Education: cause and effect

I just couldn't pass the opportunity to pass this along. What follows is a letter to the editor of the Marietta Daily Journal in Cobb County Georgia. This would be the county that decided it was illegal to encourage school children to think critically and have an open mind. Even if you don't want to read the whole letter, get the gist, then skip to the comment I quote at the bottom.

My daughter was in the fifth grade at Nickajack Elementary in Smyrna this past year. She has attended Nickajack since the second grade and has been an A/B student the entire time.

This year, I was told she needed extra tutoring for math and reading to pass the CRCT test. I was surprised, since I was never told she was having a problem in any area, but I signed her up for tutoring anyway. She had an A/B average all year long plus extra tutoring and still did not pass the CRCT test! When I asked why, her principal told me the CRCT "doesn't always align" with what teachers are teaching.

Why don't the teachers know what to teach? It is my understanding private and home-school students also are required to take the test. There are reports that 45 percent of public school students failed all or part of the CRCT. Where is the front-page newspaper article and TV news story comparing the CRCT test results of public, private, and home school students? Are the CRCT failures limited to just public schools? If so, why?

I am a single parent who has been forced to drop everything and our summer schedules so my daughter can attend summer school, re-take the CRCT test, and be allowed to move up to the sixth grade. This has been a time-consuming process and a major inconvenience. More importantly, my daughter is very upset because she doesn't know what she did wrong. She asks, "Why are they punishing me like this? I did everything they asked! I'm a good student! Why should I work hard to get As and Bs when it doesn't matter?"

What do they expect me to tell her? These educators are always making excuses and blaming someone else. I have been repeatedly frustrated by the reluctance or inability of school staff - including the principal! - to even tell me what my daughter needs to work on.

"I don't have those records available… We'll have to talk to her teacher… I don't know which teacher she had…"

Eventually, they said there wasn't a problem and they were surprised she didn't pass! They suggested she work on the areas they had just started to study one week before taking the CRCT!

They claim to be concerned "about the children" and then deliberately and cruelly inflict the emotional scars of failure upon an innocent child! Our children do not deserve to be used as pawns in political games being played by the education establishment! As a single parent with a very limited income, I don't have a lot of options. If I had some kind of school choice voucher option, I would be finding a school - public, private, whatever - that knows how to teach children what they need to know.

I don't know who is the more dangerous threat to the future of our country: international terrorists or these professional educators. In 1983, the National Commission on Education said, "If a hostile foreign government had imposed this system of education on the people of the United States, we would rightly consider that an act of War."

Enough is enough! I am sick and tired of the public school system holding my child's education hostage. Teachers, administrators, the school board, and the politicians spend all their time pointing fingers at each other - and nothing is getting done!

Sherri Green

Smyrna

Commenting on the letter was a commenter named "Public School Teacher"...

Public School Teacher says -
Your not making sence [sic]. Our Public School Teacher's [sic] work hard, long hours to educate you're [sic] children. The principles [sic] are dedicated toward all the children receiving the best education that the school can give. The problem is that President Bush and the Repbulicans [sic] has [sic] decided what is supposed to be tought [sic] and what they think is importent [sic] which is not necesarily [sic] what is best for the children and this causes the problems you talk about.

My wife (who has a teaching degree and subs at a local school) wondered if this comment could be fake, but the message is exactly what many teachers spout, and this is not the first time a public school teacher has been exposed as having poor spelling and grammar skills.

Now before you accuse me of being petty, I can see one or two typos, in fact another comment by someone claiming to be a teacher has a few, but I don't include it because I don't see a paragraph typed on the internet with 1 or 2 mistakes out of 2 or 3 dozen words to be more than a typical of what an educated person would do (especially if they aren't using a spell checker)

But other comments that I found interesting are...

Jay Scott says -
I used to teach in public high school (not in Cobb). The truth is that everyone involved knows that the system is nuts. Most teachers really do the best they (think they) can, but the Georgia tests don't correlate well with the curriculum the teachers are required to teach. For example, the GA HS graduation test is given in the Spring of Junior year. A teacher following ANY county's official curriculum will not have covered all of the material in the test by the time the kids take it. Teachers in public schools are CONSTANTLY forced to decide between doing the best thing for the kids, and doing what they're told. I rarely saw signs of intelligent life in school administration, and the higher up you go, the less likely you are to see it! They get more and more involved with balancing the budget, and less and less interested in the kids. To be fair, the budgetary process is JUST as nuts as the testing situation: in most counties, if the cost of diesel fuel goes up, OR the value of houses goes down, the schools' budget is cut. This comes from the politicians, who have chosen to allow (or encourage) this situation to develop and persist. FYI: I no longer teach in public school, and we send our child to a private school. I highly recommend you spend 100 hours of your unpaid time investigating and figuring out how to get your daughter into a private school. Too many people make the terrible mistake of saying "I could never afford it," and their children suffer. If you investigate seriously, you will find that there are some schools that are not as expensive as you think, and there are scholarships. There are other ways of getting money for school, and there are probably things you could cut out if you decide it's important to you (e.g.: I have no cable and a 15+ year-old car). Studies show that a FAR higher percentage of public school teachers send THEIR kids to private schools than the general public. It's not because they're wealthy; it's because they know how important it is! There's a single lady on my block who teaches in public school; her kids attend private school. Make a serious effort to find a way!

