Literacy Rates of High School Graduates

[Ken]

Just as a side note. I’m sitting today through my second day of training on the Kagan cooperative education model, which is something my district is emphasizing this year (we’ll be getting more training in the next couple of months).

Along with lesson planning and getting my classroom ready, I’m also working on getting my alternative license through the state and meeting all of their requirements.

It’s overwhelming. I’m in a standards, skills based district where all of my lessons need to be designed to meet the ELA standards set by the state (which are based on Common Core). I am also held accountable to whether my students learn specific skills (can they cite, can they paraphrase the meaning of a text, etc), which is a lot more involved than having my students read a short story in a textbook and answer questions. And oh yeah, many of my students are underperforming and have difficult home situations.

Meanwhile, people in the community are asking whether we are teaching Critical Race Theory, which is a load of nonsense.

I really appreciate the experience that Josh Good, Peter and Ken are bringing to this discussion. There are good districts and bad districts. There are good teachers and bad teachers. Public education as a system is broken. There are also many dedicated teachers who care about their students and are fighting uphill battles every day to teach their students.

My district has a bad reputation. Our test scores aren’t where they are supposed to be. Colorado allows students to go to schools that aren’t in their district, so high performing students go elsewhere and we have to educate whoever is left over. I’m grateful to be there. My colleagues are supportive and the administration has worked hard to support and bring in the right kinds of teachers. My principal’s background is an instructional coach, so I have a lot to learn from her.

Monday is the first day of school. I’m nervous. I’m terrified. I’m excited. I’m grateful that God has called me here. God is good.

We don't start here until the first week of September. But I'm already working through the required annual online trainings. Good Luck! It will both be more challenging and rewarding than you expect! So many of these kids need a stable adult in their lives. For some, you will be the only one.

Don't listen to the naysayers. You are doing God's work.

[Ken]

Szdfan wrote:

“Meanwhile, people in the community are asking whether we are teaching Critical Race Theory, which is a load of nonsense.”

Then you should be able to tell them “No, and we commit to you that we will not teach it.”

Do you plan to promote CRT ideas in your classroom like you do here on MennoNet?

Given your posting history here, perhaps parents have good reason to be concerned.

Josh. No school in the country teaches critical race theory to school kids. That is just the fevered delusion of a bunch of conservatives who are looking for the next culture war issue to distract from the reality that they no longer have any sort of positive agenda for the country. CRT is just a framework used for graduate-level legal research not something that is part of any K-12 curriculum.

And even if it was taught, what of it? Kids tend to be smarter and better critical thinkers than most adults when it comes to this sort of thing. What is it about America's racist past that you so desperately want to hide from them and why? Kids aren't going to be harmed by doing a little critical thinking on the topic of race, or any other topic for that matter. To the contrary. That's part of developing critical thinking skills. There is more to education than the McGuffey Reader.

[GaryK]

Szdfan wrote:

“Meanwhile, people in the community are asking whether we are teaching Critical Race Theory, which is a load of nonsense.”

Then you should be able to tell them “No, and we commit to you that we will not teach it.”

Do you plan to promote CRT ideas in your classroom like you do here on MennoNet?

Given your posting history here, perhaps parents have good reason to be concerned.

Josh. No school in the country teaches critical race theory to school kids. That is just the fevered delusion of a bunch of conservatives who are looking for the next culture war issue to distract from the reality that they no longer have any sort of positive agenda for the country. CRT is just a framework used for graduate-level legal research not something that is part of any K-12 curriculum.

And even if it was taught, what of it? Kids tend to be smarter and better critical thinkers than most adults when it comes to this sort of thing. What is it about America's racist past that you so desperately want to hide from them and why? Kids aren't going to be harmed by doing a little critical thinking on the topic of race, or any other topic for that matter. To the contrary. That's part of developing critical thinking skills. There is more to education than the McGuffey Reader.

The bigger question might be, are we seeing the start of CRT being tested on a practical level? Who would have thought, that in the 21st century, segregating classes by color would happen under a black principal? And this didn't stay in the news very long at all, which is quite telling, IMO.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/at ... d-n1276584

[Sliceitup]

Szdfan wrote:

“Meanwhile, people in the community are asking whether we are teaching Critical Race Theory, which is a load of nonsense.”

Then you should be able to tell them “No, and we commit to you that we will not teach it.”

