[HN Gopher] Student passes 3 classes in 4 years, ranks near top ...
___________________________________________________________________
Student passes 3 classes in 4 years, ranks near top half of class
with 0.13 GPA
Author : jdkee
Score : 83 points
Date : 2021-03-05 20:02 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (foxbaltimore.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (foxbaltimore.com)
| MattGaiser wrote:
| When people complain about high school diplomas not being worth
| anything in the job market, this is part of the reason why. It
| doesn't indicate even a basic level of skill.
| monocasa wrote:
| How does a school with such a low graduation rate prove that
| they give out high school diplomas to nearly anyone?
| MattGaiser wrote:
| > 4-Year Graduation Rate (Class of 2019) - 48%
|
| 48% graduate from this school.
|
| https://foxbaltimore.com/news/local/fast-facts-augusta-
| fells...
| monocasa wrote:
| I'm still not seeing how an abysmal graduation rate is a
| sign that they give degrees out to anyone.
| throwanem wrote:
| I've known any number of Baltimore schoolteachers. Hell, I used
| to drink for free thanks to some of them, on account of going to
| the same bar some days after work and being pretty good at
| Jeopardy. One I was acquainted with for something like a decade.
| They're no less likely to be good, dedicated people than those in
| any other profession - if anything, given the conditions they
| have to work with, probably somewhat more so.
|
| I'd find it difficult to say what exactly is the problem with
| Baltimore schools generally, especially in the face of a lot of
| people who've seen _The Wire_ , know nothing else about my town,
| and yet somehow feel themselves qualified to dissect it anyway -
| that's not a shot at HN particularly, that's just what happens
| when Baltimore comes up for discussion anywhere that isn't
| Baltimore. But I can tell you what, and who, the problem _isn 't_
| - I can, and I just did.
| specialp wrote:
| The problem isn't just the schools, it is the endless cycle of
| poverty and lack of mobility. For many of these students,
| school is the least of their concern. Just having food to eat
| or staying safe is hard. Combined with high single parent rates
| which is very hard, and just nobody to look up to.
|
| Schooling can only get you so far. Many of these kids need help
| outside of school with mentorship and staying out of crushing
| poverty. Otherwise they really don't have a chance even with
| the very best of schooling. I have no doubt that it is very
| difficult for these teachers. We try to quantify "failing
| schools" with standardized testing but that is not taking into
| account the students going into it. Then for the teachers
| working there they are demoralized and have a tough job as it
| is. I am not saying the schools are blameless but this is a
| more multifaceted and systematic problem than underperforming
| schools.
| hc-taway wrote:
| This is pretty much spot on. A common pithy complaint about
| US schools is that they're funded by property taxes, so it
| must be all that extra money the nice suburban schools get
| that makes them successful.
|
| Unfortunately, that's completely wrong. The worst-of-the-
| worst schools, especially in cities (maybe also out in the
| sticks, I have less visibility into that) get tons of extra
| money (state, feds, non-profit grants, et c.), such that
| they're not-uncommonly spending more per student than their
| "rich" counterparts, paying their teachers more, and so on.
|
| The reason that's so unfortunate is because if funding
| failing schools equally to "good" schools, or even somewhat
| better than them, made meaningful progress to solving the
| problem, that'd be a relatively easy thing to do.
|
| It turns out, instead, that any actually-helpful approach to
| fixing US schools amounts to "solve poverty". That's a much
| bigger problem, is much more expensive, is much more complex,
| and is far harder to sell, politically. One finds oneself
| immediately in the weeds of trying to fix US labor relations,
| wealth inequality, and our social safety net. But that's what
| has to be done to _really_ fix the problems with our schools.
| Everything short of that is just a show put on so it looks
| like "we're doing something about it".
|
| [EDIT] instead of down-votes I'd love a pointer to a more
| tractable solution than "solve poverty", but everything I've
| seen so far indicates that's the only thing that's gonna work
| and that the _wonderfully_ simple solution of "fund schools
| equally" has little or no effect. AFAIK the only thing we've
| tried that even kinda worked was so-called "bussing", but
| that was so wildly unpopular (and not just among the people
| you'd expect to have hated it) that I can't imagine anyone
| having the guts to propose it again.
| cyberlurker wrote:
| I agree completely.
|
| I know so many teachers across the country who are so dedicated
| and hard working, even in some of the worst performing schools.
| I've heard some be described as martyrs and I can't disagree. I
| can't make an absolute statement about every teacher or every
| school. I'm sure somewhere, some are bad. But at this point I
| am very sensitive to blaming the teachers. I don't think they
| are the problem.
|
| Anecdotally, I've found teachers who transition to tech/info
| security to be amazing as well. Super organized, hard working,
| and great interpersonal skills. Seriously, if you can give a
| former teacher a chance at your organization do so.
| ng12 wrote:
| > As we dig deeper into her son's records, we can see in his
| first three years at Augusta Fells, he failed 22 classes and was
| late or absent 272 days
|
| There are usually about 180 days in a school year meaning this
| student was absent more than than 50% of the time. At what point
| is it no longer the school's fault?
| rusabd wrote:
| It certainly school's fault. Maryland has truancy laws:
| https://www.peoples-law.org/truancy
|
| Specifically: "Under Maryland law, a truant student is one who
| is "unlawfully absent" from school for more than: 8 days in any
| quarter, 15 days in any semester, OR 20 days in a school year."
|
| Also, "What happens when a student is found to be truant? The
| student will be referred to the county board's system of active
| intervention. Note that each county must develop a system of
| active intervention for truant students.
|
| A school system representative will investigate the cause of
| the truancy. This representative may provide counseling or even
| notify the Department of Juvenile Services. "
|
| There is whole system designed to handle such cases and it
| failed miserably
| seiferteric wrote:
| In general I agree, except he was in the top half of the
| class... So it sounds like at least half the school just
| routinely does not show up. So how does the system deal with
| a situation like this? I think it would completely overwhelm
| the school/local PD.
| stormbeard wrote:
| Let's say there's a software tech lead and they've been code
| reviewing patches from a junior software engineer at your
| company. There are no tests, no CI to validate it, and it
| probably doesn't even compile... That tech lead approves that
| patch and that junior engineer deploys the code, taking down
| your site. Who is at fault here?
|
| The tech lead. Sure, the system is broken to have even allowed
| this situation to occur, but the tech lead failed everybody by
| approving those patches.
|
| This kid may have been absent and neglecting their studies, but
| the school kept promoting them to the next grade and didn't
| even attempt to take corrective actions by contacting the
| parent. They failed to do THEIR job and allowed for it to get
| to this point.
| john_moscow wrote:
| >Who is at fault here? The tech lead.
|
| Now assume that the moment the tech lead calls out any of
| these issues, the engineer screams "racism" and the tech lead
| gets fired on the spot. And nobody will step in to defend the
| tech lead, because "you are defending a racist, hence you are
| a racist yourself".
| macspoofing wrote:
| First, we're not talking about tech bros here. We're talking
| about a parent raising their child and being AWARE of what's
| going on in his life over a period of years.
|
| >This kid may have been absent and neglecting their studies,
| but the school kept promoting them to the next grade and
| didn't even attempt to take corrective actions by contacting
| the parent.
|
| Let's say all that is true. It's still the mother's fault.
| How could you raise your child and not know he is failing
| every class and skipping half the time FOR YEARS. Come on
| man, be serious.
|
| >They failed to do THEIR job and allowed for it to get to
| this point.
