Can You Sue a School for Malpractice?

[twoforjoy]

Eh, honestly, I would perhaps blame the college system for this, more than the high schools. I think remedial classes can be something of a scam, honestly.

 

I teach writing at a university, and many terms I teach a section or two of remedial writing. Many of my students absolutely should be there, but I get a good number of students each term--probably 1/4 to 1/3 of the class--who should NOT be in a remedial writing class. Maybe they had a bad day when they took the placement test, maybe the person scoring their test was having a bad day, I don't know. But they really shouldn't have placed into a remedial class, and it isn't a benefit to them or to my students who really do need remediation to have them in there. (I also get many students in my regular intro classes who didn't place into the remedial class but really could have used it. It's a very imperfect system.)

 

The way these tests are administered is ridiculous, as well. I remember taking my college placement exams after a day of orientation, all at once. So, basically, you sat down, after a pretty exhausting morning of orientation, for about 4 hours of testing in various subjects, in a large room surrounded by people you don't know. For students with test anxiety or social anxiety issues, that is a particularly terrible situation, and may lead them to perform much more poorly than they would in another setting. I bombed my Spanish placement exam, even though I had taken five years of Spanish and was actually pretty good at it, because half of it involved trying to translate what was being said on a tape being played at the front of a room full of noisy, restless incoming freshman. I couldn't concentrate, I could barely hear what was being said, and there was no way to ask for more time or quiet. But when I retook Spanish 101, I was bored out of my mind; I already knew all the material. My high school education hadn't left me ill-prepared for college-level Spanish instruction, and the placement test didn't reflect my abilities in Spanish.

 

But, it's hard to convince a university/college to rethink their placement system, because remedial classes cost the same as regular courses, but the credits don't count towards graduation. So you end up with students taking a semester--or sometimes two--of remedial classes that the school gets money for but don't get the students any credit. There's a lot of money involved in it.

 

Anyway, I'm just a bit skeptical of how universities handle these things. I think that their main motivation is money, and if the placement system is skewed in such a way that many more students place into remedial courses than really need them, they aren't going to be much inclined to change things.

Edited May 12, 2011 by twoforjoy

[twoforjoy]

It never occurred to me then that it might be because they didn't have a good foundation of basic math.

 

It might not have been. It could have been math or performance anxiety. My DS knows his math facts, but when his dad is home and we're doing math, he gets all nervous, because he feels like he's got an audience, and then suddenly stuff he knew perfectly five minutes before, he forgets.

 

I really get bugged, personally, when people gripe about how, because their cashier got flustered when he or she had to figure out change in their head, our country must be headed for hell in a handbasket. I've worked in retail. I'm also pretty darn good at math. I'm no mathematician, but I've taken calculus and I did really well on the math portions of my SAT and GRE. I can figure out the math I need to alter knitting patterns and recipes (pretty much the only math I need these days, outside of homeschooling) without a calculator.

 

And yet after hours on my feet, and faced with a line of impatient customers, I would often get flustered if, after I'd rung up a purchase, somebody decided to change the amount of money they gave me, and I had to redo the math in my head. It was just kind of a high-stress situation--exhaustion, impatient customers, feeling like you're being evaluated--and most people don't perform nearly as well under those circumstances than they do under others.

 

So, when I have a cashier get flustered by making change, I assume that he or she is a normally competent person who is simply tired or stressed or otherwise in a position where they aren't thinking as quickly as they might normally, instead of assuming I'm dealing with somebody too stupid or uneducated to know basic math.

[LidiyaDawn]

We will not discuss the college student that came in tonight to drop off a paper and had to count on his fingers to figure out what number month May is. :001_huh:

 

I have to do this sometimes ~ it doesn't really have anything to do with a person's education… I'm sure that your college student knows, like I do, how many months are in a year - and had the month been one of the first or last couple (or something of personal significance) he'd not have had to count them out to get the number. The rest of them? They're different…they just sorta float there…. which won't make a lick of sense unless your brain works like that too. :laugh:

[twoforjoy]

I have to do this sometimes ~ it doesn't really have anything to do with a person's education… I'm sure that your college student knows, like I do, how many months are in a year - and had the month been one of the first or last couple (or something of personal significance) he'd not have had to count them out to get the number. The rest of them? They're different…they just sorta float there…. which won't make a lick of sense unless your brain works like that too. :laugh:

 

Right. Plus, if the student dropping off the paper is anything like me when I was dropping off a paper at the end of a semester in college, said student may have been up all night working on that paper. That doesn't exactly leave you at your mental best. Even today, if I'm tossing and turning all night, I'm lucky if I can remember what day of the week it is in the morning.

[kitten18]

There is NO reason for kids to struggle so much if they do their job in High school.

I agree. I feel so badly for these kids, they do what they're told to do, cruising along, getting good grades, probably doing a bunch of homework, and BAM, they find out they didn't learn enough.

 

I'm wondering the about the reciprocal of that. If some kids can get caught up on years of high school with only a class or two why are people wasting their time with years of high school? :)

Hmmm, definitely something to think about.

 

 

Another thing is that high school teachers have so much to deal with. If they had the freedom to just teach instead of dealing with so many other things, high schools would be more efficient.

I agree with that too. When I was in high school in the 80s the kids came into class, sat down, and did what they were told because if you didn't, there were consequences that were enforced. The teachers also had a tiny fraction of the paperwork that they do now.

 

For example, we went to the curriculum fair for incoming freshman and asked the head of the English department what the difference was between the highest and middle tracks. Rather than give us specific examples or ~gasp! horrors!~ show us a sample syllabus, she just said that one was harder than the other. Gee, thanks for enlightening us. :glare:

 

:svengo::banghead:

[kitten18]

I have to do this sometimes ~ it doesn't really have anything to do with a person's education… I'm sure that your college student knows, like I do, how many months are in a year - and had the month been one of the first or last couple (or something of personal significance) he'd not have had to count them out to get the number. The rest of them? They're different…they just sorta float there…. which won't make a lick of sense unless your brain works like that too. :laugh:

:D My brain works that way too.

[alisonf3]

In math I blame the introduction of the calculator. Most major curriculums used in public school use calculators now. Kids are taught to use the calculator in elementary school.

 

:iagree: This is one of the reasons we pulled DD out of 5th grade in PS this year. She was really struggling in math and had been for several years. This year when I went in to talk to the teachers their response was, "Don't worry about whether she learns it. We will just give her a calculator." I was livid and went to speak to someone else and their response was, "At this point just let DD know she isn't academically inclined and let her be creative. I don't see why she can't just use a calculator." What???? She was home within a week.

 

Alison

dd-11, ds-9, ds-6

[mmasmommy]

Right. Plus, if the student dropping off the paper is anything like me when I was dropping off a paper at the end of a semester in college, said student may have been up all night working on that paper. That doesn't exactly leave you at your mental best. Even today, if I'm tossing and turning all night, I'm lucky if I can remember what day of the week it is in the morning.

