Even the incorrigible will perform (much) better given 1-on-1 instruction. Less kids per teacher yields better results.
The problem is that performance is exponential. That same 1-on-1 instruction will take a well performing kid to "surgeon".
It will take the incorrigible ... maybe ... to only quit school at 10th grade. Which does directly translate to money for the school these days.
What teachers/schools also effectively like about the incorrigible is that any (lowest wage) idiot that sticks to it will help the incorrigible. Not to surgeon levels, but better than before, sure. For obvious reasons you don't need much math. Some, yes, but not much. Whereas it takes a capable teacher to get good performers even higher.
Teachers are protecting the incompetent among them by doing this.
Many of these difficult kids are legit toxic to everyone around them. They make life hell for other students and any of the faculty that dares interact with them.
At my school of ~2,000 I'd say at any given moment there would be at least 30 of these kids (they didn't last long). They were violent. They hit teachers. They were regularly dragged out of classes by police officers. After a few of these interactions, they would be transferred to the problem child school. Our school actually had some great teachers that really cared about the students, but many of these kids were broken. Their home lives were just horrid. Most ended up in juvie and later jail.
Those were the worst of the bunch, but a good 20% of the school was beyond help. Daily fights, constant police presence, tons of kids brought weapons to school, lots of theft, vandalism every day, I could go on... That school was a nightmare, and it wasn't even the worst one in the city.
Point is, there is nowhere near enough teachers and resources to fix these broken kids. Their broken homes are what need to be fixed.
> Point is, there is nowhere near enough teachers and resources to fix these broken kids. Their broken homes are what need to be fixed.
The problem with that is if you can't fix their environment for 8 hours a day (most schools are more like 6 these days but for argument's sake), and you propose fixing their environments 24 hours a day ...
This is not going to work for those kids.
So it depends who you want to help. You want to help disadvantaged kids? This will, certainly in the short term, make it worse for them and make life better for advantaged kids.
> The problem with that is if you can’t fix their environment for 8 hours a day (most schools are more like 6 these days but for argument’s sake), and you propose fixing their environments 24 hours a day …
No one is saying you can’t fix it for 8 hours a day, its saying that fixing the 8 hours a day environment doesn’t address the problem because that’s not the environment that’s brokenness is causing the problems.
Well, sure, but what you say "needs" fixing has a lot of problems:
1) it's double or quadruple the time (8/6 vs 24h) vs school
2) kids aren't arranged per 20 (or 40 these days). You really need someone in a location per 2/3 kids.
So this is a non-starter, fixing the home environment. Plus current attempts to fix it, meaning mostly CPS, generally make things a LOT worse, make these kids far more toxic than they would be left in their problematic home, if that's what you're concerned about. Also, it would further take away opportunities from these kids.
a) we can't "fix the home situation", beyond providing some education on how kids should be raised
(seriously, someone in government make a fucking youtube series about it ... talk about useful spending of CPS budget!)
b) current attempts to do just that anyway make the situation worse for everyone involved (toxicity + crime + lack of opportunities), and don't improve things for those kids.
c) I don't see b changing.
d) we *still* do want to "fix" those kids
Ergo it will need to happen at school. Home situation problematic or not. Addressing the core problem or not. It will need to happen in school (taken widely. E.g. sports ... can be included). Maybe this is a very hard problem, but it's not nearly as hard as the other side of the coin.
And not helping those kids do better is not acceptable. Even aside from the obvious observation that homelessness, drugs and crime don't just impact the people directly involved.
I don't think this issue is solvable by the school. This is 100% an issue with the home. It's like having police attempt to solve the mental health crisis.
Well my point is that doesn't matter. We can't fix that. And what is impossible won't happen, therefore you must fix things somewhere, anywhere, else. That'll be school.
Incorrigible literally means they cannot be helped, and the fact is there are kids for whom that is accurate. Giving them one on one instruction doesn't help, because they genuinely do not care. It does take up the time of teachers and burn them out, though, so they're less able to help the kids who are struggling but actually want help.
It's important to distinguish kids who just do not care at all from kids who are struggling, but it's also important to recognize that the former really do exist.
