How are they the community's fault? They can't control a parent who doesn't care about their child's schooling. And live we've all seen, many times when a parent doesn't care, the kid isn't going to care.

That's awesome that your wife's school district is near a city bus stop. I'm sure parents in our area would LOVE for their child to walk half a mile from the bus stop to the school, especially with child molesters out there, and then with the snow and rain. Great idea.

PLEASE stop thinking that everyone and everything is so privileged like your family apparently is.

While I get what you are saying, you have to look at it like this,in some cases, kids living near a bus stop would HELP them go to school. When I was in 8th grade, we walked about a mile or so to school thru 'some of the roughest streets of Baltimore' through heat, wind, cold and rain, and lived to tell the tale...wooo hooo. Not everyone nor every district is privileged enough to have school buses that stop at your door to pick you up and drop you off.

While I may not agree with everything Kevin has said in this thread, i can see the point he has made here.

Not every parent has a car, nor will every parent be able to drop their kids off. A good transit system can sometimes be an appreciative motivator to get kids to and from school.

You're completely right. While I never had to take the bus, I know there are kids who heavily relied on the school busses, and the bus stop was very near their homes.

Detroit's bus system isn't exactly safe and I'd never put my niece or nephew on it alone. Hell I'd never ride it alone or even with a friend. I think it'd be harder in suburbs for students to rely on the bus system to get to schools outside of their district. I know the two charter schools in my area aren't near a bus stop.

It was actually harder for me living in the city catching the bus (buses running late or crowded, apathetic drivers, and so on).

Now in converse to that, I live in the suburbs and the kids have EASY access to get transportation and to school. Metro stops at all the corners, 3 buses to and from the subway and then of course the subway itself, not to mention that YES, the regular yellow school bus. Never rule out transit when it comes to getting kids to and from school and how teachers rely on it.
I don't care where you live....in Grime City USA or Lily White County...putting a child on a bus system is dicey business at best unless you plan for it.

It is truly hilarious for you to think of these kids as 'privileged.'

As far as transit stops go, schools should work with community organizations which can help to add bus stops and transit options to help kids get to school. That's one of the big advantages to having city buses rather than fixed-guideway transit options -- routes can be changed and added to. The only real hangup is where the bus picks up and generally, bus stops are around at fairly regular intervals.

As far as being afraid of child molesters, etc., bad stuff happens every day. Chances are it won't happen to you no matter where you are so long as you are aware of your surroundings and don't make yourself a target, travel in groups, etc. If you're going to use a dangerous city bus, it doesn't mean you have to walk into the situation unsafely or naively.

Also, around here, if you're on a city bus, you can basically have it stop and let you out at any time. I don't know if that's an option where you're from, but merely having a bus which drives by or near the school ought to be enough.

Really though, you missed my point entirely. Ultimately, it's up to individuals to see themselves out of their dire straits. If someone is there to help them? Awesome. If not? That's really no excuse.

Out of curiosity, what is a suburb to you? I think we're thinking of two totally different things. In our version of the suburb, people drive everywhere. Even driving to Downtown Detroit isn't bad as far as parking goes. There are a few parking lots that are used for people who work downtown and don't want to drive there and take the bus. In our suburb, you even DRIVE to the bus stop lol. We don't have Metro... we have SmartBus, driven by the craziest drivers and I don't know how many times I've almost gotten hit by them. And we also don't have a subway system. Mass transit or whatever people call it isn't an option in our area. I think it'd be completely awesome if we did. I wouldn't get stuck driving my drunk friends around.


I forgot to post earlier that I have a few teacher friends. We chatted about NCLB and I was under the impression that it meant no matter how bad a kid was doing, he wouldn't fail that grade. I didn't know that there was SO much to it. Both of these friends that I spoke with are by far lazy teachers. They are constantly thinking up new and different projects and activities for the kids. They are involved in their life as far as a teacher can go. They are the type of teachers that a student goes back to and says "You were an awesome teacher". Both of them aren't happy with this system because they DO have to teach the test. They don't have much of a choice because the schools make "the test" their curriculum.

I hate standardized tests. I'm a bad test taker. I probably would have graduated high school and college with a 4.0 had I never had to take a test.

Im 20 miles away from downtown DC if that matters. And yes where I live, having a car DOES matter although here in THIS county we have decent Metro access. ANd I am lucky that I live near the end of the subway line. My MIL and my best friend live 5 miles away and have to drive to MY area to get metro access but that's not considered rural...heh.

But that is beside the main idea of what Kevin was trying to impart.

The main idea really is kids with any kind of access has a better chance to make do with the school system than those who don't

I didn't know that there were different 'versions' of suburbs.

I think NCLB has done a lot of good. It's flawed, but it's done more to focus instructional resources on typically ignored, or at least marginalized, public school learners than probably anything we did previously, maybe since integration.