 

Sorry didn't mean to offend, it just struck me as odd.

[twoforjoy]

I'm wondering the about the reciprocal of that. If some kids can get caught up on years of high school with only a class or two why are people wasting their time with years of high school? :)

 

They can't. That's why our entire system of higher education is broken. We're seeing more and more jobs requiring a college degree and more and more students going to college. And yet many of those students are unprepared--not necessarily because schools are doing a worse job preparing students for college than before, but because, in the past, these students simply would not have even considered college. We do not know what to do with these students, and the current remedial system does not give them anything close to the help they need.

 

We can compare college students today to college students forty years ago all we want, but the fact is that forty years ago many fewer students went to college. It was not expected that all students (or nearly all) would leave high school prepared to do college-level work. That's changed. There are so few vocational opportunities for people without college degrees that it's pretty much expected that people will receive some sort of post-secondary education. So students who, 30 and 40 and 60 years ago would never have even considered attending college, are now expected to enter college ready to do college-level work. That's not fair to them, it's not fair to their high school teachers (who have never before been expected to have EVERY student ready to do college-level work), and it's not fair to their college instructors. It's just a difficult situation.

 

Many of my students are simply not "college material." I don't mean that in a negative way, just that they lack both an aptitude for AND an interest in higher-level academic work (ideally students will have both, but I think any student with just one can succeed). And, that should be fine. Everybody shouldn't have to be college material. Not everybody is academically-inclined, and that's okay. Except that, today, we still expect them to go to college, and to succeed at college. I'm not sure that's realistic, at least within our current system.

 

No, a semester or year of remedial classes will NOT get students who are unprepared for college caught up and ready to do college-level work. Not even close. Remedial classes are great for the otherwise-capable student who just has a weakens in a certain area and needs more review. They do not work for students who simply are not able to handle--either because of their aptitude level or the amount of time they are willing to invest in their education--college-level work.

 

I get many of those students, and I feel so badly for them. They are in a really difficult situation. There are, literally, NO job options for them without a college degree. Nationwide, the unemployment rate for under-25s is 52% (and that includes recent college grades), and I teach in an area where the economy is among the worst in the nation. These students would be lucky to find a part-time minimum wage retail job, and that isn't something you can get by on for life. And yet they aren't capable of doing college-level work, for a variety of reasons. But they go to college, because it seems like their only viable option, and they struggle through a year or two, until they simply cannot keep up, and at that point they leave school with no degree, no better job prospects than when they came in, and a bunch of college loans to pay back.

 

It just sucks. I don't know what the answer is. Ideally, honestly, I think we'd go back to having fewer people in college. College should be for those who are interested in and capable of doing advanced academic work, and not some $20K+ hoop that we expect everybody to jump through if they want any shot at a job paying more than minimum wage (i.e., the new-but-not-free high school). And jobs that genuinely don't need a college degree should not require them, so that that can be possible. When I was job searching, I applied for a number of $18-20K/year administrative assistant positions that required a B.A. That's ridiculous. There's no reason why somebody without a college degree couldn't do that job, and the only reason it was required was because there are so many people with degrees looking for work that employers can demand it. But it just adds to the problem of our college and universities getting inundated with students who in any other generation would just not have gone on to higher ed.

 

Basically, I think the whole system needs to be overhauled. (At which point I'm sure you can tell I'm really burned out from dealing both with students and a university bureaucracy.) We need to either totally rethink what higher education is, if we're really going to provide an education to all of the students now coming in, or we need to rethink whether we really need so many people to be attending college. But the way things are going now--more and more people attending colleges with the higher ed system structured basically the same way it was back when a much smaller number of people went to college--is just not working for anybody.

 

I've often said that the school where I work--an inner-city university that has many students come in who went to very poor-performing schools, from families and communities where even graduating high school is rare, and with very few basic skills--has a "remedial" program that is a joke. They have a 13-week summer program that incoming freshman who are deemed to have insufficient skills go through, and supposedly they'll come out prepared for college. Yeah-freaking-right. These students need a structured, full-time (as in, something they devote 40+ hours a week to, not something they fit in between their part-time jobs and family commitments and social life), multi-year program to work on basic skills before they are even ready for the regular remedial classes. I seriously have students in my remedial writing classes who would need, I think, 2-3 years of basic grammar work, reading comprehension skills, and writing instruction to even get to the point where they could benefit from college-level remediation. (Again, though, I think that's nothing new. My grandparents who didn't attend college would probably also have needed that kind of work to have been ready to handle college-level classes.) And if we are unwilling to provide them with that kind of help, and if they are unwilling to put the work in, then we shouldn't take their money and allow them to enroll in college.

Edited May 12, 2011 by twoforjoy

[LidiyaDawn]

It was just kind of a high-stress situation--exhaustion, impatient customers, feeling like you're being evaluated--and most people don't perform nearly as well under those circumstances than they do under others.

 

 

You don't want to know how many mistakes I made on my road test. :tongue_smilie:

 

I'm really lucky that I had a tester who understood what that sort of anxiety is all about and gave me my license despite my screw ups… I can drive - I just don't perform well under a microscope.

[mom31257]

:iagree: This is one of the reasons we pulled DD out of 5th grade in PS this year. She was really struggling in math and had been for several years. This year when I went in to talk to the teachers their response was, "Don't worry about whether she learns it. We will just give her a calculator." I was livid and went to speak to someone else and their response was, "At this point just let DD know she isn't academically inclined and let her be creative. I don't see why she can't just use a calculator." What???? She was home within a week.

 

Alison

dd-11, ds-9, ds-6

 

 

:confused::confused::confused::confused::confused: :blink: And we wonder why the education system in this country is failing! The thing I noticed in the article was when she spoke with a local school, there was so much talk of groups. That is the big thing in education right now, cooperative learning. We all know how that goes. In a group, the motivated type A kids do all the work and the shy or kids who don't care sit back. How is that learning?

 

My dh teaches world history. The school would rather the kids create a colorful brochure on a topic with some information gathered from a Powerpoint presentation rather than actually read an original source or even a textbook. He taught Geography last year (9th graders), most didn't know the continents and oceans and many couldn't find our state on a map. Let's make a salt-dough map of the continents, but you don't have to actually remember them!

[shinyhappypeople]

I think I've figured out what really angers me about this.

 

She took pre-algebra in middle school, but she didn't learn pre-algebra. She did her homework and exercised her short-term memory in order to pass the test.

 

Same thing with algebra and geometry.

 

I think the whole model of the school is "teaching to the test." Kids are told in so many words that, rather than master the material, their job is to pass tests. Pass the math test. Pass the history test. You don't actually have to learn any of this. Just pass the test.

 

Education is a series of tests to pass, with no expectation of long-term mastery.

 

They go into post-high school life having internalized almost nothing in the way of useful skills or knowledge, but they can fill in scantron bubbles like nobody's business!

 

As for writing, that's another story altogether. She was never taught to write well. In our district, English teachers are required to spend a large percentage of class time having students collaborate with one another. So we're graduating kids with superior skills in teamwork but almost no useful knowledge or skills to contribute to the group.

 

I feel sick just thinking about it.

 

My new mantra: Homeschool Through High School!

[Princess Peach]

I get what a lot of you are saying, I really do, but I think some are giving more power to the ps teachers than they deserve. They are not ultimately responsible for the kids' education. The kid and the kids' parents are. The teacher is the method, but the buck does not stop with the teacher.

 

My DH teaches at our local high school. He's an excellent teacher (of course!!) and puts in over and above what is required. He cares so much for these kids, but many have not been taught how to work, how to accomplish something- at home. This school is in a nice area and is known to be a good school in this area. But he has kids that are working full time jobs while going to school full time. He has kids whose parents just plain don't care. These kids are actually doing well in his class. But he often wonders, what happens after they graduate?

 

I went to public high school and was a solid B student. I went straight to a 4 year university and took ENG 101 my first semester. Because of my A in that class, I was offered tutoring training and tutored writing the rest of my college career. Here's what happened during high school for me: My mom, even though she worked, checked my homework, she afterschooled me when needed, she was there to talk to me, encourage me, and guide me. She did not leave my education to my teachers, she continued the process in the home.

[mamakimberly]

:001_huh:

 

Here's some fuel for your vent. http://www.salon.com/life/feature/2011/05/10/death_to_high_school_english

 

Good article, but HOLY LONG SENTENCE!!

 

"Each year, about this point in the semester, the point when I've decided that I will never teach composition again, that it's just too ****ed frustrating, that I'd rather be focusing on my novel, or reading my favorite writers, writers who make it look so easy, so seamless -- the point at which I think, life's too short; I'd rather be spending time with my family, or watching cable television, or doing absolutely anything but teaching composition, the point at which I would rather remove my own molars with a pair of garden shears than grade another paper, a student will stop by my office or catch me after class, not to tell me I've changed her life or inspired her to write the great American novel, but that, thanks to me, and the hours she herself has put in, she feels as though, in some small way, her writing has improved, or that she knows what she needs to do to improve, or that she can at least envision a future in which she is a better, more confident and more forceful writer of prose, and I tell her that no matter what, no matter how hard it is, she has to keep plowing ahead, because slow but steady progress as a reward for hard work is one of the few things we can count on in this life -- if we're lucky, that is -- and then I tell myself the same."

 

Am I right that the above is one ginormous sentence?

[vonfirmath]

After several years at the Op Ed school, he "retired" because it became like "working retail at Christmas" and he was unable to give the kids what they needed because there were so many and there wasn't as much support from the school system, I guess because those kids were the "rejects" of ps. Now he teaches remedial math at the local CC. Again, he loves it, but he gets so frustrated because he'll have so many students that are just not putting forth the effort along with those really good students that are just needing review. And as someone else has said, there are just so many classes! He complains about the administration trying to change how they have their classes because of the bottom line ($$$)

 

My husband just got his Masters in mathematics -- and was a TA while getting the degree. and this is something he is very concerned about. The number of kids -- at the college level -- that just are not willing to work/ask questions/etc when they don't understand something. They just float through the semester and only care when they don't get a good grade -- but not enough to do anything about it. Its getting him very frustrated about the prospect of teaching at all!

[twoforjoy]

So we're graduating kids with superior skills in teamwork but almost no useful knowledge or skills to contribute to the group.

 

Actually, I think it's more likely--if my experience with group work in my classes is representative--we're graduating kids with a superior ability to pretend they are working as a team but really just doing work for other classes, talking about things totally unrelated to the class, or napping. Which I suppose is good preparation for the real work world. ;)

[Mejane]

Am I right that the above is one ginormous sentence?

 

Yes! She could give Virginia Woolf a run for her money. ;)

[twoforjoy]

My husband just got his Masters in mathematics -- and was a TA while getting the degree. and this is something he is very concerned about. The number of kids -- at the college level -- that just are not willing to work/ask questions/etc when they don't understand something. They just float through the semester and only care when they don't get a good grade -- but not enough to do anything about it. Its getting him very frustrated about the prospect of teaching at all!

 

It's very frustrating. And it's what happens when college becomes an expectation for nearly everybody; suddenly it's just like high school, and most of the students do not want to be there and see it as a hoop they need to jump through with as little effort as possible. All that matters to them is the grade, because they really, truly do not care at all about the subject matter or about learning; they just want the grade so they can get the diploma so they can get a job that earns them money.

 

And they really, really do see it like high school. I'm always amazed by the students who will sleep/text/surf the web/talk through my classes. Hello, you are adults in college! If you don't want to be here, you don't have to be here. You won't be picked up for truancy if you stay home. But they really do treat it as if it's just another few years of high school, where they're forced to sit through classes they don't want to be in and hopefully get a good enough grade to pass.

 

I probably get, out of 48 students, maybe 4-6 each term who seem to actually care, even a little, tiny bit, about their education. To everybody else it's just one more box to check off. I've actually had students tell me they can't come to my class because it interferes with their part-time job schedule, so what can they do to pass anyway? Their education is just not a priority at all.

 

And don't get me started about the end-of-the-term "I'm so worried about my grade!" e-mails. Students who couldn't be bothered to come to class, hand in papers, or put even the tiniest bit of effort into my class are suddenly so very extremely concerned about their grade when the semester is about to end. It's like there is almost no connection between the grade and work for them; the grade is just this independent, magic thing that all of their focus is on.

 

They'd be happier, I'm sure, not in school. If we actually had decent-paying jobs with a future available for students coming out of high school, I think they'd be much happier taking those and being finished with school.

[Mom in High Heels]

It might not have been. It could have been math or performance anxiety.

 

 

No, I KNEW these guys. I worked with them. I was their same age (we were teenagers). They really could NOT figure out how to give change without the cash register giving them the amount. Seriously. If the order was $12.30 and they were presented with $15, they absolutely did not know how to count back the change. They relied on a calculator, or asked me. I moved from working drive thru to being a night manager at 17 because I could count change and do all the required closing paperwork, where several others I worked with who had graduated school couldn't. These weren't dumb kids. They were just normal teenagers working fast food, but they had no concept of math. My district manager offered me my own store (and a salary of $25K, which wasn't bad in 1991) when I turned 18 because I could do the job. Of course I turned him down as I was headed to college and wanted more than working fast food (not that there is ANYTHING wrong with it, it's just not where I wanted to go).

 

So, when I have a cashier get flustered by making change, I assume that he or she is a normally competent person who is simply tired or stressed or otherwise in a position where they aren't thinking as quickly as they might normally, instead of assuming I'm dealing with somebody too stupid or uneducated to know basic math.

 

I didn't say I thought a cashier who couldn't count change was stupid or uneducated. Heck, on a particularly busy day, I got tired and flustered and had to think hard sometimes to count the change, but I knew how to do it. The kids I was talking about absolutely did not.

[Dana]

Eh, honestly, I would perhaps blame the college system for this, more than the high schools. I think remedial classes can be something of a scam, honestly.

 

I teach writing at a university, and many terms I teach a section or two of remedial writing. Many of my students absolutely should be there, but I get a good number of students each term--probably 1/4 to 1/3 of the class--who should NOT be in a remedial writing class. Maybe they had a bad day when they took the placement test, maybe the person scoring their test was having a bad day, I don't know. But they really shouldn't have placed into a remedial class, and it isn't a benefit to them or to my students who really do need remediation to have them in there. (I also get many students in my regular intro classes who didn't place into the remedial class but really could have used it. It's a very imperfect system.)

 

 

I teach math at a cc. With our courses below college algebra, students have the opportunity in the first 3 days of the semester to go to the testing center if they think they've been misplaced and take the final for the course. If they pass, they can move to the next course (and they could challenge it as well if they thought they really knew it). I don't believe there's any fee for taking the exemption exams.

 

I know the college makes money off of the remedial courses, but they make money on every course they offer. I don't think many schools use the remedial courses to make money (that's what the athletic department is for or internet courses). I just think that many students come in with really poor skills. I know I have students who don't know their multiplication tables and for whatever reason I have many students who refuse to memorize formulas (like area, perimeter, volume, special products rules, and (sigh) exponential rules).

[Dana]

My husband just got his Masters in mathematics -- and was a TA while getting the degree. and this is something he is very concerned about. The number of kids -- at the college level -- that just are not willing to work/ask questions/etc when they don't understand something. They just float through the semester and only care when they don't get a good grade -- but not enough to do anything about it. Its getting him very frustrated about the prospect of teaching at all!

 

Yup.

And that's why I ended at the cc rather than the hs. I teach lower-level courses at the cc than I would at a hs (and when I started for less money and longer days than I'd have at a hs and a much longer commute). However, the responsibility for learning is on the student rather than on me.

 

I do have students who are working a full-time job and taking a full load of courses. They're often frustrating because they don't have the time to put in outside of class that they need. In many cases they end up retaking courses. However, that's their choice (and that's where I see the college taking money - with advising - and not telling students "no, you can't do it all at the same time"). I also, every semester, have students who are truly amazing. Returning to college against a ton of obstacles, there to learn, and I am honored to be able to help them. In some cases, they may not pass my course or may end with a C despite an amazing amount of work, but they still have succeeded because they know more than they did when they started and they generally leave with more self-confidence as well. They're the ones I care about teaching. I try to ignore (or at least not waste my energy on) the grade grubbers, texters, and ones who think that by paying for a course they're paying for a grade rather than an opportunity to learn.

 

Changing your focus on who you're teaching in the classroom can help. There are nitwits in every class (and lately there seem to be more) but there have also always been some amazing students in every class as well.

[shinyhappypeople]

I get what a lot of you are saying, I really do, but I think some are giving more power to the ps teachers than they deserve. They are not ultimately responsible for the kids' education. The kid and the kids' parents are. The teacher is the method, but the buck does not stop with the teacher.

 

 

 

I hear you. I think parental involvement matters. But, the buck DOES stop with the school system as a whole.

 

Where I live, parents are trained from the beginning to shut up, go along and blindly trust because *teachers are the experts*.

 

Here's the message I got when DD was in public kindergarten. "Trust us. We know what we're doing. We'll tell you (the parents) what we want you to do to support us as we educate your children. Make sure they're fed, clean and have their homework completed. We'll do the rest."

 

The bottom line is that my niece's high school has failed in its mission and misrepresented itself to the community. It doesn't get a free pass because, "mom should have known." Why should she have known? Her daughter was getting good grades and positive feedback from teachers.

 

There were NO red flags. She was getting solid Bs on her report card and wasn't a discipline problem. None of us had any clue that she couldn't really write or remember anything from algebra. In fact, and this is important, she wasn't even *taught* expository writing.

 

My sister's only mistake was trusting that the schools were fulfilling their promise to educate her willing, capable child.

[coffeefreak]

Here's a story that will make everyone :banghead:. Last year, when I was contemplating whether I should homeschool my oldest or put her in school, this convinced me to stay the course. These are very short versions of the whole debacle. What they don't tell you is, the Principal erased all the schedules because she discovered there were kids being passed through the system without the basic core courses. There were students that had all electives and no senior English, this called into question all the Seniors that had "graduated" and were starting college. Had their records been falsified by the previous administration? There were many students that discovered they were not Juniors but Sophomores and even that was debatable. I'll continue to homeschool and take responsibility for my girl's transcripts thank you very much!

 

http://www.kob.com/article/stories/S1901763.shtml

 

http://www.kob.com/article/stories/S1732734.shtml

http://www.kob.com/article/stories/S2101084.shtml

[BabyBre]

OK, I know the answer is no, but I just need to vent.

 

My niece is graduating from high school in a few weeks (yay!). She's a bright girl and a responsible student. She's a solid B student (some As), good attendance, and showed up physically and mentally for her classes.

 

She was in mainstream classes, doesn't have any learning disabilities and has normal test-taking abilities.

 

A few weeks ago, she took the placement testing for the community college and she is being placed in pre-algebra, remedial reading (I think it's a comprehension class) and remedial writing.

 

What the _________ was the school doing all this time? She showed up and did her part. She went to class prepared, turned in her work and earned good grades. But, the school didn't do ITS part. It failed her.

I'm so ticked off about them squandering four years of her life.

 

She'll get caught up. In the big picture it's not a huge deal. She'll be FINE. I'm just dumbfounded. How could this happen? They obviously weren't teaching her to read, write and do math all those years. So what were they doing instead?

 

Thanks for listening.

 

p.s. I was up in the air about whether to homeschool for high school or not. I've made my decision now.

 

 

This is the national problem in public education. A movement born in the 1960s and rooted in political correctness if you can believe it, has shifted teaching methodology, disciplinary practices, curriculum content to be more "friendly" to girls and minorities. You can see how well that's working out.

 

An action group in our area was just discussing the possiblity of a class action lawsuit, if nothing else to recoup the cost of those remedial college courses. The high school my ds attends has a 100% remediation rate at our local community college. That means 100% of their graduates who take the placement tests place into remedial math! We haven't gotten very far in the discussion, but I completely understand where you're coming from. As do many, many other parents. Parents are being duped by the promise of a quality public education, and our kids are being robbed. No wonder our nation is falling, but at least kids feel good about themselves - until they enter the real world and it's too late for the schools to be held accountable.

 

I firmly believe it is criminal.

 

 

Edit: I apologize. I didn't give NCLB the mention it deserves. This movement toward a politically correct utopia where everyone succeeds and no one fails has been exasperated in recent years by NCLB's focus on testing. The impossible mandate that 100% of students pass state tests by 2014 is causing the pressure to rise and bringing things to a head. Unfortunately, it sounds like we're in for more experiments in the form of a national curriculum. Federal government intervention has been so helpful thus far...

