Who you gonna blame?

 Who You Gonna Blame?

 

There are 156 schools in Baltimore City.   In 23 of those schools, not a single child tested as proficient in math.  Thirteen of those 23 schools were high schools.  At one Baltimore City high school, 77% of the students were reading at the elementary level and some even at kindergarten level.  Over the entire system, just 7% of kids in grades three through eight tested on grade level in math.

Surely heads need to roll for these results.    The big question is whose head is on the chopping block.  Lots of folks are looking to the woman who is the CEO of the school district.  But chances are there have been a few minutes since she taught in a classroom and had direct impact on students.

The problem is two-fold.  First of all, no one can teach in a chaotic environment and no kids can learn in that kind of environment.  But our political correctness is preventing us from suspending or in any way separating out the kids with behavior issues from those who are well behaved and ready to learn.   Many of the kids with behavior issues have learning difficulties and would be much happier being smart rather than bad.  But given that they don’t seem to have that choice they will pick bad over dumb any day.  Bad has some aplomb to it, dumb has none.

Then there is the second issue and that is the quality of the teacher in the room.  The City is down quite a few teachers for a variety of reasons, most of which has nothing to do with salary so let’s move beyond that.  The City is in a spot where they are hiring any warm body with a degree, a degree in anything.  BUT once the teacher is in the classroom, there is no support for that teacher other than the pacing guide.  Doesn’t really matter how much a person loves the kids and is enjoying being with them, teaching requires much more than love, it requires a very specific skill set. ( We had a bite out of that love apple in the early days of special ed when we retreaded teachers to be special ed teachers.)  Just because a person went to school doesn’t mean he/she can teach any more than you can be a physician just because you have been sick.

These teachers need strong support.  They need mentors that are in the room with them on a regular basis.  They need very structured staff development to teach them how to craft a lesson, how to teach that lesson and what to do when the lesson is a flop!.  They aren’t getting that.  What they are getting is a pacing guide that tells them what to teach and when to teach it but nothing of the how.

Finally, lots of these school resource officers need to be replaced with school social workers and outreach pupil personnel staff to go into homes and help families that exist with parenting skills.  And some of these kids need to be taken out of the living situation that is called a family but is really a farm raising kids to subsist on the street.

So who you gonna blame?  Every citizen in the city who prefers to finger point rather than actually do something to begin constructively fixing the problem.   Firing the woman at the top won’t do much if the foundation is rotten.