How is the public education system in your area?

[xdan0920]

My wife is a 6th grade English teacher in a very wealthy district. Teachers are leaving left and right. Discipline is a joke. Years out of school followed by insane restrictions have Done real damage. Actions have consequences….

Another issue is….Teachers don’t want to teach the things the state (NJ) is forcing into schools. I’ll leave it at that.

Pay is stagnant. The pension system is on the verge of collapse.

There’s a lot of problems, and in a state like NJ, no solutions.

 

[JAMIESMITH]

Our younger daughter was enrolled in pre-K at a private school and the older one was getting ready to start sixth grade at the public school when Covid hit. We were only planning to send the younger one to the pre-K program at the private school because the public school doesn't offer it. When we saw what the public school had in mind fpr Covid restrictions, we pulled our older daughter and put her in the private school as well. We can barely afford it, but we will scrimp and save elsewhere to keep them both enrolled. It is SO much better for them academically and socially.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

This part of the study has been thoroughly debunked FWIW.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1584704405836034049

Debunked implies something more than a twitter post and a consensus among members of an appropriate community (for instance the vaccine causes autism study can firmly be said is debunked and is usually described as such); more than just an author/musician. And basing off his twitter posts I question his impartiality.

I wasn't reading a NYT article, from the statement they said there was no clear correlation and IMO with cause and effect is hard to discern that remote learning and only remote learning drives decline in scores rather than a multi-faceted reason. I remember hearing a lot of the complaints being just what workbooks being given to kids for instance some people reported them being robust and good and others sloppily given. A very simplistic example but one that popped into my head.

I didn't write the statement, that was contained within the article I read and while I think it's a good discussion to have over each and every little aspect but I don't think we're going to get that here on the DIS

 

[superme80]

We homeschool, but I have many friends who kids go to the local school. There is a huge teacher shortage. They replaced the superintendent and principal. A lot of teachers are gone so many classes are being combined. It is a bit of a mess. I really feel for these teachers. They are doing their best.

 

[xdan0920]

Debunked implies something more than a twitter post and a consensus among members of an appropriate community (for instance the vaccine causes autism study can firmly be said is debunked and is usually described as such); more than just an author/musician. And basing off his twitter posts I question his impartiality.

I wasn't reading a NYT article, from the statement they said there was no clear correlation and IMO with cause and effect is hard to discern that remote learning and only remote learning drives decline in scores rather than a multi-faceted reason. I remember hearing a lot of the complaints being just what workbooks being given to kids for instance some people reported them being robust and good and others sloppily given. A very simplistic example but one that popped into my head.

I didn't write the statement, that was contained within the article I read and while I think it's a good discussion to have over each and every little aspect but I don't think we're going to get that here on the DIS

whatever you say.

 

[LYSE]

We wouldn't live somewhere with poor schools so they are excellent...however we aren't happy with the teachers communication and the administration, but our daughter is doing extremely well.

 

[jalapeno_pretzel]

My wife is a 6th grade English teacher in a very wealthy district. Teachers are leaving left and right. Discipline is a joke. Years out of school followed by insane restrictions have Done real damage. Actions have consequences….

In our area we were already starting to see a big uptick in teachers leaving before the pandemic. Years and years of not giving adequate cost of living increases coupled with ever increasing responsibilities, increasing class sizes, parent demands, etc. But covid certainly accelerated things.

 

[AZMermaid]

I teach first grade in AZ. My school is very highly rated, “easy” to work at, great parents support etc etc. My kids are at my school too (post Covid- pre they weren’t because I never wanted them to be Mrs B’s kids). We are sorta ok. The 5th grade situation for math is a bit rocky. There was a lot of turnover last year. No one left for money reasons- it’s mostly more and more on our plates with les and less respect. Now teachers don’t even need a college degree in AZ. It’s demeaning. And it’s not like there’s exactly a huge line of people who would totally teach if it wasn’t for that pesky degree.

