In Defense of FWCS (sort of)
Posted by Jeff Pruitt - 4/22/09 @ 11:03 pm - Filed Under Featured, Local Politics, National Politics
Every year the AYP numbers come out and everyone feigns shock that so many of our schools aren’t making the grade. People blame the school board, superintendent, teachers, etc. But rarely do people want to talk about the real problem - PARENTS. So let’s just be honest about what’s going on here shall we?
The reality is many of these kids who are falling behind have parents that could care less. At the end of the day parenting is what matters most in a child’s life. If you’re a total screw up then there’s a better than average chance your kid will be too. And that’s really the gist of the problem I have with the Fort Wayne Community School Board and the administration. They think more money will solve this and every other problem - it won’t.
The hard truth is that if a kid’s parents don’t give a damn about his education then he has little-to-no chance at a successful future. No amount of money for new buildings or programs will change that. And really, if you don’t give a crap about your own child then why would you expect anyone else to? You show me a kid who’s parents are involved in his education - even to the tune of 1 hour a night - and I’ll show you a kid who’s going to do all right regardless of their socio-economic status.
The free lunch program is a prime example of this. School lunches are already subsidized. Yet you want me to believe that 95% of kids (in some schools) have parents who can’t afford $1.50/day for their kid to eat? As a parent your basic responsibility is to provide food, shelter and love for your child. Now anyone can fall on hard times and that’s why I believe in social safety nets and charitable organizations, but if you cannot provide your child food day in and day out, each and every year then you are a piss poor parent. Of course that’s not what’s going on here and everybody knows it - the money is there so people take it and we all pretend it actually makes a difference.
We need to stop the No Child Left Behind/AYP garbage, the “vouchers will save the day” nonsense and any other method that doesn’t deal with the root problem - lousy parenting. We must rethink the way our educational system is structured and come up with a more holistic, community-oriented approach that educates (and shames if necessary) parents as well as their children.
Every day we continue to pretend that teachers or school programs or new curricula can solve the problem is a waste of time and only adds to our country’s growing opportunity cost of under-educated youth…
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46 Responses to “In Defense of FWCS (sort of)”
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Jeff:
You are my hero tonight!
Jeff,
Not sure I agree with all of this- but I have a real problem with:
“We must rethink the way our educational system is structured and come up with a more holistic, community-oriented approach that educates (and shames if necessary) parents as well as their children.”
I think it would be wrong to “shame” the children- what can a 1st grader do if her parents are crappy parents? nothing!
While you are correct that parenting is the #1 factor for school success, after that education personnel cannot be discounted. This may be hard to accept, but there are classroom teachers that should no longer be classroom teachers. If parents are working hard with their children but the school does not challenge or provide the necessary opportunities, then the school must assume some blame. Finally, Hillary’s “Village” that helps raise the child must assume some blame also. The “Village” must be aggressive in informing students that their answer is not in achieving the NBA, NFL, or MBL. The “Village” is also responsible to hold the schools accountable to maintain consistent facilities that promote learning without bankrupting the “Village.”
Finally, the students themselves are the most accountable. If you don’t attempt, then you will fail. If you fail, here are your options.
Kevin,
The wording is awkward but the shaming part was meant to only apply to the parents
And it should be “could NOT care less” rather than “could care less”.
Kids, generally speaking, will learn what they are taught. Parents should have taught them the alphabet, numbers, counting, manners and other basic skills before they’ve entered the school system. This responsibility falls squarely on the parent(s).
Jeff,
Amen! This just made my day. It’s about time someone else spoke up on this issue with some real notable relevance!
Jeff- Good!
And I do agree that the biggest problem is NOT in the school- it is at home.
But here is where reality and theory hit head-on. In a perfect world, parents would be more involved. In the world we live in, many are single parent homes where that parent may well be working more than one job to get by.
There are no easy solutions- that is why we have to keep on working!
How do you shame the parent without shaming the child?
“Hey Billy, I saw your parents’ faces on a billboard last night!”
I don’t really agree. Parents are not required to have a degree in education or pass a licensing exam in order to become parents. Teachers on the other hand are. When did the responsibility for teaching revert to the parents? If I feed and clothe my child, teach them to respect authority and pay my taxes I should expect that I may present my child to the school to be educated appropriately. The root of the problem is the ineffectiveness of the schools to maintain order and discipline. Kids that are consistently disruptive should be barred from school. And anyone who thinks that children don’t need discipline or that teachers shouldn’t be allowed to administer discipline in school (notice I didn’t say corporal discipline) either aren’t parents themselves or they are the “real” crappy parents.