Do you plan to promote CRT ideas in your classroom like you do here on MennoNet?

Given your posting history here, perhaps parents have good reason to be concerned.

Josh. No school in the country teaches critical race theory to school kids. That is just the fevered delusion of a bunch of conservatives who are looking for the next culture war issue to distract from the reality that they no longer have any sort of positive agenda for the country. CRT is just a framework used for graduate-level legal research not something that is part of any K-12 curriculum.

And even if it was taught, what of it? Kids tend to be smarter and better critical thinkers than most adults when it comes to this sort of thing. What is it about America's racist past that you so desperately want to hide from them and why? Kids aren't going to be harmed by doing a little critical thinking on the topic of race, or any other topic for that matter. To the contrary. That's part of developing critical thinking skills. There is more to education than the McGuffey Reader.

The bigger question might be, are we seeing the start of CRT being tested on a practical level? Who would have thought, that in the 21st century, segregating classes by color would happen under a black principal? And this didn't stay in the news very long at all, which is quite telling, IMO.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/at ... d-n1276584

That’s sounds like something that was maybe well intentioned, but still not a good idea. It would be interesting to hear from minorities and their thoughts on the impact of being the only person of color in a classroom, vs being one of several.

[GaryK]

Josh. No school in the country teaches critical race theory to school kids. That is just the fevered delusion of a bunch of conservatives who are looking for the next culture war issue to distract from the reality that they no longer have any sort of positive agenda for the country. CRT is just a framework used for graduate-level legal research not something that is part of any K-12 curriculum.

And even if it was taught, what of it? Kids tend to be smarter and better critical thinkers than most adults when it comes to this sort of thing. What is it about America's racist past that you so desperately want to hide from them and why? Kids aren't going to be harmed by doing a little critical thinking on the topic of race, or any other topic for that matter. To the contrary. That's part of developing critical thinking skills. There is more to education than the McGuffey Reader.

The bigger question might be, are we seeing the start of CRT being tested on a practical level? Who would have thought, that in the 21st century, segregating classes by color would happen under a black principal? And this didn't stay in the news very long at all, which is quite telling, IMO.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/at ... d-n1276584

That’s sounds like something that was maybe well intentioned, but still not a good idea. It would be interesting to hear from minorities and their thoughts on the impact of being the only person of color in a classroom, vs being one of several.

From my understanding, this was not about someone being the only black person in a classroom. This was intentional segregation "to build a community". In an earlier interview I listened to, the black mother who exposed this told the principal that she wants her child in a non-segregated classroom. The principal replied that her child would be the only black person in the class, which is the only mention of being the only black person in a classroom.

The question still stands, was this a practical outworking of CRT?

[Ken]

Szdfan wrote:

“Meanwhile, people in the community are asking whether we are teaching Critical Race Theory, which is a load of nonsense.”

Then you should be able to tell them “No, and we commit to you that we will not teach it.”

Do you plan to promote CRT ideas in your classroom like you do here on MennoNet?

Given your posting history here, perhaps parents have good reason to be concerned.

Josh. No school in the country teaches critical race theory to school kids. That is just the fevered delusion of a bunch of conservatives who are looking for the next culture war issue to distract from the reality that they no longer have any sort of positive agenda for the country. CRT is just a framework used for graduate-level legal research not something that is part of any K-12 curriculum.

And even if it was taught, what of it? Kids tend to be smarter and better critical thinkers than most adults when it comes to this sort of thing. What is it about America's racist past that you so desperately want to hide from them and why? Kids aren't going to be harmed by doing a little critical thinking on the topic of race, or any other topic for that matter. To the contrary. That's part of developing critical thinking skills. There is more to education than the McGuffey Reader.

The bigger question might be, are we seeing the start of CRT being tested on a practical level? Who would have thought, that in the 21st century, segregating classes by color would happen under a black principal? And this didn't stay in the news very long at all, which is quite telling, IMO.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/at ... d-n1276584

Shrug. There are tens of thousands of schools in this country and our educational system is set up to provide a great deal of local autonomy (as opposed to top-down Federal control that exists in some countries like Finland). So it isn't surprising that on occasion administrators or teachers might make well-intentioned mistakes or experiments one way or the other. As well as deliberately malicious decisions. We are about to roll into the season where a handful of HS football players will die of heat stroke because 'old-school' coaches make them work out in brutal southern mid-day August heat. Happens every year like clockwork. In any event, it seems to me that this sort of thing is more properly dealt with by local supervisors. Whatever this principal was thinking, she should know better.

