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Teens defend ‘fail factory’ high school in error-filled letters
NY Post ^ | 2/23/14 | Susan Edelman

Posted on 02/23/2014 5:18:26 AM PST by Libloather

These kids should learn write from wrong.

Earlier this month, The Post exposed a scheme at Manhattan’s Murry Bergtraum HS for Business Careers in which failing students could get full credit without attending class, but instead watch video lessons and take tests online. One social-studies teacher had a roster of 475 students in all grades and subjects.

Red-faced administrators encouraged a student letter-writing campaign to attack The Post and defend its “blended learning” program. Eighteen kids e-mailed to argue that their alma mater got a bad rap.

Almost every letter was filled with spelling, grammar and punctuation errors.

(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Extended News; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: curriculum; education; factory; learning; letters; school; schools; teachers; teaching; teens; union; unions
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To: fso301

well put. there’s reality and wishing and you described the reality of the situation.


21 posted on 02/23/2014 6:42:48 AM PST by wiggen (The teacher card. When the racism card just won't work.)
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To: shelterguy

There is nothing wrong with these students’ brain cells. For a person to learn an academic skill, first he has to be exposed to an academic skill. The problem in this school is the lack of knowledge on the part of the educators.


22 posted on 02/23/2014 6:48:10 AM PST by abclily
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To: Libloather
The letters remind me of The Education Of H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N.

-PJ

23 posted on 02/23/2014 6:50:45 AM PST by Political Junkie Too (If you are the Posterity of We the People, then you are a Natural Born Citizen.)
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To: Political Junkie Too

I wuz valley diktoreen at dis skool I much smart.


24 posted on 02/23/2014 7:01:20 AM PST by XRdsRev (New Jersey - Crossroads of the American Revolution)
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To: Tax-chick
Illiteracy is the old “normal,” still hanging around while we pretend things are otherwise. I was talking with a church friend about prison ministry yesterday, and he mentioned how often inmates tell him, “I can’t read.”

Years ago..many many years ago.. as an airline employee I would be standing under the TV monitors at the airport when passengers, speaking English, would ask me for the gate number for flight XXX. It finally dawned on me that they couldn't read the damn monitors. This was 25-30 years ago, It can only have gotten worse.

25 posted on 02/23/2014 7:23:21 AM PST by Don Corleone ("Oil the gun..eat the cannoli. Take it to the Mattress.")
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To: abclily

Being exposed to an academic skill doesn’t make a person smart. Exposing a horse to a racetrack doesn’t make it a Derby winner. Exposing a worm to a bird doesn’t mean it can learn to fly. You can expose kids to the best teachers in the world, but that doesn’t mean they’ll necessarily absorb any knowledge. If it were just a matter of exposure, we could all be theoretical physicists.


26 posted on 02/23/2014 7:24:13 AM PST by Kirkwood (Zombie Hunter)
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To: Francis McClobber

There you go. It should be “hugh and series”. LOL


27 posted on 02/23/2014 7:29:26 AM PST by TStro (Better to be judged by 12 than carried by 6.)
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To: Libloather

Public schools pretend to teach, and the kids pretend to learn. They aren’t preparing them for a productive life, but for a life on government assistance.

People from India, Russia, China, Japan and Korea come into the USA with diplomas that actually mean something. They are the ones hired, while under-performing Americans aren’t.


28 posted on 02/23/2014 7:41:45 AM PST by I want the USA back (Media: completely irresponsible traitors. Complicit in the destruction of our country.)
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To: Libloather

Bump


29 posted on 02/23/2014 7:59:30 AM PST by lowbridge
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To: Libloather

I am happy that the students “can digest in the information at your own paste” ...that must have been what my kindergarten classmatea were doing when they ate the paste we used for our construction paper projects.


30 posted on 02/23/2014 8:01:34 AM PST by RouxStir (No peein' allowed in the gene pool.)
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To: Kirkwood; abclily

You don’t have to be “smart” to learn to read, write, and do arithmetic. You don’t even have to be average. You do have to be taught. Those with lower native ability and in less helpful environments, especially, have to be taught by the proven, basic methods. Phonics, math facts, penmanship and composition. Drill, drill, drill. Memorize, memorize, memorize.

A lot of supposedly scientific racism is invoked on this topic, but when I taught Sunday School to a class of white 6th graders who attend “good” suburban schools, fewer than 2/3 of them could read from our workbook with fluency. I learned after the first couple of classes to ask for volunteers, rather than assuming we could go around the table and each of them could read.

It’s hard to learn to read if you’re not taught. What happens is that they’re not taught to read effectively in first, second, and third grade, and after that, the system just pretends they can read and awkwardly works around the deficiency, until they graduate.


31 posted on 02/23/2014 8:04:46 AM PST by Tax-chick (The future is not going to take us seriously.)
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To: Libloather
"A junior wrote: “What do you get of giving false accusations im one of the students that has blended learning I had a course of English and I passed and and it helped a lot you’re a reported your support to get truth information other than starting rumors . . .”" Thelma Hill and Frances Walker are spinning in their graves. Back in the dark ages, when I was in school, even the most academically challenged student wrote more cohesive and cogent sentences. In addition, we learned how to use commas and other forms of punctuation. I am just appallled
32 posted on 02/23/2014 8:10:51 AM PST by Nifster
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To: Francis McClobber

we really know its huge and series


33 posted on 02/23/2014 8:12:04 AM PST by Nifster
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To: cripplecreek

Not so sure your sentence structure nor your word selection are much better than the young students quoted.


