On Feb 3, 12:28 pm, Mark & Juanita wrote:

SNIP of reference quote

Progress reports go unanswered; emails ignored; phone calls
are unreturned.

Nailshooter, you put that point a lot more eloquently than I did and with
a lot more good humor.

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If you're gonna be dumb, you better be tough

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I have a whole new outlook on teaching, teachers and parents with my
pal going to teaching than I did before. Talk about a look from the
inside. Simply having kids in school and claiming you understand
teaching and the school system is like building a birdhouse and
calling yourself a general contractor.

Until his new school super came on board, the teachers caught all the
flack for poor student performance. We all know there are poor
teachers, but according to him, there are also a lot of good ones.

He hasn't had to face the guy that work 2.5 jobs and lives out of
district because his child was bussed and he is afraid of child
protective services. Paul would probably drive out to meet that guy
personally. No... it is much more mundane. The excuses he hears are
"I forgot", "oh, was today?" and (my favorite) "I didn't do good at
math either, so why should he?".

The best though, is when it is time to pass/fail, and the parents are
sent a notification letter and very few respond. They do respond
though (magically finding the time!) when they find out their kiddo
will be held back a grade. Their response? No one told me. This is
the first I have heard of this...

And since the teachers didn't keep records of when they sent out
notices, emails, made phone calls, etc., they were held at fault by
the parents. How could their little angel be put back a grade? He
only missed 10 unexcused days in the whole semester... and he did turn
in something for an assignment... I don't know what it was or what
class it was, but I do remember that one day he was working on
schoolwork...

Enough teachers received discipline notices that they pushed the
principal and superintendent to come up with a new plan since they
felt like they were getting blamed for problems. Now, since the
school district has been SUED for not passing students, they have a
system that satisfies today's litigious requirements.

They are required to notify the parents (and keep records of same) if
the students start slipping in their grades, have unexcused absences,
or they are tardy too many times. They parents must be notified in a
time frame that allows the student to recover. If there is no
response, they do it again, all documented, this time with the
principal involved. If no response, they notify the parents again
with the assistance of the principal's office so that the school admin
is involved.

In other words, they are building a case against the parents.

And to address another aspect of suspicioned technophobia, here's how
phone notification works (according to my buddy):

"We called you twice to let you know about this"

"No you didn't"

"Yes we did"

"No you didn't"

"Oh yes we did!"

"Prove it!"

Although he likes that one, he really likes the parents that wind up
with the principal telling the admin staff they have never heard of
Paul, much less talked to him.

The parents if these children don't feel the need to keep up with
their kids, and they honestly feel like it is the job of the school to
assist them in raising their kids, not just to educate them.

What is truly sad is the fact that the kids know they face no
consequences from parents or school, and with a 47% dropout rate (2006
statistic as compiled by the school district) before graduation, they
don't care. Paul's students have told him, "yeah dude, I gave the
note to my parents but you know they won't call." He tries to do what
he can, but he is now at the place in his career where he realizes you
simply can't save them all. And without help from the parents -
impossible. According to him, the parents are usually 75% or more of
the problem.

But here is where the district is caught in the crack. If they have
XX % of dropouts or fails, they will lose their State funding first,
then their Federal funding, which means they are gone. Strange, isn't
it? It puts them in a position of trying everything they can to keep
butts in the seats, if for no other reason than to protect the jobs in
the school district.

I don't want this to sound like I am 100% all pro education, though.
Rest assured, I do see both sides of the arguement. If the parents
don't care about education and furthering the interests and well being
of their kids, who are we to say that is wrong?

And when I am trying to screw with Paul (who still has a little of
that "Welcome Back Kotter" them song running through his head) I
always tell him to calm down, and like water, let the situation find
its own level.

We live in South Texas, and in some areas of the state business is
mainly manufacturing and agriculture. So my questions to him a if
all are educated, who will pick our lettuce? Who will pick the
grapefruits and pack them for shipping? Who will clean up my jobsites
and load the dumpsters? Who will prime and paint the bumpers at the
truck bumper plants? Who will clean the live animal pens at the meat
packing plant, and who will clean the guts up from the killing and
first gutting floor at the slaugher house? Who will hold the "SLOW"
sign that you see when going through a small road construction
project?

So if we educate them all, who will do those jobs? Certainly not the
immigrants that are coming over these days. They make work the fields
if they are illegals, but the legal guys that take piece work from me
are educated enough to do complex carpentry work, do some really good
paint/plaster work (including estimating material amounts and costs
for large jobs) and some even run their own small businesses. So
where would that leave us in the long run if we run out of people to
take the worst jobs? In one sense, those with lesser education hold
an important position in our economy. Would any of you want your kids
doing those jobs to support a family - your grandkids?

Thankfully, we won't have to make that decision for a while. His
school district will continue on as it has for many, many years, and
we will have a steady supply of feeble minded imbeciles that simply
cannot do better. Some have the native intelligence to do so, but
simply not having been encouraged or disciplined to do better, they
don't. These smarter guys make great drug dealers and the actual
leaders of some of our local gangs.

For me, the solution is easy. If the parents don't participate and
show an interest, their kids are doomed. If neither side cares, and
ample time, effort, tax payer's money and teacher attention is spent,
they should pull out both parents and kids from the school, and leave
the teachers with the parents that give damn and kids that want to
learn. There are still a few of those families out there, even in his
district.

Robert