|
| What are you talking about? It isn't the school's
| responsibility to raise children. Schools are part of a huge
| government bureaucracy staffed by well meaning bureaucrats
| providing a particular social service. You, as a parent,
| CANNOT delegate the responsibility for raising YOUR child to
| them.
| ng12 wrote:
| Ok, except you're forgetting the CTO who doesn't believe in
| testing and will yell at the tech lead for wasting time
| writing them. And the CFO who won't approve budget for a CI
| system. And the CEO who just wants the feature pushed so he
| can sell it to clients whether or not it works.
|
| The system is broken and in cases like these the school is
| put in an impossible situation. And remember this isn't just
| one kid they're trying to deal with: it's more than half of
| the student body. So the tech lead probably has dozens of
| junior devs constantly pushing code that he has to deal with.
|
| You're probably right: the tech lead makes a nice scapegoat
| when a news article gets published that riles everyone up.
| Firing him won't solve the problem though.
| inopinatus wrote:
| That is similar to my own attendance record for the final two
| years of high school, three decades ago. No-one came looking,
| then, either.
| maxerickson wrote:
| I was chronically late my last semester of high school. Didn't
| impact my grades any (I finished in 1998, roughly the start of
| the 'lock down' era and was fortunate enough to have a first
| hour teacher that didn't really care). I was probably late more
| than 1/2 of the time.
|
| (the point being that the count of 'late and absent' probably
| doesn't paint enough of the story)
| bendotero wrote:
| But they passed him. I can't say whether his mother is telling
| the truth or not, but if she is, they passed him without even
| notifying her that he was absent so often. In either case, he
| at least should not have been moved from English and Algebra I
| to the level 2s of those classes. Of course he was going to
| fail the other ones. So something crazy is happening that a
| student who is that absent can still get promoted.
| macspoofing wrote:
| >But they passed him
|
| Because schools don't fail kids or hold them back as a matter
| of policy, and honestly, that doesn't matter. That's not
| excuse for the mother not knowing what's going on.
|
| >hey passed him without even notifying her that he was absent
| so often
|
| Maybe they did, maybe they didn't, but she should take an
| interest. She's raising him. And it isn't like he failed one
| test. It's years of failed classes and truancy. Are you
| telling me a parent wouldn't see the signs that would make
| them at least go and talk to his teachers to see what's going
| on?
| ww520 wrote:
| There were pressure from parents to force schools and
| teachers to pass students no matter what. Remember SAT was
| removed as an objective measuring standard? That was not an
| isolated instance.
| ng12 wrote:
| By and large schools are not allowed to say "this student
| never shows up, we're kicking him out". There's a laundry
| list of regulations and perverse incentives that ensure
| underachieving students fail upwards until they give up and
| drop out.
|
| What the school is hoping for is that he'll voluntarily drop
| out and - maybe - get his GED. That's usually the only out
| they're given.
| m8s wrote:
| There is certainly shared responsibility from the student(s),
| and from the parents, but this also highlights a systemic
| breakdown in so many areas. A person should not need three jobs
| to support their family. Schools should have the necessary
| resources to help failing students. I could go on, but this
| whole thing just stinks.
| viklove wrote:
| Probably an unpopular opinion, but if you're working multiple
| jobs you probably shouldn't go and have 3 children...
| [deleted]
| oarsinsync wrote:
| To turn that position around, what is the appropriate
| number of jobs to have for someone with three children?
| viklove wrote:
| It's not so much about the number of jobs, but about the
| hours you're working. A single parent working 80+ hours a
| week can't raise 3 children without paid help. Even if
| there are two parents, they need to allocate time to
| mentor their children through life.
|
| If you don't have enough time to raise your children
| properly, that's 100% on you. Having children is a
| _choice_ , and the costs of that choice should not be
| imposed on society at large.
| Frondo wrote:
| We don't know the circumstances of someone working three
| jobs with three children - maybe they had a good job, maybe
| they were married to someone who also had a good job, maybe
| life was going swimmingly until someone in their family got
| cancer and bankrupted them or their spouse died or their
| employer closed and down and because it's Baltimore it was
| tough to find another decent job.
|
| Better to figure out how we can support these people so
| that their lives aren't filled with such abject suffering
| than to say "they (retroactively) shouldn't have kids."
| sergiotapia wrote:
| Two things need to be blown up and it's ashes scattered to the
| winds.
|
| 1. "No child left behind".
|
| 2. Common core. Which is inherently very racist and damaging to
| high performing kids.
| cyberlurker wrote:
| Source for #2 please. I'm genuinely interested how anyone
| could call it racist.
| [deleted]
| desine wrote:
| https://youtu.be/LQ8Nr3_2724
|
| Often the war on white privilege manifests itself as
| preventing white success rather than helping PoC. Families
| that help their children with math homework have been
| irritated that students often get no credit on math
| homework if they use the older arithmetic methods. Rather
| than allowing students to use any valid mathematical
| principles to learn, children are forced to use a new
| system that (in my opinion) generates extra work to achieve
| the correct result.
|
| I dated a teacher many years ago, long before the political
| climate shift, and she constantly ranted about how common
| core was slowing her students down. At the time I didn't
| understand much (and didn't ask her to elaborate much), but
| it's been interesting seeing her rants validated the last
| couple of years.
|
| Common core makes sense when a student struggles with the
| traditional methods. But forcing all students to use it,
| and it's historical background of being driven by racial
| issues, is a damning sign that it's intentionally holding
| high performers (often White or Asian) back.
| monocasa wrote:
| I'm not sure how you came to the conclusion that
| education is this zero sum game, and that by
| intentionally helping less privileged students, they're
| holding more privileged students back.
|
| For instance on the math side, a focus on numeracy rather
| than rote memory gives students without access to extra
| out of school resources another set of tools to approach
| later math classes on their own.
|
| On top of that, a focus numeracy also helps out
| privileged students as well and IMO actually teaches math
| rather than just arthimetic. It'll actually be useful in
| an age where everyone has multi ghz calculator in their
| pocket.
|
| Everyone wins.
|
| This whole discussion reminds me of the push back against
| New Math, where the changes in education were described
| by some as a soviet plot. No, we just keep making
| improvements to how we teach each generation, using the
| data we got from the previous gens.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Math
| benjohnson wrote:
| It also harms parents that only have a small amount of
| time to help their child with homework by pulling the rug
| out from under them. The parent's own knowlage is no
| longer of any use.
|
| I have enough time to get the nuance of common core and
| help my child but plenty of others don't have that luxury
| of time.
| threatofrain wrote:
| The Common Core for math just advances the curriculum
| forward by 0.5 years, and for any particular section,
| such as for some subject at some grade, the specification
| can be read in maybe 5-10 minutes. (I mention math
| specifically because it's recently been a topic of
| discussion with "non-racist math".)
|
| Khan Academy, for example, conforms to the Common Core
| perfectly.
|
| In the Age of Google, it shouldn't be hard to summon the
| relevant passages which are problematic so that everyone
| can discuss them. But the vagueness of critique is a tell
| that someone doesn't care to lead with detail.
| shiftpgdn wrote:
| This absolutely isn't true. Ask any parent whos children
| are doing common core math. It doesn't help much of the
| coursework and wording is nonsensical. A lot of it
| reminds of me communications we would get from our South
| Asian team at one of my old jobs.
| dmix wrote:
| It's interesting to square:
|
| > and was late or absent 272 days
|
| And the mother's statement:
|
| > He didn't fail, the school failed him. The school failed at
| their job. They failed. They failed, that's the problem here.