Teasing out subgroup performance meant that even schools with high average scores had to consider the performance of the learning disabled, minority groups, and the economically disadvantaged, for example, and dedicate resources to their instruction that they probably weren't getting before. And sure, lower performing schools did probably reflect their communities maybe more than they reflected the efforts of their staff, but NCLB meant districts had to be somewhat more serious about staffing these schools with certified teachers and somewhat focused on instruction.

The problem with too much complaining about "teaching to the test" is that there's really no evidence, since we didn't really measure much, that there was some golden age of teaching before accountability. And while NAEP scores* haven't really gone up as much as most state test scores, I don't think anyone can point to a measure of education that has gone down since NCLB was implemented.

*NAEP is a national test that is giving in some districts to track performance over time. It gives a measure of how kids today are performing compared with kids twenty years ago. It's not flawless, but it's interesting.

The biggest thing that bugs me is that people attribute a lot of crappy instruction to the law that the law doesn't actually require. If your system delivered good instruction, it wouldn't have to teach to the test. The states made their own tests, so if the tests are crap or poorly linked to the state curriculum, your state, not NCLB is to blame.

The bolded part is a great example of what I meant as far as the bill getting blamed for district response to it.

Sure, graduation rate as measure by the number of 9th graders who enter who graduate four years later is one indicator for school performance under NCLB. BUT it's the school districts and spineless administrators who have decided that rather than try to get kids to do all their assignments and actually learn something (or take responsibility for re-taking the course) that teachers should just hand out passing grades. These geniuses apparently have so little faith in actual learning that they don't see that there would probably be a relationship between lowering requirements for the class and kids maybe not learning as much to show off in the tests.

But NCLB probably included graduation rates so that schools didn't have a perverse incentive to push kids no likely to do well on the tests out of school. And yes, I think there are some schools that would have done this. I think a lot of schools indirectly encouraged certain kids to drop out for a long time.

The community (like in terms of enforcing laws) can most definitely control a parent up until the child is around 16, so why can't it continue until the child is 18? True, there are kids that aren't gonna care if their parents don't care, but that isn't always the case. But if a child has parents who don't place any emphasis on getting a diploma, it's harder for them to continue. That is where the community should come in. I'm not saying that the community is to blame, but if you HAD to place the blame somewhere, IMO it would be the community.

ETA:
And where is your proof that the more stringent requirements for certification don't improve the quality? That's true that not every teacher is a quality teacher, but NCLB didn't lower the bar, the less-than-quality teachers have been around waaaaay longer than NCLB. The federal government sets up guidelines for what a "highly qualified" teacher is, and each state then sets their own standards for a "highly qualified" teacher. So really, it depends on the state if you have "lower" quality teachers.

I don't think there's different versions, just different visions. I've never been in the DC area so I have no clue what that looks like. I guess maybe we'd be considered somewhere between rural and suburb? Not sure. Dee can answer that.



I agree. Teenagers become adults at 18. That's when they are legally allowed to make life changing decisions so it makes sense. That would take away the option of dropping out of school. I still blame parents though. It's our duty as parents (well when I actually have kids) to raise our children and teach them wrong from right. It's not the teachers duty to raise our children. It's their duty to TEACH them reading, writing, arithmetics, etc. It's not the community's duty to raise our children, it's their duty to provide activities and recreation to enhance our children's senses and involve them in things other than the TV. It's not the law enforcers duty to raise our children. It's their duty to serve and protect.

When it comes to a student who's parents just don't care, then perhaps others can step in. I don't know what the real solution is. I was raised that if I failed a grade or class, my parents would be seriously disappointed and I'd be grounded. My friends who's (am I using that right? lol the irony) parents didn't care about their schooling excelled on their own.

oh yeah, I completely agree with you. I guess I just see how it is here in my community. A kid is allowed to miss 9 days of school a semester, and after the 9th day, the parent can be taken to court for truancy. Yet once a kid turns 16, they are allowed to drop out and no one cares anymore. I don't think it's right. The parent of the 16 year old should be taken to court just as much as the parent of the 1st child. But that happens soo many times here. In fact, there is an initiative here (forgot what its called) where the MAYOR goes to the houses of kids who have dropped out and encourages them to go back. Does it help? Ehhh, maybe when the news station goes out to cover it, but IDK if it helps that much.

The biggest thing that our community could do here is to change our mentality. A lot of parents are stuck in the "old way" and its hard to convince them otherwise. As long as you reach the kids, that is all that matters.

But my whole thing is that the teachers shouldn't be held responsible for drop outs. But with NCLB, they are.

Lol then we're agreeing completely on this. I think that's awesome that the Mayor is doing that. Things at your school were pretty similar to mine. I think we started out in 95 with 160some students. By graduation in 99, we graduated about 120ish. I'm sure the school system would cringe if that were now.

There was a girl whom I had known since kindergarten. Bright student, but then started hanging out with the wrong crowd. In high school, our Spanish teacher made a deal that if she came to class every day for a week, we'd have a pizza party the next week. She didn't make it. Eventually she dropped out. Her sister who was a year younger than her, although the biggest pothead I know, graduated in the top 5 of her class.

