Get Schooled

By knowing better

September 7, 2006 11:42 AM | Link to this

I had a good friend that taught at this school last year, and i taught at a Clayton Co. school the year previous. If a politician was to ever visit Riverdale or many other of the Clayton Co. schools, he would probably quit. The politics are crushing great teachers with great ideas. The discipline is next to non-existant. The students are not receiving the education they deserve, not because of teachers not teaching, but because the administrators are more worried about keeping their jobs until tenure (but who wouldn’t try hard to keep an easy $100 gran job) and their parents are too undereducated or just plain lazy and uncaring. My friend quit teaching all together and I’m 8 months from it….Privitization of our schools is getting closer!

By T-Man

September 7, 2006 11:44 AM | Link to this

Sounds like the student Ms. Wolfe is the type of student who will make it far in life. Unfortunately when you look at the school as a whole you find gaps in the type of students attending the school. There is an ugly drop out rate for this school and low SAT scores when matched to the national average. When labeling a school you must look at the whole picture not just the bright stars.

By SET

September 7, 2006 12:08 PM | Link to this

Marjon Wolfe’s comment is an interesting piece. But it is the writings of a child. I’m not knocking her - she seems to be trying and it is significant that she’s stating her position in writing for everyone to see under her signature.

But she is an 11th grader.

Because she is young and inexperienced she cannot (yet) perceive most of what is going on around her. She makes the point that her school is judged in this instance only on the performance of one test given to the 11th graders. And this is a problem because?? Does she have a quick and affordable alternative to compare schools across a state or a country? When doing comparisons on this scale there is no time to do site visits, standardize the subjective evaluations and publish.

When I pick a jury not only do I get rid of the college students (those that survive the jury screens in the first place) but I try to drop anybody under 30. After more than 25 years in trial practice I’ve learned the hard way that these people aren’t careful thinkers or observers and don’t have the experience to realize when they’re being lied to.

The other thing about young and inexperienced people (and I was once one of them) is that they don’t know when to cut their losses or admit there is a problem that isn’t going to get better on it’s own. You have to make them go to the dentist.

If there is a foundational problem with the way her school is being run - how would she know? What does she have to compare with? Especially if the conditions at the school are comfortable. And that’s what I’m hearing from her. The school is a nice place and she likes it. We should like it too.

And sometimes that’s the problem.

By Jeff

September 7, 2006 12:18 PM | Link to this

At a conference in Macon right now…. FUN!!

Anyways: I agree with what she is saying, and the points about discipline. You can have an AMAZING school not meet AYP because ONE STUDENT fails the test.

About the discipline: I’ve got two or three EXTREMELY dsruptive students. Guess what? Due to AYP, these students will be in class virtually every day with no real consequences… all because we have to have their bodies in class to meet AYP. Never mind that they are so disruptive that no student can learn. (Thus lowering everyone else’s test scores, which makes the school fall FURTHER behind… very much a self-perpetuating system that could be EASILY stopped by measures such as out of school suspension and EXPULSION!)

By Nja

September 7, 2006 01:59 PM | Link to this

Sighs

I think Marjon has made an interesting point. One that many teachers and others working in the school system has said time and time again.

There is A LOT of work to be done in the schools. But I do think the AYP scores focus too much in one area. Just my opinion.

What I would like to know- of all the people that complain about the condition of the public schools, the youth and the future generations- WHAT ARE YOU DOING ABOUT IT? Anything more than putting your opinions on this blog?

By V for Vendetta

September 7, 2006 02:26 PM | Link to this

Bravo to Marjon for voicing her opinion, that is the first step. In a student’s eyes, things might not seem so dreary. A student currently in high school has no idea what the educational landscape was like ten years ago. I applaud her for standing up and saying something in response to the current situation, but her view is limited.

A teacher that I myself had as a high schooler recently started working part time at my school. I was talking to her the other day, and she was telling me how terrible the state of affairs was here in metro Atlanta. She basically confirmed my worst fears.

I don’t want to be a downer here, but things are bad people. We have to, in my opinion, ignore the youthful optimism of kids like Marjon, and focus more on the task at hand. Like Nja said, what are YOU doing to help?

Another example: I was told this year that asking the college prep freshmen to memorize twenty vocab words in a week was too difficult. That they might do better if I only gave them ten at a time. College prep? Please, that doesn’t even begin to prepare them for a job at McDonald’s, let alone college! And remember, I teach at one of the “good” schools!