We are a school choice state. You can go basically anywhere as long as there is room. My school is about 50% open enrollment. The voters turned down vouchers for all, but the state government just approved it anyway. So now anyone can use their tax dollars for private schools (it had been a select group- mostly students with special needs). 80% of the people of have applied were already going to private schools. You could alreafy get tax credits for tuition, but this upped the amount by a lot. So…. We will see what that does to public school funding in a few years. It’s scary.

 

[CinderEmma94]

It’s less than great here. Especially if you have a child with special or extra needs. We planned to homeschool when we had our first baby (my husband was homeschooled and I went to public) however our son has special needs so we were basically bullied by his doctors, therapists and the district into putting him in public school. We followed what they said and regret it immensely. He is now homeschooled and thriving, doing so well academically and yes even socially. That year of red tape and being pushed to the side and a useless IEP and admin who didn’t give a crap (his teacher was wonderful but she was overwhelmed understandably - it was a special needs class) set him back even further and I’m so glad we pulled him out when we did. We will be homeschooling our other kids from the start and, like their older brother, providing plenty of opportunity for extra activities outside of the house (co-op, life skills, extracurriculars). I actually went to school to be a teacher (pre-kids) and while I love the idea of teaching there is no way I’d do it now, other than my own kids.

 

[fab1976]

We have some pretty big teacher shortages here in Ontario, Canada. Substitute teachers must be fully certified teachers and it’s often considered the first step to being a full time teacher. The hiring process is something else for teachers. They had one system for a long time, then it got changed so teachers who were waiting for their shot got shoved aside for newer teachers. Elementary schools, so k-8, seems to have positions filled. Daily jobs though, go unfilled more and more often now that we are a couple of days in. So that means a support teacher who does ESL or library, gets pulled to teach a class for the day. High schools, some classes haven’t had a solid permanent teacher yet. 2 months into school. Starting Monday they should have them, but some positions were hard to fill because there weren’t teachers with qualifications. So some high school kids lost a chunk of class time. Remains to be seen what repercussions that will have. Thankfully my son didn’t have any teacher issues in grade 10. My daughters school today had 3 unfilled absences. And that’s just one school in a district with hundreds of schools. It’s rough out there in the school staffing world.

 

[Cheburashka]

On the other hand, I see many ways lower income kids are excluded from these choices. Yes, it's a lottery to get in, but some have requirements like - a parent has to volunteer to do lunch monitoring 2x per month, or a parent has to sign up to direct carpool traffic 2 weeks out of the year. Not so easy for parents who don't have the job flexibility or income security to take time off during the day.

That is intentional. It's them trying to keep their school from being overwhelmed by low-income students, who usually have greater needs. They also want to keep out students whose parents are not engaged. I won't venture an opinion as to whether that is right or wrong- you could actually argue it both ways, but I will state that the school knows what they're doing with those exclusive requirements.

I'm a teacher who has taught at both charter and non-charter public schools. A charter I taught at two decades ago put no limit on who could enroll, and within a few years it was overwhelmed by severe discipline cases who were earmarked for alternative disciplinary placement at their district, and they chose our "little charter school" as an alternative to accepting that placement. So our school, with no real resources, had to deal with some extremely severe kids. I had a child molester (student) in one of my middle school classes. We also had a lot of students from really crappy public schools on the wrong side of the tracks, and a lot of those students were very low, academically, and there were other issues, too. When the numbers with those issues get very high and you have few resources, it just doesn't work.

At another charter school I worked at only briefly, they intentionally kept the very low income students out by not offering cafeteria lunches and not offering busing. Just those two steps cut down on low income students greatly, as well as some of the severe behavior cases whose parents just didn't want to deal with alternative placement or do much work on their child. It was night and day, compared to the other charter school I'd worked at.

