uruk
Philosopher
- Joined
- Apr 9, 2003
- Messages
- 5,311
No, not really. Funding for schools have been tied to student performance based on a standardized test. It's known as the TAKS test-soon-to-be-renamed STARS. The better students perform at a school the more funding it recieves. The assumption being that a school that performs badly necessarily means that the school adminstration and faculty are poor. This is not always the case and I'll explain later.
Schools with poorly perfoming students go on a three strike system, After the third strike or poor student perfomance on the TAKS test, the principal of the school is reassigned and a new "fireman" principal is assigned. If the students perfom badly again the administrative staff and faculty is sacked and replaced with fresh blood. During this time the student performance expectation is set to 100% passing, which is an impossibility especialy where there are students with learning disabilities and students who have emotional problems.
This system inevitably encourages the school districts to cheat on the test results to maintain TAKS compliance. (I have wittnessed this personally.) Other ways of dealing with perfomance issue is to redraw districts so that a "scapegoat" school recieves all the special ed. and emotionaly disturbed students. (again, I have wittnessed this personally) Other schools in the district perform better when the "problem" children are redistributed within the district.
The problem is that the assumption is that it is the school and faculty that is the sole reason or cause for the poorly performing students. The education adminstrations seem to fail to recognise that there is a whole battery of reasons that students do not perfom well. Here are a few.
1. Parents: Students perform better in school when the parent encourages the student and participates in their childs education. The issue here is that parents fail to do so for various reasons. limited contact with child due to work hours, time management issues, domestic abuse and neglect, and apathy. Part of the job of parenting include the childs education. You do see a distinct correlation with student performance and parential attention.
I have personally seen parents refusing to answer phones and doors or fail to respond to requests for meetings about the performance of thier children. I have personally wittnessed parents deny thier childrens poor behaiviour when it is played back form them on survailence tapes.
2. Socio-economic: Some cultures and economic areas are not education friendly. In the area where I grew up and live the predominate culture is hispanic and the main economy was agriculutural. Most hispanic familes down here were once employed mainly by farms and packing plants. Families did not see education past the first few grades as being necessary. You just learned how to read and write and do basic math and then you were off to work in the fields or packing plant. For women, it was get married and produce more filed workers. Now that the economy is changing from agriculture to service and industrial education is becoming more of an important issue. But the family attitudes concerning education have not kept up with the times. You also have parents that become jealous that thier child is recieving a higer education than they had. They feel that their authority as parents is being threatend by the higher education the child is recieving.
3. Education Adminstration ignorance, apathy and corruption: I live in an are that is 90% hispanic. I have actually read memo from the state board admonishing school districts down here for not having enough caucasians in school districts. Where are we supposed to bus them in from, up state?!?! There are school districts where the local schoolboards vote themselves a payraise at the begining of every meeting. We are in a economically depressed are yet we have some of the higest paid schoolboard members in the state.
And the forementioned gerrymandering of school districts to favor certain schools over others.
4. Special interest groups: The usual cast of characters that try to bend the content of education to thier particular agenda. Both liberal and conservatives camps are guilty of this.
There are methods for dealing with poor performing teachers, even those who are union. Testing is one such method, re-certification is another.
I think you will find that in the majority of school districts teacher's salaries are below $60,000 a year. A $95,000 salary seems more like the exception that the rule.
Teaching children requires money for materials and classrooms and equipment, and cooling and heating, and feeding the children, and providing for thier safety, and transportation, administration etc.. The teacher's salary is just one small percentage of that total bill.
No one is saying that corruption and mismanagement is not rampant and present, but taking it out on the teachers is not the answer. Teachers do not make the rules, they are only employees doing what they are told. The stress in getting so bad that there are very high burnout and turnover rates amoung teachers (which some see as good since the individual teacher's salary does not get that high due to quitting at an early date)
Also there are fewer americans that want to become teachers because of the stress. So now there is a growing trend to import teachers form other countries. The Phillepenes and India are the two largest sources of imported teachers
It is easier to blame the teachers for the poor performance of students than to accept the fact that there are also more complicated socio-economic reasons behind a students perfomance.
our education systen cannot improve untill these issues are properly addressed.
Last edited:
