The title of this post is unfortunately not true, not even remotely. But why should such a headline be considered absurd? Do we go on expecting to be among the worst performing school districts in the state? We have brand new, state-of-the-art schools and still building. Our superindentents are among the highest-paid in the state. Many of our teachers have 20, 25, even 30 years of experience in the classroom. The newest teachers come mostly from TAMIU, a university with a rich history of producing teachers for the last 40 years. Their vast experience in the field has to count for something. It surely must be one of the best teacher colleges in the state. Should it not?
One of the most important things in teaching is that you have to have high expectations of your students. Do we, as taxpayers and citizens, have the highest expectations of our schools? Why do we feel fortunate just to simply avoid a 4th or 5th year of federal sanctions at our highschools? Why do we have students in our schools for three years who can still not read at a functional level? What is the root cause and what are the first steps to put an end to this lunacy?
The consensus seems to be that it is the parents. They are not responsible. They are not accountable. They are not reliable. Many kids are raised by their grandparents. These statements, no doubt, have varying degrees of truth. Still, the students are (or should be) in school for at least 7 hours a day. That is a very substantial amount of time. Is it not enough to make a dent on illiteracy?
I know, I sure have a lot of questions. It's a shame, it's just a shame.
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