When people compare charter schools to public, they need to keep in mind that charters have many methods (some explicit, some subtle) to filter the harder students out of their student bodies. Regular public schools can't, and that makes a huge difference to discipline, academic performance, teacher morale, etc.

 

[jalapeno_pretzel]

When people compare charter schools to public, they need to keep in mind that charters have many methods (some explicit, some subtle) to filter the harder students out of their student bodies. Regular public schools can't, and that makes a huge difference to discipline, academic performance, teacher morale, etc.

Oh yes, I completely agree this is intentional and they know exactly what they're doing. And then because there are less difficult students at the charter schools, the best of the public teachers are drawn to teach at the charters, which makes the public schools worse, which make more families that have the means to do so switch to private or charter, which again makes the public schools worse. I sometimes think there are some that would prefer to do away with public education altogether, and the method is to chip away at it slowly, making it worse and worse so that eventually everyone who can do so has withdrawn and gone an alternate route.

(At the same time, I have many friends with kids in charter schools, and I do not fault them one bit for pursuing the best education situation that they can for their kids).

 

[Cheburashka]

At the same time, I have many friends with kids in charter schools, and I do not fault them one bit for pursuing the best education situation that they can for their kids.

No, certainly not. My 17 year-old son has gone from private preschool, to public school, to homeschool, to private school, and back to public school, throughout his educational career, based on what his needs have been at any given time. Education is not one size fits all and parents should do whatever is best for their child.

Students with severe discipline problems persistently disrupting the education of everyone else is a serious problem in some public school classrooms. It is not the fault of teachers, who are at the very bottom of the rung of power. Discipline standards are almost nonexistent in some schools today for many reasons: lax and absentee parenting, politics, aspects of special education law that make schools fear being sued for not keeping even extremely disruptive emotionally disturbed students in the classroom, etc. I'm just tired of seeing public teachers and schools blamed for things out of their control.

 

[amylevan]

We are in a typical, average but small (graduating classes around 100-125) school district. We have always had somewhat higher than average teacher turnover due to lower pay and the way that teacher tenure transfers districts in Pa. So sometimes , teachers would work in our district long enough to earn tenure and then transfer to another district for higher pay. That said, we are a good district to work for for other reasons, so it was a factor, but not necessarily debilitating.

This year, it’s a bit more of a problem. My son (8th grade) has a freshly graduated science teacher that they hired literally the week before school started. His reading teacher gave notice this summer that he was leaving upon hiring his replacement or 60 days, whichever came first. They could not find a suitable replacement, so last week he left and my daughter’s 4th grade teacher, who is highly certified in reading, was moved out of her classroom to 8th grade reading and DD was given a newly hired, fresh out of college teacher - 8 weeks into the school year. I’m not happy about that. They essentially robbed my 4th grader of a great teacher to fill a hole in my 8th grader’s class. I would have liked to have seen a different solution there. And from what I understand, similar issues are happening throughout the district.

 

[Colleen27]

Mixed bag. Major sub shortages - no surprise since they're paying less than fast food or retail and subs have to pay all their own background check and licensing costs up front - and an even worse shortage of bus drivers. But our county implemented a "reverse scholarship" program (student loan pay-down grant) to try to bring kids back here after college graduation and it seems to be working; two of my 14yo's teachers went to school with my 24yo and came back to start their careers here. No clue about test scores but I assume they're not exempt from the pandemic-slide, though the district wasn't closed for in person instruction as long as many others. But lots of school board drama thanks to the "parents' rights" nonsense spreading on the internet, making parents think the school system is responsible for ensuring their child never see anything that goes against their personal beliefs and prejudices, and several school board candidates running on a book-banning platform this cycle.

 

[Gary M]

Our public school system was/is horrible. A few years ago the State of Indiana took control away from the local school board and ran our school system. After a few years the state turned the system over to our local university (Ball State U.) to run and they still control our schools. To top it off the FBI investigated fraud and corruption in our city government and convicted 9 officials of corruption. Most were sentenced to federal prison for short periods of time.

