PBS: 180 Days A Year Inside an American High School

[Svnla]

I saw this last night and it was sad and sickening to watch it. Is this going to be the future of the USA? And we want more illiterate illegals to join?

Episode #2 will be tonight.

An issue that plagues DC Met, and is a leading indicator for dropping out, is chronic absenteeism. In 2010, nearly 50% of students from DC Met missed 15 or more days of school. Throughout the film, faculty members scour roll call reports to see who is showing up for homeroom. The basketball coach reminds his team that if they do not show up to school they cannot stay on the team—to which one of the players responds by walking out of the gym as cameras roll. Adding urgency to the problem, an audit two months into the school year gauges how many of the registered students are actually in school, in order to determine the budget for the following year.

http://www.pbs.org/programs/180-days-american-school/

 

[chucky2]

Can't watch the link right now but some of these schools are just beyond F'd up. I went down to Indy this past weekend to visit my bud, who has a g/f who has moved in, along with her 3 kids. One is a freshman. They lived in a bad area of Indy and I'm assuming went to some sh1thole high school in Indy. Girl had like 379 absences (couldn't have been days obviously, must have been missed classes).

I asked her how this was possible, how the teachers could allow it, and she said that her teachers were all substitute teachers...so none cared. Just report to class, then, walk out the front door...no one stops you.

Girl has the attitude that leads to a gas station attendent career. Just sad...

Chuck

 

[xj0hnx]

* Forgive is for suckers. Payback with extreme prejudice plus interest.
* Relentless pursuit of a more perfect perfection.
* Golden Rule = Treat others as others treat you, don't take craps from anyone.
* I ain't looking for trouble, but if trouble comes knocking, I will be ready, willing, and able for some rocking.

Your sig is almost straight from the Satanic Bible.

 

[Spungo]

Problem not found. Just fail the people who don't show up. Fewer people having a high school diploma means a diploma is worth more. It would also be a good indicator of how good a person is. A person with a diploma is obviously capable of showing up for work on a regular basis since attendance would be one of the core requirements to get one. Not having a diploma would be a quick and easy way of filtering out useless job applicants because it's a good indication they'll screw around and call in sick every week.

 

[KB]

Man I wish I could have taken guitar lessons at my high school. Kids don't appreciate what they have, although I can't say I did when I was in high school either.

There seems to be many causes for this problem, but I still mostly blame the parents. They need to push their kids to go to school more.

 

[Spungo]

There seems to be many causes for this problem, but I still mostly blame the parents. They need to push their kids to go to school more.

Why? Going to school won't prepare me for the world of being on welfare for the rest of my life.

 

[Juror No. 8]

Public schools = Government indoctrination internment camps

There's an entire history behind the creation of the government education system in America, and it has absolutely nothing to do with real education or intellectual development of American youths. The system was created for a far darker, more sinister purpose.

I applaud anyone who doesn't show up. Bravo!

 

[drebo]

Hey, this is what everyone asked for...everyone treated equally.

This means kids can't be held back for failing classes. So, if the kid is going to move on to the next grade anyway, why the fuck would they go to classes?

There are no punishments in our school systems. That's the real problem. There's no discipline and no recourse for teachers against bad kids or bad parents. Teachers should be able to hold a kid back. You miss too many days? You repeat the grade. So now when you have a 15 year old in 3rd grade, he's going to feel like a real loser...as he should.

 

[lotus503]

Public schools = Government indoctrination internment camps

There's an entire history behind the creation of the government education system in America, and it has absolutely nothing to do with real education or intellectual development of American youths. The system was created for a far darker, more sinister purpose.

I applaud anyone who doesn't show up. Bravo!

http://www.arc.org/content/view/100/217/

now lets see your history

 

[SheHateMe]

Hey, this is what everyone asked for...everyone treated equally.

This means kids can't be held back for failing classes. So, if the kid is going to move on to the next grade anyway, why the fuck would they go to classes?

There are no punishments in our school systems. That's the real problem. There's no discipline and no recourse for teachers against bad kids or bad parents. Teachers should be able to hold a kid back. You miss too many days? You repeat the grade. So now when you have a 15 year old in 3rd grade, he's going to feel like a real loser...as he should.

No Child Left Behind..

Everyone gets "aged out" at some point.

Besides, schools get money for kids when they show up to official count day. That's part of the reason why you see failing schools giving incentives to kids who show up on count day. Including kids they haven't seen in 2 months.

 

[Juror No. 8]

http://www.deliberatedumbingdown.com/MomsPDFs/DDDoA.sml.pdf

Read this and put forth your arguments against the evidence she brought forward (direct quotes, teaching manuals, memos, Reece Committee investigation, etc...).

 

[Munky]

I can't watch it now, but my understanding is that there is a certain pressure on teachers to meet certain expectations with regard to how well their students perform. And in the spirit of refusing to call a spade a spade, certain school administrators will find it hard to admit that many of their students come from families which don't raise their kids to be responsible for their own success in life. So the choice is basically this - you either fail these kids and tell the parents it's their own fault, or you lower the standards to placate the lowest common denominator.

 

[DrPizza]

At my school, 10 absences (or 5 in half credit courses) and a letter is sent warning the parent. 15, and letter #2. If they pass 21 days, they're done. Nothing else is corrected, no further grades (other than zero.) No final exam.

Weird that we have a high success rate, huh?

 

[lotus503]

http://www.deliberatedumbingdown.com/MomsPDFs/DDDoA.sml.pdf

Read this and put forth your arguments against the evidence she brought forward (direct quotes, teaching manuals, memos, Reece Committee investigation, etc...).

Ill read it although it may take some time 700+ pages and all.