34 posted on 02/23/2014 8:14:19 AM PST by Nifster
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To: Don Corleone

I have heard similar stories from others.


35 posted on 02/23/2014 8:16:31 AM PST by Tax-chick (The future is not going to take us seriously.)
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To: cripplecreek

“The future of the country.”

Well, yes, I’m afraid so.


36 posted on 02/23/2014 8:27:38 AM PST by The Antiyuppie ("When small men cast long shadows, then it is very late in the day.")
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To: fso301
I'll disagree with you. The outdated assumption that hasn't existed for decades is that the parents should have no input into what goes on in the classroom. A school should be strictly but even-handedly run with a clear set of rules...no exceptions. A teacher should explain what their grading system is. The parents should stay out of the picture, and you know what? With excellent teachers and discipline support students from disadvantaged backgrounds do just fine.

The public school should be a place where what happens to you outside the school (good or bad) does not affect what goes on inside those walls. It all comes down to discipline and fairness....two totally missing concepts in many if not most public schools today.

37 posted on 02/23/2014 8:28:52 AM PST by grania
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To: FES0844
"Just go back to the 3R’s plus a D=discipline"

Don't forget the 4th "R"...recess.

http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/school-ditches-rules-and-loses-bullies-5807957

38 posted on 02/23/2014 8:55:29 AM PST by moovova
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To: grania
I'll disagree with you. The outdated assumption that hasn't existed for decades is that the parents should have no input into what goes on in the classroom.

That has some validity when classrooms are more demographically homogeneous. However, that era ended +40 years ago.

When classrooms are multi-ethnic, multi-religious, multi-socioeconomic, which parents should the teacher listen to?

Then there is the matter of why is it the school's fault that large percentages of parents don't see to it that their children do their homework?

39 posted on 02/23/2014 9:01:03 AM PST by fso301
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To: abclily
"...The problem in this school is the lack of knowledge on the part of the educators."

Congratulations on winning the most ignorant post in this thread award!! Educators cannot teach students who are not present in the classroom, who are disrupting the lesson or who are not paying any attention.

Now read this excerpt from Michael Goodwin's column in the same issue of the NY Post: (bolding is mine)

"...When it comes to early education, the only thing New York City’s first lady, Chirlane McCray, doesn’t mention is parenting. Until she does, she’s guilty of neglecting the biggest force for change. McCray’s husband, Mayor de Blasio, called her “my best friend in the world, my closest confidante, my No. 1 adviser” and gave her an official job and staff. It’s safe to say, then, that she’s on message when she trots out the heroes of the civil-rights movement to rally support for his agenda. Coming from a black woman, that invocation is meant to assert moral ­authority and move Albany lawmakers to support the $2.6 billion tax hike de Blasio demands.

In truth, McCray’s approach is misguided and creates a false equivalency. Likening school failure to the race-based denial of civil rights paints modern society as the embodiment of Bull Connor, the Alabama official who loosed water hoses and snarling dogs on black marchers in ­Birmingham 50 years ago.

The suggestion to mostly black audiences that they must mobilize because the city is putting up impediments to African-American students defies reality. New York already spends more than $20 billion on education, much of it specifically directed to help poor, nonwhite children. Still, the racial achievement gap remains stuck at high levels.

As de Blasio has noted, only 11 percent of black city school grads are ready for college or careers.

Yet the first couple’s ideological bent, which favors collective society over individuals and families, leads them to believe the best ways to help children are found outside the home. They are looking in the wrong places.

So far, they display no interest in the mountain of studies showing that children raised in stable, two-parent families are far more likely to succeed in school and life. Conversely, dysfunctional families usually produce dysfunctional children, no matter the buffet of social programs.

Consider that, year in, year out, about 45 percent of city children are born out of wedlock. The total hits 90 percent in some black and Hispanic neighborhoods, and 70 percent in all The Bronx.

Attendance is another fundamental key to school success. One study found that 24 percent of black third- and fourth-graders in New York missed more than a month of school. The figure was 23 percent for Latino children, 12 percent for whites and 4 percent for Asians. Attendance rates are early predictors of graduation rates because most children who fall behind don’t catch up..."

Peddle your one-note tirade, based on nothing at all but your own ignorance, elsewhere. I have personally witnessed exactly what Mr. Goodwin describes. The largest ethnic group of students walking the halls when they should be in class are black students. Nearly always, the first student in a class to act out is a black student. Calls to their homes often result in "This number is disconnected" recordings. It is becoming more and more uncommon to see a student with the same last name as the parent/guardian. Most of the worst behaved and most academically at risk students prove, upon investigation, to be in foster care.

So these children are severely handicapped before they ever reach a classroom, by their irresponsible parent(s). A patchwork mishmash of online "instruction" and other stabs in the dark approaches is a parody of the education they should be receiving. I have personally witnessed some of these computer classes. Taxpayers, did you know that the kids are graded often on how long they spend logged on to the computer rather than what online coursework they completed? The minute the teacher's back is turned, they go to websites about high-dollar sneakers, pop music, games, etc., minimizing those windows when the teacher walks by. What a complete farce! No wonder their letters and emails reflected ignorance. They were a true mirror of what they had learned online!

I am quite sure that 99% of educators, with one hand tied behind their back, would best you in academic skills.

40 posted on 02/23/2014 9:02:25 AM PST by EinNYC
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