Note: This is obviously not an exhaustive study to the many abhorrent practices that are happening in our schools that cause the American Tax Payer to get no return on his investment.
I have been a public school teacher for 17 years. I have only worked in low income schools. Throughout my career, I have had the privilege to teach some truly wonderful students who have gone on to become accomplished adults in such fields as doctors, nurses, lawyers, and engineers. Some of which have even earned scholarships to Ivy League schools. But I must say as the years pass and new regulations are instituted, I see fewer and fewer of these types of students. But, it is possible to get a good education in a low income school if one takes advantage of the opportunity and they have the right teachers. There are always a few teachers in these schools who are eager and go out of their way to encourage, support and mentor the child who wants to learn.
However, those students were not the norm in low income schools. A large majority of students in low income schools are willingly throwing away their opportunity to become educated and are in many instances, stealing the opportunity of education from others due to their hectic behavior. So, how do some students escape becoming the ever growing percentage of those who refuse to be educated and never become productive members of society? We all know the answer; good parenting or mentoring, choosing the right crowd, hard work and having an understanding of the value of education to their future.
In contrast, these are the very factors that are lacking in those students who refuse to be educated.
There are also other contributing factors that empower these students to stay uneducated. One of which is the pressure by administration on teachers to lower the standards. Of course that would never be said directly but it is done in ways that intimidates teachers to comply with the desired goals of the administrators. This is because the administrator’s evaluation by the county is determined by how many students fail, how many and what kind of discipline referrals there are as well as student test scores. This causes the actual reality of what is happening in the schools and the reported data to be skewed. What is happening in our Public Schools is a crime against the taxpayer who trust that children are learning how to become productive and competent citizens. There is an outcry for accountability, usually at the detriment of the teachers, but the system is full of fraud because the truth about what is happening is hidden by unreported data.
