Do you need to be smarter than a fifth grader?

Schools in America are broken.  Ask anybody.  When the study countries we're like the top 25% but we spend like double what the top ten pay to educate their kids.

Didn't we invent the idea of universal education?  Kids in England were working in factories 30 years after the US wrote the Northwest Ordinance.

In America 25% of students don't graduate.  In urban settings it's normal for less than 60% of freshmen to graduate.  How many graduate without the ability to read?

I've subbed at some rough and tough schools and the expectations aren't high.  I've seen really good teachers create a fun and engaging atmosphere.  The students fought engagement.  The students couldn't be bothered to learn.  The students had reviews.  The students were coaxed and cajoled and pleaded with.  The students failed the very easy tests.

I've seen students disrespect their peers and their guides.  I've heard the "N" word more in one day than years outside.  Their leaders and school professionals do not get their attention or their interest.  They muddle through.  They are defined by apathy.  Apathy is their superpower and they are great at utilizing 

Teachers don't always use the best pedagogy.  Teachers are fighting this apathy and guess what, sometimes it's easier to fight apathy with a stick than it is to fight with the carrot.  The carrot takes a long time to prepare.  The stick doesn't.  They both take a lot of emotional energy.

Teachers don't always teach to all the modalities of learning and all of the seven different types of intelligence because they have to cover a large amount of content in their best modality and intelligence.  Guess what the students don't respond to any of them anyway.

Students sometimes couldn't be bothered to copy what the teacher writes on the board.  Look I did this.  And I analyzed their refusal based on certain premises.  First, maybe they thought that they wouldn't be graded on it.  Wrong.  I told them they would be.  Maybe they thought that that which was given freely was of little value.  Maybe, but 30% copied incorrectly.  Maybe they thought that succeeding in math was unnecessary because of social promotion that they had been experiencing several years of their school careers.

Students don't read their textbooks.  School textbooks are big business.  14 Billion dollars a year on school textbooks that aren't even read.  The teachers don't assign the students to read them.  Maybe they'll assign sections of the social studies and/or English Composition books.  A lot of schools have paid $10,000+ for class sets that are never assigned, books that aren't read cover to cover, and students who don't use technology to supplement their education.

Students have access to all the classes almost any college can offer.  They can read Wikipedia and other online materials all day everyday.  Students now have the ability to create, learn, experience, engage with, more sources of information, more teachers of skills, more experienced mentors than ever.

Students could go to school and learn four languages and three instruments and more information in one year than we used to learn in a decade before the internet, but they just don't.  They could watch teachers teach every section of knowledge imaginable from several different teachers and they can do all that without leaving bed.

Schools in America are terrible.  I know English, Aussies, South Africans, Korean, Russians, Ukrainians, Czechs, Pakistanis, and Thai.  Maybe a couple of other countries and they're not really much better than ours when you strip our incongruous disabled population.  But even if this is just about us.  American schools are bad.  Ask anyone.

But how good do they have to be?  What if the main thing we need to concentrate on is primary school?  Okay, lets say the the goal should be to learn and I mean MASTER a content test for all the information you should learn when you're in the 5th grade.  Now, spread the content of 5 years + Kinder out to say 8 years of schooling.

So if we concentrate on reading, writing, and arithmetic then you never let anyone graduate without getting that content.  Anyone doesn't want to pay attention and get that content.  They can go home.  Self-induced expulsion I call it.

What about High school?  I am well aware that there is a need for some students of every ethnicity, socioeconomic level, and gender to have the opportunity to try computer science, higher level math, chemistry, biology etc.  We must offer to find those who would make their careers in those fields, not to mention, those who would truly revolutionize those fields.  But need we offer it to everyone or just anyone?  Huge difference.  I posit that universal education is follows the proverb, you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink.  Education is on offer if you will but take it.  Teachers in a school with these expectations don't need to be as engaging, but still interesting and entertaining.  These educators are the people who are taking our best and brightest students and finding out if they are so.  The work should be challenging enough to see if they are passionate about the content and capable enough to succeed in the pursuit of a higher education.  Send all kids to school.  Kids get 5th grade educations by 8th grade.  Kids graduate or drop out.  Kids who graduate can attend these high schools.  High school is like college in this reality, demanding and difficult.  Maybe high school becomes collegiate, but you dabble in everything.  College becomes a place where you take 101 classes.  You take introductions.  You survey.

