So do we run from our local communities/schools and move to Wayzata, Orono and Edina? Or do we stay put and fight for them?
I asked a friend once what a parent should do who is faced with having their kids in a challenging school situation? He answered immediately that it was their responsibility to move the kids immediately to the best possible school. Then I asked him what would happen to his local community/school if every engaged parent and good student did that? He didn't like the resulting situation.
I have pondered this discussion for a long time and still do not have the answer...
- I want my kids to get a good education that will help them succeed in life.
- I want the my RAS communities to thrive and grow, not wither and shrink.
- I want my kids exposed to diversity in a healthy and positive manner.
- I want my kids to learn to have empathy for and help student's that are not as lucky.
By the way, we are here for the duration unless something changes significantly. I think this community is worth fighting for... And there is more to school and life than Math and Reading scores... Though they are pretty darn important !!! (This opinion of course coming from an Engineer/Project Mgr...)
Osseo Demographics
12 comments:
Well, here I am going to back off a bit from my insistence that it is the schools' duty to teach, regardless of the level of necessary parental involvement that may or may not be there. I have long said that good students can get a decent education almost anywhere, because their homes expect it of them and can fill in the holes left by mediocre public schools. So if your kids are getting a "good" education where you are, even if all around them are failing to make the grade, you can stay put.
IF, however, you have the MEANS to buy a home in another district with better schools, and your kids are small enough to take advantage of that, I consider that you are derelict in your parental duties if you do NOT move. The big kicker here is that most people aren't rich. They tend to move once, when the kids are young, ALWAYS to an area with "good schools." If those schools go bad, you are stuck with them, and they ALL go bad, either through academic failure or fiscal irresponsibility, as your graphs show. (In business terms, product quality declines and the price increases.) At this point, the only thing you can do is apply pressure to the local schools and to the State (where all the stupid rules are made and where money flows like wine at a Bacchanal) to make the schools better for EVERYBODY, but especially for those who do NOT have the wealth to move nor the advantages your kids have-- those whom the public schools are failing, and there are millions of them in Minnesota alone. It's unacceptable and cries out for redress.
J. Ewing
I think we pretty much agree. yippeee !!!! Though calling me a derelict hurts... (just joking) Each of us needs to attain peace and balance on our own terms.
I agree whole heartedly with the applying pressure concept. My biggest heartburn right now is with the protection of incompetent teachers. By incompetent, I mean those that often lose assignments, walk out of classrooms and leave the EA in charge, fail to collect assignments, have NO classroom control, make up good grades when challenged, apply 100% grades to homework without checking it, ramble during lecture, etc. I mean truly incompetent...
Yet after 100's of parental complaints to the administration, they are still in the classroom screwing up kids and wasting a portion of the kid's life. These are the small minority (2-5%), yet I continue to hear specific cases of them year after year.
That is soooooo wronnnngggg!!!! Teachers: Rise Up and Police Your Own Ranks !!!! You Owe It to the Kids and Your Profession's Reputation !!!!
So long as incompetents are protected by union agreements and wages set by union negotiators, teachers are NOT professionals! They say they are, but they are lying to us and to themselves. That is why I think merit pay is so important. When teachers are paid on merit, as professionals, the power of the union is broken both individually and collectively, including the political power that rewards incompetence at the school district level. How else to explain Minneapolis schools getting nearly twice the State average "pay" for results that are half of the State average. The Catch-22, of course, is that to break the political power of the union through merit pay, you have to break the political power of the union and pass the law accordingly.
J. Ewing
The Union's/Teacher's protection of teachers that are in essence harming children by failing to teach them or control the classrooms, certainly would leave many of us with that perception...
I compare it to if Professional Engineers allowed incompetents to design buildings... Even after they proved incapable...
Oh well... That building fell down and killed a few people... I'm sure they'll do better next time...
As an architect friend of mine said, when I inquired if he had been involved in some buildings he considered "ghastly" architecturally, "You know how many charlatans there are in your profession, so there are in architecture. Ever make you wonder about doctors and lawyers?"