By Marie Dockery

September 7, 2006 04:00 PM | Link to this

I agree with her statement. NCLB needs a lot of work.

No other country includes special ed students with the regular ones on testing like USA does.

Things aren’t always as they appear. Politicians want the paper work to look good, and most could care less about whether the students are succeeding or not.

AYP is a bunch of bunk.

By SET

September 7, 2006 05:24 PM | Link to this

V: If teens aren’t complaining about overwork they are not being worked hard enough. Give them a week to read a novel…They’re college prep, aren’t they?

Their rewards include bragging to everyone about how hard the class is (but they managed to do it). It gives them earned self-esteem.

By TinaTeach

September 7, 2006 06:00 PM | Link to this

Case in point: Miss Wolfe mentioned how the school has benefited herself and several of her friends. She also mentioned several AP/honors courses that she has taken. This young lady is in the gifted program it seems and it is likely that several of the friends that she mentioned are probably in the same classes.

A better article would have been to perserve her article and then have someone from a normal, nay even remedial class respond to it. This may give us an idea of the two extremes at the school.

I applaud this young woman for taking a stand and writing about what she believes in. She is a rare type among high school students

By JustMe

September 7, 2006 06:25 PM | Link to this

A few thoughts on the article and on some previous posts…

First, AYP is part of NCLB. That means NO child left behind. Yes, one too many students can fail and that will cause the school to not make AYP. That means that there IS a child left behind. Get it?

Second, I agree that she is inexperienced. However, that alone does not make her points invalid. I do think that there are good teachers and great learning happening in schools that do not make AYP (see Lakeside HS).

Third, the problems in high schools not only stem from lack of discipline, lack of parental involvement, etc., but also lack of real education staring in grade 1. Even the CRCT is not really correcting the problem. Why? Well, let’s see…. 1. A student can fail the CRCT. However, the student may be allowed to pass onto the next grade anyway. These “exceptions” are killing us in highs school and failing the student. 2. A middle school can make AYP using a second indicator of attendence. Yes, that’s right, ATTENDENCE! A middle school can make AYP based on simple attendence and not based on an academic area such as science or social studies. Too bad a student cannot pass the high school graduation test based on attendence!

Do I think that NCLB and/or AYP is BS? Partly. This is because I do think that they have forced schools and the community to really consider all aspects of education. Because of this, I think (or at least hope) that as students move through K-12 that their education will be better than the recent graduates.

By Jeff

September 7, 2006 06:58 PM | Link to this

Just me:

What gets me the most about the “Golden Child”? Its not even that they necessarily fail the test. If the kid isn’t there on test day, we have no record of whether that kid would have passed OR failed. HOWEVER, because the “Golden Child” wasn’t there on test day, the school fails AYP. IT IS ASSUMED THAT THE CHILD FAILED. Don’t even get me started about all the subgroups… at a very diverse school, THAT is even more of a headache!

I agree about the attendance thing… I work in a MS that uses that, and it boggles MY mind! (Also a major contributor to the discipline problems I mentioned earlier.)

3rd, 5th, 8th grade cuts is no good…. it needs to be 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 1, AND 12!!!

BTW: An interesting development: It turns out that of the remaining ~140 days of school, I will be out about 40 of them!!!! (Due to professional development of a couple of different strands. It will definetly prove useful, no doubt about that. I just find it kinda weird…)

By V for Vendetta

September 8, 2006 09:00 AM | Link to this

Amen SET, you are right on point with that one. College Prep must stand for Preparing to Fail Out of College, because that’s all the classes seem to be good for.

We didn’t just lower the bar, we dropped it into the ocean. It’s resting somewhere down there next to the Titanic. Maybe James Cameron will make a movie about it.

By jim d

September 8, 2006 09:57 AM | Link to this

and YES Ms. Wolfe,

There is a Santa Claus.

By MMM

September 8, 2006 10:37 AM | Link to this

Ms. Wolfe is to be commended for her loyalty, but in order for me to find someone’s arguments compelling, I have to feel that they have had enough exposure to make a valid comparision. She has not.

That “my school’s shoutcomings are excusable or an incomplete picture” is not an empirical statement—it is an emotional one. While I wholeheartedly agree that the AYP calculation has many flaws—all the other schools are judged on the same yardstick, so why didn’t her school’s 11th graders measure up? Time will tell if she and her classmates can pull it off when they are 11st graders—-but the label seems to have motivated greater effort, a good thing.