Edited May 12, 2011 by BabyBre

[Capt_Uhura]

:iagree: I just don't believe in college for all. I'm open to changing my mind but there are jobs out there that don't require a college education to do the job well.

 

They can't. That's why our entire system of higher education is broken. We're seeing more and more jobs requiring a college degree and more and more students going to college. And yet many of those students are unprepared--not necessarily because schools are doing a worse job preparing students for college than before, but because, in the past, these students simply would not have even considered college. We do not know what to do with these students, and the current remedial system does not give them anything close to the help they need.

 

We can compare college students today to college students forty years ago all we want, but the fact is that forty years ago many fewer students went to college. It was not expected that all students (or nearly all) would leave high school prepared to do college-level work. That's changed. There are so few vocational opportunities for people without college degrees that it's pretty much expected that people will receive some sort of post-secondary education. So students who, 30 and 40 and 60 years ago would never have even considered attending college, are now expected to enter college ready to do college-level work. That's not fair to them, it's not fair to their high school teachers (who have never before been expected to have EVERY student ready to do college-level work), and it's not fair to their college instructors. It's just a difficult situation.

 

Many of my students are simply not "college material." I don't mean that in a negative way, just that they lack both an aptitude for AND an interest in higher-level academic work (ideally students will have both, but I think any student with just one can succeed). And, that should be fine. Everybody shouldn't have to be college material. Not everybody is academically-inclined, and that's okay. Except that, today, we still expect them to go to college, and to succeed at college. I'm not sure that's realistic, at least within our current system.

 

No, a semester or year of remedial classes will NOT get students who are unprepared for college caught up and ready to do college-level work. Not even close. Remedial classes are great for the otherwise-capable student who just has a weakens in a certain area and needs more review. They do not work for students who simply are not able to handle--either because of their aptitude level or the amount of time they are willing to invest in their education--college-level work.

 

I get many of those students, and I feel so badly for them. They are in a really difficult situation. There are, literally, NO job options for them without a college degree. Nationwide, the unemployment rate for under-25s is 52% (and that includes recent college grades), and I teach in an area where the economy is among the worst in the nation. These students would be lucky to find a part-time minimum wage retail job, and that isn't something you can get by on for life. And yet they aren't capable of doing college-level work, for a variety of reasons. But they go to college, because it seems like their only viable option, and they struggle through a year or two, until they simply cannot keep up, and at that point they leave school with no degree, no better job prospects than when they came in, and a bunch of college loans to pay back.

 

It just sucks. I don't know what the answer is. Ideally, honestly, I think we'd go back to having fewer people in college. College should be for those who are interested in and capable of doing advanced academic work, and not some $20K+ hoop that we expect everybody to jump through if they want any shot at a job paying more than minimum wage (i.e., the new-but-not-free high school). And jobs that genuinely don't need a college degree should not require them, so that that can be possible. When I was job searching, I applied for a number of $18-20K/year administrative assistant positions that required a B.A. That's ridiculous. There's no reason why somebody without a college degree couldn't do that job, and the only reason it was required was because there are so many people with degrees looking for work that employers can demand it. But it just adds to the problem of our college and universities getting inundated with students who in any other generation would just not have gone on to higher ed.

 

Basically, I think the whole system needs to be overhauled. (At which point I'm sure you can tell I'm really burned out from dealing both with students and a university bureaucracy.) We need to either totally rethink what higher education is, if we're really going to provide an education to all of the students now coming in, or we need to rethink whether we really need so many people to be attending college. But the way things are going now--more and more people attending colleges with the higher ed system structured basically the same way it was back when a much smaller number of people went to college--is just not working for anybody.

 

I've often said that the school where I work--an inner-city university that has many students come in who went to very poor-performing schools, from families and communities where even graduating high school is rare, and with very few basic skills--has a "remedial" program that is a joke. They have a 13-week summer program that incoming freshman who are deemed to have insufficient skills go through, and supposedly they'll come out prepared for college. Yeah-freaking-right. These students need a structured, full-time (as in, something they devote 40+ hours a week to, not something they fit in between their part-time jobs and family commitments and social life), multi-year program to work on basic skills before they are even ready for the regular remedial classes. I seriously have students in my remedial writing classes who would need, I think, 2-3 years of basic grammar work, reading comprehension skills, and writing instruction to even get to the point where they could benefit from college-level remediation. (Again, though, I think that's nothing new. My grandparents who didn't attend college would probably also have needed that kind of work to have been ready to handle college-level classes.) And if we are unwilling to provide them with that kind of help, and if they are unwilling to put the work in, then we shouldn't take their money and allow them to enroll in college.

[twoforjoy]

I know the college makes money off of the remedial courses, but they make money on every course they offer.

 

At my school, remedial courses don't count towards graduation, so they're pretty much extra courses that the student has to pay for. I do think it's kind of a scam. The school MUST know that many of the students who need these classes are simply not college material and will end up dropping out or failing out within the first year. But they keep accepting them, and putting them in these classes, and taking their money.

 

I feel like there's a place for remedial courses, but it's not for students who are simply unprepared for college, period. Those students have very little chance of finishing successfully, and by accepting them and taking their money, the school is basically setting them up for failure. Many of them will end up leaving school within the first two years, now saddled with student loan debt. And I don't see universities really caring too much about that.

 

It just frustrates me. I think that schools either have a responsibility to not accept students who don't have a reasonable chance of success, or to do everything within their power to make sure the students they do accept (and take money from) can succeed provided they put in the effort. I don't see either happening right now. I see the school where I teach accepting students who it is very, very clear will not be able to succeed in a college environment, even if they are able to pass a semester or two of remedial classes, and I see no commitment to providing the kind of multi-year, full-time remediation these students would need to actually perform at the level that will be expected of them in higher-level classes.

[BabyBre]

I hear you. I think parental involvement matters. But, the buck DOES stop with the school system as a whole.

 

Where I live, parents are trained from the beginning to shut up, go along and blindly trust because *teachers are the experts*.

 

Here's the message I got when DD was in public kindergarten. "Trust us. We know what we're doing. We'll tell you (the parents) what we want you to do to support us as we educate your children. Make sure they're fed, clean and have their homework completed. We'll do the rest."

 

The bottom line is that my niece's high school has failed in its mission and misrepresented itself to the community. It doesn't get a free pass because, "mom should have known." Why should she have known? Her daughter was getting good grades and positive feedback from teachers.

 

There were NO red flags. She was getting solid Bs on her report card and wasn't a discipline problem. None of us had any clue that she couldn't really write or remember anything from algebra. In fact, and this is important, she wasn't even *taught* expository writing.

 

My sister's only mistake was trusting that the schools were fulfilling their promise to educate her willing, capable child.

 

 

:iagree: 100%

[Jen500]

What?

