Literacy Rates of High School Graduates

[temporal1]

Veteran public school teacher writes:

.. Most people who have never taught in a classroom have no understanding that teaching is about 75% classroom management and only about 25% what you are actually teaching.

but when questions arise about what’s “being taught” in public schools, official curriculum+state laws are promptly trotted out.
as-if official and narrow are all that happens. hmm.

yet, 75% of lengthy school days are devoted to .. “other.” (no one questions these percentages.)

i feel secure abortions are not “performed” in public schools.
but a whole lot of teaching, supporting, enabling, including conspiring against parental notification goes on.
and has for decades.

[Ken]

Veteran public school teacher writes:

.. Most people who have never taught in a classroom have no understanding that teaching is about 75% classroom management and only about 25% what you are actually teaching.

but when questions arise about what’s “being taught” in public schools, official curriculum+state laws are promptly trotted out.
as-if official and narrow are all that happens. hmm.

yet, 75% of lengthy school days are devoted to .. “other.” (no one questions these percentages.)

i feel secure abortions are not “performed” in public schools.
but a whole lot of teaching, supporting, enabling, including conspiring against parental notification goes on.
and has for decades.

You are misinterpreting what I wrote. What I meant is that about 75% of what makes an effective teacher is being able to effectively manage your classroom and only about 25% is what you actually know. I did not mean that teachers spend 75% of their CLASS TIME doing classroom management. Effective teachers actually spend far less class time doing classroom management than ineffective teachers because their classrooms are well-oiled machines. Which frees them up to actually teach. The 75/25 number is something I just made up based on my own experience to make the point, not something you'll find in teaching literature that I'm aware of.

Put another way, a good teacher who can effectively manage a classroom can teach virtually anything if they have the materials, by employing good pedagogical techniques to turn the kids loose to tackle the lesson or materials themselves. Whereas a bad teacher with poor classroom management skills is going to be ineffective no matter how much they personally know about the subject. I have seen teachers with PhDs in the subject they are teaching be completely ineffective because they don't know how to manage their classes.

What that means for a new teacher is that they should put a LOT of focus on running an effective, organized classroom and worry less about the actual details of the material that they are teaching. A lot of new teachers think that they need to know every answer in advance, and every detail of the material that they are teaching and spend all their time focused on that. When that really isn't the case. It is honestly fine if you don't know a specific answer to a specific question. You can say to the class: "Does anyone else know the answer to Josh's question?" And if no one does and it is a relevant question, not some irrelevant rabbit-hole you can say: "OK, Josh, how would you find the answer to that question?" and then "Josh, why don't you research that question and come back tomorrow with what you found."

[temporal1]

.. whatever you say, Ken.

[nett]

I’m not “value neutral,” but I’m not going to let the keyboard ideologues dictate to me what and how I’m going to teach in my classroom.

How about this. If the topic comes up, will you tell your students that abortion is murder?

[temporal1]

2018 / “How Schools Quietly Indoctrinate Your Kids On Abortion And Transgenderism”
“It’s not always in exactly what teachers and curricula say as much as how they say it and what they assume.
And far too many parents aren’t paying attention.”
https://thefederalist.com/2018/05/03/sc ... genderism/

My perception is, it’s gotten worse since the 2020 election.
(Living in Illinois and Washington.)

[Szdfan]

Not on demand.

Are you aware that they don’t perform abortions in schools?

Days taught: 4
Babies aborted: 0

That's a nice straw man. Meanwhile, Teenagers should be taught abortion rights in school to counter inaccurate information from home, say teachers

Would you be a teacher who agrees with this?

Here are the Colorado Academic Standards. https://www.cde.state.co.us/apps/standards/

Please point out where it mentions abortion under the “Reading, Writing and Communicating” and “World Languages” standards. What you’re asking about is irrelevant to the standards and skills I’m teaching. Why would I be teaching anything about abortion in ELA or beginning German?

I wanted to follow up on this. Today I rode with the health teacher to our alternative license training. I asked her about abortion and she responded that the State does not require her to teach or mention anything about abortion. She understands herself as pro-life and so will not raise the subject with her students, but will answer questions if asked.

So I don’t understand the necessity of making proclamations about a content area that I have nothing to do with and don’t teach in order to appease strangers on the Internet.

[Ken]

That's a nice straw man. Meanwhile, Teenagers should be taught abortion rights in school to counter inaccurate information from home, say teachers

Would you be a teacher who agrees with this?

Here are the Colorado Academic Standards. https://www.cde.state.co.us/apps/standards/

Please point out where it mentions abortion under the “Reading, Writing and Communicating” and “World Languages” standards. What you’re asking about is irrelevant to the standards and skills I’m teaching. Why would I be teaching anything about abortion in ELA or beginning German?

