Dropout Factories

[Rideski]

We can't pay to get enough security to keep the students and faculty safe. Can't pay to attract brilliant instructors. Can't pay to give enough incentive to encourage people to seek teaching as a career.

But we can pay pro athletes millions of dollars to play games.

[Blurred]

BKLN-

I'm curious as to your opinion on higher dropout rates when the minority rate is higher.

Is that a racism issue, a poverty issue, or both? Please explain. (and no, I'm not trying to stir the pot or talk smack)

[Cliff Huckable]

...so, what are the political purposes???

I have a hard time believing that the researchers at this level just make stuff up. Do you have any proof? Why do you think they make stuff up?

[Blurred]

...so, what are the political purposes???

I have a hard time believing that the researchers at this level just make stuff up. Do you have any proof? Why do you think they make stuff up?

Just like the GLOBAL WARMING!!!!!!! alarmist douches, the more attention they achieve promoting their agenda, the more money they receive in grants, etc.

[Tippster]

I agree, but I'm sure it's a very difficult task.

Maybe we should start with their PARENTS.

[Ripzalot]

i blame it on teh rap music.

[The AD]

i blame it on teh rap music.

Either that or the baggy, underwear revealing jeans. Yeah, the more I think about it I think it's the saggy jeans...

[cj001f]

at least it's not a burqa

[Maurice Ballstein]

It must be a coincidence that the red states have the lowest number of drop-out factories.

[Tippster]

Ummm... look at Alabama and Missisippi, then think in terms of "Per Capita."

They ain't blue, boy.

[The AD]

The top six, at least, are red states.

edit: actually it's the top seven. Delaware is the worst "blue state" (2004 election) at number eight.

But who would believe me. I went to one of those schools, after all

[Ripzalot]

i'm sorry to report but the next high school over from mine has a 50% dropout rate. in a red country. but it's primarily a rap music listening school. my high school, being mostly classic rock and country, is not on the list.


yes, i'm from florida...

[bklyn]

BKLN-

I'm curious as to your opinion on higher dropout rates when the minority rate is higher.

Is that a racism issue, a poverty issue, or both? Please explain. (and no, I'm not trying to stir the pot or talk smack)

My comments come from observation and not from living the life I am going to describe to you. I know far more blacks and latinos that have been through graduate and phd programs than those who have not graduated high school. We all came from lower-middle to middle class families that lived in what were perceived as "bad" areas like the Bronx. Our families owned the houses or coops that we lived in. We went to private, parochial, or magnet public schools that had testing requirements to enter. For the most part, we did without certain things that our white counterparts took for granted because our family incomes could barely meet tuition requirements.

This is a very different lifestyle than what is at the root of these dropout schools in NYC.

Parents (single, married, living together) who are poor or low income, work long and sometimes not regular hours... they are worried about making a rent (in small cases mortgage)/electricity/telephone payment. They don't have time to read books to these kids when they are really young, don't have time to monitor the kid's homework and progress. I think this is a parental responsibility based on my life experiences, but the schools could help out in a number of ways, since this seems to be the #1 complaint from teachers.

If English is a second language for a family, then they can't correct the homework. English speaker or not, most of these parents have had a rather bad education experience themselves and don't have the tools to answer questions or identify mistakes and correct them. How hard is it to send home a parents guidebook to the work? The curriculum is already set. Email it. Shit, tell the parents how to set up a google/yahoo/hotmail account and use it as an incentive to get the parents involved with the school. Give up the hating on Spanish speakers and help them, provide materials in their language. It's in everyone's best interest.

These parents don't have the tools to find out about programs that are available to their kids and there simply isn't an effective outreach program. Most of them are free, afterschool, study and tutoring programs - when you look at who is actually going to them it's the non minority kids, the rare kid living in poverty who's parents push, and the "gifted" or "honors" student who is simply exceptional and could learn in just about any environment. Most times the kids are handpicked by teachers and administration for these opportunities.

I've done a few extracurricular arts programs for the public schools in some truly bad areas and the schools are downright awful. I've participated in quite a few mentoring programs and I see how the admins treat the parents and what they think of them. They always find a way to catch or correct themselves when they say some outright racist crap in front of me "present company excluded, of course". Or hide their gaping when they meet me in person after communicating about the programs solely via email or telephone.

When the parents get called into school about a problem, school admins treat them like trash instead of trying to ally with them for the kids benefit. Racism plays a part for sure in the actions at public schools. The school board just takes it for granted that these kids won't succeed. Forget it if you are a latino parent and don't speak english, the school doesn't have time for you.