Let’s be honest about the matter. Parent behavior is not going to change. Our society, and blame whomever you want, threw personal responsibility under the bus a long time ago.
That leaves the active agents: FWCS, the school board, teachers, and kids, as our only hope.
FWCS is a laughing stock with zero credibility in the community. Zero. It’s a bloated bureaucracy that only seeks to perpetuate it’s existence. They’re axing teachers, the wrong teachers, with impunity (more on the way!) — and yet because they downsized “downtown” in 2006 or whenever evidently all the real cuts will be with the people on the front lines of education.
The school board. LMAO. They’re a pathetic, sterile bunch that walk lock-step to Wendy’s initiative-du-jour. They’re sycophants of the highest order.
Teachers? The union protects the bad ones. The great ones are underpaid and under-appreciated. Faculty morale is at a long time low at our best high school — Snider — which is circling the drain as we write not because of bad leadership — because of no leadership. The refusal to hire Russ Isaacs as AD is laughable.
The kids aren’t the problem. They’re the victims.
We need to vote the school board members out. The new school board needs to fire Wendy and her mafia. The union needs to weed out ineffective teachers. We need to invest in our kids.
I feel better. Thanks.
Yeah, I think the kids would be shamed IF the parents were, so I can track on that.
Trouble is trying SHAME them in the first place. They have no shame, remember?
I alluded to this today as well, so Jeff and I must be drinking from similar sources.
School is NOT the place to UNLEARN what the world has been pumping into these pliable minds for the rest of the darn week. Educators only get them for about 40 hours as it is.
Last time I checked, schools were for EDUCATION…NOT policing OR parenting.
And any real, positive change will only be accomplished to aid the children when it comes from the TOP on down.
You don’t fire the troops fighting a poorly conceived battleplan…you fire the generals who have (mis)conducted the operation from the git-go.
Don’t blame me, I only married a teacher, and am a product from a better scholastic environment and age.
(as are most all of us here, politics aside)
Very good post, Jeff.
Jeff,
You and Indy Lurker both make good points, seeing as how students, next to their parents, see teachers almost the same amount of time during the day, sometimes teachers see them even more!
No, the key is not more money, in a sense you think of it as buildings, air conditioning, etc.
The key is smaller class sizes. Period.
Why do parents want vouchers? You may say the other school is better, but it is only better because the class sizes are smaller. And, yes, it may be more expensive.
But a teacher with a class size in the 30’s or more, and especially given the demographics of a given area, are given a very tumultuous task.
The smaller the class size, the better a chance a teacher can engage active learning in any student, regardless of where they live or what their background may be.
The focus should be smaller class sizes first, buildings second.
Charles
class size is not the issue. It’s the mixture of student abilities in one class. Thzt makes it much more difficult to meet educational needs of diverse student abilities. Low-skill and high-skill, mixed with several in the middle, a few immigrants that speak limited English and then special ed kids that must be mainstreamed. But public ed is not allowed to group students by ability…it’s against the law.
90% of the conversations I hear among teachers are about kids and their parents. They know the parents are the problem. They talk about it all the time in private but they won’t do it publicly because, heaven forbid, they, and especially the board and administration, might piss somebody off. They know more money won’t help, at least not in the way they’re spending it, but it will provide employment for more teachers and keep the education establishment and their suppliers in business.
Eventually the system will go the way of GM and the UAW. I just won’t be around to see it.
I trust the teachers ideas on what is wrong about as much as I do the UAW on how to fix GM. Teachers also know who amongst them are the crappy teachers but they won’t turn on a fellow union member. Merit raises based only on standardized testing would fix that in a hurry.
The schooling model itself is the problem.
It should be no surprise that many parents push the responsibility to teachers, administrators, and “education professionals.” They’ve been instructed to do so by the system.
Parents successfully teach their children to walk, talk, eat, and other age-appropriate tasks for the first 4-5 years of their lives. Suddenly, they’re told the child’s education is better left to professionals who have gone to school for such things. Parents are no longer qualified to teach. First it was kindergarten. Then it was pre-school. Now it’s suggested we surrender our wards to the system at age 3, to give them a “head-start” on the education experience.
I found it laughable last year when FWCS held a meeting (Elmhurst, I believe). They were looking for feedback from parents about how FWCS should solve a particular problem. The administration appeared dumbfounded when few parents attended (”We even served refreshments!”). No surprise here. Administrators have done a bang-up job teaching us they know better and have the answers. Could humble parents really solve the problem? If the system wants involved parents, stop insulting them and undermining their primary role in education.