| They failed. They failed. He didn't deserve that.
|
| There's got to be _far_ more than just the school failing here.
| jariel wrote:
| "He didn't fail, the school failed him."
|
| It's almost ridiclous.
|
| If students don't show up, don't care, have absolutely no
| interest in paying attention, are more concerned with social
| structure etc. then a top prep-school would have the same
| outcomes.
|
| The blame and externalizations is part of the problem.
|
| The teachers are basically heroes.
|
| The families, students, communities are completely broken,
| that's the problem.
| belltaco wrote:
| >The teachers are basically heroes.
|
| What? Why are the teachers basically heroes for letting a
| student to the next grade while he's failing that much? And
| also not informing the parent about it? Huh?
| jariel wrote:
| ?
|
| This line of thinking is really insulting to teachers.
|
| Do you think for a moment the teachers have a right one
| way or the other to fail those students?
|
| What would happen when the teacher decides to fail 80% of
| a class? Do you think that's allowed? Not for a second.
|
| And 'informing the parent about attendance'?
|
| You think the parents generally care one bit?
|
| You think the parents don't know their kids are _never in
| class_?
|
| What kind of parent 'discovers' their kid has not been in
| school for 2 years?!?
|
| That it's the teachers responsibility to spend 4 hours on
| the phone every day as 70% of her class doesn't show up?
|
| It is the expectation that students:
|
| 1) Show up. 2) Paid attention. 3) Don't join gangs. 4)
| Try to finish the work.
|
| If they do those things, they will get an education.
|
| Beyond that, it's really hard for schools - a school can
| handle a 'small handful' of special cases, but not much
| more.
| threatofrain wrote:
| Keeping the parents in the loop and developing
| interventions is part of the _administration 's_ job,
| especially if a child has been absent overall (as opposed
| to only not attending math).
|
| The fact that this parent didn't know so many things for
| so long means that they are absentee. But they are
| holding 3 jobs, and for them to not know _also_ indicates
| the failure of the school to keep the parent informed.
| hc-taway wrote:
| It is entirely possible the school didn't communicate
| well, but be aware it's _typical_ for a parent with a
| grievance to report not having received messages that
| have been presented to them several times via several
| different channels. And that 's not even considering the
| ones who'll simply lie (every teacher will run into some
| of these), but just the ones who don't read anything or
| respond to phone calls.
| belltaco wrote:
| >but be aware it's typical for a parent with a grievance
| to report not having received messages that have been
| presented to them several times via several different
| channels.
|
| Sure, but it's also _typical_ for school admin to lie
| about the same thing happening when it did not.
| stormbeard wrote:
| What did the teachers even DO to be heroes? It's not like
| they tried to turn these kids' lives around or something.
| They didn't even to the bare minimum of their jobs...
|
| They basically just showed up to work and rubber-stamped
| everyone on to the next grade. Tell me what about this
| makes them heroes.
| jariel wrote:
| They are 'heroes' because they are trying to teach the
| most impossible, intransigent, terrible students in a
| nearly hopeless scenario.
|
| Most of them could _quit_ and just go elsewhere - often
| they do the work because they view it as a social
| responsibility.
|
| Everything they do beyond 'showing up and teaching' is
| beyond their duty, and most of them do.
|
| This whole bit about 'rubber stamping to the next grade'
| is a misunderstanding of the situation -> they don't have
| the power to fail students en masse.
|
| I suggest >80% of teachers would be happy to 'fail'
| students if that were allowable. They'd probably love to
| have classes of 8-10 students which is probably the
| necessary level of attention required.
|
| If teachers acted rationally they would quit and leave -
| frankly I think they should, let the communities deep
| problems be exposed for what they are.
| tedunangst wrote:
| What does "trying to teach" mean in this context?
| Standing in front of an empty classroom and giving a
| monologue?
| prepend wrote:
| They are much heroes as anyone who does a hard job is a
| hero.
|
| It's quite rationale to stay in a position and get paid
| in order to pay bills, manage life, etc.
| goldcd wrote:
| I'm going to go out on a limb, and say I'll excuse the school
| for failing him, on the days he didn't go there.
| BeetleB wrote:
| Will you excuse the school for continually promoting him
| when he was doing so poorly?
|
| The school I went to would not let you advance if you
| failed a subject (with a few exceptions). You failed math?
| You don't get promoted. No exceptions.
|
| Of course, my school may have had its own set of problems,
| but this sounds like the opposite extreme.
| goldcd wrote:
| I'm not normally one to get pissy over a down-vote - but
| "Come on?"
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| Another quote:
|
| > "He feels embarrassed, he feels like a failure," France
| said of her son. "I'm like, you can't feel like that. And you
| have to be strong and you got to keep fighting. Life is about
| fighting. Things happen, but you got to keep fighting. And
| he's willing, he's trying, but who would he turn to when the
| people that's supposed to help him is not? Who do he turn
| to?"
|
| Her son is the victim? Maybe that school is not the best, but
| the student made the choice to skip classes and not tell
| anyone. He's not the victim, he's actually a failure because
| he failed most of his classes, and he needs to learn from
| that and take school seriously, or stop pretending he's
| studying.
|
| Losing three years is a fair exchange for the three years of
| freedom he loaned from his future.
| robotresearcher wrote:
| > He's not the victim, he's actually a failure
|
| He's a kid. He made bad decisions. He needs support, role
| models and being gently but firmly held accountable for his
| decisions in a way that ramps up gradually. I don't see
| these things in this story.
|
| The school informed his mom of his grades but - at least as
| reported here - didn't explain the eventual consequences to
| her. They did not impose the 'natural' consequences of not
| progressing in classes that she was expecting. There's a
| communication failure there, a weird policy, and a failure
| to escalate this case. He was not held accountable for his
| decisions regularly with gradually increasing stakes.
| There's also the bad reassuring incentive provided by
| publishing his peer ranking in a failing peer group.
|
| The mom also apparently did not escalate these very bad
| grades and attendance into a major issue for her son. She
| didn't go down there and dig into it. And now she is
| avoiding any overall responsibility for the bad situation
| he is in. Perhaps she didn't learn personal accountability
| at school. Certainly she trusted the school too much.
|
| Shit is messed up.
|
| But we take schooling as a shared responsibility, and
| that's the only piece of this puzzle we have collective
| control over, so let's focus on how that can be improved.
| It's a long game. The kids of educated kids will almost
| always be educated. Blaming the mom is not productive.
| Calling the kid a failure is unhelpful.
| prepend wrote:
| > He's a kid. He made bad decisions. He needs support,
| role models and being gently but firmly held accountable
| for his decisions in a way that ramps up gradually.
|
| This is not exclusive to failure. He failed AND he needs
| help.
|
| I think the issue here is that missing 270 days of school
| requires some detailed explanation. There's a reason, but
| having once been a teenager the most reasonable is that
| he skipped a lot of school.
|
| Blaming "the system" for this level of just plain
| missingness is not telling the whole story.
|
| Unless you want to go deeper in that the underlying
| condition that made it hard for the parent to not check
| grades in 4 years and the kid to skip that much school
| without anyone noticing.
| idrios wrote:
| The article is about a kid who ranked in the upper 50% --
| they chose to do a story about him because this means he's
| not an outlier, he's the norm for this school. It's very
| likely that failing / skipping class is the only way to fit
| in, that students who put in too much effort or do too well
| get beaten up or worse for it. The school's faculty also
| probably understands the problem better than anyone else,
| but doesn't have the resources to provide a solution.
