Re: My neighbor is a FCPS teacher and she went back to work today!!
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teachers are not the problem
()
Date: August 28, 2016 01:19PM
Teachers are not the problem in Fairfax. Yes, there may be a few who are incompetent or worse, and the school system may not be as quick or as nimble in managing them out as they should be (to some extent a problem I have experienced in the private sector, especially with individuals in protected classes).
But let's be realistic. Most parents know intuitively that bad teachers aren’t a huge problem. What they care about, from top to bottom of the income scale, is environment. Suburban white parents don’t want poor black and Hispanic kids around. Poor black and Hispanic parents don’t want bad kids around. (Yes, this means suburban parents see poor kids as mostly bad kids.) Asian parents don’t want white kids around to corrupt their little tigers, much less black or Hispanic. (White parents don’t really want too many Asians around, either, but that’s the opposite of the “bad kids” problem.)
In other words, parents don’t care much about teacher quality. They care a lot about peer group quality. I can imagine someone saying in response, but I care about teacher quality. Great, nice to hear. But that doesn't make teacher quality the cause of the achievement gap or even what makes certain schools such negative places to attend.
The biggest problem facing FCPS right now is the huge achievement gaps between whites and Asians, on one hand, and Blacks and Hispanics, on the other. The problem has become increasingly dire because of the influx of uncontrolled (or if you will, illegal) immigration. And it is a problem everywhere you look, whether in terms of finances, SOL scores, actual literacy, computational abilities, classroom behavior, and so on. And FCPS leadership, like every other leadership cadre in public schools across the country, quite simply, are more than just concerned about the racial achievement gap, no, the achievement gap is the overwhelming and primary concern of the administration, day after day, meeting after meeting. They are progressives, indoctrinated by education schools, the holding bin of the peasants of the intelligentsia One might notice, however, that the gap never closes, and in fact, has become worse in the last decade.
Of course, a lot of energy and focus spent on closing the gap is futile. There is no amount of fantasy and hoping that is going to cause an 80 IQ kid from typically at best a disordered home to compete with the kids at the 84th percentile of cognitive ability that it takes to succeed in a rigorous pre-college program. Again, if a kid is near or at that 84th percentile ability level, believe me, no one is putting the quality of teachers in Fairfax near the top of any list of problems requiring immediate resolution.
I get the assertion that if the children of illegal immigrants are here, we must do something with them. But really, kill and drill them on SOL tests where the goal is to make everyone average (remember, the number of 100 IQ's average among whites, is not nearly as common as one might think, and that is before taking dysfunctional and disordered family life into account)? The tests designed to make sure (a progressive's fallacy, to be sure) that everyone can go to college? Well, this turns the schools for these kids into wasteful social service providers, meal providers, adolescent baby sitters (by the way, until age 22), all because no one can deal with the fact that low cognitive kids should be taught differently, with a focus on practical skills, and learning good behaviors (like showing up on time and finishing tasks well within their capabilities).
I hear the plaintive plea for more money for the schools. Again, I get it. But I would be much more inclined to support higher taxes if the schools were to open and say, look, we are having increasing populations that are challenging, and a great deal of it is due to political decisions over which we have no control. And it costs more - but since it is tax money and we want real practical results, no matter how different racial groups achieve, we are going to spend it wisely getting the low cognitive kids practical skills - even if it means we have to be politically incorrect by recognizing that they will receive a different kind of education that a lot of others in Fairfax receive.
I hold open the promise or inter-generational gains in cognitive ability. But it is a long, slow progress, and not something that is susceptible to any easy fix with a "Young Scholars" program (although these may have value for the rare kids - the poor and disadvantaged with relatively high cognitive ability). Let cease to fool ourselves.