get away with their behavior rather than risk being accused of bias.