What The Teachers Are Saying
Kids Can't Read, Can't Self-Regulate, Have No Background Knowledge
Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash
Thanks to tenure, teachers can’t get fired for venting about their jobs on TikTok, reddit, or twitter. So, if you want to really know what teachers think about their students or parents, go to social media.
In a two-minute video with nearly 4 million views, a middle school math teacher known as QBthedon said he was shocked at his students’ poor preparation.
This viral TikToker said that most of his seventh grade students were at a fourth grade level for math, with some performing at first, second, and third grade levels. He said that his school keeps passing those student along even though they get zeros on their work. He is stunned that parents are completely ignorant about their children’s academic problems.
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QB’s video went viral and a bunch of other teachers responded with their own horror stories. (These are “stitch” videos, meaning the first few seconds are the QB’s video and then another teacher jumps in and adds her two cents.) I know y’all don’t like to click on links anymore, but you should watch these. Very entertaining.
We know that the kids didn’t learn much during covid with schools being shutdown and things being totally chaotic, but you think that they would have caught up, right? I mean the government gave schools $190 billion that was supposed to be used to help kids catch up. That’s a lot of money that should have helped the kids overcome their challenges.
Well, truthfully, we have no clue how schools spent that money, but it doesn’t seem to have gone to the kids. Kids didn’t get the quality tutoring that they needed to make up for the failures of remote education.
And then the schools compounded those issues, by just passing the kids along. Even though the kids never mastered fourth grade, they moved up to fifth. And then they were too far behind to understand fifth grade work and sixth grade work, so they just stalled out.
Can you imagine sitting all day in a classroom and having no idea what’s going on? It must be very frustrating.
The teachers are shocked that the parents have no idea how they kids are doing in school and don’t seem to really care. Poor parent involvement and awareness of their kids’ education levels are part of a longer trend and can’t be blamed on Covid. And this is a problem that cuts across income levels.
Just last month, Time magazine had a cover article “Many American Parents Have No Idea How Their Kids Are Doing in School.” And they should be more aware, because things aren’t great.
Many American parents would be shocked to know where their kids were actually achieving. Nationally, 90% of parents think their children are reading and doing math at or above grade level. In fact, 26% of eighth graders are proficient or above in math and 31% are proficient or above in English, according to Learning Heroes, an organization that collects data and creates resources to improve parent-teacher relationships.
There’s more going on. Young people aren’t socializing enough with others or their parents. They spend too much time on toxic social media. There’s a breakdown in community connections. Sigh, I could go on and on.
Lots of us have been sounding alarms on student achievement for a few years now, but without parents and people with real power joining us, nothing much is happening. All we have are teachers — the canaries in the coal mines — sending their little videos into the void.
LINKS
Education links: After Teachers, America’s Schools Spend More on Security Guards Than Any Other Role (Ed Week), More schools are adopting 4-day weeks (AP News), As test scores plummet, the science of math movement may be gathering steam, (Ed Source)
Lots of buzz about a new book on the benefits of a two-parent marriage.
I vote “no” on SlobWear.
Watching: We just binge-watched “Only Murders in the Building”. Totally obsessed with Selena Gomez’s clothes and the NYC apartment decor.
Photo: Venice at Night. (July 2023)
Travel: Between work or all the bad weather, we haven’t been able to do many weekend adventures for a while, but we’re hoping to return to our adventures soon. If we have some sun on Sunday, we’ll go upstate for fresh apples and a hike.
Laura, this is good stuff. I mean really good. These are really eye-popping revelations, all the more because you list one after the other without sermonizing or peppering everything with capital letters. In its own way it's very modest: short, right to the point, no sermonizing, just the facts. But the facts are hair-raising.
I'm frustrated, because I want to see more people read and respond to it. You're so much smarter than I am, so you've got to figure out how your writing can get to a larger audience.