I doubt many would say we’re doing a better job now than we did 25, 50, or 100 years ago. Stop blaming the parents, teachers and kids. Look at the model itself. Don’t buy the lie.
The human brain process information the same way it has for the past 10,000 years. We are still on rev 0. Mathematics which I will include addition, subtraction, division and multiplication is the same, nothing has changed. Algebra, trigonometry and calculus is still the same, again nothing has changed. When I was in school I was taught history, geography and social studies. We started with the dark ages and bit before and went up through the Korean War. This covered nearly 2,000 years. Now we have a bit of modern history that added fifty more years. Administrators keep fooling around with instruction when maybe they should leave it alone and get back to basics. The purpose of K-12 is to teach our children how to teach themselves, yet they have taken on the task to teach every subject possible, reducing their basic education.
I would really like to know how many students actually get a job by knowing something that was specifically taught in a school besides the standard courses (farm economics vs economics).
The one I like is at <Maple Creek where they teach Engineering classes and robotics. These may get the students attention, but the reality is they do very little at presenting anything they can use later on. It takes math, english, history, science and geography to make a well rounded, knowledgeable individual. The schools are in essence putting out students who know a little about everything and a master of nothing.
Keep in mind the software and or computers your children use in K-12 will not be that used in industry and they will have to learn new stuff. The more information presented at one time, the less information retained.
Myths;
Smaller class size produces higher test scores. The more you pay teachers, the higher the test scores. The more counselors you have, the better idea they have of what they want to do after school. The more administrators you have, the higher test scores and fewer discipline problems you have. Newer schools produce higher test scores. Technology produces higher test scores.
In the case of FWCS, the teachers are much more the problem than the parents! As a tutor, I have delightful, hard-working student that is in the 5th grade. The family is from another country and relocated seeking a better life! Although the child is in the 5th grade, their reading level is that of a 1st/2nd grade. The student’s parents want her to do well! However, they realized that the child is not meeting the expectations of the 5th grade, and they have asked countless time for the child to be held back! The parents have been denied the right to obtain an extra year of schooling for their child that they so much need! So onward to middle school!
This parent wants to be involved!!! As they are from another country, they lack knowledge of what a child studies in the 3rd/4th/5th grades, and they would like some assistance in that area. Who do they get their assistance from? Me. I make sure to get reading comprehension questions and math materials translated into the parents language - on my own time. Why? Because the school REFUSES to have educational materials translated into the parents’ language! Yet, this school openly blames the parents.
I have a had a few laxidacial and uneducated parents, however when they make the commitment to have their child tutored by a former employee of FWCS, (who was let go due to corruption), it is truly amazing! Due to my contract, I have to go into their homes - even those in the bad neighborhoods at night! I have more teachers state so and so parents are ‘hostile’, ‘angry’ or ‘horrid’ and yet the parents are truly support the education of their child. Quite a few come and sit in my sessions, so they are able to help their son or daughters!
BTW…Fort Wayne Community Schools spends at least $450,000 on tutoring services due to its inability to meet AYP!
AND I DO TAKE IT PERSONAL WHEN MY STUDENTS DON”T MAKE ENOUGH PROGRESS!
“Because the school REFUSES to have educational materials translated into the parents’ language! Yet, this school openly blames the parents.”
When you emigrate to another country, who is responsible for learning the language? My grandfather and Grandmother were both immigrants (Norway and England). My grandfather learned the language and became a US citizen.
I hate to be “rude” or “unkind”, but the responsibility is the parents to have the material translated. The school system teaches in English and it is the responsibility of those who move to this country to learn the skills to live in this country, not the other way around.
When you work for 0.25 per hour (NO LIE), and work 18 hour days 6 days a week, WHEN, WHEN do you get to learn English. My parents would like to, but they don’t have the money to do so!
Tutor
You know someone who works 108 hours a week for $27? Send them my way, I’ll double their pay (50 cents per hour).
It sounds like your family came to the US to find a better life. The problem is, it was your choice. Our schools have 10 to 15% more students because of illegals. Indiana has been running deficits for years, even though they say they balanced the budget (unemployment fund, teacher and police pensions prior to ‘77, storm water/sewer mandate and more). Now as an immigrant you want me and my family to pay for your books to be translated? With unemployment in the area rising to 10% if not higher, you are asking for something that we cannot afford.
As for making 25 cents an hour working 18 hours a day, 6 days a week is this better than where you came from?