| Smaller classes helps but you need more funding to pay more
| teachers to do that. And any problems at home the school
| has no control over.
| dmix wrote:
| > It's very likely that failing / skipping class is the
| only way to fit in, that students who put in too much
| effort or do too well get beaten up or worse for it.
|
| Bingo. Not the only thing of course (as you mention some
| issues with schools government funding structures) but a
| critical one.
|
| Although I've learned talking about culture is often
| taboo in academia and polite serious conversation. You
| have to be extremely careful so many don't breach the
| subject at all, so it gets ignored like many important
| obvious things. Like "The Wire" it's easier to show it in
| it's raw form than to analyze it in discussion or in
| papers.
|
| But still it's a giant elephant in the room which I
| experienced heavily as a poor performing student early on
| in my life. Before I (fortunately out of circumstance
| with my single mother) moved to a better environment and
| set of friends.
| kube-system wrote:
| Any time I read a story about this, people can't decide
| whether it's the school's fault, the kid's fault, or the
| parents' fault. I think the reason we never solve these
| problems is because it's nobody's fault in particular.
| It's the broader community as a whole that is stuck in a
| self-perpetuating cycle. There's no single component you
| can change to fix it.
| joshspankit wrote:
| With a parent working 3 jobs (probably just to make ends
| meet), they at some point have to rely on the implied social
| contract (as dictated by the law):
|
| - That the school will teach what they are required to teach
|
| - That the school will track absences/lates
|
| - That the school will notify the parent if they see that the
| child is falling behind at either of those
|
| Having seen similar cases myself, I can say almost
| definitively that one of the other huge parts going on here
| is that at some point the student fell behind and was ashamed
| to speak up. If no one is being accountable, students in this
| position can show up every day and _still_ fail because they
| simply don't have the foundation to understand what's being
| taught. It doesn't take much at that point for them to simply
| disengage and stop showing up. By not being "disruptive" I
| would argue that they are _more_ at risk of failing as these
| issues fly under the radar.
| goldcd wrote:
| I'll agree to that. I mean I'll hold my hand up today, to
| clicking the "accept" on that meeting invites and attending
| - but not having an f'in clue how to solve the problem, so
| keep quiet.
|
| The immediate 'bad justification' is that if I didn't
| attend, I might get labelled as the problem.
|
| The 'more rational' justification is that by attending and
| listening I get a better understanding, and by meeting #2
| and #3 hope I can contribute constructively.
|
| I know I'm _definitely_ not going to be able to help by
| dodging the discussion.
|
| Now there are exceptions - if I think others are better
| able and willing to solve an important issue, or I think
| the issue is ultimately unimportant - but that's high risk.
| Like saying I don't need school, so I won't go.
| warent wrote:
| Agree, I get the sense we're not getting the full picture
| here. There's some information / context missing
| alistairSH wrote:
| This is one of the best responses I've seen when this topic
| arises and people wonder who's failing whom. I'm tempted to
| copy/paste it into every other post about how the kid is a
| lazy bum.
| joshspankit wrote:
| That's high praise, thank you. I'm humbled.
|
| You (and anyone else) have my full and unrestricted
| permission to copy/paste it.
| arthurcolle wrote:
| Reminds me of this scene from Animal House
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKS0GVvoE9I&ab_channel=russl...
| [deleted]
| koolba wrote:
| The majority of this student's high school years were with
| Catherine Pugh as the mayor of Baltimore[1]. She was eventually
| convicted of abusing her power as Mayor and being bribed for
| $500K from the University of Maryland Medical System. The bribe
| was indirectly done by having the University purchase 100,000
| copies of her self-published book to donate it to the Baltimore
| school system in exchange for her approving contracts for the
| University (including $4M for the CEO).
|
| Baltimore, like Philadelphia, Chicago, and a number of other
| large cities, has had the same political machine in power for the
| past 50+ years. It's a system where corrupt politicians compete
| and only the most corrupt gets to the top to seize power.
|
| It's no wonder the school children aren't learning anything.
| Their parents keep electing the same failures who never change
| anything.
|
| [1]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_Pugh#Resignation_and...
| anewaccount2021 wrote:
| Blue No Matter Who. Its why Andrew Cuomo would be re-elected
| tomorrow, as would Gavin Newsom. Indeed, if I were Andrew
| Cuomo, I would schedule an election ASAP - there's nothing like
| a vote mandate to erase any doubt.
| robohoe wrote:
| Yep, sounds like Illinois. There is currently a shift in power
| in Illinois after Michael Madigan's resignation [1]. We will
| see if "The Machine" is going to fall apart now or get injected
| with fresh blood.
|
| [1]: https://www.chicagotribune.com/politics/ct-prem-mike-
| madigan...
| nojito wrote:
| This has nothing to do with corruption. It's that no state has
| proper truancy laws that have widespread support.
|
| You can't educate kids if they don't show up to class.
| ghaff wrote:
| What would proper truancy laws look like?
|
| Taking kids away from parents? Jailing parents as well?
|
| At some point I'm pretty sure that a sufficiently draconian
| "cure" is worse than the disease.
| [deleted]
| idrios wrote:
| > But in those three years, only one teacher requested a parent
| conference, which France says never happened
|
| An enormous amount of these kids come from broken families. I
| volunteered at a charter school in Cleveland, and would hear the
| exasperation in the school director's voice over parents who
| would pick up their kids while strung up on drugs, or not show up
| at all. There were also a number of great parents who were
| engaged with their kids, but this was also selection bias because
| the charter school was specifically for finding the students with
| the best chances of escaping the cycle of poverty in that area,
| and taking them away from the public school system.
|
| This article should be used for awareness, not fingerpointing.
| This is an extremely challenging problem
| [deleted]
| spamizbad wrote:
| On no parent conferences: Teachers only have so much bandwidth
| for parent-teacher conferences, so they likely prioritize
| students in the lowest quartile. Because her son was near the
| median, he likely wasn't performing poorly enough to merit one.
| School administrators might even have policies demanding such
| things.
| skissane wrote:
| > Teachers only have so much bandwidth for parent-teacher
| conferences, so they likely prioritize students in the lowest
| quartile.
|
| Different system and different country, but at our son's
| school, every child gets two parent-teacher conferences a year
| (one at the start of the year and one at the end). There is an
| online booking system, you go in and book a slot. They only go
| for ten minutes. The only way you don't get one is if the
| parents choose not to book one.
|
| And that's nothing new, I remember the same thing when I was a
| kid. The only thing that is new is online booking.
|
| If our son's school can do this, why can't this one?
| Incompetence? Underfunding?
| spamizbad wrote:
| Sounds like that's a system that requires parents to take the
| initiative and book the conference. If you don't book, are
| you forced into a slot?
| skissane wrote:
| They send out an email, saying the booking system is open.
| We have to go in and make a booking. No, they don't
| automatically allocate slots to parents who don't book. I
| don't know what would happen if you were expected to book a
| meeting but didn't book one.
|
| Actually we don't book the meeting because they have a
| different system for students on IEPs. If your child has an
| IEP, you don't book the normal meeting, the school contacts
| you to arrange a different one. That's because they bring a
| lot more staff to IEP student meetings than the regular
| parent-teacher meetings.
| huffmsa wrote:
| There are only 120 kids in his class
| mrguyorama wrote:
| One thing my teacher mother always talked about:
|
| The kids who NEED parent teacher conferences don't show up to
| parent teacher conferences, and the ones who do show up never
| really needed them in the first place. This is about 90% of the
| cases. They are still incredibly useful for those 10% leftover
| cases where a student is struggling and a parent cares
| jVinc wrote:
| > He's a good kid. He didn't deserve that. Where's the mentors?
