Kids really notice when students who are markedly worse behaved than them get rewarded and it's sad. The last school I worked at had a system called "positive referrals." They could be really great! Students who were observed by teachers doing something well or going above and beyond by being kind or community oriented would get a positive version of a write up, that notification would go to the principal, and then at the end of the week the principal would congratulate the student and share the nice message their teacher wrote about them, as well as giving them a print out to show to their parents.
HOWEVER.......
The kids who got the most PRs were actually the ones who were the worst behaved. Students who were usually terrible doing the absolute BARE MINIMUM would get a PR for not being disruptive, while the students who were consistently wonderful and hardworking get nothing. I remember seeing an interaction between ninth graders where students were talking about how a classmate of theirs who had a lot of behavioral issues but had improved slightly over the year got SEVEN PRs in one week, while the students talking who were both very lovely hardworkers who never got in trouble hadn't gotten a single PR, ever. I immediately wrote them PRs of course, but it felt really illustrative of how general positive reward system behaviors work.
Additionally, the chronic behavior issues mean that students who are generally well behaved and want to work hard get pushed up into accelerated classes regardless of how advanced they are with the material. Many accelerated students are below grade level, but they are pleasant and well behaved, and to avoid having to deal with their terribly behaved classmates have selected a "challenge by choice" option. Not being allowed to fail students results in AC standards being continually lowered. And because we've gotten rid of leveling, the teachers down at the bottom are left with classmates FULL of poorly behaved students, and the actually advanced students aren't able to take a truly advanced class.
This is all true in my experience as well. Because we tolerate so much bad behavior, accountability for everyone (academic, behavioral, parental, professional) goes out the window and we are left in an absolute morass where it's a miracle anyone learns anything ever.
A big part of the problem comes from the aversion to punishment. I’m not talking about physical punishment, but loss of privileges that really ARE a loss. Sitting and having a long, boring talk with some creepy, caring professional isn’t cutting it. Kids blow that off. In elementary school, losing field trips was a really big deal. Teachers took all kinds of really fun field trips at my school, and could use it as incentive for kids to keep it together for weeks. Then, our SJW principal decided that was too mean, and we had to have “full inclusion” field trips. There goes a great lever teachers had, plus, as field trips became more and more untenable due to behavior problems, they took fewer and fewer and now take only rare ones. This is a microcosm of the problem as a whole.
Punishment could also involve real work- weeding garden, shoveling mulch, cleaning playground- and that might help some kids who just have a ton of energy and school is hard for them to deal with.
I’m not sure how I found you but I am thankful. I’m looking forward to reading more of your stack. I’m 34 and we have three young kids (5, 4 and 1) and we are starting our homeschool journey. My parents took the Laissez-faire approach with my education in the public school system. I’m determined to take a hands on approach with my children’s education and I am looking forward to learning alongside them! Thank you your words of wisdom and sharing your experiences.
I agree with your message, and also with the fact that parents must take charge, but sadly many won't. Public school is seen as public daycare.
Well, if the majority of parents are going to keep seeing it that way, is there a way to change how schools are run to accommodate?
I remember when I went to public school, there were suspensions, expulsions, summer school, repeating grades, no field trips if poorly behaved or had poor grades and the big fear of being sent to a juvie type school because you kept getting into serious trouble.
Why can't those measures be reinstated? They used to work for the vast majority of students in my age group, or at least seemed to work from my viewpoint. I also remember being able to be separated by achievement: gifted kids got first dibs on honors or AP classes, special needs were on their own, ESL kids their own side, normal kids their own classes with maybe 1 or 2 misbehaving kids that by halfway through the year if they were still a menace, could be booted to the other school for "bad" kids.
I see that now, classrooms are a forced mix of every type of student and it is hurting them all. I think it worked best for all to have separated levels of achievement with the ability to move higher if proven worthy of the grade.
Was this all because of "No child left behind"? I remember being in school at the time it first started, and my parents were less than thrilled with it.
You're right that when schools hold students and families accountable for their part in maintaining an effective learning environment through detentions, suspensions, expulsions and for academic achievement by honesty in grades which leads to placing students where they will most likely succeed, the schools perform far better.