Students who do not graduate the 8th grade go to remedial high school.  This is a second chance to learn the content of the first 8 years.  This place has teachers that specialize in being engaging.  These teachers always follow best practices.  These teachers have small class sizes and may work with an aid for instructional.  These students are special needs(lower capabilities not severe disabilities), but aren't behavior issues.  Behavior issues don't go to school.

People who don't want preparatory college high school and didn't need remedial can begin to learn trades.  They can start working as bus boys, dishwashers, lawn mowers.  Start teaching them about compound interest in middle school and find them a job at 15 they can save $100/month doing.

Students who don't want to work or go to either kind of high school do not get welfare.  Now, here in lies a crux.  I think the welfare culture and the failing schools are connected.  I could be wrong.  I believe there are some in both industries fudging the numbers to change the perception, but this is my belief.  If the flow of benefits runs dry then I believe people, not all but most (95% is a guess), will go back to school or the work force.  Social security and SSI disability were supposed to be about 5% but now it's way higher.  I know Romney got destroyed for saying it was 47% on some sort of assistance; that seems legitimate if not precise.

Two reasons we NEED kids to graduate.  75% of crime in the US is committed by high school dropouts.  And a high school dropout will make $200,000 less over a working career than a graduate.  And a dropout is three times more likely to fall below the poverty line and be subsidized by the government.  It's in our economic interest to make them graduate.  And it's in out penal interest to make sure they earn it.

So there is my plan for a revolutionary education overhaul.  Be amazed.  It really was a lot of verbal mental diarrhea I've been thinking about since I really thought about what students needed to learn in high school.  And what they do, but don't.

I have decided to do this more often...again.  For some time now I've been caught up in trying to get a a job and not working on the kind of job I want to have. 

This year I've been a substitute teacher.  I've had more students this year than most teachers will have in a fifty year career.  I admit that I don't know these students as intimately as their teachers do.  However, not knowing them as intimately as their teachers also should afford me greater authority on the whole of education.  Shouldn't it?  I mean if we say I can't say things about any teachers kids that they can refute because they 'know them better.'  Shouldn't I be able to say things about the entire education system because I, 'know it better?' 

So this year I substitute taught at over 25 schools.  I spent more than one day at about 10.  I spent over two weeks at three.  One of the three long term jobs was kindergarten generalist.  One was Essential Academics (read severe disabilities), and one was as Educational Assistant (read teacher's aide for classrooms with a lot of special ed students at a high school.  All of my jobs span two districts and one private school.  I would have gone to Austin ISD, but at the time I told myself I should specialize so that fewer administrators got to know me better.

So hopefully I'm going to write several things I've learned about school.  Several meaning if I'm not lazy or forgetful than several others will follow.  I've learned them to be true from my experience.  Some other people could refute my experience with metadata.  And the first thing I've learned is...

1. Social promotion doesn't work.

I was with a teacher in her class.  It was a class for students who failed Algebra I and Algebra II.  We received to standardized tests from the district over the period of three weeks.  They were to diagnose low performance.  In one class of twenty.  Three worked on the test.  In one class of 25 three worked on the test seven or eight copied it with a level of stealth that I would describe as elephant ninja.  It didn't matter. 

The teacher took me through there scores from years past.  What she was doing was probably less than legal.  She showed me that they had all been failing math since the fifth and sixth grade.  They had kept failing and kept on moving on to the next section. 