| Where is the help for him?
|
| Well obviously at the school but...
|
| > was late or absent 272 days.
|
| I feel like the story here isn't that the schools are failing
| parents, it's that parents are going to absolutely aburd lengths
| to try to blames schooles after the fact for their own failures.
|
| She ignore her childs education for 3 years, and so did her kid,
| and suddenly at the end of it she's going "whaaat!?" when they
| tell her that this has consequences.
| nkrisc wrote:
| As I recall from reading this article the other day, she's also
| working three separate jobs to support three kids.
| chrismcb wrote:
| While I agree, I think there is blame to go around. As the mom
| said, she knew he was getting a failing grade, but thought it
| was OK when the kid was promoted to the next grade or next
| class. Why is it may now they are learning he is still in 9th
| grade? As there were indications he was promoted to 10th when
| he shoukdnt have been. And what about the other half the
| school?
| eznzt wrote:
| >"He didn't fail, the school failed him. The school failed at
| their job. They failed. They failed, that's the problem here.
| They failed. They failed. He didn't deserve that."
|
| Guess the race.
| umvi wrote:
| Anecdata, but even here in Montgomery County truancy is rampant
| as well. My next door neighbor is a 7th grader who has attended
| his Zoom classes only 4 times since last March. Meaning, he was
| truant 99% of 2020. His mom is a single mom struggling with her
| own problems and can't forcibly homeschool him.
| cheeze wrote:
| > His transcripts show he failed Spanish I and Algebra I but was
| promoted to Spanish II and Algebra II. He also failed English II
| but was passed on to English III.
|
| Reminds me of the scene in The Wire where they talk about social
| promotion
| washadjeffmad wrote:
| Scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mIqFTizGMI
| prvc wrote:
| I think there are many reading this that are unfamiliar with
| that scene.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| The part that is baffling to me is, if there is a procedure in
| place to notify parents, and try to remedy the situation, how is
| it that almost half of the rest of the students have even worse
| attendance and worse grades?
|
| Something stinks about this story. We certainly don't have the
| whole picture here.
|
| Unrelated but when I read the article I assumed the school was a
| private school. I realize that doesn't really match up with
| "Single Mother of three working three jobs", but "Augusta Fells
| Savage Institute of Visual Arts" does not sound like a public
| school to me.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| What stinks is the Baltimore public school system. Inner city
| public schools are, in most cases, corrupt (you can tell
| because the employees quoted here feared retaliation),
| worthless, dangerous, and too expensive (because of the
| corruption).
|
| There's unfortunately not a deeper conspiracy here than a
| public school system which advances students whether or not
| they learn literally anything.
|
| Also: I sympathize with a single working mother, but
| "notification process" aside, the fact is, this means she
| didn't look at her kid's report card in 4 years. She might
| otherwise be a perfectly great parent, but she was 0% engaged
| with his education.
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| Feel bad for this poor kid and all of these kids.
|
| Their lives are significantly hurt by crappy parenting and a
| crappy school system.
|
| It's like they never had a chance.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| In the article she admits she knew he was failing classes,
| but since he was still being advanced she thought it was
| fine.
| harrisonjackson wrote:
| I am not trying to defend her but she was aware he was
| failing lots of classes but assumed it was not going to
| prevent him from graduating since he was promoted to the next
| class. Spanish 1 -> 2, English 1 -> 2, etc.
|
| How is someone going to pass Spanish 2 after failing Spanish
| 1?
| MattGaiser wrote:
| > How is someone going to pass Spanish 2 after failing
| Spanish 1?
|
| Failure is not a barrier to passing evidently.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| It is kind of a weird assumption on her part, but also
| weird behavior on the part of the school.
|
| It all just stinks is what I mean. Basically no one took
| any kind of responsibility for this kid's education and
| success.
| misiti3780 wrote:
| It's still a bit confusing no - that the mother knew he was
| failing classes but thought everything was fine?
| dkhenry wrote:
| The Baltimore city-wide graduation rate is 70%[1]. Its not at
| all unbelievable that this single school would be below 50%.
| Public education in the US is a failed system, and we have
| rewarded it by throwing more money at the problem.
|
| 1. https://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2020/02/25/baltimore-city-
| sch...
| Retric wrote:
| Extra money is rarely used to improve the schools at issue
| rather than testing and administration overhead. What I found
| interesting was:
|
| _The district's five-year graduation rate increased by .02
| percentage points, to 75 percentage points overall. Since
| 2010, the four-year graduation rate has increased by 8.8
| percentage points overall.
|
| "The new graduation requirements raised the bar for all
| Maryland students_
| umvi wrote:
| > Public education in the US is a failed system
|
| Public education failed? Or these kids' parents' failed?
| Doesn't seem fair to force schools to pick up the slack of
| failing parents and families and then chalk it up to school
| failures when the kids still aren't attending. You could have
| a gold-plated diamond-studded high school staffed by nobel
| prize winners, and it wouldn't amount to any value for the
| kids if they don't go...
| urban_strike wrote:
| I'd agree that it's not fully solvable by the school alone.
| But zooming out, I'd be inclined to say the "society that
| forced a mother to work 3 jobs to get by" failed. I imagine
| it's hard to give each child individual attention/care when
| you're spread that thin, hence being essentially forced to
| offload chunks of that parenting-responsibility onto
| institutions.
|
| Which is a much larger and harder issue than a failure of
| individual responsibility. But it seems like that's the
| more foundational issue as far as I can tell.
| umvi wrote:
| > But zooming out, I'd be inclined to say the "society
| that forced a mother to work 3 jobs to get by" failed
|
| But how did the mother get into position where a) she's
| single and b) she needs to work 3 jobs to get by?
|
| One situation is teen pregnancy. Say a girl gets pregnant
| as a teenager and the father flees (common for single
| moms). Now she has to raise a kid by herself and drop out
| of school, limiting her career options.
|
| Is this an individual responsibility fail or a societal
| fail? I guess you could argue "society failed by not
| providing her with free contraceptives and/or abortive
| services and/or social services" but it's just a bad, sad
| situation no matter how you slice it, and clearly there
| was _some_ personal agency involved. Even worse, it 's a
| self-perpetuating cycle (i.e. the pregnant teen's
| offspring is more likely to also be a pregnant teen)
| urban_strike wrote:
| I think your teenage pregnancy example is probably
| reasonable, I could see that being a big turning point in
| a mother's life, where things began getting
| tougher/worse.
|
| I guess my point is that even if it's clearly an
| individual-failure, how long should that condemn her to a
| life of struggle and hardship, let alone her children? If
| one step off the straight-and-narrow in society means
| that you need to beat incredible odds to make it back
| onto the happy-path, we need to work to make that easier
| to do. Regardless of whether you fell off that path by
| your own actions today, last week, or decades ago when
| you were a child.
|
| I'd want to live a society where those struggling get
| repeated lifelines and assistance to help find some
| stability. I guess I don't see what the other option is;
| I don't think we can just give up and let them (and their
| children, and their children's children...) struggle and
| fail forever. Even if that means that they need more
| support/attention than the average citizen for however
| long it takes.
| washadjeffmad wrote:
| For people not from the US, selective defunding of education
| was part of a strategy begun in the mid-1800s to further
| disenfranchise free blacks around the nation.
|
| By shifting schools to local funded, areas with multiple
| (segregated) school systems used "plain and simple economic
| reason" to shut down excess schools to save cost, somehow
| always the black ones. The proof that blacks could not lift
| themselves out of these situations was used as further proof
| of their inherent inferiority, not the systemic racism they
| faced.
|
| To compound this, states that organized "literacy tests"[1]
| to vote rarely required them for whites. Further removed from
| the ability to affect their circumstances, many black
| communities languished for generations.
|
| As a natural extension of this, many school districts in the
| US are still operating under unequal resources while their
| constituents' tax revenues go towards the landscaping and
| infrastructure costs of wealthier areas, while the blame is
| placed on the victims (eg- "absent parents" who are largely
| working class victims of exploitation from extreme rent
| seeking, over-policing harsher monetary and legal penalties,
| payday loan traps, and other things you don't encounter in
| wealthy areas).