Many things undermined the things. you pointed out which used to work. Overarchingly, all backward programs have been implemented in the name of taking care of the unmet needs of every child. This provides a huge number of high-paying jobs to the correctly politically-aligned adults.
It's graft, and it's coming off the backs of all our kids, none of whose educational needs are being met because we've increased the scope of our mission to the impossible; meeting ALL the unmet needs of all children.
I generally agree with your posts but this lacks nuance. You frame certain groups as victims and disruptive students as the perpetrators. Many of these students are students with unsupported needs and disabilities. These kids are victims of the system that prioritizes compliance over learning too. When their needs are met, they resort of maladaptive coping mechanisms. These kids aren’t being deliberately disruptive and their needs aren’t being met either.
but I would also argue that the best support for kids who are flailing is not permissiveness or additional accommodation, but strict accountability for behavioral and academic norms, both on the teacher and student side.
I agree but only with supports. Our experience has been the school is reluctant to acknowledge or address underlying needs or deficits. They push compliance with rewards and carrots, but without support and skill building, kids don’t have the ability to comply, even if they want to. In a lot of way, we have higher expectations for our child than the school does. And we certainly put in more effort.
Agreed. That is EXACTLY what happens in reality. The school has no interest in your kid actually learning and growing -- they only want to make sure you have no grounds to sue and they can ensure that by controlling the grades and any disciplinary/academic interventions they control the narrative around "support."
The ship could be made to float again -- direct instruction from expert teachers. High behavior standards. Failure to behave (costing the learning of others) equals removal from class, then suspensions, then expulsion, plus the option to train in a trade given the appropriate behavior standards were maintained.
Until those are brought back, instruction at scale is impossible.
The biggest disincentive is dealing with lousy student behavior that is unchecked and having the regulatory burden of jumping through a ridiculous number of administrative hoops that add nothing to your value as an instructor, plus dealing with entitled parents. Most of those problems are solved by booting kids who don't want to be there. However, I'd argue that most ACTUALLY smart (not just high-GPA, high-compliance smart) kids aren't going to take the financial limitations that come with teaching. Better to get 2nd career experts and have a cadre of admin who deal with all the... administrative tasks -- shocking idea, I know -- including interventions and teaching appropriate behavior.
Kids really notice when students who are markedly worse behaved than them get rewarded and it's sad. The last school I worked at had a system called "positive referrals." They could be really great! Students who were observed by teachers doing something well or going above and beyond by being kind or community oriented would get a positive version of a write up, that notification would go to the principal, and then at the end of the week the principal would congratulate the student and share the nice message their teacher wrote about them, as well as giving them a print out to show to their parents.
HOWEVER.......
The kids who got the most PRs were actually the ones who were the worst behaved. Students who were usually terrible doing the absolute BARE MINIMUM would get a PR for not being disruptive, while the students who were consistently wonderful and hardworking get nothing. I remember seeing an interaction between ninth graders where students were talking about how a classmate of theirs who had a lot of behavioral issues but had improved slightly over the year got SEVEN PRs in one week, while the students talking who were both very lovely hardworkers who never got in trouble hadn't gotten a single PR, ever. I immediately wrote them PRs of course, but it felt really illustrative of how general positive reward system behaviors work.
Additionally, the chronic behavior issues mean that students who are generally well behaved and want to work hard get pushed up into accelerated classes regardless of how advanced they are with the material. Many accelerated students are below grade level, but they are pleasant and well behaved, and to avoid having to deal with their terribly behaved classmates have selected a "challenge by choice" option. Not being allowed to fail students results in AC standards being continually lowered. And because we've gotten rid of leveling, the teachers down at the bottom are left with classmates FULL of poorly behaved students, and the actually advanced students aren't able to take a truly advanced class.
This is all true in my experience as well. Because we tolerate so much bad behavior, accountability for everyone (academic, behavioral, parental, professional) goes out the window and we are left in an absolute morass where it's a miracle anyone learns anything ever.