I think that we often talk ourselves into accepting what we are forced to have as “good enough” because otherwise we would be compelled to do make waves. Lazy—-until it is too late and we have missed out on our capacity for excellence. Ms. Wolfe sounds like she cares, is motivated, and I wish her well.

By V for Vendetta

September 8, 2006 11:13 AM | Link to this

Patti, I have a non-related question to ask you, might I trouble you for your email address? Thanks ever so much.

V

By V for Vendetta

September 8, 2006 11:22 AM | Link to this

Post it if you don’t mind, my email address listed on here is fake. Sorry, I’m paranoid.

By Ernest

September 8, 2006 11:36 AM | Link to this

V, if you select Meet the AJC Ed team on the left hand pane, you’ll have access to Patti’s email address and other members of the AJC Ed team. I also added the link in this post.

By JustMe

September 8, 2006 11:39 AM | Link to this

V….

A long time ago educators did not want to call anything “low” class or “slow” class. So, the old low classes became “college prep.”

The old college prep courses became accelerated courses.

The old accelerated courses became AP courses.

This is why college prep courses are so sorry.

By Patti Ghezzi

September 8, 2006 11:40 AM | Link to this

Hi V, My e-mail address is pghezzi@ajc.com.

By SET

September 8, 2006 12:13 PM | Link to this

V: I just read your comment about the vocabulary words again - who was it that told you (the teacher) that the proposed 20 vocab words a week for the “college prep” freshmen was too much? Was it a parent or an administrator??

I think grade school kids get at least as much (vocab words) - or at least they used to.

Last night on the TV news a camera crew was at a ghetto mall in Oakland CA (Eastmont Mall) on an unrelated story and there was a (teenaged?) shooter in the parking lot who shot at a number of people and hit at least one - in sight of the TV reporter on the air. I know that this is off topic but when we are talking about how to handle 16 year olds in Class I keep thinking about what else the kids can be out doing… Then there’s the story in Milwaukee about the teen sex party with the 11 year old party girl - I’m not buying it as a “rape” case.. And I (greatly) dissaprove to trying the 15 year olds as adults without allegations of weapons, kidnapping, force, etc.

Back on topic - If the schools can keep the kids engaged in something they find difficult or challenging - which is what I grew up with - they might have less time and energy to get into so much trouble. Maybe it’s vocab words… or maybe it’s the public school vocational ed school down the street from my work with 5 auto repair bays facing the street - cars are up in the air and 16 year olds are busy working on them. Late model cars too. The kids walking to and from that (large) school are not laughing and goofing off much. They are carrying backpacks and look quite serious. I suspect thay have deadlines to get the transmission back in or whatever they are doing that day.

Keep them challenged and cut back on the sympathy and they can stay out of trouble.

By V for Vendetta

September 11, 2006 12:52 PM | Link to this

SET- to answer your question, it was an admin. and dept. chair. Watering down expectations like champs!

By KC

September 11, 2006 03:13 PM | Link to this

I totally agree with what Marjom wrote. She is right. I beleive one test does not give politicians or anyone else the right to stereotype an entire school. I doubt those politicians spend more than one full day per school year at all the district schools combined. Don’t call them failures!!!

And another point to what SET said. DO you have any children? Because if you do, make sure they do not read your first comment. Do not assume that everyone under the age of 30 is not a careful thinker or able to tell a lie from the truth. That is just stupid..with all due respect for my elders.

Obviously you were once young and inexperienced, but I don’t think you were young and inexperienced in the early 2000s. There are many problems in schools today that need addressing. Why don’t you listen to what the students are saying. I bet they will tell you a bunch of problems in the schools. The problem is that many people don’t listen to them because they think that the students don’t know what they are talking about.

And she would know about problems in her school because she is there practically all the time. The politicians are the ones who need to be told what they are.

By SET

September 11, 2006 03:26 PM | Link to this

KC: My point is what it is. Young people do not have the experience to make careful decisions or to observe things that portend trouble. They just don’t. These are things you gain from (painful) experience. Some people never learn. But show me a young person and I’ll show you someone who can be fooled - most of the time.

Obviously I don’t think people over 30 are “qualified” by their age. I’m just saying that people under that age can’t be counted on.

Yes complaints from the students are important - they are a form of feedback. However any good school will have it’s students complaining about something. If the students are (literally?) fat, dumb and happy you have a really bad school.

I agree we do have a problem with politicians. Eliminating gerrymandering and “safe” districts would help fix that.