Tutor,
I’m sure there are plenty of books at the library where your parents could get a good start. Also, you seem to have a good grasp of the English language, you teach them!
I would love to….but, let’s see I have 16 students x 3 hours per week = 48 hours of tutoring per week. Two hours for planning for every hour worked = 96 hours….96 + 48 hours = 144 hours worked! I don’t have time!
2 hours of planning for each hour worked? I find that hard to believe.
Assuming one can tutor kids from 2:30 - 8:30 each day after school. That is a 30 hour window each school week. (6 hours x 5 days) That means you do 9 hours of tutoring on each and every weekend.
144 hours a week = about 20 hours a day.
Maybe you can tutor me in ‘rithmatic because it doesn’t add up to me.
Also, if you supposedly tutor for 144 hours a week, when the hell do you sleep? There are only 168 hours total in a week. You moron.
Monday - Friday: 30 Hours
Saturday: 11 Hours
Sunday: 7 Hours
Planning, prep and paperwork the rest of the time.
Crazy!
It’s called I work my ass off! OH BTW, I am the ONLY tutor in FW to earn a PERFECT evaluation score!
OK, I feel obligated to make a blanket “BS” call on all of Tutor’s calculations. 3.4 hours of non-tutor time per day…. come on?
What Green Jeans said…
Wow, we finally agree on something :)
Pick any one activity - if I had to do it 144 hours a week I’d put a gun to my head on Thursday.
Making love to Pamela Anderson for 144 hours? Gun to my head by Thursday.
I agree with Mr. Green Jeans and Honest Abe. And I choose to laugh out loud at Keith.
It’s 10:29 p.m. and I just got home from tutoring…and I will be doing paperwork and lesson plans all night long.
It’s 11:02 p.m. and I am still at the office. I have been here for 98 straight days without a break. My cloth tie squared off at the bottom, the height of fashion when I put it on, is now hopelessly out of date. My suit pants have chemically bonded to my skin. My Members Only jacket hangs listlessly on the door. I hear word from the outside that I have a son, but I have never seen him. And yet I find time to blog….
Keith, the ultimate compliment. I laughed so hard at your post, that I literally spit my diet coke out onto my desk.
I read blogs….as I m downloading reports - they take a few minutes.
Tutor - The numbers you’ve provided must certainly be stretched. It is not possible to work 144 hours each week and function at even a mediocre level. That means you have about 4 hours each day for sleep, eating, laundry, bill paying, etc.
I think you should come clean. I don’t doubt you work hard, but stretching the numbers has cost you any credibility on the issue.
Jeff H
Don’t forget at least one hour a day (conservative estimate) of bragging about what a good tutor you are and how much you work.
Its my understanding that tutor is able to blog 8 hours a day on top of his other duties because he types by blowing through a straw like Stephen Hawking, which allows his hands to be free to work on all of his extensive tutor plans, laundry and to get a bite of food in his mouth now and then.
[...] As I’ve said before the reason these schools are failing is because the parents are failing. To portray this as some sort of problem with teachers is laughable. Loser parents, in general, raise loser children - that’s just the reality of a vicious sociological cycle that takes a lot more than a teacher or two to fix. That’s why the administration’s plan is so ridiculous. Most of the people who teach in these failing schools are there because they truly want to make a difference. If you shitcan them who the hell are you going to get to take their place? [...]
At one time, it was the duty of parents, teachers, and other significant adults in a child’s life, to help them develop a sense of personal responsibility. This is the job of families and schools. At times, what needs to be said to a child, even a five or six year old, might produce a sense of ’shame’ in the child. If we continue to resist our responsibility as adults to help them learn and conform to society’s simplest expectations: be on time for work, be honest, do your work to the best of your ability, be trustworthy, be kind, be respectful… if you haven’t mastered a prerequisite skill to a level equal to your ability, you must repeat it…
We often ‘avoid’ helping a child learn the basic premises of having a productive and happy life by not holding them accountable. (social promotion for example)
If a six year old is late for school or misses, routinely, it is not their fault. However, it is important for someone to say to them that although it is not their fault, they need to be told they are late for school and missed some very important lessons because they were late or so frequently absent.
