This article is about the several problems concerning America's educational system. This article will provide useful information for all that are interseted. by RB Champ
(libertarian)
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Violence on the streets. Men and women marching. And in the middle of it all, three well known high schools risk being shut down due to test scores so low that they'll put a tear in your eye. Jacksonville, Florida is the scene of it all. Considered the largest city in Florida, Jacksonville is a great city. However, it has many low performing schools. Right now, there is a battle between the county and the state over control of these schools that contain an estimated 3000 teenagers. If these schools are shut down, will the children profit from some other school? Or will they just bring the grade down of their new school?
The names of the schools at risk are Raines, Ribault, and Andrew Jackson. They have been here for quite a long time and they are a place for African-American students to attend, learn, and succeed.
According to what I found on Duval County Public School's website, all three are failing miserably in reading. At Ribault, a whopping 16% of students are performing at grade level. At Jackson, it is 15%. Raines had the lowest; only 13% are scoring at grade level. Now, what is the problem?
It is obvious. The problem lies at home. Many experienced parents will tell you that a lot of what a baby's personality is made of is first determined by its experiences with its mother and father. The kids that attend these schools grew up in a hostile environment and the first thing they learned was how to survive. Smart kids are ones that learn how to be curious. Nowadays, a growing number of teenagers show no interest in anything such as their future. It's a really sad thing, especially when you know that one day these kids are going to be a part of American society and will have an impact on what kind of government we have.
I know in my gut that this isn't a unique problem. All over America, many of predominantly African-American schools are suffering because their students had bad experiences growing up. Those kids do not deserve to be cursed when they are born. Unfortunately, as a teacher, I can’t tell a kid to learn. He must learn to want to learn and that is the parent’s job.
Here is my message to all that read it: please play the most important role in your child’s life. If you don’t fill that gap, I assure you someone will and you won’t necessarily like that person. It could be a teacher, it could be a celebrity. Or, it could be a drug user or a criminal. Even if you have a demanding job, make being a parent your number one priority. In the end, whether you are jobless or not, you are still a parent. Whether you live in a grand house or out on the streets, you still have a kid to think about.
Here in Jacksonville, many parents are protesting the effort to close the schools. I cannot say how well these parents have done to take care of their kids, but I do know that this crisis could have been averted. I only hope it is not too late to resolve it.
Please, for the sake of our freedom, make the leap to become a more interactive parent. You don’t need to go to college to be able to teach your kids something, that’s a teacher’s job. Preventing a crisis is a whole lot easier than reversing one.
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Posted By: Bill Gee
Date: February 9, 2011 09:38:02 AM
My goodness! Your analysis is rather simplistic (and frankly insulting) to the issue of educational reform.
As educators, we all know that without support from home, students are much more likely to fail at school, but to tell parents to "get their priorities straight" is just as difficult as making a child learn when they don't want to. I have vivid memories of parents telling me that they don't think school is important and that their own kids are "dumb". What are you supposed to do with that?
However, when you suggest that it's the parents that need to address school performance, you remove the responsiblity of the school to provide a safe learning environment for the students. When only 16%, 15% and 13% of children are reading at grade level, that says that the problem is likely bigger than just a parental one. Having not visited these specific schools myself I cannot say with any certainty what the problem is. Likely, there are a whole host of problems as "failing schools" tend to have similar characteristics. These include outdated facilities and textbooks, a high turnover rate for teachers, gang violence, school board corruption, grinding poverty, and malnutrition (just to name a few).
If these schools are failing on some or all of these multiple fronts, then they should be closed and replaced with Charter Schools, vouchers for private schools or the students should be transported to better public schools.
