"J. Clarke" wrote in message
...
Leon wrote:
"J. Clarke" wrote in message
...
Leon wrote:

Totally agree with that and I attribute the failure to poor teachers
that don't give a **** and that finally led to teachers that could
not find a job any where else. Long ago when teachers could step
in as a parent and administer discipline he or she could actually
teach. We have lost teachers that actually taught for baby sitters.

Uh, you might want to actually get drunk with a few teachers sometime
before
you blame them. They have to do what they can with what they've got
and what they've got these days isn't much (and I'm not talking
about the kids,
I'm talking about the rules they are required to work under). Wanna
fix education, first shoot all the professors of education and all
the school boards.


It may differ with location but for the most part the teachers you are
describing are what we had 20 years ago, but not in Houston today.
Today they are asking "how to do" from the kids.

Not sure what you mean by "asking how to do", however in some districts
teachers are forbidden to actually teach subject matter--they are
constrained when a kid asks a question to "facilitate" the kid looking it
up
for himself and disciplinary action will be taken against them if they
actually get caught answering the question.

My son's calculus teacher asked the students , how to do, a problem, she
could not figure it out.


I know it is not their fault, the teachers, for the most part the
good ones are long since gone.
And they are gone because they no longer want to be baby sitters
instead of maintaining discipline and actually teaching. Teaching
should also be considered a part of how a child is taught to act and
to respect others. That does not happen any more.
While I agree the restrictions/cigarettes was the root of the
problem.

I don't understand what you think cigarettes have to do with anything. As
for restrictions, it's not just "restrictions", its a whole mass of
bureaucrat-mandated bull****.

I was making a compairison, cigaretts/cancer, It started with restrictions,
then came the bureaucrat crap and eventually the cancer spread to the
teachers.



However the teachers are not the cause. They don't make the decisions.
They don't make the policies.

Don't recall saying the teachers were the cause but they have been sucked in
and have become part of the problem. The kids are more intelligent than
most of the teachers these days in the HISD.


You could staff the schools with a who's who of American leadership and
they
wouldn't be any better than they are now because they'd be operating under
the same rules.

That is right and the good ones eventually leave. Those that can't do
anything else or are in it for the benefits remain.


When there's something wrong with a huge organization, it's not the peons
at
the bottom who are causing it.

Correct, not the cause but do become part of the problem.


The HS my son went to was an exception to the norm, that school had
"good" teachers and there was not a discipline problem.

And this is symptomatic of the problem. Every parent knows that the
schools
are broken, but the one that their little darling went to was an
exception.

The only decent ones my son went to was the private school K-2 and the HS
9-12, the other 3 sucked.



That public
HS was by invitation only. The only requirement to be invited to
attend that school was that you needed to have a "Satisfactory"
average, for conduct, that's it. If a student became a discipline
problem they were warned once and the second time transferred to one
of the other HS's in the district.

So the teachers at that school weren't any better than the ones in the
other
schools, they just made the problem kids somebody else's problem. So do
you
think that those same teachers would have done nearly as well at one of
the
other schools?

Yeah they were better teachers. There was a waiting list for them to get
into the school. Problem kids were few and very far in between. My son
knew of "1" in the school, a frined of his, and he tas transferred out.




When my son began at that HS the school had grades 9-12. In all four
grade levels there were only 650 students. I would estimate that in
the other 3 HS's that there were in excess of 10K and that is a very
conservative estimate. Out of all of those students approximately
150 were invited each year to attend Kerr HS.

And from that you conclude that the _teachers_ at those other schools are
the problem?

"Part" of the problem and the ones we delt with, 3-8 grades seem
comfortable with that. They did not care for 3 way meetings with the
principal however.


Kerr HS taught the kids how to prepare for college every day. There
was no week off to study for the TAAS test, which is a Texas thing to
judge how the students are coming along for their grade level. His
middle school took a week every year to review for that test. IIRC
the year my son graduated 95% of the students had been accepted to a
college. IIRC 87% of those students had been awarded scholarships of
$15K or more.

And this is because the teachers were so brilliant you think.

I would not say brillinat so much as above average and the teachers had
nothing to do with obtaining the scolarships. That was all on the kids to
do the leg work.
The system was totally different in that school all the way up to the
principal. Teachers were allowed to teach and they did teach. And yes most
all of the teachers in that school were impressive, even to the kids.
Remember, the good teachers were lined up to get into Kerr. They wanted to
teach there, that came out at every PTA meeting.

In the other schools the teachers reminded me of typical "government
workers", there for the benefits.
I know that their attitudes were not all their fault, the system is to blame
but many of those teachers were like many of the kids, lost. You know when
the system sucks badly enough and you cannot attract good help because of
that fact you settle for less than desirable to fill the classrooms. That
is what I saw.


I'm certain that the education that my son received at Kerr HS played
a very major roll in him transitioning so smoothly into college. I
recall the 10th graders mentoring the incoming 9th graders and most
of them were high achievers. Life transitioning into Kerr HS was a
bigger challenge for my son than going from that HS into college. I
am also certain that Kerr HS played a major part in my son getting
into the Honors College his first year at the university and
graduating with a 4 year average GPA of 3.87.

And all of this you attribute to the excellence of the teachers and not to
the district policies that allowed the school to cherry-pick students?

Do you call only accepting students with at least "Satisfactory" conduct
grade cherry picking? Let me mention also that younger borthers and
sisters were also accepted regardless of the conduct grade.

Many of thse kids were not brilliant but they certainly shined when they
graduated.