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_test
| civilized wrote:
| The whole picture we're missing here is that _everyone_ is
| failing, checked out, and has no goals other than shifting
| blame.
| jariel wrote:
| Why do we live with this delusion that it has anything to do with
| the schools?
|
| They are the same facilities, programs, course materials and
| teachers as most other places.
|
| The students, an extension of the community are the
| differentiating factor.
|
| For a million reasons surely, but don't blame the teachers.
|
| It's completely bizarre all this talk about 'education' when
| students are not showing up, don't care a single bit about
| outcomes.
|
| That school could be a top prep school and outcomes would be
| similar.
| trentnix wrote:
| Because there is money and power in blaming someone else.
| jariel wrote:
| I think the reason is - we believe that the 'school' is the
| system that transforms students. While it is to some extent -
| it needs good inputs.
|
| The 'first order finger pointing' for failing students is
| reasonably schools.
|
| But once you understand they are the same systems that are in
| other places, and often the teachers in these places are
| heroes and part time social workers - you realize it's the
| inputs, not the system.
|
| It is not the schools responsibility to get students to show
| up when 70% of them don't want to show up. It's not the
| schools responsibility to be full time guidance counsellors,
| mentors, and provide every need.
|
| It's utterly ridiculous. They'd have to have 1 non-teaching
| staffers for ever 2 students just to cope.
|
| Not even a top prep school could handle that.
|
| The 'best performing schools' also have the most
| conscientious and engaged students.
|
| There are deep social problems in those communities, blaming
| the teachers is quite insulting.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| pavlov wrote:
| I have an 8-year-old child. Over the years she has already been
| in school in Finland (public), UK (somewhat fancy private), and
| USA (good public in Manhattan).
|
| The American school is striking in its emphasis on externally
| managed curricula, state-wide tests, etc. It feels like the
| teachers are competent but nobody trusts them. Other parents seem
| more demanding and aggressive than at the expensive private
| school in London.
|
| Any solution to America's school woes probably isn't going to
| include even more top-down control and parental involvement, as
| the system seems to be already overflowing with those.
| WoahNoun wrote:
| American schools are not a monolith. There are some of the
| world's best schools and (first) world's worse schools. If you
| could afford a fancy school in the UK, you were likely in a
| nice neighborhood in the US with enough property tax base for
| that neighborhood to afford a good public school. The US's
| problem is that school funding is local and most neighborhoods
| don't have that property tax base to afford a good school.
| There is very little top down control and parental involvement
| in poor neighborhoods with poorly funded schools.
| pseudo0 wrote:
| Baltimore City has the 5th highest per-student funding out of
| the 100 largest school districts in the country, with $15,793
| per student per year [0]. The issue is that no amount of
| school funding can substitute for involved parents and a
| stable home environment.
|
| [0] - https://foxbaltimore.com/news/project-
| baltimore/governor-lar...
| dcolkitt wrote:
| 100% agree. Middle-class American schools are actually very
| good by international standards. The reason US test scores
| are low is because of a long left tail of failing schools in
| low income areas.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| skissane wrote:
| > The US's problem is that school funding is local
|
| Maybe that's the answer then? Abolish school districts, all
| public schools should be controlled by the state government?
| Then local taxes won't pay for schools, only state and
| federal taxes will. That's the system we have here in
| Australia, and it seems to work okay.
| medium_burrito wrote:
| We already spend a shitload of money on education here, and
| it's crap. Same with healthcare. Our spending is not the
| problem.
|
| Spending more money on schools will not fix a social
| problem.
| skissane wrote:
| It isn't just about how much money you spend, it is also
| about how the money is distributed, which actors get it
| and what they spend it on.
|
| If state governments took over control of schools and
| local school districts were abolished, that might well
| not lead to any change in the overall amount of money
| spent on public education, but it would very likely lead
| to changes in how and where that money was spent.
| nullserver wrote:
| If kids don't show up 50% of the time and the mom doesn't
| care, and the Dad is long gone. Kids friends think
| learning makes you into a sell out.
|
| Money isn't going to solve that.
| skissane wrote:
| I agree. But at least the school can reach out to the
| parent(s) and say "your child is skipping school and
| failing", which this mother claims they did not. Either
| the mother is being untruthful, or else the school really
| did fail here in a way which is independent of the social
| issues of the child and their friends and family. And if
| the later is the case, changing administrative and
| funding structures might actually make some difference.
| Not to the ultimate problem of the child's social
| deprivation, but at least to the parent(s) saying "we had
| no idea".
| ghaff wrote:
| >The US's problem is that school funding is local
|
| If your problem statement were true, I'd expect that I'd see
| a strong correlation at the state level between per student
| spend at the city/town level and test scores. I won't say
| there's no correlation but it's a fairly weak one. For
| example, many urban school districts have both bottom of the
| barrel results with some of the greatest spend.
|
| Added: You also see disparities between states. Mississippi
| outspends Utah per student. Which one do you think has better
| outcomes. And New York dwarfs everyone else in spend even
| though most NYC public schools are notoriously bad.
| earthscienceman wrote:
| This pretends that test scores are a meaningful metric for
| the success of school funding when we know that's not true.
| How money was spent is just as important how much. Which it
| seems is the argument you're making. Where I think you're
| missing nuance is in recognizing that the most meaningful
| comparison is not from state to state, where the lines are
| blurred. It's much more meaningful to compare outcomes from
| neighboring districts.
|
| And, in that comparison, it's extremely well documented
| that wealthy neighborhoods have significantly better
| outcomes than their poorer neighbors.
| ghaff wrote:
| >extremely well documented that wealthy neighborhoods
| have significantly better outcomes than their poorer
| neighbors
|
| Sure. But wealthy neighborhood correlates with a bunch of
| other things than high property values and typically
| relatively high property taxes which fund schools. It
| also tends to correlate to successful people, often well-
| educated, with at least one parent who spends a lot of
| time involved with their children's schoolwork, other
| types of support including tutoring if necessary, etc. So
| it's more complicated than the local public school has
| more money and spends that money on the right things.
| hc-taway wrote:
| > The American school is striking in its emphasis on externally
| managed curricula, state-wide tests, etc. It feels like the
| teachers are competent but nobody trusts them.
|
| One of the most important things to understand how America
| works, I think, is to appreciate that blame-avoidance is the #1
| priority of basically all actors who matter--which itself isn't
| that unusual--and also that we also have a bizarre cultural
| blindness to same, such that we'll give people a pass when they
| plainly _are_ responsible just because they set something up in
| advance to shift the blame (to e.g. a system of rules or a
| committee).
|
| The flip side of this is that we _crucify_ people who can have
| mistakes pinned on them, or admit to a mistake.
|
| "No-one got fired for buying IBM" is practically a national
| motto for us.