Don't most states have some sort of standardized tests? Even if a student got an A in a class, if they didn't really learn the material wouldn't this result in a low mark on the standardized test?

[twoforjoy]

This is the national problem in public education. A movement born in the 1960s and rooted in political correctness if you can believe it, has shifted teaching methodology, disciplinary practices, curriculum content to be more "friendly" to girls and minorities. You can see how well that's working out.

 

Where is your evidence for this?

 

Rather than believing there's some sort of conspiracy of radical feminists and multiculturalists who, despite having pretty much no economic or political power, managed to completely take over education for their sinister motives, it's best to look at the economics of this.

 

Starting in the 1960s, we began to see the collapse of the American working-class. The well-paying jobs that used to be available to people without college degrees started to disappear or move overseas. So, people who would previously not have gone to college because they could have done just fine without a degree now were being pushed into higher education because there were no jobs available for them. At the same time, we saw average wages for everybody stagnate, as the cost of living rose, so more and more families required two incomes, which meant that many people who previously would not have had to enter the workforce (i.e., women) had to find a career that could support or help support their families.

 

Because of that--because there was a sudden, large influx of students into universities who in previous generations would not have had attended college--some educational methods did have to change. But those changes were a needed response to the changing student population and changing educational needs of students (needs that changed because of economic pressure), so that more students would have more success, and not some weird radical conspiracy.

 

If you want to blame anybody, blame the private sector for 1) requiring college degrees for positions that in no practical way actually need them, 2) compensating jobs that do not require a college degree so poorly that people cannot support themselves much less a family on those wages (full-time work at minimum wage comes out to $15,080 per year before anything is deducted), and 3) moving the few well-paying jobs that didn't require a college education overseas. That is what has created a situation where high school teachers are not simply expected to have their best students prepared for college work, but nearly all of their students, and where college instructors are now expected to teach advanced academic work to students with no aptitude for or interest in advanced academics.

 

It's those demands that have led to changes in teaching methodologies. Those changes were absolutely necessary if the idea wasn't to provide all students with a basic education and the best students with preparation for advanced work (what we used to do, and what traditional methods work very well for), but to provide nearly all students, who come from a variety of backgrounds and with a huge range of aptitudes, with preparation for doing college-level work.

[Ester Maria]

Ideally, honestly, I think we'd go back to having fewer people in college. College should be for those who are interested in and capable of doing advanced academic work, and not some $20K+ hoop that we expect everybody to jump through if they want any shot at a job paying more than minimum wage (i.e., the new-but-not-free high school). And jobs that genuinely don't need a college degree should not require them, so that that can be possible.

I absolutely agree.

 

There are WAY too many students in colleges who are not college material and the situation is bad for ALL, because it automatically lowers down the quality of the instruction and disables you from teaching at a level at which you should be teaching. Either a system in which fewer students end up in colleges is needed, either the system which accepts many, maybe even without numerus clausus, but with the eliminatory first and second year (which should, together, halve the number of students with the difficult exams).

[Dana]

 

I feel like there's a place for remedial courses, but it's not for students who are simply unprepared for college, period. Those students have very little chance of finishing successfully, and by accepting them and taking their money, the school is basically setting them up for failure. Many of them will end up leaving school within the first two years, now saddled with student loan debt. And I don't see universities really caring too much about that.

 

.

 

I definitely think the place for remediation is at the cc or at adult education.

I think there can be very limited remediation at four-year schools, but only one semester at the most (and I think college algebra should be the lowest math at a four-year school).

[Annie]

Anyway, I'm just a bit skeptical of how universities handle these things. I think that their main motivation is money, and if the placement system is skewed in such a way that many more students place into remedial courses than really need them, they aren't going to be much inclined to change things.

 

I think there is definitely something to be said for this.

 

When I took my placement tests at a respected university, the form asked me to place a check next to the math courses I had taken in high school, and I followed the directions. When I went to orientation to sign up for classes, they had me listed for remedial math. Imagine my surprise since I had just gotten a four on my AP Calculus test a few weeks earlier. :glare: I had to put up quite the fuss in order for them to use some common sense and remove the requirement. Eventually we figured out that I didn't check that I had taken Algebra I on their form, and since I didn't check it, I was automatically routed to remedial math. Well, the reason I didn't check it was that I took it in eight grade, and the form said to check the classes you took in high school. Heaven forbid anyone actually follow the directions. It obviously ended up working out, but I'm guessing a lot of people would have just given up and taken the stupid class.

[justamouse]

It's one of the major reasons I may be keeping Dd16 out of PS one more year and only letting her go back her senior year for that 'diploma' she needs for her license. I want that extra year to work with her on writing.

[shinyhappypeople]

This goes way beyond whether or not all students should go to college. I agree that not all people want or need a college degree. No argument there.

 

But, algebra isn't just for the college-bound. Reading and writing aren't only necessary for professionals. We do ALL students a disservice when we launch them into the world without these basic academic skills. Is my niece unprepared for college? Yes. :( But she's also unprepared for all but the most basic, entry-level jobs. This is unacceptable.

 

My husband's job doesn't require a degree. He's in a skilled blue collar trade. He uses algebra, geometry and accounting every single day. He writes reports, assessments and training manuals. If he didn't have these skills, he'd be limited to cruddy, low-paying jobs.

 

I wish high schools weren't so quick to let themselves off the hook. They're the end of the road for an awful lot of students. Better make those four years count.

[justamouse]

They can't. That's why our entire system of higher education is broken. We're seeing more and more jobs requiring a college degree and more and more students going to college. And yet many of those students are unprepared--not necessarily because schools are doing a worse job preparing students for college than before, but because, in the past, these students simply would not have even considered college. We do not know what to do with these students, and the current remedial system does not give them anything close to the help they need.

 

 

 

A-freakin-men.

 

Some jobs you just don't need a college degree for.

 

But I think they started requiring one because the HSs were doing such a lousy job that requiring a degree was the only way they could assure the people could actually read and write.

[YourFidgetyFriend]

My husband just got his Masters in mathematics -- and was a TA while getting the degree. and this is something he is very concerned about. The number of kids -- at the college level -- that just are not willing to work/ask questions/etc when they don't understand something. They just float through the semester and only care when they don't get a good grade -- but not enough to do anything about it. Its getting him very frustrated about the prospect of teaching at all!

 

I originally wanted to teach college English as a career. After being a TA, I can no longer do it. Most of the kids were okay writers (although they had problems thinking outside the 5 paragraph essays they were required to write in HS), but they were extremely unmotivated. Sometimes I wanted to just shake these kids like "Why are you here?" It was obvious they only wanted a grade and cared nothing about actually learning.

 

What's even more sad is that English is a saturated field and tenure-track positions aren't exactly in abundance, so many grads end up with an M.A. or Ph.D only to be an adjunct for 20k a year dealing with these blank-faced kids :glare:

[unsinkable]

I hear you. I think parental involvement matters. But, the buck DOES stop with the school system as a whole.