But whatever this misguided principal thought she was doing it has nothing to do with CRT. Not every racially-related incident has anything to do with CRT. In fact pretty much none of them do. And to be perfectly accurate, this principal wasn't creating segregated black classes, she was creating segregated white classes. There were only 12 black students in the entire grade. A normal elementary classroom has about 20-22 students. She was distributing her black students into just two classes so the result would have been two classrooms that were diverse but still majority white with about 6 black students combined with 14-16 white students in each class. And then the other classes in the grade would have been all white. Or at least no Blacks, they might still have had Asian or Hispanic kids in them.

[Josh]

Josh. No school in the country teaches critical race theory to school kids.

This simply isn't true. There are lots of documented examples of it.

That is just the fevered delusion of a bunch of conservatives who are looking for the next culture war issue to distract from the reality that they no longer have any sort of positive agenda for the country. CRT is just a framework used for graduate-level legal research not something that is part of any K-12 curriculum.

Conservatives have been alarmed about a lot of things, like the push to legalise sodomy, then to allow "civil unions", then to allow gay marriage, then to extend discrimination laws about homosexuals. They've been 100% right about all of these things. Conservatives have a point about slippery slopes.

Things start out as theory at universities, and then eventually become part of dogma taught in K-12 public schools.

And even if it was taught, what of it? Kids tend to be smarter and better critical thinkers than most adults when it comes to this sort of thing.

In what theory of human development are children better "critical thinkers" then adults? In Psych 101, we learn that children think in very concrete terms and slowly develop the ability for abstract reasoning. Critical thinking doesn't come until adolescence and isn't fully formed until mid-20s.

Admittedly, I went to college 20 years ago, so maybe things have changed since then.

What is it about America's racist past that you so desperately want to hide from them and why? Kids aren't going to be harmed by doing a little critical thinking on the topic of race, or any other topic for that matter. To the contrary. That's part of developing critical thinking skills. There is more to education than the McGuffey Reader.

I don't think Critical Theory is a good idea; I'm not terribly concerned about the race angle of it, but I'm very concerned about pushing the whole concept of Critical Theory in general. It's a bad idea that has completely overtaken most universities, and now is extending its fingers into primary and secondary education as well.

[Josh]

Just as a side note. I’m sitting today through my second day of training on the Kagan cooperative education model, which is something my district is emphasizing this year (we’ll be getting more training in the next couple of months).
Monday is the first day of school. I’m nervous. I’m terrified. I’m excited. I’m grateful that God has called me here. God is good.

We don't start here until the first week of September. But I'm already working through the required annual online trainings. Good Luck! It will both be more challenging and rewarding than you expect! So many of these kids need a stable adult in their lives. For some, you will be the only one.

Don't listen to the naysayers. You are doing God's work.

I would like to congratulate you two for doing the same thing thousands of 18 year old plain Anabaptist girls are also doing.

"Nervous and terrified". It's teaching school, not evacuating Saigon.

[Sliceitup]

The bigger question might be, are we seeing the start of CRT being tested on a practical level? Who would have thought, that in the 21st century, segregating classes by color would happen under a black principal? And this didn't stay in the news very long at all, which is quite telling, IMO.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/at ... d-n1276584

That’s sounds like something that was maybe well intentioned, but still not a good idea. It would be interesting to hear from minorities and their thoughts on the impact of being the only person of color in a classroom, vs being one of several.

From my understanding, this was not about someone being the only black person in a classroom. This was intentional segregation "to build a community". In an earlier interview I listened to, the black mother who exposed this told the principal that she wants her child in a non-segregated classroom. The principal replied that her child would be the only black person in the class, which is the only mention of being the only black person in a classroom.

The question still stands, was this a practical outworking of CRT?

In another article there were a few more details. The parent wanted the child in a specific teachers class, to which the principal replied that then she’d be the only Black person. There were not ‘segregated’ classes in the context of all white or all black. Some classes had black students and others didn’t. That was my take.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/educatio ... -students/

[Josh]

The race of students should be irrelevant and administration of schools should be colourblind.