Our truancy policies are similar and parents are often taken to court before the child is 16. There have been a few changes made recently to help encourage the 16-18 year olds to stay in school. To get a driver's license, the 16 year old has to be in school. I don't know that they take it away if the kid already has it and drops out though. There has been some push to change the drop out age to 18 or graduation, whichever comes first, which makes a whole lot more sense to me. I don't understand why a 16 year old would be able to drop out of school when they're not allowed to do much of anything else without parental permission, including seeing R rated movies. That's definitely a way that society can help.

The mass transportation issue is pretty unique to Detroit. Most big cities have good mass transportation. This one I'll blame on the auto industry dominating our culture here. It's not in the best interest to implement something that will hurt the industry that 60% of your economy relies on. As a result, we have really crappy mass transportation. I have had co-workers who re-located here from other places be pretty surprised just how far people generally commute to and from work and how far apart we can live from each other. It's not unusual to work with someone who lives 100 miles from you because you each commute 50 miles from opposite directions. I guess we're more spread out than many metro areas. I mean, I'm dating someone who lives an hour and 15 minutes away and we both live in "Suburbs" of Detroit. You do have to get pretty far from the city to get to anything that I'd consider rural, especially to the north or west. To the south, it's more rural.

I agree, AGDAlum that it's interesting to look at the breakdowns in different districts of the sub groups scores. It's even more interesting that the Detroit area is so segregated that in the "best" districts, there are no subgroups. In the most affluent county around Detroit, all of the special ed kids go to one district, so the other districts don't have their scores included. Oh wow, they all go to the same district that the impoverished kids live in too. It's shady, really shady. So these really affluent districts send their learning disabled kids out for special ed and there are so few minorities in these districts that don't have to separate them out. So, those districts always make AYP and get the funding. Then the district that provides all the special ed for the county and is one of the few districts in that county that has poor kids doesn't make AYP ever and loses its funding. That's definitely a flaw. That's not as true in the two other Detroit area counties though. The other two are much more integrated.

I expect our graduation rates are going to dip drastically in Michigan in 2011 when the new graduation requirements go into effect. There are just some kids that won't be capable of meeting those requirements no matter how good their teachers are or how spectacular the curriculum is. Some kids aren't going to "get" Trig no matter what you do. Unless, of course, they just get passed through. I think that's why teachers are starting to do this "100% on homework" as long as it is finished, whether it's correct or not, especially in math. If you have all 100s on your homework, you can't fail the class, even if you fail all the tests. I didn't even realize that was going on until I noticed that my son was getting 100s on all his homework but 80s on his exams. I asked the teacher at conferences about it because I was concerned that he wasn't retaining concepts and wondered if I should get him extra tutoring. That's when I found out his 6th grade teacher gave 100 on homework if it was complete, even if every answer was wrong. My bright but very lazy son figured out that if he didn't feel like doing his homework, he could just put down anything and it didn't affect his grade. However, he didn't learn the material either so he wasn't working up to his potential on tests. I wasn't letting him get away with that so I told him I was going to start checking his homework every night and that if he was doing it incorrectly, I would show him how to do it right and he would have to re-do it. Then he started getting As on tests too. I don't know whether that teacher just started doing that or if that has always been his style. I wasn't impressed with that particular teacher though.

I do think that too much pressure is being put on individual teachers to ensure that their kids perform well. Can you blame the 8th grade math or English teachers for a child who cannot read at grade level or do higher level math? It's likely that they fell behind back in 1st or 2nd grade. That 8th grade teacher can't be held responsible for what was lacking in 2nd grade.

I don't know what teacher certification requirements are in other states. In Michigan though, it's all based on years of education. Teachers get their initial certification and have to complete 20 credits of grad school classes in 5 years to keep their certification. While that does require effort on a teacher's part, I'm not sure it measures how a teacher actually teaches, does it? It seems like more of a measure on how well a teacher can do in school rather than how well a teacher can teach children.

I have always felt that our society is very messed up with our priorities and pay scales. I've said this before on this board... we pay day care workers, who care for our children, and nursing home aides, who care for our parents, some of the lowest hourly wages. While teachers are better paid than them, they definitely aren't paid enough for the importance of what they do every single day. If we really want to make educating our kids a priority and we want quality people to do it, we are going to have to look at what we pay them. Although, I guess one could argue that nobody goes into teaching for the money, they must go into it because they have a passion for it.

To go with the graduate class thing and how well they are teaching... One of my friends who is in one of Downriver's better school districts has the principal coming in and out every so often. They have review days or something like that where the principal will spend the day or a half day in the classroom watching the teacher and how the kids react to the teacher. I think this is something that was implemented with NCLB. Although I do remember in high school our principal would lurk in the hallways and sometimes sit in the back of the room but I don't think there was an evaluation or anything.