Illiteracy rates are not based on kids not wanting to learn.


To brush it off on the kids requires you to ignore the fact that those groups that are at risk have much different illiteracy rates based on the approach of the school. The rates can literally double or triple based on the school.


It is very clearly the schools fault.


Kids are a challenge to teach. There are schools that rise to the challenge and those that blame it on the parents. If the parents are X then the teachers have to know how to deal with students who have parents that are X. Whatever X may be.

 

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There are plenty of studies out now on this that show parental involvement is not the problem. It's not money either. It's the teachers and the administrators, which is why it's so stupid nobody wants to fix the problem. In universities we have a way of dealing with underperforming teachers and administrators. K-12 should adopt these same criteria, it's that simple.

 

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I don't disagree. But teachers are trying to do what they can. I'm not sure sending a bunch of homework home with the kid is really going to help if the kid isn't interested in the first place, but what else can teachers do? As you said it's a social problem not an educational one. The teacher can't march into the house and demand teh parents shape up.


Incidentally, in Japan teachers kind-of CAN do that. The teacher visits the houses of students once a year. In practice the teacher probably can't do much to really get bad parents to become less bad, but just the threat of the visit itself probably does osmething to promote parents staying engaged.

That's sorta the point. Schools where the parents are X are not going to have the same results as schools where the parents are Y. Whether you want to call that blaming the parents or not doesn't really matter.


It isn't realistic to try to teach kids with X parents like we teach kids with Y parents and it also isn't realistic to expect the X group to ever do nearly as well as the Y group.


I would like to see Enkidu's studies because I question if the findings are really as robust as he claims. And the conclusion (adopt university hiring and firing policies) is so patently self-congratulatory and absurd it sorta makes me question the data itself. The worst teacher I have ever had was a university professor and the idea that university teachers are hired and fired based on their ability to teach is laughable.

The problem obviously goes well beyond a few underperforming teachers. If it is underperforming teachers, then you're talking about maybe 20% of the educational work force on average. That would indicate a deeper problem in my opinion - unrealistic expectations, lack of incentives to teach or something else.

Also, how does the "underperforming teachers" model explain differences in performance in various socioeconomic groups? Are the good teachers being assigned exclusively to the good schools?

 

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It's not 20% of the workforce and they affect everything around them. Problem is you can't get rid of them under the current system and you can't reward good teachers with bonuses. So everyone does as little as possible to get by. That's what's wrong and nobody wants to fix it.

 

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If you ever actually spent even a day or two at an elementary school you would realize it is simply false that everyone only does the minimum required to squeak by. It is patronizing idiocy like that which makes the sort of reforms you're talking about impossible.

Per student?
Per school?
Per district?
As a % of GDP?


What's the context and qualifiers?

 

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I am not comparing different types of students, I am comparing different types of schools. There are different results for parents that are X based on the school. I am not comparing kids with parent X to kid with parent Y.


One of the biggest reasons these schools fail these kids that have parent X is because they blame the parents.

 

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All you have to do is look at the product they are producing and the vast amount of deadwood in the system that cannot be removed. If you spent an hour or two looking at the research that has been done in the last ten years you'd see that the system is broken and impossible to fix because of the standing union contracts that prevent poor teachers from being fired or allow pay increases for great performers. You can attempt to aplogize for the schools all you want, but the fact remains they are failing to educate their students and the cause is obvious to anyone who has studied the problem.

 

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