As a teacher, I spent many hours talking with parents encouraging them to understand the importance of their child being at school and on time. There were many I was never able to influence. There were several who decided to take offense at my concern for their child instead of making a plan for how we could work together. On the days the child appeared on time, I would praise them and welcome them with a big hug telling them how much more they would learn that day. Unfortunately, these were the same homes where the family denied there was an attendance problem, didn’t return phone calls or notes from the teacher, were defensive and bullied me when I was able to catch them on the phone, did not assist their child in learning five vocabulary words for the week, spelling words, math facts, or complete any homework or assigned reading, didn’t send medication (inhalers for asthma), didn’t get their child on the bus in time to come for the free breakfast program (so I had apples and cereal bars for them)…. These kids were usually tired, so I would encourage them to go to bed (or sleep if they didn’t have a bed) by 8:00. I told them they did their growing and healing when they were asleep and that they would be so much smarter if they would come to school rested. and on and on… We can’t fix some things.
Not all homes are this negligent, but I spent so much energy on these families that in hindsight, I wish I’d spent on the kids that were eager to learn. They weren’t eager because of any special training… just some nurturing and an appropriately developed sense of personal responsibility. We really should get over feeling that it’s not right to ’shame’ someone (probably not the right word) who needs to know they have done something unacceptable.
Evert Mol is right on. As a teacher, I was the one in trouble when a parent called the school office or the superintendent’s office because they were mad at me. I had to learn that there would be little to no support for me, as a teacher, no matter how unreasonable the parent was. I can’t tell you the number of meetings I had w/parents and administrators that were unproductive because the parents who were ‘problems’ spend their time bullying everyone at the meeting, talking loudly and often profanely. When the real concerns I had for the child were revealed, there wasn’t much constructive that happened. At one such meeting, the parent insisted on having their child tested so they could be in ’special ed’ and get more help at school. We tried to explain to the parent that because of the child’s chronological age, the expectations for test performance were so low, that they would not qualify for special ed. The parent insisted on the testing anyway. I completed all the paperwork as did the other’s required to complete paperwork. Then later, I was chastised for submitting paperwork for the child to be tested. When asked if the submitted paperwork had been read to see that it was a parent request and not advised by myself or any school personnel, the ‘accuser’ did back off. But this is so typical of FWCS. The first thought is always that the teacher must be an idiot. There are too many situations in a teacher’s day that are similar to this… The teacher is an easy target.
Somehow these horrid and demeaning experiences are so memorable. There were so many more experiences that were perfectly wonderful. Of course, that was only when I was happily working with students and parents who were interested in the process and activities that were related to learning and growing…
I knew of a very talented Canterbury (K-8th) educated teacher that taught in FWCS for 2 years. She was incredibly bright, wealthy and wanted to do great things for those around. She could not handle the administration, she now works for a PharmD company in sales.
The largest problem in FWCS is the weak administration. If the admin. would all have backbones and supports the teachers, the union would have no bite!
Tutor,
What you describe is awful, but teachers have no say in the holding back or retention of students. Those decisions are made by administrators.
I agree wholeheartedly with the blogger who wrote the article. I agree that parents need to be more involved, and there needs to be less handouts. I definitely do think FWCS protects the bad or burned out teachers, but terminates the good, younger ones. I think another person said something about how can you expect for other people to care for your kid if you don’t care about your kid? Another thing is the teachers….
Now, I am a practicing teacher. I have interned at FWCS, I even student taught at one of the Title 1 schools in the district. I agree about how the administrators need to grow a backbone. At all the schools I was at, the principals were not authoritative at all and seemed almost…timid when making decisions. Back to the teachers, I felt as though many of them were burned out, or didn’t care. I remember at Price the reading interventionalist was talking to my co-op teacher about how Northside was on academic probation, she said “well that wouldn’t happen if the teachers from homestead went to northside and the teachers from carroll went to southside..” Just wow, and coming from someone who’s supposed to be helping these kids.
It’s sad the kids are victims. I just think the negative attitudes of most, but not all of the teachers is detrimental to their students’ learning. They act like if you don’t cater to the “neediest” populations, you aren’t as “dedicated” as they are. Why else would they talk so bad of Northwest and Southwest?
I don’t know, it’s all political. I really want to get out in the field and make a difference, but with all my negative experiences with the FWCS, I feel beaten down myself. I’m going to a rural district probably to teach…
FWCS has been going down hill since the 60’s. I am not sure what has caused this slide. The Percentage of school days missed for FWCS is nearly twice that of the surrounding school systems. All things being equal, they should not differ that much. In addition, while the school enrollment was declining all these decades, the system administration failed to take action to close schools, wasting resources on underutilized schools.
FWCS is was a major reason why when I came back to Fort Wayne, I chose another school system to live in. I am not alone. I believe this is a major negative in attracting business expansion in the area. Until this is changed, all the tax abatements, TIF’s and economic development spending is throwing good money down the drain.