Law Enforcement And The Black Attitude

School funding is a huge problem. Rich districts get lots of money and poor districts get little. That's one area that needs to be addressed. In PA schools are funded for the most part by local property taxes. If the district has a poor tax base you get less money. Only 36% of the funding comes from the state and a much smaller amount from the feds.

So if you live in a place like Reading, which is an old industry town on the decline, the tax rate is high, but due to low population the return is low. ($2,245 per pupil from property tax (29 mills), $4,914 per pupil from the state.) Per pupil funding is $8,430 per year. Reading has a high poverty rate and needs to spend more on its students due to their circumstances.
If you live in Tredyffrin-Easttown School District, beside Reading School District, you get $12,680 per pupil from property tax (14.5 mills) The state gives more money to Reading per student but there is still a $6,500 per-pupil advantage to Tredyffrin-Easttown.

So some buildings look like the Taj Mahal and some look like abandoned factories.

 

Simplistic attitude. Of course teachers make mistakes, everyone makes mistakes. I don't have any idea where this "god" thing comes from.

The level of instruction varies depending on the level the student is at when entering 12th grade. Unfortunately most schools no longer fail students who don't achieve the expected outcomes, that would hurt their egos too much, so they get pushed through the system...but that's another topic.

As far as "what we say is the way it is". The level of instruction at the elementary level is primarily geared to giving the students an understanding of the world they live in. They are taught to read, to be able to do basic math, and to acquire a basic understanding of the history of their country and state. They are being acculturated. That is not a bad thing if we wish to maintain a coherent society.

At the secondary level more freedoms are granted (if possible) and more individual learning and questioning of the status qua is encouraged. This continues to a greater degree at the college level and beyond the post grad level.

As far as teacher's acting like robots, they are constrained by the school board approved courses of study that they must implement, school policies, accepted teaching methodologies, and legal and moral factors.

 

I would have to comment on "wrongness" on a case by case basis.

Judgement calls are judgement calls, if you respect the authority making the call you have no reason to question them. The problem is teachers are no longer held in high regard by society. When I was a student teachers were never questioned on judgement calls (seldom) as they were granted the same authority as a parent. And in those days parents actually had some authority over their children. Now, it seems that children are becoming equals with their parents. Same with school, students feel they are at least equal to their teachers in terms of respect and even some areas of content matter, such as the teaching of evolution/creationism.
Students feel they deserve as much respect as a teacher...they don't, they deserve respect as a student, not an equal to teacher.

Group punishment has certain advantages over individual punishment, you will find tons of information about how it is ineffective and unfair but it does have its place, IMO.

It is not always easy to punish an individual student. For example, if I am teaching with my back to the students and someone throws a block of wood at me and hits me in the head (we will assume a block of wood for each student is part of the lesson plan and there is pile of them in front of a group of students), what am I to do? I can ask who did it and 99% of the time no one will tell who it was for reasons such as, we are not snitches, we are afraid of retaliation, we don't know either, we all thought it was funny, etc..
So the lesson can continue until all the blocks of wood are used up by hitting me in the back of the head, or I could terminate the lesson and go on to something else or present it in a different way which some students may interpret as a punishment.
Same can hold for assemblies and pep rallys, recesses where injuries or bulling result and the perpetrators can not be identified, and so on.

Teacher knowledge of their subject matter can be problematic. If you are teaching a class in Shakespeare, or algebra for example, nothing much changes from year to year content wise. Presentation may vary, instructional tools, time factors, student ability, and so on, but algebra is algebra and Shakespeare is Shakespeare. There is no excuse for not knowing the subject.

However, some other subjects are very different and content changes constantly. For example one class I taught was drafting. Drafting hasn't changed for hundreds of years, orthographic projection, auxiliary views, rotations, etc., But the tools used to make those types of drawings have changed drastically in the past few years. I learned by using a T square, triangles, and India ink. With the advent of computers I had to teach myself how to run DOS, Win 3.1, AutoCad, SolidWorks, etc. There was no training offered to me, I learned on the job. The computers and software were too expensive for home use and learning and little paid time is ever offered for teacher instruction, maybe 8 hours over the summer, if you're lucky.

