If a student isn't learning, who's responsible?

[SVPete]

If a student isn't learning, who's responsible?

https://www.joannejacobs.com/post/if-a-student-isn-t-learning-who-s-responsible

Teachers told that if students don't learn -- or even show up consistently -- it's their fault for not building relationships or being sufficiently engaging. It's never the student's responsibility to pay attention, participate in class discussions, do assignments or avoid distracting classmates. It's not the parents' responsibility to nag them about studying at home and get them to school. It's all on the teachers, and it drives them crazy.

Those days may be ending, writes Rick Hess in Education Next. "Personal responsibility" was racist, for awhile, but common sense is making a comeback.

1. I'm all for holding problematic teachers responsible for the outcomes of their actions, but NOT for the consequences of things beyond their control!

2. Some things beyond teachers' control:

* Students who refuse to show up;

* Students who choose to be violent or otherwise disruptive;

* Adminicrats and educrats who refuse to take problem students seriously and refuse to discipline troublemakers;

* "Parents" who refuse to encourage their children to learn;

* "Parents" who support their "babies" bad and violent behavior and attack any and all who try to discipline their "angels";

* Curriculum larded with political crap;

* Curriculum based on methods known to fail many/most students (e.g. the subject of Why Johnny Can't Read, a method still used today, albeit under a long succession of euphemism-smokescreens).

Joanne Jacobs is not a conservative, AFAIK. I think she's more like a non-crazy pragmatic liberal particularly interested in education.

[FlaGator]

in most cases I would say it is the student who is responsible, followed by the education system.

[enslaved1]

I love the "build relationships" fertilizer.  It tends to come from folks who don't realize class sizes in most of the US run 25-30 kids, at least 7 periods a day (middle/high school).  That's between 150 and 210 students with individual personalities, talents, backgrounds, problems, and motivations or lack thereof, plus the parents, step-parents, caretakers, ect that are in the picture (or not).  My anti-social butt can't fathom building that many relationships, and even more personable folks seem to have a lot of problems actually pulling it off across any board. 

One of the reasons I'm at the school I'm at is while it's helpful to have good relationships with students, our admin knows it's not realistic to do with all of them in the short periods they are assigned here, so we don't hear too much about "building relationships". 

in most cases I would say it is the student who is responsible, followed by the education system.

 

There's a nice little pie chart, IMHO, for each student.  There are three sections, the parents, the school system, and the culture they are in.  All these are the prime factors in whether students succeed or fail, and the blame or praise if they are successful, gets divided out differently.  I will say, over the years in the system and observing it through my own kids and my teacher wife, the school's slice of the blame is getting consistently bigger for many kids, but that doesn't mean good parents and a good culture can't overcome those shortcomings.  The student has a huge role too, with their choices and actions, of course, but that doesn't really start kicking in until high school or so (in long term, big picture terms).  When all three of those factors fail, or one or two bad sections overpower a good section, kids come out with no foundations to make good choices come middle/high school and into adulthood.   

[DefiantSix]

I love the "build relationships" fertilizer.  It tends to come from folks who don't realize class sizes in most of the US run 25-30 kids, at least 7 periods a day (middle/high school)...

This has been a mantra of the teachers' unions anytime they're making the concerted effort to arm twist more money out of the populace for many, many decades now, and it's annoying to me.

Consider for a second that I first started hearing communities being brow beaten wit it when I was but a young nipper in grade school - in the 1970s. I heard it all thru the 80s and 90s as well, until my siblings and I graduated the screwel system and moved out into adult lives. All thru my school age years my class sizes were and remained about 25-35 kids.

When I had mini-me to run thru the gauntlet of public screwels, his class sizes were about the same 25-35 kids that my classes had been, and from my training as an engineer, I realized that that figure is the number set the screwel districts use when they're determining when and where to build additional public screwel facilities. In other words while I had teachers unions screeching in my ear that class sizes at 25 - 35 kids were too large, and teachers were overworked having to teach 6 classes a day of 25-35 kids, and I should shell out more of my hard earned money to pay for more teachers to spread the class loads and pay teachers better because they're overworked and burning out on classes so large, on the other side of the equation screwel administrators continued using the 25 - 35 kids class size model as their planning and budgeting basis.

**** 'em.

Class sizes have been this way for a minimum of the 50 years I've been aware of and observing screwels, and I bet if anyone were to dredge up the actual data that it's been the case for 100 years or more. Teachers KNEW what the class sizes were - what the damned job entailed - when they decided to accept the District's shilling. They don't get to act surprised and tell me how overworked they are when working conditions are exactly what they were given to expect them to be.

For 50 years, the public screwel racket has repeatedly bent my family over a barrel to extort more and more money, while at the same time the quality of the product that money has purchased has degraded continuously. It got so bad that we pulled mini-me out and began home schooling before he'd completed his first semester of middle school. Before that, I was the meanest dad ever in the eyes of his elementary school when I told them to discontinue the IEP on my son because it was more of a crutch and distraction to his education than a benefit - except to the screwel officials who were rolling in the additional taxpayer money they were bringing in at his expense.

Please don't take my rant personally, enslaved1; it's not intended to be. You just accidentally tripped one of my hot buttons. Funny thing is, The Boy's been out of school for years now and I didn't realize that button was still hot for me.

[enslaved1]

Please don't take my rant personally, enslaved1; it's not intended to be. You just accidentally tripped one of my hot buttons. Funny thing is, The Boy's been out of school for years now and I didn't realize that button was still hot for me.

No worries.  It really should be a hot button for all of us.  Our schools have been a mess for a long time (growing up in Podunk Ks, I didn't realize that much of the country had class sizes that big that far back, NYC, LA, sure, but it seemed to be the exception, not the rule).  The country needs well educated people to work every level of job, make informed decisions in the voting booth, keep the economy strong, generate a truly great society, and just to know how to treat each other like human beings.  It's clear from looking around today that uneducated people just can't do those things. 

I'm all in on dismantling the Dept. of Ed and removing it's overarching monetary power and influence, letting states decide what they need and don't need, and even generate more competition via voucher programs.  The transition will likely be hard, and some states are probably going to screw it up, maybe some with the best of intentions, maybe some, not so much.   Teacher's Unions need to take a big hit in their power and influence as well.