At least those professionals are judged in the free marketplace, and the worst ones, when discovered, can be eliminated. That is why I insist on saying teachers are NOT professionals. They do not exist in a free market for teaching services. The first essential is to create merit pay, so that merit, or the lack thereof, can be properly compensated.
J. Ewing
It is interesting also that Engineers, Architects, Doctors, Lawyers, etc can also lose their license for violation of the standards. I wonder what a teacher would need to do to lose their license?
You are correct though that the desire to keep a job or keep their business open helps to keep people on the straight and narrow. Also, it helps give them external motivation during periods of time when their internal motivation is low... Which happens to all of us at times.
If work was always fun... They would call it play... Sometimes we need some help pushing through the harder times... The external motivation/stress can be a good thing.
I wonder what my performance would look like if no one could hold me accountable, and my job and compensation was secure. And there really was no way for me to influence my compensation except "time served". It would be very strange and disturbing indeed.
Furthermore, imagine that you are told more or less what and how you will deliver as your work product, and that you are not beholden to your "customers" for the quality of it. Imagine being paid the same regardless of how well you do your job. It is a tribute to the devotion of so many good teachers that anything gets taught at all. That is why I would love to see merit pay, so that these "master teachers" could be recognized and those who are just putting in the time can be put off somewhere else. I really believe that is where reform starts.
J. Ewing
When some loud bragger tries to put me down and says his school is great,
I tell him right away, "Now what's the matter, buddy, ain't you heard of my school? It's number, er, ah, 23rd in the state?"
And so what if it is? In St. Louis Park, I went to the scrappy Central Junior High, the old high school long since closed. The hoi polloi went to the newer preppy Westwood Junior High. But while there was a small clique or two few cared about, we all came together in high school.
Maybe we parents are worrying about this far more than the kids, far more than we should, maybe? Would it hurt us to talk up Cooper and shut up about IB while the kids are in the room? Follow enough to know they're making the expected effort, but also make sure their budding social needs get some attention and blessing, too. Does it really matter if it's Orono or Fridley?
When other nights and other days may find them gone their separate ways, they will have these moments to remember.
Heaven forfend, Beach Boys references aside, that we should damage these kids' self-esteem by pointing out that their teachers are making mental defectives of them, and crippling any chance they have to compete for a good job with a good salary. Maybe it's time to get a little angry when your school is actively short-changing your child, and cheating you out of what you paid for.
We entrust our most precious possession, the lives and future of our children, to the public schools. When they fail our children as badly as they do in many cases, they ought to be going to jail, not getting a raise in pay.
J. Ewing
We as parents and taxpayers have to continue the fight to either improve or close the public school system. But we're not helping our cause or our kids by whining in front of them about how nice it is at Edina or Breck.
We can and should press for improvements like abolishing RSI, but we can also appreciate the efforts of our local districts as they navigate the Byzantine rules flowing from St. Paul and increasingly, Washington DC. That's where the real battles are.
Suppose you somehow became the Supreme Leader of 281, and started cleaning house. No more RSI and IB and ECFE. No more teacher tenure. No more steps and lanes, just performance. The good are rewarded and promoted, the badpromoted, the bad dismissed. Budget neutral vouchers for anyone who wants out. No more social promotion or grade inflation, as in grounds for termination.
We'd see you on the news: now serving three consecutive life terms for the myriad of laws you would have violated.
Just because something is difficult or even illegal doesn't make it NOT the right thing to do. If it weren't for the fact that parents interested enough to change the system have enough interest to get their kids educated in spite of the schools, we might make some progress. Seems to me that what we need are MORE dissatisfied parents and maybe even kids. Not dissatisfied with their school compared to another, but dissatisfied with their school "not living up to its full potential."
J. Ewing
Correct, JE. We have to speak up against the whole system that it wholly went short of where it needs to be, even in the best districts.
Infighting district vs district actually serves the teachers unions, who then say "more money to shore up the poorer performers!"
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