"J. Clarke" wrote in message
...

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

Could they figure it out? If so then she had done her job well. When a
student can do something the teacher can't then the teacher has succeeded.

Ok,,,, I can see how you and I are not going to agree on anything here now.
My son did not figure it out, he showed her how to solve the problem, he
knew because he studied the night before. She and most of the class was
lost on the next problem also. End of class perticipation for that day.



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

I'm not following you.

Then I'll not go any farther with that.



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.

I was more intelligent than most of my teachers through high school back
in
the '60s, or thought I was. I did know more about quite a lot. But they
were doing what was required of them.

Required of them? ... I went to school in the 60's and I recall my teachers
being pretty smart and they all had their own style. Some times it was
spare the rod, some time it was not.


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.

How do you know they were better teachers? Do you have results of some
kind
of teaching competition or something?

Absolutely have results. Look at "all" of the graduating classes that have
come out of that school. Consider also that the kids that went to that
school came from the same system and none of them were there because of good
grades. Coming out of that school they excelled compared to the other high
schools in the districe. Common sense would tell you that the teachers did
a better job.



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.

I'm curious about what those meetings were typically about,.

One I recall specifically was with the 7th grade Science teacher that my
son had. A specific assignment given on a syllabus on a Monday was due on
Monday of the following week. The next day on Tuesday the class was unruly.
As punishment, that week long assignment would be due the following day. My
son came home from school and immediately went to work tying to complete the
assignment. The following day the teacher asked the students for the
assignment and about half of the students turned their work in. The teacher
asked those that did turn in the assignment who thought that they did a
good job on the assignment. My son raised his hand and she promptly picked
up his assignment from her desk, declared it trash, and threw it in the
trash, ungraded.

The Science teacher Ms. Delesbore, Ollie Middle School, AISD, met with my
wife and I and the principal. We arrived at the principals office
unannounced and told her of the circumstances, She in turn summoned the
teacher and we waited for her to come to the principals office. She had
absolutely no defense and immediately apologized for her inappropriate
actions.







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.

So we've got one school that cherry-picked the whole system and managed to
do well for a handful of kids. So how do you make that work for the rest
of
the system?

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?

Did they accept every student in the district who had such a grade?

Every student with a Satisfactory conduct grade. The school, during my sons
first year, was enlarged to accept an addition 500 or students for the next
year. The building was tiny to begin with, it was a small business prior to
being purchased by the school district and added as a HS. This school was
about 1/3 the size of a typical Sam's Club store, maybe. Befor my son
graduated, Taylor HS was built about 1/4 down the street. It looks like a
large shopping mall, probably 20 time larger than Kerr HS.



Let me mention also that younger
borthers and sisters were also accepted regardless of the conduct
grade.

So what percentage of students in the district were these?

I don't have those figures but I would say well below 3-4 %. While the
school invited all the students with a Satisfactory conduct grade a majority
of the students did not want to attend because there were no sports or band
or not enough of their friends were going to go to Kerr. For the most part
the kids at Kerr HS wanted to be there.

Kerr Hw was/is a shining example of a system that works for the kids and the
staff.