It’s a form of genocide for the urban schools to impose programs suitable for the average white in Iowa, run the black students of Los Angeles and Oakland through them, then throw their hands up because so many of the blacks wind up in prison or on welfare.

The black students have needs that are based as much in biodiversity as anything else.

You presume much to tell me I need to be “very careful” in my statements.

You are a public school teacher. You are not a paragon. Your products are found wanting. They shouldn’t be. With all the money and technology the public schools have no right to be producing students more illiterate and undisciplined than previous generations. We all know what works, the urban public schools are very carefully doing what is known to fail. And they are doing it to black and brown students not white ones.

To get the best levels of literacy and earning power from the urban school students we need to teach phonics, stress literacy and discipline, and track students to maximize the reach of the brights and maximize discipline and controls on the dulls. We shouldn’t treat the student population as so much hash.

Just because they’re black.

Brave New World.

Granted the students coming into an 8th grade class have little concept of how far they can go. With the right teacher and the right program you can get higher academic and vocational results from given students than they or their family think. But doing that means “pushing” the kid to the point of stress. Some people do not want to be stressed. They want to do what they want, when they want, they way they want, IF they want.

So it’s not going to happen – especially in a school district that puts a premium on the students and the family being “happy” (ie no flunking, no reprimands, no involuntary transfers, no stress, no toughlove).

I’m not writing off the black kids, the urban schools are. Black kids are run off before age 18 by schools that don’t deal with them realistically and imposing college prep courses is better ghetto repellant than classical music.

Only a fraction of the urban students are college material. The district is responsible for the economic viability of the far greater number of non-college material blacks. It’s folly to place all the bets on any college prep program for urban students except the (relatively) small campus the college prep students would merit.

As to tracking: Yes, it has its benefits, and I have been a beneficiary. BUT, I have seen the situation where there are two equally (non)performing white and African American students, and one is given the benefit of the doubt and the other isn’t. I don’t think I need to say who gets placed into the lower track. It is the racism, even if unconscious, that needs to be removed from the equation, not necessarily tracking itself.

While I would quibble with Nextset’s characterization of *dull* black kids, I certainly agree that non-college bound kids, especially African American kids, do not seem to get much vocational counseling. A person needs to be fairly sharp and on the ball to work in the jobs that make $60K and up; he or she just doesn’t need to engage in the type of abstract analysis required in college.

A couple of things – Let’s not focus just on the students. I do not think the Chicago TEACHERS were ready for the change, nor wil the Oakland TEACHERS be ready for a change. Do you really think the remedial teacher can all of sudden teach at college prep level and go from grading no homework, a minimal lesson plan and assigning no essays to a quadruple workload? And “college prep” is a relative term (see Donna’s example of the unprepared “B” Honors student who was shocked by the SAT). The educators could get prepared, but that would take a much greater investment than just passing a resolution. There are no quick fixes in education.

Public School Teacher points to the actual solution – early intervention, longer hours, and Saturday attendance. This could only happen for the students in elementary school. But without a better work ethic and more money to pay for this it will not be possible.

And Nextset I know you wouldn’t be on this site if you didn’t care about education. Don’t write off 75% of the kids! I have to tell you there is a good percentage of kids from this 75% that if they get the right teacher can go from the parole board to the college board – and that is a beautiful thing.

And there is NOTHING the school district can do about it. Other than hand out diplomas for having a reflection in the mirror. We don’t want that, do we?

Yes, tracking is good. Establishing which students have which capabilities is important to providing the correct services so that lives aren’t wasted. I have seen too many dull people getting good vocational counseling and training and go on to make a good living while supporting a family. Thing is, lately they are all white.

The dull black kids are not getting the vocational counseling and training and they sure are not getting the discipline required to make it in this Brave New World. At least not any more. It seems the White Liberals and the blacks progressives running things in the urban districts don’t want to make the effort anymore. It’s easier to set them up for failure and just say, “everybody’ failed.

If the school(s) turn out welfare mothers and prison inmates, the school is a failure. It’s no defense to me to hear the failure factory say “but we didn’t want to track them”.

If you raise the bar, you better have some SERIOUS supports for those students. AVID classes, longer day, guided homework hour, whatever.

Holding teaching AND/OR curriculum as the cure-alls is a problem.

Why do we suddenly believe there are shortcuts? It takes time, motivation and hard work to learn most things worth learning.

The fact is, we have two wrongs and no right: Tracking is a problem and mixed-level classes are a problem.

Tracking leads to segregation, de-motivation and overly-lowered expectations.

And as both a student and a teacher, I’ve experienced the problems of the mixed class: The class is always too slow for some and too fast for others, de facto.

There is no magic pill and nothing new under the sun.

I agree with your main point regarding our culture of instant gratification and how one must learn some degree of delayed gratification for college and post-graduate studies. Furthermore, I agree that stretching the mind is not always “fun” and “entertaining”. It also entails a lot of requirements, drudgery, and often brain exhausting effort.

I’m less sure that kids of immigrant parents get this message more than others. I think that it would probably vary among particular immigrant populations, wtih some groups enjoying high college graduation entrance and exit rates and others doing quite poorly. Just curious to know to which group were you referring?

Also, I am curious to learn more about this idea that the AP and Honors classes are “ghetto” and “unchallenging”. My kids are not yet in HS, but it seems that some kids can come through OUSD with a good, solid, college-prep education and go on to perform well at college, while a whole lot of kids don’t make it through with even the basics. Unfortunately, from what I’ve heard and read on this blog, this difference often breaks down along racial and socio-economic lines. Therefore, kids going into the same classes, but some are coming out and passing their AP exams and some aren’t. I don’t have any first hand experience with this, so I’m asking the question. Are the AP classes unchallenging and underpreparing for all students or is this another symptom of the achievement gap or something else?