I just started teaching high school biology and physical science after a mid-life career change. I'm appalled at what I'm seeing. Of the incoming freshmen in our urban parochial school, about half have reading levels below 5th grade. Some of the conduct issues are a learning impediment and stress me out. What really breaks my heart though is seeing these high school age kids who cannot extract meaning from a textbook to save their lives. I don't know how on earth I'm going to teach them anything resembling the content standard when they read on such a low level.
High school rigor is only part of the problem. The bigger issue is that they are not learning what they need at lower levels. These are failures of elementary education which never really get addressed.
I was never interested in religious education, and my parents weren't either, so I was in public school until 8th grade. After the first year of Junior High, I'd had enough. I literally learned NOTHING in an entire year; the place was a friggin' zoo. We had ARMED security in each wing and on every floor of that place -- and this was in 1967. After the Easter Break, a ninth grader came into a votech class and shot his girlfriend and the shop teacher who tried to reason with him. I can't even imagine what goes on there now. I do know that in the last ten years or so that I've been following the school it has never come in higher than 480 in theTribune Reviews PA school district rankings. Two of those years it was not even on the list (came in lower than #500.)
I couldn't believe how different the Catholic School was. It goes without saying the nuns were punitive and nasty. But you could actually learn there...
Anyway, having taught undergrads for around a decade in the 1980's the decline was clearly visible over that period. I never used my Physics PhD and have been considering teaching math and/or science as a retirement option. The kicker: my Alma Mater wants (minimum) $30K for a teaching certification. But that's another story ...
I was never interested in religious education, and my parents weren't either, so I was in public school until 8th grade. After the first year of Junior High, I'd had enough. I literally learned NOTHING in an entire year; the place was a friggin' zoo. We had ARMED security in each wing and on every floor of that place -- and this was in 1967. After the Easter Break, a ninth grader came into a votech class and shot his girlfriend and the shop teacher who tried to reason with him. I can't even imagine what goes on there now. I do know that in the last ten years or so that I've been following the school it has never come in higher than 480 in theTribune Reviews PA school district rankings. Two of those years it was not even on the list (came in lower than #500.)
I couldn't believe how different the Catholic School was. It goes without saying the nuns were punitive and nasty. But you could actually learn there...
Anyway, having taught undergrads for around a decade in the 1980's the decline was clearly visible over that period. I never used my Physics PhD and have been considering teaching math and/or science as a retirement option. The kicker: my Alma Mater wants (minimum) $30K for a teaching certification. But that's another story ...
We are not the same country we were in 1972 when one in 21 was foreign born. Today it is one in 8, the highest it has been in 90 years. Demography is destiny.
Yep, I teach eighth graders. If I had my way - we’d spend all our time reading and getting the kids to read quickly and well.
Most have difficulty reading.
IMO poor reading and math pedagogy are sabotaging the learning of other than the top quartile of our children, who can figure things out for themselves. (A swarm of nuns teaching phonics could have given most of those kids you are seeing a sound reading foundation by the third grade.)
However, the low performance of the majority of students helps to pull down the standards and expectations for all, which contributes to a lower level of learning for nearly all students.