Most of these schools have the kids going through metal detectors to get in. It's not a place of learning anymore, it's grooming for the penal system. It won't help in any case if a bully has a shank stashed in grass outside. A band aid placed on the symptom is not aiding the root problem.

My neighborhood, which has gone through a huge gentrification in the last 10 years, has seen the schools flip. The white parents came in and demanded everything from the big things to details like areas peeling paint should be repaired. The minority (and we're not really talking poor in the area but working class) parents complained about the same things but didn't get that immediate response, didn't get any response except "it's not in the budget". Was that racism? It's a mixture of factors, but I see the same response from the police department. They were basically looking the other way about many things but once a white woman was stabbed and killed on the way home from work, you better believe the sirens were whooping for any infraction no matter how minor.

A good brunt of responsibility goes to the families of these kids, but I've seen overworked parents in every socioeconomic and racial background who aren't paying attention to what's going on with their kids. I see their kids out after 3pm, unsupervised by their families. The police follow the minority kids around the neighborhood in their squad cars at 2mph looking for a reason to incarcerate them. Their parents have no clue. The difference is minority parents can not look to the public schools for a safety net. If a white kid gets expelled, their parents will get an audience with the principal and the case will be reviewed. Minority kids are tossed out without parental review more often than not.

The thing about well meaning white people is they have never seen this double standard up close. They don't understand why minorities (the poor ones) are facing these terrible conditions. Why don't they go to the police dept. and demand action? Why do they live in these awful places? Why don't they demand change from the schools? Well, there is a contingent that does demand, but their voices aren't being heard in the same way that a white persons' voice is heard. The response is simply not there. Parents who care and can afford a little extra, just scrape up the money for parochial or private education, even if it means many sacrifices.

I'm not advocating socialism, but as a taxpayer contributing to the system I want to see success and progress. A school with less than a 75% graduation rate needs to be shaken up. Don't blame it on the kids or the parents when your rate is less than 50%... less than 20%! That principal needs to be fired. The teachers need to be fired. They aren't doing the job. I'm paying for the schools to graduate most of the kids under their charge, so that they can go on to college or work. I'm not paying for them to fail at that job or push them into the military or the penal system.

[Tippster]

Oddly enough what you described happens in DC as well -- where the cops, school board, City Council, and Mayor are nearly all Black. Race has little to do with the equation, IMHO - it's all about the Dollars. You listen to your income, you put up with your outgo.

[Griz]

Wow... now I feel better about my teaching. The highschool I was at in Omaha Public Schools is the only one from the district not on the list. Clear evidence that the kids stayed in school because they loved their history teacher, right...

[hutash]

I am posted here just to gloat a little. My daughter is a senior in HS here in California, and her senior class just scored sixth highest on the standard testing for the whole state. I wish I can say it was genetics, it may still be, but if must be from my wifes genes. This is a public school, and one of only two in the top ten. She scored in the 99th percentile in several sections, with her lowest at 89% (slacker).

So it is not all public schooling's fault. The most important thing in a child's education is parenteral support. This is severely lacking in many areas. In many schools teachers and admin. want to get more parents involved, but that does not happen for a variety of reasons, and it is both sides fault. Parents like Tracy's obviously value education, and because of it their kids have a better chance to succeed. Many parents don't care, or are too busy surviving to help (or care).

[iceman]

I am posted here just to gloat a little. My daughter is a senior in HS here in California, and her senior class just scored sixth highest on the standard testing for the whole state. I wish I can say it was genetics, it may still be, but if must be from my wifes genes. This is a public school, and one of only two in the top ten. She scored in the 99th percentile in several sections, with her lowest at 89% (slacker).

So it is not all public schooling's fault. The most important thing in a child's education is parenteral support. This is severely lacking in many areas. In many schools teachers and admin. want to get more parents involved, but that does not happen for a variety of reasons, and it is both sides fault. Parents like Tracy's obviously value education, and because of it their kids have a better chance to succeed. Many parents don't care, or are too busy surviving to help (or care).

Maybe this has been covered, but are you a native English speaker?

If the answer is "yes" I'ma chop you up a bit.

[Dexter Rutecki]

I'm not advocating socialism, but as a taxpayer contributing to the system I want to see success and progress. A school with less than a 75% graduation rate needs to be shaken up. Don't blame it on the kids or the parents when your rate is less than 50%... less than 20%! That principal needs to be fired. The teachers need to be fired. They aren't doing the job. I'm paying for the schools to graduate most of the kids under their charge, so that they can go on to college or work. I'm not paying for them to fail at that job or push them into the military or the penal system.

If you've got a teacher who has five classes with 30-40 kids in each class, and the kids don't give a shit, and the parents don't give a shit, I find it pretty hard to blame the teacher. That said, there are some horrific teachers out there who don't know what the fuck they're doing, but in some of these situations it wouldn't matter who was trying to teach. No one is overcoming years of inertia when the students and parents just don't care.

