We have had social programs and supports in schools and cities for years and what has changed? The people who come up with these programs have zero accountability and never get asked to demonstrate effectiveness.
A failing school will simply be reflecting a failing community. Even a janitor who barely speaks English can tell you that (as one told me). But who gets blamed for failing schools? Teachers, because it’s always those with the least power who get scapegoated. They are also the last ones to get asked what they think should be done. It’s like the police; they don’t make policy or write the laws. A Democrat mayor made stop and frisk a policy and also made sure that it impacted minorities more. But who looks like the Gestapo? The cops.
Schools will have procedures and policies to deal with behavioral issues. As a teacher you need to document everything and show that you followed those steps but you do it not because it works but to simply cover your ass. And what they want you to do, does not work. The thing is, the people who should be dealing with discipline issues don’t know what they are doing (I also think they are lazy as they chose a job in education that is easier than teaching) so they have protocols in place that make the teacher have to deal with problems until they become impossible to manage. I have kicked kids out of class and been told that I needed to do try more ways to deal with the behavior before kicking the kid out. So that’s my job? Behavior management? What do teachers do knowing that the people who are supposed to fix those problems don’t fix them and pass that responsibility onto teachers? They just let kids get away with shitty behavior because it’s the easiest way to get through the day. No one wants to go to work knowing they are going to be in a battle. I’ve seen teachers crying in their cars before and after school.
The thing is that admin wants to keep suspensions and disciplinary actions (and arrests) low. It doesn’t look like a principal has control of a school if they are suspending lots of kids every day. This is why they create a environment in which teachers just ignore bad behaviors which in turn enables those behaviors. “A student told you to fuck off? How many times? One? And you want him to face consequences for one offense? Come back after he tells you to fuck off 10 times.” This is the attitude of admin. I read about a school in the Philly area that was able to reduce the number of student arrests. Sounds great until you read the fine print: they stopped calling the cops for every arrestable (is that a word?) offense including bringing a weapon to school. I worked in a school that was a total shithole (like the town it was in, surprise). The state was monitoring certain school reports and emails that dealt with discipline issues (between deans and social workers, for example) so what did the school do? If a kid got suspended, the state would know. If a student was reported for certain behaviors (teachers would document incidents electronically) the state would know. They decided to bypass the official channels set up for reporting and documenting those issues so the state wouldn’t know how bad it was. My wife knows of a school that would record suspensions as absences.
That same school had the lowest test scores in the state. At a board of ed meeting the superintendent, who is basically a politician, blamed everyone equally (teachers, community) but it is not about teachers. There were teachers at that school who had been there for years and the school was fine but then the demographics of the city changed. Same teachers, different students. I saw that at other schools where teachers who had been working there for 20 years said that once the demographics changed, everything went downhill. And, it’s not like there are two different hiring pools for teachers. One pool is the good teachers who work in suburban schools and another for urban schools. Teachers can’t teach in shitty schools because some of the students are unteachable. Then you meet the parents (I mean parent) and it all makes sense. You also have high numbers of special ed students. There was one elementary school where over half the students were SPED. So schools go and fudge test numbers (or just help kids cheat) or find ways to keep the worst kids from taking the standardized tests (many of them don’t show up anyway). There is grade inflation and in some schools the lowest possible grade for a student is a 50. Students can hand in a term’s worth of work the day grades are due. You have to accept all late work. This does not teach responsibility. None of these things are the ideas of teachers and none of them work but it makes the job of admin easier.
I have heard college students who want to become teachers say they want to teach in the inner cities (white savior syndrome). I ask them if they ever lived there and the answer is no. I tell them to stay away from the ghetto because they will only feel disappointment and pain. You hear teachers say how if they can save just one kid it’s worth it but the reality is, they are haunted by the many students they couldn’t save.
The only way to fix the ghetto is by having the people change how they think and feel. Their sense of normal is not compatible with the rest of the country. It does not lead to success. The only way to get people to change on a cultural and social level is to impose it upon them (think about growing up in a stable family environment where there were rules, standards of behavior and expectations that you had to follow and meet. You had no choice and those standards were also seen in the community) but that won’t happen. An idea as simple as making it a requirement for a mother receiving welfare to attend parenting classes. Making it a requirement that if a child is having behavioral issues that she and the child must both attend counseling. Tell a parent that she won’t be allowed to pass the buck when it comes to raising her kid and will be an active participant in his upbringing and, she will be told how to do it properly, otherwise you get no money. You see kids with iPhones whose parents won’t buy them a pencil.
If people actually saw what goes on in some of these schools they would be screaming for them to get closed. If you ever get to visit one of these schools, go during lunch time and see if they let you go to the cafeteria. I know someone who was doing student teaching in a ghetto school. He lasted one day. He said the kids were vulgar and didn’t listen but the final straw was students having sex in the bathrooms. At least it was the bathrooms. Kids will have sex in the classroom, during class, with a teacher present. And yes, someone recorded it on their phone.