I wanted to follow up on this. Today I rode with the health teacher to our alternative license training. I asked her about abortion and she responded that the State does not require her to teach or mention anything about abortion. She understands herself as pro-life and so will not raise the subject with her students, but will answer questions if asked.

So I don’t understand the necessity of making proclamations about a content area that I have nothing to do with and don’t teach in order to appease strangers on the Internet.

The correct answer if abortion comes up in a public school classroom (which it never has for me in 15 years of teaching) is: "That isn't relevant to the topic at hand" which is the same answer I would give to any student trying to distract the conversation into an irrelevant tangent. Which does happen all the time. Back in Texas the kids often wanted to talk about the Cowboys. in WA it is usually the Seahawks. On any random Monday in the fall the boys would talk all period about the NFL is given the opportunity and the girls would probably talk about BTS or some other popular band or whatever reality show they are following. The more quirky kids might want to talk about Japanese anime or some such. Unlike the rest of you here, abortion is frankly never on their minds.

And if a student has a personal abortion-related question the answer should be the same as it is with any other medical-related question you might get from a student: "I can't give you any advice about that at all. You need to talk to the school nurse or your parent or your doctor" Which is the same advice I would give a student asking me about Tylenol, Adderall, a rash on their leg, or abortion.

[PetrChelcicky]

I think exchange of opinions here might be more productive if we (both sides) at first make some concessions which don't touch the point at issue.
The rightwing party may concede that teachers, in order to do their work well, need some leeway and must not be overregulated, in particular they should not be enforced to act against their conscience or their deep convictions. The leftwing party may concede that teachers can indeed have a bad influence on the private emotions and the political ideas of their students (and this without teaching the complete Marxist textbook). The leftwing party might also concede that parents are, in a direct conflict with the teacher, at a disadvantage and may have no better alternative than appealing to the lawmakers (as the ultimate arbitrators).

[Ken]

I think exchange of opinions here might be more productive if we (both sides) at first make some concessions which don't touch the point at issue.
The rightwing party may concede that teachers, in order to do their work well, need some leeway and must not be overregulated, in particular they should not be enforced to act against their conscience or their deep convictions. The leftwing party may concede that teachers can indeed have a bad influence on the private emotions and the political ideas of their students (and this without teaching the complete Marxist textbook). The leftwing party might also concede that parents are, in a direct conflict with the teacher, at a disadvantage and may have no better alternative than appealing to the lawmakers (as the ultimate arbitrators).

In 15 years of teaching in both TX and WA I have only ever had one uncomfortable confrontation/interaction with a parent over a political or ideological subject. That was maybe 10 years ago in Texas and it was a parent visiting my classroom during evening open house who loudly objected to an ocean-related climate change poster I had on the wall amid many other science posters. The parent demanded to know what kind of global warming propaganda I was teaching. I had to inform him that the subject of climate change was, indeed, part of the state's curriculum standards for both aquatic science and AP environmental science. In other words, it was a subject that I was REQUIRED to teach. Standards that were ironically written before global warming had even become a hot-button political issue.

By contrast I have had hundreds of interactions with parents over those same 15 years that were focused entirely on working together with the parent to help motivate their children improve their motivation and academic performance in my classes. Every year it is literally endless back and forth, working together with parents to try to motivate, prod, excite, and incentivize students to achieve to the best of their abilities or in some cases, just get over the finish line. I am in constant contact with parents about their student's performance and how we can work to improve it.

Despite the notion here (and reflected in your comment) that teachers are in some kind of ideological battle with parents over things like CRT, abortion, political ideology and so forth. Or as you put it "parents are in direct conflict with the teacher." That is simply not the case. Teaching is almost entirely about teachers and parents working together to get the best out of students in the subject at hand, which pretty much anyone who has ever worked in a public school can tell you.

[Bootstrap]

Cue Boot and Ken asking for even more funding in 3... 2... 1...

Actually, I think there's enough money in the system, but it is not well distributed and it is not well managed. I do think this is a problem that seriously needs fixing.

We currently pay an average of $14,439 per pupil, that should be enough, but it's a LOT less in some places and a LOT more in others. Ideally, I think funding levels should be more or less equal for all children, adjusted for regional cost of living differences. I think we should largely get the politicians out of mandating what teachers should or should not do, they are terrible at it, they have no clue, they micromanage and play hot button political and play to the audience, and they have built layer after layer of bureaucracy that takes money away from the classroom. Our children's schools should not be a fiefdom for politicians who want to make a name for themselves on talk shows.

Treat teachers as professionals. Pay them like professionals. Give them authority to use their professional judgement. Measure their work and hold them accountable. Fire them if they don't do their job well, like we would with professionals.

Give all children access to equally good schools. I like the voucher system a lot, but it has to be structured in a way that accomplishes this goal, that generally means making sure that the voucher pays for the entire cost of the education and that schools that take vouchers also need to have fair ways to allow students to apply and be accepted.

I think that could be done cheaper than what we are doing now.