[bklyn]

If you've got a teacher who has five classes with 30-40 kids in each class, and the kids don't give a shit, and the parents don't give a shit, I find it pretty hard to blame the teacher. That said, there are some horrific teachers out there who don't know what the fuck they're doing, but in some of these situations it wouldn't matter who was trying to teach. No one is overcoming years of inertia when the students and parents just don't care.

I don't disagree with your point. There are good teachers and faculty that recognize that there is a problem.

My question is - What is being done about it? Is there any feedback going to elementary and middle schools to step up their game? I am frustrated that it is widely accepted that the problem is intractable.

It's as if this was a car company and you blamed the guys who did the paint and finishing for the car failing a crash test. A private company would take a holistic approach to improvement and not sit there cursing the paint.

[pappag]

I once had to teach 4th, 5th, and 6th graders how to brush their teeth in Newark. From my one-day experience, there was a pretty diverse mix of both students and teachers. Interestingly enough, the more behaved kids were paired with teachers of the same that were very professional; the kids running around rampant, cursing, and punching one another were paired with teachers of the same that were anything but professional.


There was absolutely no correlation between how each group of people acted and race.

I blame poor academic performance on the parents.

[Dexter Rutecki]

I don't disagree with your point. There are good teachers and faculty that recognize that there is a problem.

My question is - What is being done about it? Is there any feedback going to elementary and middle schools to step up their game? I am frustrated that it is widely accepted that the problem is intractable.

It's as if this was a car company and you blamed the guys who did the paint and finishing for the car failing a crash test. A private company would take a holistic approach to improvement and not sit there cursing the paint.

Right, but I look at the paint and finishing as what a teacher does--all the really important stuff comes from the parents. I've taught in independent schools for over 10 years now, and if I meet the parents I usually have a pretty good idea about the kids. Even at these uber-expensive (30k/year) schools, there are parents who don't really care, and it shows in the kids--they just want the prestige, or the family's gone to the school forever, or something. There is definitely a lot schools could do that they don't do, and some of it could help some students, but we need a cultural change more than anything else. No matter what a school tries to throw at kids/parents, it's not going to ultimately change the fundamentals that need to be changed (and this means that as long as we have 'compassionate conservatives' running around, the people at the bottom of the ladder are going to keep getting screwed).

[hutash]

Maybe this has been covered, but are you a native English speaker?

If the answer is "yes" I'ma chop you up a bit.

No I'm not a native English speaker, I'm American. Chop all you want. I don't proof read my posts, and I am a terrible typist. More importantly, I don't give a fuck if I have typos in my posts After all this is the interweb, not my high school English paper.

[Tippster]

My question is - What is being done about it? Is there any feedback going to elementary and middle schools to step up their game? I am frustrated that it is widely accepted that the problem is intractable.

It's as if this was a car company and you blamed the guys who did the paint and finishing for the car failing a crash test. A private company would take a holistic approach to improvement and not sit there cursing the paint.

Sorry - the teachers didn't create the students, they inherited them. I don't care how hard you have to work - children and their education is PRIMARILY the parent's responsibility, not the School Board's. Unfortunately stuff like this is fodder for "School Vouchers" and "No Child Left Behind." If you cannot take 10 minutes to ask your kid what they learned that day and quiz them on it then you aren't willing to be a parent.

No I'm not a native English speaker, I'm American. Chop all you want. I don't proof read my posts, and I am a terrible typist. More importantly, I don't give a fuck if I have typos in my posts After all this is the interweb, not my high school English paper.

It totally sounded like your wife has genetic material in all the kids, which on one level could be really cool.....

[hutash]

The problem is multi-factorial as Bklyn points out. The frustrating thing is everybody is too busy pointing a finger at everybody else to solve the problem. The Bonfires of the Vanity was great at pointing this out (about race, not education). Everybody was blaming everybody else, and nobody was dealing with the problem. There is good and bad teachers, admin., parents and students. No one single group is to blame. I don't have a solution, but I am sure it is going to involve all these groups getting together, dropping their complaints about each other, and working towards a solution for these kids who are in desperate need for some help. I was a major part of a local Boys and Girls Club, so I know things can be done to help at least some of these kids. I saw it happen.

[iceman]

Hutash, I'm not trying to give you a hard time, I was thinking about syntax, not typos.

I am posted here

This is not normal English, it makes me think of German.

Whatever, I don't care. Were you raised in a household where English was the primary language?

Feel free to ignore the question, it's just curiousity on my part and certainly not important.