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It’s funny. If you talk to teachers the problem is the 10% of students who make the whole place miserable and no parental support. In fact, the parents make the

It’s funny. If you talk to teachers the problem is the 10% of students who make the whole place miserable and no parental support. In fact, the parents make the problem worse by siding the problem students instead of helping the school fix the problem.

p0pcult 4y ago
As a former teacher in one of the poorest congressional districts in the country at the time (South Bronx, early 2000s), as well as the current parent of a kid in a very different (Midwestern) city's public school systems, this is the answer I would point to. Teacher quality has always been a distribution, with some good and bad outliers, but the vast majority are sufficient. What hasn't always been the case is the inability to get rid of kids who are extremely disruptive and make it impossible for education to take place. There also seems to be a bigger share of that disruption now than two decades ago, when I was teaching. I think a lot of it relates to feedback loops: in the suburban schools in my area, as well as the elite public high school in my area (requires an academic test for entrance), these problems don't exist. The problems only seem to exist in the schools where there are higher concentrations of antisocial expectations/behavior. This does tend to correlate with poverty, but poverty doesn't apprar to be causative, merely correlated: I would point out that poor kids who test into the elite public high school tend to do just fine. But, they are all there for a reason (i.e., it is a self-selecting group of people who want to test), and also worked hard enough to pass the entrance exam.
LanceH 4y ago
This. And the mission creep for teachers: more standardized tests every year it seems, hall duty, lunch duty, increased professional training, individualized programs for more and more students (wife had more than 20%), etc... When she was still teaching I would ask my wife if they ever had any actual classes. The high school my kids go to changed completely across covid. From no discipline problems to daily fights, vandalism, and generally (many) students ignoring anything short of police presence. Teachers are quitting in droves in a top tier school district. The only saving grace here is that it's a district that people want to get into, so they get pulled from somewhere else. I can only imagine what's going on elsewhere.
- mlyle 4y ago
  The testing thing can be really horrible. This was my first year teaching AP Microeconomics. Students depend upon doing well on that test, and the college board has crammed the class full of a whole lot of topics. I had a group of students who were in love with game theory even before the class, and as an individual I love the topic, too. But all the time I could spend on it was half a class period, and only the very boring cases involved in analyzing oligopoly behavior... Because we had to get back to all the edge cases in monopolistic competition and practicing how to write answers to free response questions in the very formulaic ways that we can be sure the graders will give credit for. I feel like I was forced to teach a less engaging and useful class than I'd have liked to.
panzagl 4y ago
So my wife's school had a 4th grader bring in a taser and threaten a kid with it before break- where does a kid even get a taser? He's back at school. I'll leave it to the reader to decide whether that's a detriment to learning or if it's that my wife is just another spoiled teacher.
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  Around here the very worst district pays better than any other public schools around. Lots of aid dollars flowing in because the district's so bad. My wife subbed at one of their elementary schools once when taking a break from full-time teaching to care for our kids. It was on lockdown that day—and, apparently, many days—over credible threats of violence. Nobody told her this, so she found out when she poked her head out the classroom door and got yelled at by a cop for opening the door. Early elementary kids swore at her and refused to do any work, and there was nothing she could do about it. Admin couldn't handle minor stuff like that because they had multiple fights that day to deal with, despite the lockdown. The other teachers told her they were threatened with violence on the regular—by, like, 3rd graders—and occasionally attacked. It was fucking insane.
yamtaddle 4y ago
Ability and willingness to tell entire families to fuck off and go away is truly one of the main advantages private schools have.

p0pcult 4y ago

As a former teacher in one of the poorest congressional districts in the country at the time (South Bronx, early 2000s), as well as the current parent of a kid in a very different (Midwestern) city's public school systems, this is the answer I would point to. Teacher quality has always been a distribution, with some good and bad outliers, but the vast majority are sufficient. What hasn't always been the case is the inability to get rid of kids who are extremely disruptive and make it impossible for education to take place. There also seems to be a bigger share of that disruption now than two decades ago, when I was teaching. I think a lot of it relates to feedback loops: in the suburban schools in my area, as well as the elite public high school in my area (requires an academic test for entrance), these problems don't exist. The problems only seem to exist in the schools where there are higher concentrations of antisocial expectations/behavior. This does tend to correlate with poverty, but poverty doesn't apprar to be causative, merely correlated: I would point out that poor kids who test into the elite public high school tend to do just fine. But, they are all there for a reason (i.e., it is a self-selecting group of people who want to test), and also worked hard enough to pass the entrance exam.

LanceH 4y ago

This. And the mission creep for teachers: more standardized tests every year it seems, hall duty, lunch duty, increased professional training, individualized programs for more and more students (wife had more than 20%), etc... When she was still teaching I would ask my wife if they ever had any actual classes. The high school my kids go to changed completely across covid. From no discipline problems to daily fights, vandalism, and generally (many) students ignoring anything short of police presence. Teachers are quitting in droves in a top tier school district. The only saving grace here is that it's a district that people want to get into, so they get pulled from somewhere else. I can only imagine what's going on elsewhere.

mlyle 4y ago
The testing thing can be really horrible. This was my first year teaching AP Microeconomics. Students depend upon doing well on that test, and the college board has crammed the class full of a whole lot of topics. I had a group of students who were in love with game theory even before the class, and as an individual I love the topic, too. But all the time I could spend on it was half a class period, and only the very boring cases involved in analyzing oligopoly behavior... Because we had to get back to all the edge cases in monopolistic competition and practicing how to write answers to free response questions in the very formulaic ways that we can be sure the graders will give credit for. I feel like I was forced to teach a less engaging and useful class than I'd have liked to.

panzagl 4y ago

So my wife's school had a 4th grader bring in a taser and threaten a kid with it before break- where does a kid even get a taser? He's back at school. I'll leave it to the reader to decide whether that's a detriment to learning or if it's that my wife is just another spoiled teacher.

yamtaddle 4y ago
Around here the very worst district pays better than any other public schools around. Lots of aid dollars flowing in because the district's so bad. My wife subbed at one of their elementary schools once when taking a break from full-time teaching to care for our kids. It was on lockdown that day—and, apparently, many days—over credible threats of violence. Nobody told her this, so she found out when she poked her head out the classroom door and got yelled at by a cop for opening the door. Early elementary kids swore at her and refused to do any work, and there was nothing she could do about it. Admin couldn't handle minor stuff like that because they had multiple fights that day to deal with, despite the lockdown. The other teachers told her they were threatened with violence on the regular—by, like, 3rd graders—and occasionally attacked. It was fucking insane.

yamtaddle 4y ago

Ability and willingness to tell entire families to fuck off and go away is truly one of the main advantages private schools have.