|
| We'll tolerate a chronically-broken and ineffective system far,
| far longer than we will an individual making one bad choice for
| every ten good ones they make.
|
| Keeping this in mind makes a lot of how our institutions and
| "decision-makers" operate much clearer.
| khrbrt wrote:
| Way off topic for a discussion about schools, but your
| comment reminds and enrages me about Abu Graib and how they
| court marshaled a few low level enlisted soldiers and nothing
| happened to the colonels, generals, and high level DoD
| officials who were responsible for, and well aware of, the
| conditions at that prison.
| Grustaf wrote:
| Clearly parental involvement was exactly the problem here. It
| took her 4 years to notice he was failing every class. Maybe
| she was very busy, but still.
| ars wrote:
| You can't compare Finland and the USA because this is a race
| problem, not a school management or teacher trust problem.
|
| If you compared Finland to only white students in the USA
| you'll see one result, if you compare to only black students
| you'll see very different results.
| heterodoxxed wrote:
| 40 years ago, Finland was a backwater nothing of a country
| and by actual investing in their children and education and
| teachers equally across the board, they went from that
| backwater to #1 in education.
|
| We in the US have never even tried that for anyone but our
| wealthiest, let alone our poorest.
|
| If we took this problem seriously on a federal level, and put
| all our options on the table, we absolutely could fix it.
| jeffbee wrote:
| There are a lot of reasons why making comparisons between
| Finland and the US is not appropriate. Just one of them:
| there are more school kids in Brooklyn and Queens than in all
| of Finland. Comparing to Finland is just cherry-picking.
|
| Of course, then there are the systemic/societal reasons you
| allude to. In America having a child for many people means
| losing your job and your health care. In Finland they give
| you a year off and a complete wardrobe for your kid. In
| Finland they ended homelessness entirely. In America at this
| very moment they are debating on the senate floor whether
| repealing eviction moratorium would incentivize single
| mothers to get a job. There's really no comparing.
| StillBored wrote:
| This is one of the things that changed over the past 20-30
| years in an effort to boost the US international rankings.
| Every level in the system has attempted to remove control from
| the lower layers. At this point the teachers are mostly
| functioning as little more than preprogrammed robots. Even in
| the less restricted classes, you have district level
| mandates/guidance on what kind of CAD software/etc can be
| taught, and how much time is given to each part of the subject,
| generally down to the day.
|
| I had a middle school English teacher who spent a couple weeks
| at the beginning of the school year teaching a basic
| calligraphy style. His general idea was to instill a respect
| and love for penmanship believing that would extend to the
| words being written as well. I can honestly say that in my 14
| years of English education (including a few mandatory college
| classes), I both enjoyed and probably learned more in that
| single English class than any other single English class (which
| was generally my worst subject).
|
| I happened to run across some of his pictures a few years back,
| and had a short online conversation where I learned he had been
| forced out of education after 30 something years teaching
| because the school refused to allow him any flexibility to
| extend the curriculum. That particular school where he taught,
| and I attended was likely the worst school I ever went to (and
| still today has very poor rankings) yet, it had five teachers
| who I consider to have some of the largest affect on my
| education. Including one that encouraged and helped me to
| enroll in her C programming class at the local JC when I was in
| middle school.
|
| So, I haven't any idea how those teachers that used to have the
| largest affects on some kids survive without the flexibility to
| diverge from the curriculum to make the subject interesting for
| their students.
| harrisonjackson wrote:
| The school mentioned in the article seems to have a huge lack
| of top-down control and parental involvement.
| earthscienceman wrote:
| Well, as someone deeply involved in education, these
| statements combined together highlight exactly the problem
| with America's educational system. Like many American
| institutions, it is extremely diverse in its methods and
| primarily focused on providing services to the wealthy. The
| parent comment here is correct in highlighting a problem that
| exists at the highest levels in our school system and the
| topic article is highlighting a problem that exists at the
| lowest levels. They are very different problems.
|
| However, they have the same root cause. What would actually
| solve this is a systemic shift in America's education system
| to a more centralized approach that promotes well researched
| methodologies and systems to be used across the country. We
| have phenomenal teachers and phenomenal schools that operate
| at extremely high efficiency. The problem is that this
| quality is extremely poorly distributed. This would be very
| unpopular with the wealthier members of society though, as it
| would make access to academic silo schools much less of a
| given for their children. And access to education, and the
| societal benefits that this access brings, is one of the
| primary motivators for wealthier Americans. You don't have to
| look farther than Hacker News. How often do you see titles
| here like "MIT students launch the Facebook of toilet paper",
| where MIT student is seen as a meaningful signal. Your child
| doesn't get the opportunity to be the beneficiary of that
| headline without first being purchased a top rate education
| at America's best high schools.
| anewaccount2021 wrote:
| You're being too high-minded.
|
| This is about absent parents and a school board that has
| already given up on students before they even enroll.
|
| This is not a "systemic" national issue...its an issue for
| inner city schools where the students are poor and brown.
| SubuSS wrote:
| So in the world you describe, if a parent wants better
| education for their child (than what the government
| provides uniformly across the country) - is the only
| recourse private schools?
|
| So I come from India where the above model is in place -
| very few government funded schools are considered top
| ranking. Parents live closer to good private schools and
| fund the same when possible. But usually this means hours
| of transit for the child.
|
| At least from my perspective, the US model seemed better.
| Here you can choose to live in a nice neighborhood if you
| can and get a lot more benefits than just good schools.
| These things seem to go together (safety / general wealth
| of the neighborhood / public services / good schools /
| accessibility to job locations and so on). I am curious to
| see why someone would not want this.
|
| If the overall push is that the whole country should grow
| only at a uniform rate and we should penalize folks who
| work hard to get these benefits in lieu of folks who can't
| (or won't), that doesn't sound very American, at least not
| the American dream I was sold when I moved :).
| earthscienceman wrote:
| I mean. I'll let my political colors fly a little bit
| here and tell you what I see to be as plain fact: the
| American dream you were sold when you moved here is a
| scam. The American dream, as it stands today, is a dead
| ideological notion that the wealthy in this country use
| to justify stepping on the backs of the poor in order to
| attain more, and more, and more.
|
| Saying something like "choose to live in a nice
| neighborhood" is analogous to saying "if you're poor you
| won't be given access to good schooling" because poor
| people can't choose to live in a nice neighborhood, no
| matter how hard they are willing to work. Not to mention
| poor children. And you're presenting a false dichotomy
| here. We don't have to choose between rewarding people
| who work hard and providing good education to everyone.
| We are absolutely capable of doing both, we just choose
| not to because the system in place has clear benefits to
| the people who are creating/perpetuating that system.
| Much like the caste system in India. I'm absolutely, in
| very clear terms, not proposing we implement the Indian
| education system. That should be obvious.
|
| What you're defining as American is very dangerous.
| You're saying quite literally "to be American is to have
| the individual right succeed no matter the expense to
| others". While that's a very Hacker New mentality, and
| quite obviously how America operates, I wouldn't call it
| particularly equal or meritocratic. If hard work was
| rewarded, the hard working lower class Americans who have
| three jobs would be given access to these neighborhoods
| and school-systems. But this is transparently not the
| case.
|
| You seem to be someone who believes you should seek the
| rewards of your hard work, and I agree with you 100%.
| However, what you're missing is that the rewards system
| in the US is not designed to reward those who are putting
| in the most effort. Nor is it designed to reward the
| children who are driven and likely to be successful. The
| rewards and incentives in the US currently favor anyone
| who already has money, no matter what they are actually
| providing to society. And it certainly provides no
| opportunities to promising young children who happen to
| be from lower-class backgrounds... but at this point I'm
| just stating facts.