...and...

Rusty Shackelford says -
It would be easy to dismiss this as another "not MY child" type of letter, but the fact that an A/B student needs tutoring to pass a standardized test is disconcerting. Teachers are usually given a bad rap for just "teaching the test" ie covering only those subjects that the students will encounter on the state exam. Sounds like her teachers couldn't even get that part right. Our government schools are making our children dumber and dumber. And yes, the good things that teachers do don't make headlines in the newspaper. But it's hard to argue when our students are falling behind those of other countries, and can rattle off the cast of "High School Musical" but cannot tell you when the Civil War was fought. This is complicated by a newer, disturbing trend of education majors coming from the bottom pools of their graudating classes. Garbage in = garbage out. As Ms. Green says, a voucher system would be ideal, but as long as teachers unions exist, that will never happen. The last thing public schools and public school teachers want is competition, or anything else that will threaten state funding and job security.

Could this be THE Rusty Schackelford?

Concerned Father/Citizen says -
My daughter has some minor learning disabilities but did fairly well at school making B's and C's. She did all the course homework and we spent extra time at home to help her get through it often taking several hours. We also requested and got special tutoring at school and met with the teachers and councilors faithfully each year as required and expected. By 5th grade what we saw was our daughter getting progressively worse. She still did not know all her math tables, could not read above a 2nd grade level, could not spell, properly punctuate or write across a stright line. Often we cold not read her handwriting. When the Georgia Special Needs Scholarship program became available, we signed her up immediatly and she was accepted. We found a private school that specialized on children like her with reading and learning problems. She was tested prior to the beginning school and again she showed only 2nd and 3rd grade levels in reading and math. She did not have as much homework but we still sat with her from time to time to help her with next days reading assignment. My point being that we did not spend as much time as before when she went to government schools. By the end of this past school term, she was tested again and she showed a remarkable improvement. She went from a 2nd and 3rd grade level to 4th and 5th grade level. I got really mad. Not because of her major improvement but because of the fact we had waisted 5 years of her life trying to work within the government school system that had obviously failed her. What a waste of yours and my tax money. The only way we will ever change this is to get in front of all of our board of education meetings and start to demand resignations if results/improvement are not happening inside the classrooms. These beuracrats making thousands more than me and getting terrible results make me very upset. I know I would loose my job if I did not provide a service my company needed or provide an end result that did not help the company to make money. People, we are failing our children putting up with such terrible results and we are also sacrificing the future of our country by producing children who cannot independently learn, reason and make corret decisions. In the end, future citizens will become like cattle, being led by Washington Elitist and the freedoms we take for granted during our lives will be taken away from our children; the sacrifices of our forefathers will be in vain. Please, please, please get involved in making our school systems more accountable to us, the taxpayers. Get angry and start demanding more.

...and...

James Porter says -
When my son was in high school, I got a progress report indicating that he had missed 12 homework assignments in one class and was doing poorly in the rest. I called for a meeting with his teachers and the pricipal. At the onset the pricipal said how glad he was that would take the time to visit with my sons teachers and be so involved. I told him to "cut the crap, I know I'm a good parent, my question is to whether or not you are good teachers". They were astounded and asked what I meant. I told them that had they notified me of his lack of turning in or doing homework at the onset, it would never had gotten this far. I was told that the union only required them to send out progess reports 4 times a year. I told them that if bare minimum is all they were willing to do, then they needed to find a new profession. I said if they hit my son with a stun gun each time he did not do his homework, how many times would he continue to not turn it in. They said "Mr. Porter you know we can't do that". I said "I am your stun gun. Call me. I'll fix it". They said that they can't call 400 parents each day. I said "let's just say half of your 400 students didn't turn in their homework and you called their parents, how many would miss the next day. I'll bet not many. You may find there are one or two who don't care enough to make a difference, but you will not be calling very many. We place our kids in your care thinking you will take good care of them. We are obviously wrong. You will only do what you forced to do. If I worked at my job the same way I would be fired". They still did't call me. Until there is acountability by the teaching profession, our problem of raising uneducated children will not improve. Our children spend more waking hours at school than with their parents. We must have options (vouchers)or better requirements and dedication from our teachers. I know the courts have hamstringed them with the inability to deal with disruptive and often criminal activities. I also know they are not always paid well, but this was their choice of occupations. We have given them our trust and the most valuable possession we have. Our future. We need to fix what is broke and then dismiss the incompetent. If the union is in the way, get rid of it. We did with the flight controllers.

Posted by Danny Carlton at June 26, 2008 8:04 AM