Set up to fail: In real life, you've got to show up and do the work

[SVPete]

Set up to fail: In real life, you've got to show up and do the work

https://www.joannejacobs.com/post/set-up-to-fail-in-real-life-you-ve-got-to-show-up-and-do-the-work

School systems across the country, including the giant Clark County, Nevada district, which includes Las Vegas, are going "equitable," writes Randazzo.

At first, Las Vegas English teacher Laura Jeanne Penrod liked the idea of evaluating students on end-of-course mastery rather than their ability to meet deadlines. However, she noticed even her 11th-grade honors students aren't brainstorming and writing rough drafts of essays the way they used to. Few teenagers have the "intrinsic motivation" to work harder than they have to, she said.

“If you go to a job in real life, you can’t pick and choose what tasks you want to do and only do the quote big ones,” said Alyson Henderson, also a high-school English teacher. “We’re really setting students up for a false sense of reality.”

[enslaved1]

Been teaching seven years now, have gotten three kids through school, one more finishing her junior year now, my wife has taught for 20 years in 3 states, and all that has shown me that the school system is failing huge portions of our children miserably.  Without going on too much of a rant, there's a pie chart of who is at fault when kids fail.  It's divided between the schools, the parents, and the culture the kids are in.  In recent years, the school's slice has gotten bigger in general.  Not holding students back when they can't work up to grade level, cow towing to ridiculous levels of accommodations, lack of disciplinary action, shoving sped kids out in regular classes who really need to be separated for everyone's best interests, and dozens of other reasons.  Parents and society still do their damage (or occasionally help) but the school system's responsibility keeps growing. 

[Old n Grumpy]

At first, Las Vegas English teacher Laura Jeanne Penrod liked the idea of evaluating students on end-of-course mastery rather than their ability to meet deadlines

So many of her 11th graders are turning in assignments that were given in the 5th grade 

Better late than never   

[SVPete]

Been teaching seven years now, have gotten three kids through school, one more finishing her junior year now, my wife has taught for 20 years in 3 states, and all that has shown me that the school system is failing huge portions of our children miserably.  Without going on too much of a rant, there's a pie chart of who is at fault when kids fail.  It's divided between the schools, the parents, and the culture the kids are in.  In recent years, the school's slice has gotten bigger in general.  Not holding students back when they can't work up to grade level, cow towing to ridiculous levels of accommodations, lack of disciplinary action, shoving sped kids out in regular classes who really need to be separated for everyone's best interests, and dozens of other reasons.  Parents and society still do their damage (or occasionally help) but the school system's responsibility keeps growing.

The current mess is pretty systemic, unfortunately. US culture has been ignoring and denigrating academic achievement for so long that the fear lies raised in that are raising children or grandchildren with the same values. US culture has also encouraged thoroughly irresponsible behaviors, and tried to cushion the predictable negative results.

On the school side of things, the variously-euphemized failed word memorization method of teaching reading has been known to work poorly or worse since the 1950s (Why Johnny Can’t Read was published in 1957!). Teaching phonics is BOH-RING, but for most students it works (the age at which it clicks does vary). But schools keep repackaging and re-euphemizing the failed method instead of doing what works.

Discipline has become a politicized and racialized four-letter-word. The Florida mass shooter was known to be violent and unstable from when he was in middle school. He is the extreme end of the spectrum of possible consequences of not doing discipline, not anomalous.