Every Child Left Behind
The field trip I chaperoned a couple of weeks ago illustrates almost everything that is wrong with our public schools in Connecticut. A school district in another region of the state received a mini-grant to do some diversity training by working their 7th graders with another district. The first district (we'll call them Killingly) which is made up of rural, low-income, mostly white students met with our district (we'll call us Pawcatuck) which is made up of suburban low-income, mostly white students. It was hard to look at the students and see what was diverse about the make up, but it actually took some time to get the opportunity to look at the other students at all.
Killingly applied for the grant and organized the trip, which was to a state park to participate in various games and team-building activities. Clearly, the district had spent a great deal of time and effort on the event. The principal from Pawcatuck, however, failed to open the attachment on her e-mail that listed the times, activity schedule, and location. This meant that Pawcatuck arrived an hour late because we went to the wrong state park.
While I was watching white kids play games with other white kids, I talked to one of the teachers from Killingly. He had been a 7th grade math teacher, but is now a grade 5-8 math tutor because so many kids are scoring low on the math portion of the Connecticut Mastery Tests, something that every district imposes on their students from grade three through grade eight (this is replaced by CAPT testing in 9th grade), and spends the first 6 weeks of school teaching to. These students, identified by the Killingly administration, are taken out of Social Studies for an entire semester and given double math periods. How could any district not understand what a BAD idea that is? We are already so ethnocentric, so bigoted (note the major news stories these days: keeping the Mexicans out and the homosexuals in the closet), and removing any hope of awareness of the world we live in seems a much greater crime than not being able to multiply fractions. And the most obvious thing is that Social Studies teaches math with timelines, population composition, and more.
It is horrifying that we spend fully 1/6 of the school year teaching to the CMTs in the first place, forgoing ANY other curriculum. Why not instead have administrators who prepare and organize their school's activities. Why not have a system set up, as they do in most European countries (where math scores are just fine, by the way) where schools and businesses are closed for two hours in the afternoon, forcing families not only to interact, but also to eat better. It's no surprise that the students who are doing the most poorly on the exams are the same ones who are in school early to eat breakfast there, who are then late for class because they are still eating their french toast sticks. Maybe the No Child Left Behind authors were taking double math instead of Social Studies, so they don't know there's another way.
Killingly applied for the grant and organized the trip, which was to a state park to participate in various games and team-building activities. Clearly, the district had spent a great deal of time and effort on the event. The principal from Pawcatuck, however, failed to open the attachment on her e-mail that listed the times, activity schedule, and location. This meant that Pawcatuck arrived an hour late because we went to the wrong state park.
While I was watching white kids play games with other white kids, I talked to one of the teachers from Killingly. He had been a 7th grade math teacher, but is now a grade 5-8 math tutor because so many kids are scoring low on the math portion of the Connecticut Mastery Tests, something that every district imposes on their students from grade three through grade eight (this is replaced by CAPT testing in 9th grade), and spends the first 6 weeks of school teaching to. These students, identified by the Killingly administration, are taken out of Social Studies for an entire semester and given double math periods. How could any district not understand what a BAD idea that is? We are already so ethnocentric, so bigoted (note the major news stories these days: keeping the Mexicans out and the homosexuals in the closet), and removing any hope of awareness of the world we live in seems a much greater crime than not being able to multiply fractions. And the most obvious thing is that Social Studies teaches math with timelines, population composition, and more.
It is horrifying that we spend fully 1/6 of the school year teaching to the CMTs in the first place, forgoing ANY other curriculum. Why not instead have administrators who prepare and organize their school's activities. Why not have a system set up, as they do in most European countries (where math scores are just fine, by the way) where schools and businesses are closed for two hours in the afternoon, forcing families not only to interact, but also to eat better. It's no surprise that the students who are doing the most poorly on the exams are the same ones who are in school early to eat breakfast there, who are then late for class because they are still eating their french toast sticks. Maybe the No Child Left Behind authors were taking double math instead of Social Studies, so they don't know there's another way.
posted by kingoftherabbits at
10:35 AM
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