So you learn on the job. In addition over my 34 years I've taught probably over 10 completely different subjects in technical areas. It is very hard to become proficient in one area when you are told in August that you will be teaching something next month that you haven't practiced for 10 years...and then you find the technology has completely changed. In addition you have two or three other non related classes that also need to be taught each day. Sometimes all you can do is stay one step ahead of the students.

If you are certified in math you may have taught basic math your entire career to entry level 9th graders and then suddenly be thrust into an advanced calculus course for exceptional 12th grade students. And you haven't looked at a calculus book in 30 years.

Teaching is an extremely complicated activity that takes a lot of investigation to truly understand what is going on today.

 

Same here, never saw a fight in all my years as a student, but times were different then. If you talked back to a teacher...you just disappeared for a while....do it enough times and you were gone.

 

No.
A judgement call is a decision based upon someone's knowledge, training, experience, etc. It is subjective, not objective. When an objective decision can't be reached we instead rely on a subjective one. If the person making the judgement call is a respected member the call stands.

Happens all the time.

How specifically are these teachers screwing up? Constantly.

As for the hiring and quality of the teachers, sounds like the administrators aren't doing their job. In PA teachers are hired on a non tenure basis. That means they can be fired for any reason prior to attaining tenure. Any reason at all. It takes at least 3 years to attain tenure. After they attain tenure they can still be fired for:

1. Immorality
2. Incompetence
3. Unsatisfactory teaching performance based on 2 consecutive ratings of the employee's teaching performance that are to include classroom observations, not less than 4 months apart, in which the employee's performance is rated as unsatisfactory.
4. Intemperance
5. Cruelty
6. Persistent negligence in the performance of duties
7. Willful neglect of duties
8. Physical or mental disability as documented by competent medical evidence, which after reasonable accommodation of such disability as required by law substantially interferes with the employee's ability to perform the essential functions of his/her employment
9. Advocating of or participating in un-American or subversive doctrines
10. Conviction of a felony or acceptance of a guilty plea or nolo contendere therefore
11. Persistent and willful violation of or failure to comply with the school laws of the commonwealth

Notie they can be fired for performance based reasons such as incompetence, unsatisfactory teaching performance, negligence in the performance of duties,
and willful neglect of duties. They must be rated on their teaching performance by at least two classroom observations per year, but can be observed by any administrator, parent, or other teacher at any time without prior notification.

Here's each state's grounds for dismissal after tenure, just for comparison.

To be hired you must have a Bachelor's degree in your field from an accredited college or university, complete a state teacher education program, complete supervised student teaching, obtain a recommendation from the certification officer, have a minimum 3.0 GPA, and successfully pass a Praxis Academic test, appropriate content knowledge tests, and Praxis II subject test. You must pass a Pennsylvania State Police criminal records check, a Department of Public Welfare child abuse check, and a Federal criminal history check....and you must be fingerprinted.

To gain tenure in PA you must teach for 3 years and you must have a satisfactory rating from your performance evaluations. Within the first 6 years you must also earn an additional 24 post graduate credit hours approved by the department of education on your own time and expense or lose your certificate.

In addition you must earn an additional 180 hours of education or 6 college credits every 5 years to maintain your certificate.

And remember all tenure does is grant you the right to appeal a dismissal, prior to tenure you have no right of appeal.

So there is no reason to have a poor teacher....unless the administrators and parents aren't doing their part don't blame the teachers as there is plenty of opportunity to weed out the bad ones.

So don't blame to teachers, blame the system they are stuck in. Sounds like you were in a piss poor district, which happens.

I was in a rural/suburban district in Western PA. over 2,000 students in 3 grades in one building. It was a basically working class environment in which teachers and education were both highly respected. We had our moments such as when we walked out of school over a dress code, skipping an occasional class, but nothing serious. I can't remember any vandalism at all...other than a food fight and my cousin on the school bus, but he got his rear end straightened out.

 

I think the OP created Crackersplaining.
It's mansplaining, but white dudes talking about how black folk should be doing it, cause whitey knows all.


(I think I choked on some sarcasm, there)