Re: Educational Posting

Alvin E. Toda wrote:

On Thu, 8 Mar 2007, Alan Lichtenstein wrote:

Alvin E. Toda wrote:

And there should be social workers in the schools to solve these problems. Schools rely too much on expulsion, especially when the parents are too drugged out to care.


That is another fallacy. The school cannot, nor should not assume the parenting responsibilities of the parents. Expulsion and failure are appropriate consequences of poor parenting, and that's life.


Well, that's what NCLB is all about. Expulsion and failure cannot be accepted. The school must make the effort-- even having a staff of social workers.

Wrong, Alvin. NCLB is about destroying public education, and it backfired on the reactionary right. And the school should NOT make the effort to intrude on parental responsibilities. It's simply not it's job. Parents have primary responsibility for acculturating their children. The school only supports those values; nothing more.

Here's a good example: Good Will in Hawaii is expanding their dropout tutoring program for kids up to IIRC 21 years of age (I don't think that they are the "hard core, at-risk" types that the agency that my son used to work for, handled. Their reasons for non-achievement are more the complacency I mention earlier). Goodwill had been hiring tutors for $30/hr when I first called to inquire. I've been doing substitute teaching for 8 years after several years of boredom upon retiring as an engineer. This past summer I was called in when I inquired again because they are expanding and I am somewhat familiar with the Plato site that they now use.

Back in the olden days, the kids were expelled, or dropped out. After a couple of years in the workforce and learning that in the school of hard knocks, they need an education to succeed, most of them went back to night school, on their own time, and, being duly motivated by experience, corrected their earlier faults. THAT, Alvin, is the way to handle the problem. Not bending over backward to correct values that never should have been allowed to develop because of poor parenting. When the kid finally realizes his behavior was inappropriate, HE will correct those values on their own.

They had released all their human tutors and were using the Plato site to tutor the drop-outs-- typically at a fourth grade level. I was surprised because I don't consider computer tutoring very good at all, but it serves their purposes. Perhaps it doesn't push their buttons as a teacher like you might do to them. Instead they have hired a lot of social workers to serve about a 100 kids. They have about 10 PCs set up in a Lab. I saw one being used in the afternoon. IIRC they had about 5 offices on the floor they occupied with one or two workers each. They have group therapy, work counseling on interviewing, work habits, etc, counseling on babycare, a case worker who makes home visits-- soup to nuts.

The kids don't need counseling; they need to fail so that they will understand WHY they failed, and then do something about it. If they don't either way the problem will be solved.

I would estimate that in a typical HS of about a 1000 students about 10% need social workers-- say about 8. But there is only one counselor who mainly does college type stuff for juniors and seniors and sometimes assists the principal when he meets with parents to discipline the kids. He needs to follow up on the action items and monitor the "progress" (or punishment). But the district (which services about 300,000 population) has two social workers. This is not the kind of committment that is needed for NCLB.

Alvin, they don't need Social workers, they need PARENTS. if they don't have parents, then they need to learn the values their parents never taught them for themselves. And unfortunately, they need to learn it the hard way. Social workers aren't going to accomplish that. they need tobe kicked in the teeth and then understand WHY the got kicked in their teeth.

No. There are report cards. The state standards are not used for that. Parents need to know what problems their kids have.


Alvin, if there are report cards and the standards are so low as to be effectively meaningless, exactly what is that telling the parents.


The standards are not meaningless. They're just ones that schools believe that most of the teachers and students can meet. But the standards are not used in the report cards which is the teacher's evaluation. You may pass the state standard, but that doesn't mean the teacher will give a good grade. He/She has her own standards.

Standards that everyone meets are no standards at all.

Well, that's you opinion. Parents would be relieved to know that their kid is guarantteed to have met the state standard by the time he/she graduates.


I'm sure they would. But still and all, a standard which everyone meets is not a standard at all. The standards are not put into place so the parents can be 'relieved.'


Yes it is. That's the purpose of a standard in this case.

Alvin, don't you understand that a standard which is met by everyone is not a real standard, since it obviously is set far too low? And do you not realize that NAEP data is telling us precisely that?

The testing is
mandatory because the student scores a zero if he/she refuses to take the test. Of course that score does not affect their grade on a report card. The grade is not very good for the parent to just how well the school is doing, but because of the ubiquity of the stardards test, that scores tells the parent more about how well the kid is doing.

Stop right there, Alvin. Grades earned by students reflect student achievement, NOT a measure of what the school is doing.

Hence, if
there should be a complaint about the standards test score, then the parent can simply be told that the kid wasn't trying.

Alvin, is you are acknowledging that grades are more indicative of student achievement rather than school function, isn't that in contradiction with your above assertion?

And to have the
kid try an aptitude test to rank him among other kids who want to attend college. He/she might try harder there for the extra effort and expense and the effect of the outcome.

That's the theory. Unfortunately it isn't working out that way.

If the feds could know that all states could meet some standard, then it could begin to look at the standards more closely. Because it could know what is possible, and what cannot work. This is a great experiment in standardsmanship.


Alvin, are you familiar with Amendment X of the Constitution? If not, study it and then we'll revisit your last assertion.


I'm assuming that all the states will volunteer.

States 'volunteer' only to get their hands into the Federal 'goody bag.' Some would call that 'arm twisting.'

Parents will insist on
knowing how their kid ranks nationally. Probably for the distant future... Don't think that the 10th Amendment should have anything to do with this.

As per your clarification, and my comments, it would seem so.
.

Loading