Closing the achievement gap (Schools must deploy the best teachers to minorities)

LA Times ^ | 2 December 2007 | Staff

[NonValueAdded]

No, that is incorrect, you have it exactly backwards.

[bannie]

If, every year, a 7th grade teacher gets over 50% of his students from Mexico, how can she improve from year to year? These students may improve individually, but next-year’s 7th graders will start all over again.

YET...each year, the averages have to IMPROVE. HOW? These kids are not the same kids you had last year.

This is just a way for the federal/state governments to take the schools away from the local government—the school boards (you, the parents!).

[bannie]

No.

I am correct.

You have it backwards.

[Polynikes]

This is precious. First school busing was touted as the be all to end all for the achievement gap now its “teacher busing” The more things change the more they stay the same

[jack_napier]

*Deploy* teachers? This is not the Marine Corp we are talking about. These are teachers. If you send them to these areas and they don’t want to go, they will quit and go work in the ‘burbs or for private schools. What idiots.

[ga medic]

My wife is a teacher and she gave me an article to read a couple weeks ago. I don’t know where she got it but it was about a small school district that assigned mostly male teachers, and many district football coaches to a school that had discipline/underperformance problems.

They also had dads volunteer to come in and help supervise lunch. The end result was that the increase in males within the schools was a big deterrent to the discipline problems, and once discipline was established, student performance went up.

Before someone gets upset, I am not saying the men make better teachers, only that some students seem to respond better to men in disciplinary matters, and personal safety might be less of a concern. Of course if someone comes in with a gun, then it doesn’t really matter whether the teacher is male or female.

[NonValueAdded]

I am involved in the process as a parent. The progress is measured student by student, not simply by teacher or school. Last year's scores track with the kid and this year's teacher must build upon that foundation. Contrary to popular opinion, not every school is inundated with illegals. But even with the new student, there is the entrance test and the exit test, so the teacher is measured on what they achieve during that school year.

Before NCLB, the teacher and the school could point to class averages as a sign of achievement. Under NCLB, the average score still counts but there is also a look at individual scores. Now the story would be, yes the 6th grade shows improvement except for the white females without disabilities, they lagged behind. Schools are therefore forced to deal with each student's progress and not rely on a few targeted individuals to game the average.

[bannie]

I’m not sure about how Florida works with NCLB. I am sure about how California does.

You may be correct about Florida.

I am correct about California.

[steel_resolve]

Why as a nation, are we so afraid to state simple facts like this? Black children as a group are not as interested in gaining an education as white or asian children. THey all want to be athletic stars or rappers. This isn’t meant to portray every minority that way, but my eyes don’t lie.

[ChocChipCookie]

When my sister taught 4th grade, she refused to teach the kids who came in and didn’t speak English. If they were placed in her classroom, she just let them sit there, refused to learn to speak Spanish herself, and said that since their parents weren’t paying taxes, she didn’t have any responsibility to teach them.

[bannie]

WOW! Was that recently?

[bvw]

It would not work. The "Best Teachers" would become mediocre, and the "mediocre" teachers would become "The Best".

A class, and performance of all in it is a product of the environment of the whole. The whole of the teachers and students, the whole of the school, classes, aides, staff, proncipal, the whole of the families and neighborhood, the whole of the school district and its school board, the whole of the government sets hurdles that schools from districts with well-behaved students can easily jump over, but that in districts where the students arrive alone, misanthropic and wild, untamed -- they have NO chance in hell of jumping over -- every regulation breaks the legs of any principal or teacher bold and strong enough to be up to the task of taming the wild.

[valkyrieanne]

I don't know how they assign teachers in Los Angeles, but in many major cities, white middle-class parents have already voted with their feet and moved outside the bounds of badly-performing school districts.

These suburban districts have good teachers, in many cases, because they have better pay and working conditions than the inner-city schools. So in many cases it's not a matter of "reassigning" teachers - it's a matter of two separate school districts (sometimes in two separate counties.)

So if you have a good, experienced teacher, and you give her a choice between being assigned to a terrible school, or quitting and trying to work for a school district where she is not in a combat zone, and can actually teach - what are most going to do? IMO most will quit - and that will leave the inner city schools even worse off than before.

[hinckley buzzard]

First school busing was touted as the be all to end all for the achievement gap now its “teacher busing” The more things change the more they stay the same.

Good point. The effect on the school system will be the same--concerned parents taking their kids out of the system, leaving the kids of parents who don't care or can't help themselves. Judicially ordered crosstown busing destroyed the Cleveland Public School system. As one would predict, Black children far and away suffered the most.

[Drew68]

bump

[JoeSixPack1]

Wonderful. Inept teachers, teaching uncaring students a political education based on a failed ideology.

Or, lets shove some teachers around like we did 10 years ago, and 20 years ago, and 30 years ago, and 40 years ago, and see if anything is different this time.

Or, lets bus some students around like they did 10 years ago,,, etc.....

MORONS.

[struggle]

I teach in downtown Jackson, Mississippi, and even though our kids are some of the poorest, most disadvantaged kids in the state of Mississippi, we are STILL a level 3 school (successful) because the teachers are exemplary. This will change next year because of one central problem: administration. We are expected to do an inordinate amount of work documenting, grading, submitting, and reviewing with the district staff, so much so that we can’t teach anymore. This is all to defend the district against lawsuits from parents when their child fails or gets kicked out of school.

There is no “blank slate” child. I have seen bad kids turn around and work their butts off to graduate, but for every one of those there are ten that don’t. Even if you kick a kid out of class for being rowdy, he returns with a smile and a saturday detention slip that means nothing to him. Calls home to mama are completely ignored as well.

I have 148 black kids and 2 white ones that are my kids, and I want to educate them for the future, but their parents and the district won’t let me. It’s sad.

[valkyrieanne]

And she felt that most of the teachers in her school, at least, were reasonably competent. Until someone figures out how to change the culture in the minority community, nothing will ever change. When prominent blacks like Cosby try to point this out, they are shouted down.

And when conservatives point this out, they are criticized for actually arguing that kids CAN learn in public schools (if their home life encourages learning), or that public school teachers actually are mostly competent.

[ChocChipCookie]

Yes. She is now a librarian in her district, but up until last year taught 4th grade for about ten years. I was a teacher about ten years ago and don’t blame her. It’s hard enough to try and meet the needs of the 20-30 kids in a classroom, much less those who don’t speak English and crossed the border illegally.

[wintertime]

ping