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Originally Posted by Jasper17
Perfectly stated. You absolutely hid it on the head. As someone who has been in education (I escaped thank God) as well as having a significant other still in the classroom, this couldn't be better stated.
Somewhere along the line parents became absolved of their responsibility to parent. I had a part-time bartending job whilst in my last teaching assignment. Customers would tell me, "I want my kids to do well in school, be more successful than me, go to college, stay out of trouble, etc." All I told them was to be involved in their kids education. It makes the single biggest difference. Not race, color, divorced/married, money, disabilities. The parent being CONSTRUCTIVELY involved.
Obviously, as you also stated, schools and teachers are not failable. All of these pedagogy "experts" are constantly coming up with all of these cooperative, and inquiry-based strategies is deplorable to the whole field. Elementary schools are in bad shape now-a-days because of all the warm and fuzzies. Kids show up in 7th grade (le gf's grade) and they are reading at a 3rd grade level. How on Earth is that kid going to learn any kind of science or social studies if they can't read the textbook or other class materials. The whole system needs what los Yets need. A thorough cleaning from top to bottom. |
While I agree with Parents being AWOL in their children's education is the #1 key, You obviously have not worked in Elementary schools, and therefore have no clue.
Parents, your children are watching too much tv, too many video games, not enough reading and actively playing. Those are killing your child's learning and health.
The key problem with our entire USA Educational problem is the influx of millions of non-speaking US students who after 1 year in the US are forced to take tests whose scores are merged in with American students.
Educators and researchers know that it takes a minimum of 5 years for basic language acquisition to the point of being able to answer basic questions. Takes much longer to gather the intricacies of the English language and meanings that test makers are trying to reveal. There is no way a nation with more than 10,000,000 students who don't have the language should be bunched in with the other 50,000,000 kids, it dilutes their scores and makes everyone look bad. Testing should not happen until language acquisition has happened. This is one thing that is lowering our scores and is unacceptable but standard practice.
As far as the tests, let's go there now. Testing is created in 4 major states in the US. NY, CA, TX, FL. Generally written for the Northeastern Students and norm based in the others. Tests are made harder and harder each year, while our students are not learning more thinking skills, they are learning less, reading less, and becoming increasingly more arrogant and unruly, leaving them farther and farther behind.