 

[Matt1970]

Hey, it's a lot easier to drop out and then bitch about your $10 Walmart cashier job later in life. Sure you need the display to know how many quarters dimes and nickles to give out, but damnit, you should be making $25/hr with full bennies.

 

[SheHateMe]

Hey, it's a lot easier to drop out and then bitch about your $10 Walmart cashier job later in life. Sure you need the display to know how many quarters dimes and nickles to give out, but damnit, you should be making $25/hr with full bennies.

Matt, I hope you aren't saying that everyone who works a shitty job at Walmart is there because they dropped out of school.

 

[chucky2]

It's not just to placate the LCD (just...large parts of the system are to do just that)...it's also to make sure The System doesn't backlog itself. If they actually kept kids back it'd completely break The System...you can't have 500 freshman when you're supposed to have 300. The folks who setup and exist in The System don't want these kids held back and actually taught something, they want them out ASAP as there's another kid right behind him the next year, and the year after that, and so on.

It's a large part of why NCLB was put in place, because schools (compromised of those highly paid admins and those super 'We care for the poor children students' teachers) were just pushing kids right on through, no care on if they learned a thing or not. Trusting schools/admins to setup a successful system really is not a viable option. Trusting them to do such a thing is what got us to NCLB in the first place.

Everyone concentrates on high school, really, the concentration needs to start on grade school (1-8), and then focus on high school. It's a huge drain on resources (which means lots of extra cost) to try and turn around a failed student that is starting freshman year. Oh well...someone needs to ring up my Cheetos and Pepsi at the local BP...

Chuck

 

[ZaneNBK]

We're currently home schooling my son due to the poor quality of public schools. He's in first grade right now and doing math at a 3rd grade level or higher and probably knows more history than most high schoolers.

Most of the big problems seem to be schools in large cities and their excessive class sizes. That combined with basically segregation due to most schools just taking students in a certain geographical area.

I lived in Kansas City in the early 90's and spent a semester at Westport High School, a communications and technology magnet school at the time. That school was ~%50 black and 50% asian with maybe 10 white people there. I was rather tall at the time and due to my skin color and height the other students often thought I was a teacher when they saw me in the hall. When I transferred to the school I was forced to chose different classes because they didn't have Physics or French. I ended up taking Oriental Cultures and Rug Weaving. Seriously.

The computer teacher was so ignorant of his subject he would ask me to take home floppies to copy for him. The business teacher was so bad that he put together a fund raiser to pay for students shooting up a construction workers car, by renting a movie from Blockbuster and charging the students to watch it. The school didn't care if you showed up or not, they wouldn't even attempt to contact parents. When I transferred out at the end of the quarter they couldn't even find my records, so the next school had to use my 4th quarter grades for the whole semester.

That was over 20 years ago, I can't imagine how bad things have gotten since then.

To their credit, Kansas City did try to fix the segregation issue by changing all the public high schools to magnet schools. Unfortunately, waving your hands and say "Poof! You're a magnet school!" doesn't actually make those schools good at their intended focus and didn't get parents to start shipping their kids across town to go to schools based on their interests.

Segregation by location, which tends to end up along race lines in big cities, is a hard problem to overcome.

 

[Londo_Jowo]

Matt, I hope you aren't saying that everyone who works a shitty job at Walmart is there because they dropped out of school.

How did you read that into what he said?

However, if you drop out of school what type of job do you think you would land? Walmart? Target? K-Mart? Kroger/other major grocery retailer? Gas station/convenience store? McD's? B-K? KFC?..........

 

[Annisman*]

I'm technically a H.S. dropout, with an income range in the top 10-20% of Americans. I like the billboard I see on the way to work that says "100% of our dropouts need 100% of our support"

No government cheese for me, thank you.

 

[SheHateMe]

How did you read that into what he said?

However, if you drop out of school what type of job do you think you would land? Walmart? Target? K-Mart? Kroger/other major grocery retailer? Gas station/convenience store? McD's? B-K? KFC?..........

I was verifying that he wasn't trying to make that connection.


And sure, those are the jobs you'd end up now...but some of the folks in the thread about student loan debt think that it's entirely possible to make Monopoly money without high education.

Maybe 30 years ago. Not now. I certainly can't do that.

 

[Annisman*]

I was verifying that he wasn't trying to make that connection.


And sure, those are the jobs you'd end up now...but some of the folks in the thread about student loan debt think that it's entirely possible to make Monopoly money without high education.

Maybe 30 years ago. Not now. I certainly can't do that.

See ^above^ post, it is possible. Just not probable.

Edit: Well, I guess I don't know your definition of 'monopoly money' , certainly enough to live by.

 

[SheHateMe]

Edit: Well, I guess I don't know your definition of 'monopoly money' , certainly enough to live by.

There's a running joke here on AT that most of its members make 100k a week.

Basically, people here apparently make gobs of money and so you better listen to them when they tell you that you don't need no stinkin' education to get ahead.

Granted, the people saying this are old enough to by my father. So, times have changed.

 

[sandorski]

There's a running joke here on AT that most of its members make 100k a week.

Basically, people here apparently make gobs of money and so you better listen to them when they tell you that you don't need no stinkin' education to get ahead.

Granted, the people saying this are old enough to by my father. So, times have changed.

100k a week is what I lose in the couch....

 

[AyashiKaibutsu]

There's a running joke here on AT that most of its members make 100k a week.

Basically, people here apparently make gobs of money and so you better listen to them when they tell you that you don't need no stinkin' education to get ahead.

Granted, the people saying this are old enough to by my father. So, times have changed.

My father has admitted to me that he would probably be a bum if he was born in this age.