No one could teach the Welfare Class. You can’t blame the teachers for the material they are dealing with. Destroyed families with out of control kids are the main reason these scores are low.
I am totally aware of the near-impossibility of teaching the welfare class, as I spent 14 years in public schools as a teacher (my first year was in a firmly welfare-class school).
But I also know that some teachers are not educators - they teach to draw a check. Chicago is one of those states - they are the highest paid baby-sitters in the country (other than possibly the US Secret Service).
The problem is massive - and the teachers are just one component in it. Government control is one major problem - those who are making the rules, requirements, and policies for schools known nothing about the real state of schools and “education”.
The courts have hog tied schools in many ways - from giving special protected status to a major portion of those students who DO NOT BELONG in the regular school setting. They can come and disrupt, they can break the rules, they can break the LAW - and the school cannot kick them out (well - they can, but then they must still provide 100% of the educational servicing to that student outside the school setting - who can afford to hire a private teacher for each kid that gets suspended/expelled for bad behavior who has been classified as “special needs” - formerly special education).
And we now are seeing the 2nd and third generation of fully-indoctrinated teachers who take their charge to further indoctrinate children more seriously than their responsibility to teach them how to read, write, calculate numbers, and real history.
We have school administrators who are not “educational leaders” - they are bullies who nitpick the minor details, while allowing Rome to burn. Then again - it is hard to blame them - the courts and legislatures have bound their hands from addressing many of the components that are causing the fire in the first place. So they pick on what they can... which causes students to further withdraw, and teachers to have low morale.
The majority of “parents” (I use quotation marks because REAL parents, those who take their God-ordained responsibility to raise their children, to provide for their children, and to make certain their children are educated STARTING AT HOME, are few and far between) are disengaged from their children’s education. They only get involved when the situation forces them to. Even then, they often engage the school with rather extreme (and unmerited) hostility. The few parents that have legitimate complaints and concerns often get lost in the mess, or their concerns have no clear answers because of all the above.
In Chicago - the teachers and their union have made excuse after excuse and refuse any changes (because change usually means more work). Without change, the Chicago schools will never improve. But without a massive change in attitude of the people (not just the students), legislators, courts, and the government in general - those kids are stuck along with teachers who are more concerned with getting paid more than the majority of Chicago citizens than doing all they can for the kids.