| theamk wrote:
| Have you talked to immigrants much? I was in the English
| as Second Language class in my somewhat mediocre high
| school. Lots of immigrant children, no fancy connections
| and all pretty poor by US standards. And yet some of them
| ended up in the high quality universities, and likely got
| a well paying job.
|
| Please don't say things like "US currently favor anyone
| who already has money", as it completely ignores the
| achievements of first and second generation immigrants.
| They had no money, only hard work, and while they are not
| billionaires, many of them are in the middle class,
| earning more than a median salary.
| ascar wrote:
| I live in Germany and private schools are the absolute
| exception. I'm not a parent yet, but from my experience
| as a student you just send your kid to the closest school
| and school reputation isn't really a thing. There are
| some "rich kid" schools, especially bording schools, but
| they are really rare and graduates don't really have a
| lot of benefit when it comes to university applications
| (German universities operate by taking in many students
| and make the weak performers drop out or switch to a
| subject better fitting their skills)
|
| To promote higher achieving students we split kids into
| three different tiers based on their performance in their
| 4th school year (around age 10/11). Each tier is actually
| a completely separate school (location, building,
| curriculula, even different qualifications for teachers).
| Students that do exceptionally well/bad can still move
| between tiers every year.
|
| There is a world where the state provides education and
| thinking about private schools isn't an important
| consideration for parents. I would expect it's similar in
| many other EU countries. So it's not one or the other
| like you fear.
| readflaggedcomm wrote:
| Germany prohibits homeschooling, which to me distorts the
| situation.
| ascar wrote:
| I'm don't really follow how the possiblity of
| homeschooling and public school quality correlate? What
| is your argument here?
| jimbokun wrote:
| Yes and no.
|
| There are extensive documented procedures for handling under
| performing or absent students, defined in great detail at the
| top level. But seems like there is a disconnect between those
| bureaucratic processes and actual connections between the
| teachers making sure the students know where they stand.
| heterodoxxed wrote:
| | _works three jobs._
|
| I wonder why.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Folks are missing the bigger point: this student is in the top
| half of the class. This story isn't uncommon; its the norm there.
|
| Why? Because, probably, the school is unsafe for students. Never
| mind blamethrowing who is at fault for truancy. When half the
| class is late/absent half the time, what can the county do? It's
| take an army of truancy officers to even begin to address.
| TheCoelacanth wrote:
| Your larger point stands, but the phrase was "near top half".
| He was 62 out of 120.
| tadeegan wrote:
| Sheeeeit boy
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70eU840lc38
| [deleted]
| frogpelt wrote:
| The whole idea of public school created a new breed of parents
| who think their child's education is no longer their
| responsibility, that it is now the government's responsibility.
|
| Of course many parents--maybe even the majority of them--don't
| believe this but way too many do.
|
| This poor woman obviously has a lot on her plate but if your
| child is failing all his classes for 3 years, why would you
| assume everything is fine?
| dgellow wrote:
| Is it US specific? I haven't seen this in other countries I'm
| familiar with, and they all have public schools for the vast
| majority of students since forever. But I'm maybe just not
| aware of the issue there.
| t-writescode wrote:
| The only reason this was noticed is because it was in Baltimore.
|
| I've heard of horrifying schools in middle-of-nowhere towns that
| will never get his kind of attention.
|
| Hopefully all-star teachers and principals, specialized in
| improving student performance in rough and poverty-stricken areas
| can come to this school with plenty of money and help this area
| succeed.
|
| Improvement is hard, incredibly time consuming and expensive. It
| will take *years* to bring up thriving students once more.
|
| This news article is a blessing of notoriety to help save this
| school. I hope we hear positive things in 7 or 8 years.
| hc-taway wrote:
| > I've heard of horrifying schools in middle-of-nowhere towns
| that will never get his kind of attention.
|
| The fact that practically all rural public schools are bad is
| what keeps us from living the remote-work dream of moving out
| to a quaint little town or cheap country house. If you're not
| rich enough for (good) private schools (bad private schools are
| more common than one might expect, though), and not daring
| enough to hope to luck into a good urban charter school, then
| you're basically stuck living in the 'burbs, even if you'd
| prefer _either_ the city or the country /small-town to that.
| macspoofing wrote:
| It's not the school. It's never the school. It's never the
| teachers either.
|
| Take the mother in the profile. Her kid has been failing most of
| his classes for years and she blames the school for not knowing
| that?
|
| >> He didn't fail, the school failed him. The school failed at
| their job. They failed. They failed, that's the problem here.
| They failed. They failed. He didn't deserve that.
|
| No. She failed him. He failed himself too. But she neglected her
| responsibilities of raising him. You can't delegate raising your
| child to an education bureaucracy, even if it is staffed by well-
| meaning individuals.
| Salgat wrote:
| Yeah I can't help but wonder. She had no idea about his GPA, no
| idea about any of his class grades, seemingly never went to a
| parent teacher conference where she could learn this, and is
| shocked to learn he flunked out and has to go back to the 9th
| grade? For 4 years she had no idea what he was even doing, just
| assumed because he wasn't kicked out that everything was fine.
| The school should have done a better job of contacting and
| informing her, but she's the one who dropped the ball.
| Atropos wrote:
| I agree. In a perfect world, it would not matter who wins the
| lottery of having conscientious parents etc. and the government
| would make sure that everyone has the same chance to achieve
| their potential in school. But in the real world, it is crazy
| to expect that state resources could ever provide the same
| benefit as a "tiger mom" willing to go to battle with her
| puberty-stricken teens over finishing their coursework 24/7.
| tohnjitor wrote:
| This is thanks to "No Child Left Behind". Schools are
| incentivized to pass students up to the next grade no matter
| what. My wife was told by her school administrator that she was
| forbidden from failing students.
| gnicholas wrote:
| It's just like the startup mantra: 'failing forward'. \s
| idrios wrote:
| That only explains why he graduated as a senior with such a low
| GPA. I think without No Child Left Behind he would have
| repeated 9th grade multiple times until he dropped out --
| though I could be wrong. I'd say a part of the problem is that
| the school doesn't have enough funding in general, that class
| sizes are too big for a teacher to even manage a class or get
| to know their students well enough to understand them, and
| tailor how they teach to what the student knows.
|
| edit: I do agree No Child Left Behind creates a perverse
| incentive, just claiming that it's not what caused the problems
| at this school
| userbinator wrote:
| Then these people eventually graduate, and some might even get
| hired as teachers, perpetuating the cycle of decline.
| heterodoxxed wrote:
| | _some might even get hired as teachers_
|
| What? How would you extrapolate that? The university system,
| for all its flaws, is very different from public high schools
| in a poor city.
| shaftway wrote:
| Mis-application of "no child left behind" is so rampant and so
| narrow-minded. I've heard a school administrator say that if
| one kid couldn't go on a field trip then none of the rest
| could. Otherwise that one child would have been "left behind"
| grumple wrote:
| I understand that life is hard for a single mother with multiple
| kids and poor financial prospects - that's how I grew up. But how
| could a parent look at their child's report card every few
| months, see all Fs, and think they were doing "well"? Unless they
| weren't doing that (totally neglecting their duties as a parent).
| I place blame on both the parent (for taking, apparently, no
| interest in the child's education) and the institution (for
| moving somebody along without passing prereqs, not notifying the
| parent).
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