 

Where I live, parents are trained from the beginning to shut up, go along and blindly trust because *teachers are the experts*.

 

Here's the message I got when DD was in public kindergarten. "Trust us. We know what we're doing. We'll tell you (the parents) what we want you to do to support us as we educate your children. Make sure they're fed, clean and have their homework completed. We'll do the rest."

 

The bottom line is that my niece's high school has failed in its mission and misrepresented itself to the community. It doesn't get a free pass because, "mom should have known." Why should she have known? Her daughter was getting good grades and positive feedback from teachers.

 

There were NO red flags. She was getting solid Bs on her report card and wasn't a discipline problem. None of us had any clue that she couldn't really write or remember anything from algebra. In fact, and this is important, she wasn't even *taught* expository writing.

 

My sister's only mistake was trusting that the schools were fulfilling their promise to educate her willing, capable child.

 

Did your niece's parents ever look at the papers or writing assignments she produced? Wouldn't that have been a clue?

 

ETA: I am not asking this to be argumentative. I am genuinely curious. I have no wish to point fingers or blame anyone.

Edited May 12, 2011 by unsinkable

[twoforjoy]

But I think they started requiring one because the HSs were doing such a lousy job that requiring a degree was the only way they could assure the people could actually read and write.

 

I'd like to think that, but I really think it's more about our current economic system being such that we have NOTHING to offer young people. There are almost no fields left in which you can leave high school and get a job that would allow you to be financially independent, much less support a family on. We have nothing to offer young people from maybe 18-25, so instead we use college as a $50K (which I just read is what the average public four-year college costs) to $125K (which is what the average private college costs) holding pen.

 

If our economy truly needs people with more skills than in the past--because I do not believe nor have I seen evidence that the average young person today has fewer literacy or math skills than the average young person in the past--and gaining those skills requires most people to be in school an extra four years, then we should have a system in place for providing that for them that doesn't require them to go deep into debt.

 

I just get very, very angered by what we're doing to our young people. We're basically saying to them, "Hey, kids, if you skip college you'll be lucky if you can find a job paying minimum wage. So, go spend 4-5 years in school learning stuff you don't care about and have no aptitude for, and then you can come out with tens of thousands of dollars of debt and just a slightly better chance of finding a job than you did before, which in all likelihood won't even pay enough that you can move out of your parents' house with all of the loan debt you need to pay back." Young people are starting out their lives burdened with a lot of debt, not because of poor financial choices on their part but because college costs keep rising and they have no other way to pay for it and no other options, and from what I've read there hasn't been a time in recent history when the job market has been worse for under 25s. It's just a mess, and I do think at some point it will get so bad that drastic measures will need to be taken.

[shinyhappypeople]

Did your niece's parents ever look at the papers or writing assignments she produced? Wouldn't that have been a clue?

 

My sister (N's mom) is not well-educated. She has weak writing skills and only basic math skills. So, yes, I assume she saw the papers. No, nothing seemed amiss to her. She trusted the school. I think, more than anything, she trusted the grades Niece was getting. A solid B average looks pretty awesome, especially to someone who dropped out of high school.

 

My sister fulfilled her end of the contract*. My niece showed up clean, fed and homework in hand. My sister attended the parent-teacher conferences. She trusted the school when they said they'd do the rest.

 

* There is an actual contract parents sign in kindergarten stating that we (parents) agree to do a list of things. Among them are making sure kids show up on time, well-rested, complete homework, etc. So, when I say she fulfilled her end of the contract, I mean that literally.

[Guest Dulcimeramy]

Yes, exactly. Part of the reason we are reaping the whirlwind is that the previous generation was not very well-taught, either.

 

Parents might personally be better able to read, write, and compute than their students, but that doesn't translate to being able to evaluate strengths or weaknesses of an academic program. Especially when they don't know all that is being taught or corrected in class. All they have to go on is glimpses of nightly homework.

 

Completed homework, returned with A's or B's, should offer reassurance to parents who have been caring and involved. Those A's and B's should mean something!

 

Mom is innocent here. The school perpetrated fraud.

[unsinkable]

My sister (N's mom) is not well-educated. She has weak writing skills and only basic math skills. So, yes, I assume she saw the papers. No, nothing seemed amiss to her. She trusted the school. I think, more than anything, she trusted the grades Niece was getting. A solid B average looks pretty awesome, especially to someone who dropped out of high school.

 

My sister fulfilled her end of the contract*. My niece showed up clean, fed and homework in hand. My sister attended the parent-teacher conferences. She trusted the school when they said they'd do the rest.

 

* There is an actual contract parents sign in kindergarten stating that we (parents) agree to do a list of things. Among them are making sure kids show up on time, well-rested, complete homework, etc. So, when I say she fulfilled her end of the contract, I mean that literally.

 

:grouphug: I am really sorry about this.

 

I wonder if your sister contacted the local newspaper about this. They'd probably be able to protect your niece's privacy. I would bet your niece isn't the only one in this situation.

[lionfamily1999]

I think a big problem is that we've forgotten "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink." Rather than schools dividing the student body up by those that learn quickly and well and those that strive to learn, and those with no interest in learning, we put all three groups together and force one teacher to try and teach. By the time they reach high school they're so far behind their teachers are lucky to get them up to a low standard of acheivement.

 

I was floored when the local ps dropped vocational training. Their goal is that every student is ready for college (which is absurd given their track record) and they don't care if those students don't WANT to go to college.

Did your niece's parents ever look at the papers or writing assignments she produced? Wouldn't that have been a clue?

 

ETA: I am not asking this to be argumentative. I am genuinely curious. I have no wish to point fingers or blame anyone.

I glanced at dd's work up until this year. She always brought home great grades and I assumed that the A's meant Excellent. :glare: I read one of her A's (complete with a note from the teacher gushing to dd about how well she writes) and was STUNNED by the number of spelling, grammar and writing mistakes. There were no paragraphs (she's in 8th grade and can't write a paragraph?!?), plenty of sentence fragments, grossly mispelled words. It was shocking.

 

I would not have looked except that I was considering taking dd out for health reasons. I was worried that she would be so far ahead (she was in all advanced classes) that I would struggle to keep up. Thank heavens she is a quick learner. We're on track now (thank you SWB and FLL).

[unsinkable]

Yes, exactly. Part of the reason we are reaping the whirlwind is that the previous generation was not very well-taught, either.

 

Parents might personally be better able to read, write, and compute than their students, but that doesn't translate to being able to evaluate strengths or weaknesses of an academic program. Especially when they don't know all that is being taught or corrected in class. All they have to go on is glimpses of nightly homework.

 

Completed homework, returned with A's or B's, should offer reassurance to parents who have been caring and involved. Those A's and B's should mean something!

 

Mom is innocent here. The school perpetrated fraud.

 

Thank you, Amy. I was trying to find a way to express this. If a parent has a limited background in education, they probably don't know what they don't know. Good grades, good attendence, no problems at school. Yes, that should mean a graduate with high school level skills.