 

[Lumpy1106]

I'm not sure why you're disagreeing with me personally about the study. It's been done since 1969, it is the measure we've had before the pandemic and after the pandemic. It is meant as a measure for national understanding.

We all have antidotes to go off of but it is the largest understanding of how things impact our education system and has been for decades.

You and I agree more fleshing out should be done because well we haven't had a global pandemic before but it's not worthless just because you disagree with it now.

Not disagreeing with you, disagreeing with the results of the study. Do a YouTube search for "Cecily Myart-Cruz" to see why the LA Public schools are so terrible. She's the UTLA president. There are some who had good intentions and wanted to keep the schools closed for safety - then there was Cecily. She was militant about keeping them closed and it had noting to do with COVID - it was all abut $$$. If you can watch one of her addresses during the school shutdowns through to the end without screaming at your computer you are a stronger person than me. There is no miracle by which the LAUSD scores improved during COVID with her in charge.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

Not disagreeing with you, disagreeing with the results of the study. Do a YouTube search for "Cecily Myart-Cruz" to see why the LA Public schools are so terrible. She's the UTLA president. There are some who had good intentions and wanted to keep the schools closed for safety - then there was Cecily. She was militant about keeping them closed and it had noting to do with COVID - it was all abut $$$. If you can watch one of her addresses during the school shutdowns through to the end without screaming at your computer you are a stronger person than me. There is no miracle by which the LAUSD scores improved during COVID with her in charge.

I honestly believe you about LA schools, there were people talking about them throughout the pandemic, etc and most of the country has heard about CA has handled things. If you personally don't believe 4th and 8th grade test scores in any subject improved (in which case the only one in LA county was reading and it was for 8th grade) that's your personal take, can't argue with that. I just wouldn't leap to it's worthless was what I was getting at. I hear you on how different political figureheads (including union leaders, local other leaders, state leaders, etc) impacted things.

 

[RangerPooh]

My kids are spread across two school districts (shared high school), both of which rank highly. There have been a few teachers who have already left, at least one was for medical reasons. We chose to buy in our community for the schools and have not been disappointed.

The large inner city metro school district nearby is hit or miss depending on the school. I spent a semester teaching science in it before I quit. I bounced between two schools. One clearly had some support, the other nothing., it was already slated for closure. This said, the lack of funding, lack of communication, lack of mentoring, and overall lack of support was not worth the crud that I dealt with. At the lower performing of the two schools, half the teachers quit week one. The rest of us continued to quit throughout the semester. Only a small crew stuck it out the rest of the year. I have no plans to ever return to teaching. I am happy working in higher education, where I had been previously. Five years later I continue to enjoy working in higher education.

 

[Lumpy1106]

I honestly believe you about LA schools, there were people talking about them throughout the pandemic, etc and most of the country has heard about CA has handled things. If you personally don't believe 4th and 8th grade test scores in any subject improved (in which case the only one in LA county was reading and it was for 8th grade) that's your personal take, can't argue with that. I just wouldn't leap to it's worthless was what I was getting at. I hear you on how different political figureheads (including union leaders, local other leaders, state leaders, etc) impacted things.

I think there is a definite need for the study - there is no question kids took a step back and need help. I know we were very aggressive about getting DD16 help and moved DD8 to a different school. Not all parents have the ability to advocate for their kids in that way and we (as a society) need to figure out just how bad the problem is so it can be fixed. Worth noting and we are very aware, teachers have to by-and-large teach to the kids needing the most help. Just because your kid managed remote learning well or was able to get help does not mean that they are not experiencing learning loss - not to mention a host of other issues related to the forced isolation.

So yes, I would say we are on the same page. I just question how the LA school numbers don't reflect the problem...and I have my theories. It's worse, maybe THE WORST there, and you don't need a study to see it or understand why. It does the kids no good to pretend it didn't happen or that there isn't a problem.