Now they were taking this coarse to help them buff up their math skills to help them pass the STAAR exam to get their diploma.  The teacher felt like that was impossible.  How was she supposed to teach them Algebra I and II in a year when they couldn't learn it in two?  How could she get them to work when they hadn't worked, but had still been promoted?  How could she get them the skills they needed when they didn't know their times tables?  There was a hole of knowledge she couldn't get back to and around and catch up before their time was up and if she had the will the students didn't.

One day the teacher wasn't their.  I became normal substitute instead of just aide.  Homework was assigned.  The teacher told me to give it out and pick it up at the end of class.  With her permission I did ALL the problems on the board.  I wrote out all the problems and how to do them on the board.  I told them to copy.  The assignment wasn't worth a lot to their final, but it did affect it so why not copy.  In a class of 20, ten students handed in the assignment.  Only two got a hundred on the assignment.  In another class of 25 almost 20 turned the assignment in.  Ten got hundreds on the assignment.  I'm not sure which is scarier.  That so few could copy, or that some didn't even copy.  I didn't do this on the board because I wanted to know if they could copy.  I figured they'd retain some of the process if I did a lot of step checking and understanding checks.  It didn't.

A lot of these students will graduate.  I taught three sections of this class with the same teacher.  There were 65+ students.  The school graduates over 75% of the students who go all four years.  That means that some of the students who couldn't even be bothered to copy will walk the stage.  The school is graduating a lot of students so that it won't appear to 'leave children behind.'  But they're being left behind anyway.  Now they're left behind adults. 

Social promotion doesn't work.  It doesn't incentivize kids to achieve.  It doesn't incentivize them to work hard.  They just go to school and collect attendance (Which the school still cares deeply about because that's how they get paid).  The talk with their friends.  The don't learn.  If possible, a sport might pressure them to succeed, but how difficult is achievement in classes where all you have to do is copy the stuff off the board?

Now, there is also a lot of evidence that failing students doesn't work.  Did you know that?  There are white papers about it.  There are randomly selected test subjects in pools of thousands.  There are data sets and control groups and PhD's.  Wow! I'm convinced.  I read this for the first time in an Education Week article.  I did a double take.  Most of the teachers that I know don't think so.  I did a triple take.  I started doing some online research.  It's true.  There is evidence that this doesn't make students work harder.  Except for me.  And you.  And like every other kid of a particular generation before social promotion.  It isn't true.  Studies like this may have been done without polling.  But I studied harder to make sure I didn't fail.  I heard other students, friends and acquaintances say this.  These studies may be saying that it didn't work because some students still failed, but how many didn't because they feared failing.

And now the numbers are skewed.  There is no way in my mind that I can believe high schools are graduating only students who have achieved a satisfactory understanding of Texas essential knowledge and skills.  Colleges are agreeing with me since most have increased or invented for the first time remedial programs on campuses of higher learning.  Can you get the results that social promotion is working?  Yes, if you graduate students who haven't achieved.  My question for those schools is that diploma.  It is a certificate of achievement.  And how can we in good conscience certify that students have achieved all the requisite knowledge and skills if they haven't?

So.

Stop passing those who fail.  Maybe not all at once.  Maybe schools should for a very short period of time one to two years only fail the students who make below 50 rather than 60.  Later, when children will skip on party a month or one Netflix binge a week in order to not fail then you can reorder the amount of failings.  Give teachers a free pass to give to one student who they can certify tried but didn't succeed.  Let Principals give some out for extenuating circumstances.  Let kids go to summer school.  My way out is that you tailor the way out to each individual student.  I hate a solutions that are supposed to fit every student in every school in every city in every state.  I'm willing to admit failing doesn't always work as a disincentive.  If we can all admit that not leaving any child behind pushes some adults way too far ahead.

There's a very old quote, "If I advance, follow me.  If I retreat, cut me down.  If I fall, avenge me." Source unknown, but I've heard it was Napoleon.  This seems to me to be the single solution voice when the problems are legion.  There is no one size fits all.  There is not cookie cutter solutions.  We need all the tools.