[KristinaBreece]

I think a big problem is that we've forgotten "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink." Rather than schools dividing the student body up by those that learn quickly and well and those that strive to learn, and those with no interest in learning, we put all three groups together and force one teacher to try and teach. By the time they reach high school they're so far behind their teachers are lucky to get them up to a low standard of acheivement.

 

I was floored when the local ps dropped vocational training. Their goal is that every student is ready for college (which is absurd given their track record) and they don't care if those students don't WANT to go to college.

I glanced at dd's work up until this year. She always brought home great grades and I assumed that the A's meant Excellent. :glare: I read one of her A's (complete with a note from the teacher gushing to dd about how well she writes) and was STUNNED by the number of spelling, grammar and writing mistakes. There were no paragraphs (she's in 8th grade and can't write a paragraph?!?), plenty of sentence fragments, grossly mispelled words. It was shocking.

 

I would not have looked except that I was considering taking dd out for health reasons. I was worried that she would be so far ahead (she was in all advanced classes) that I would struggle to keep up. Thank heavens she is a quick learner. We're on track now (thank you SWB and FLL).

 

I have a brother who's graduating this month. He's in an "advanced literature" class (not AP) this year. His final was to be an essay analyzing the themes of a novel of his choice, chosen from a list approved by the teacher. He chose "The Power of One." I read his "A-" paper and was floored at everything he missed. From his paper, I can't tell if he actually read the book (I know he did-- he basically lives with us & I make sure he gets his assignments done), or just read papers from other kids who had read the book. :001_huh: When I asked him if he wanted me to proof it before he turned in the final draft, he said that the teacher had really liked the rough draft, so he just fixed his grammatical errors and was going to turn it in.

 

He is slow, and he's had an IEP since he was little... this was his first year in all mainstream classes. I still think there needs to be a standard there that we're lacking.

[kitten18]

 

Completed homework, returned with A's or B's, should offer reassurance to parents who have been caring and involved. Those A's and B's should mean something!

 

Mom is innocent here. The school perpetrated fraud.

Exactly.

[ElizabethB]

Actually, this is an interesting case where a lawsuit was filed and won, I found it because of my interest in reading, there are several fascinating articles and studies about "The Matthew Effect," although many of my favorites are no longer online.

 

http://www.wrightslaw.com/info/test.matthew.effect.htm

[lionfamily1999]

I have a brother who's graduating this month. He's in an "advanced literature" class (not AP) this year. His final was to be an essay analyzing the themes of a novel of his choice, chosen from a list approved by the teacher. He chose "The Power of One." I read his "A-" paper and was floored at everything he missed. From his paper, I can't tell if he actually read the book (I know he did-- he basically lives with us & I make sure he gets his assignments done), or just read papers from other kids who had read the book. :001_huh: When I asked him if he wanted me to proof it before he turned in the final draft, he said that the teacher had really liked the rough draft, so he just fixed his grammatical errors and was going to turn it in.

 

He is slow, and he's had an IEP since he was little... this was his first year in all mainstream classes. I still think there needs to be a standard there that we're lacking.

I agree completely.

 

Is it any wonder that the remedial classes are full? If they're giving A's out to (at best) average work then an A might as well be a C. If the teachers won't mark what's wrong then the students never learn how to do better.

[Halcyon]

I have a friend who is tutoring (for free) a local 16 year old whose mom pulled him out to "homeschool" him because he didn't want to attend classes anymore. He is tutoring him in math, and says he doesn't know long division, doesn't know his multiplication facts and has no concept of place value. He is supposed to be going into 11th grade, I believe. He was only pulled out last year, and I am very surprised (well, not really I guess) that he has been advancing to the next year in public school if his skills are really so lacking.

[gardening momma]

A few weeks ago, she took the placement testing for the community college and she is being placed in pre-algebra, remedial reading (I think it's a comprehension class) and remedial writing.

 

What the _________ was the school doing all this time? She showed up and did her part. She went to class prepared, turned in her work and earned good grades. But, the school didn't do ITS part. It failed her.

I'm so ticked off about them squandering four years of her life.

Just a quick comment...haven't read the whole thread yet, but will later. I was a B+/A- student in high school (private, not public). My first year in college I took various classes, mostly whatever *I* wanted, not really helpful core classes. One of them was a general math class, though. I spent one year at that college, then worked for a couple of years, and then I decided to go to a community college. I had to take some placement tests. I had to start with Algebra I, even though I had taken that in high school (I also took Alg II, but just scraped along there). I also had to take a remedial class--can't remember specifically what specific category this was in, but I had a choice of 3 classes, and chose Speed Reading).

[justamouse]

I'd like to think that, but I really think it's more about our current economic system being such that we have NOTHING to offer young people. There are almost no fields left in which you can leave high school and get a job that would allow you to be financially independent, much less support a family on. We have nothing to offer young people from maybe 18-25, so instead we use college as a $50K (which I just read is what the average public four-year college costs) to $125K (which is what the average private college costs) holding pen.

 

If our economy truly needs people with more skills than in the past--because I do not believe nor have I seen evidence that the average young person today has fewer literacy or math skills than the average young person in the past--and gaining those skills requires most people to be in school an extra four years, then we should have a system in place for providing that for them that doesn't require them to go deep into debt.

 

I just get very, very angered by what we're doing to our young people. We're basically saying to them, "Hey, kids, if you skip college you'll be lucky if you can find a job paying minimum wage. So, go spend 4-5 years in school learning stuff you don't care about and have no aptitude for, and then you can come out with tens of thousands of dollars of debt and just a slightly better chance of finding a job than you did before, which in all likelihood won't even pay enough that you can move out of your parents' house with all of the loan debt you need to pay back." Young people are starting out their lives burdened with a lot of debt, not because of poor financial choices on their part but because college costs keep rising and they have no other way to pay for it and no other options, and from what I've read there hasn't been a time in recent history when the job market has been worse for under 25s. It's just a mess, and I do think at some point it will get so bad that drastic measures will need to be taken.

 

I don't disagree with you (I totally see how a degree is needed for everything but being a whopper flopper or Waluniverse checker), but I also see it from another perspective.

 

We own a small business. We employ about 35 people. Do you know how hard it is to find people that can read and write and add? We're not the regular small company, and we deal with the FDA so there's a lot of logs to keep up and sops to deal with. There is a lot of math and reading. Dh does the hiring and you would not believe the illiteracy of people that graduate from HS. It's a freaking sin. There are measurements that have to be taken and logged. People can't do it. I'm talking basic stuff here-no degree required. You can start at the bottom and if you're capable, work your way up to QA. So the job is there. I know it's not the norm, but it is the view from my seat.

 

We now have to get people through a temp service because weeding through the interviews and resumes was just taking up too much time. If not for the temp service, a degree would be absolutely required. Just to make sure they had the basics.

Edited May 12, 2011 by justamouse