A big part of the problem comes from the aversion to punishment. I’m not talking about physical punishment, but loss of privileges that really ARE a loss. Sitting and having a long, boring talk with some creepy, caring professional isn’t cutting it. Kids blow that off. In elementary school, losing field trips was a really big deal. Teachers took all kinds of really fun field trips at my school, and could use it as incentive for kids to keep it together for weeks. Then, our SJW principal decided that was too mean, and we had to have “full inclusion” field trips. There goes a great lever teachers had, plus, as field trips became more and more untenable due to behavior problems, they took fewer and fewer and now take only rare ones. This is a microcosm of the problem as a whole.
Punishment could also involve real work- weeding garden, shoveling mulch, cleaning playground- and that might help some kids who just have a ton of energy and school is hard for them to deal with.
I’m not sure how I found you but I am thankful. I’m looking forward to reading more of your stack. I’m 34 and we have three young kids (5, 4 and 1) and we are starting our homeschool journey. My parents took the Laissez-faire approach with my education in the public school system. I’m determined to take a hands on approach with my children’s education and I am looking forward to learning alongside them! Thank you your words of wisdom and sharing your experiences.
I agree with your message, and also with the fact that parents must take charge, but sadly many won't. Public school is seen as public daycare.
Well, if the majority of parents are going to keep seeing it that way, is there a way to change how schools are run to accommodate?
I remember when I went to public school, there were suspensions, expulsions, summer school, repeating grades, no field trips if poorly behaved or had poor grades and the big fear of being sent to a juvie type school because you kept getting into serious trouble.
Why can't those measures be reinstated? They used to work for the vast majority of students in my age group, or at least seemed to work from my viewpoint. I also remember being able to be separated by achievement: gifted kids got first dibs on honors or AP classes, special needs were on their own, ESL kids their own side, normal kids their own classes with maybe 1 or 2 misbehaving kids that by halfway through the year if they were still a menace, could be booted to the other school for "bad" kids.
I see that now, classrooms are a forced mix of every type of student and it is hurting them all. I think it worked best for all to have separated levels of achievement with the ability to move higher if proven worthy of the grade.
Was this all because of "No child left behind"? I remember being in school at the time it first started, and my parents were less than thrilled with it.
You're right that when schools hold students and families accountable for their part in maintaining an effective learning environment through detentions, suspensions, expulsions and for academic achievement by honesty in grades which leads to placing students where they will most likely succeed, the schools perform far better.
Many things undermined the things. you pointed out which used to work. Overarchingly, all backward programs have been implemented in the name of taking care of the unmet needs of every child. This provides a huge number of high-paying jobs to the correctly politically-aligned adults.
It's graft, and it's coming off the backs of all our kids, none of whose educational needs are being met because we've increased the scope of our mission to the impossible; meeting ALL the unmet needs of all children.
I generally agree with your posts but this lacks nuance. You frame certain groups as victims and disruptive students as the perpetrators. Many of these students are students with unsupported needs and disabilities. These kids are victims of the system that prioritizes compliance over learning too. When their needs are met, they resort of maladaptive coping mechanisms. These kids aren’t being deliberately disruptive and their needs aren’t being met either.
I addressed a lot of that here https://open.substack.com/pub/educatedandfree/p/k-12-will-always-fail-special-education?r=b8lae&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
but I would also argue that the best support for kids who are flailing is not permissiveness or additional accommodation, but strict accountability for behavioral and academic norms, both on the teacher and student side.
I agree but only with supports. Our experience has been the school is reluctant to acknowledge or address underlying needs or deficits. They push compliance with rewards and carrots, but without support and skill building, kids don’t have the ability to comply, even if they want to. In a lot of way, we have higher expectations for our child than the school does. And we certainly put in more effort.
Agreed. That is EXACTLY what happens in reality. The school has no interest in your kid actually learning and growing -- they only want to make sure you have no grounds to sue and they can ensure that by controlling the grades and any disciplinary/academic interventions they control the narrative around "support."
The ship could be made to float again -- direct instruction from expert teachers. High behavior standards. Failure to behave (costing the learning of others) equals removal from class, then suspensions, then expulsion, plus the option to train in a trade given the appropriate behavior standards were maintained.
Until those are brought back, instruction at scale is impossible.
The biggest disincentive is dealing with lousy student behavior that is unchecked and having the regulatory burden of jumping through a ridiculous number of administrative hoops that add nothing to your value as an instructor, plus dealing with entitled parents. Most of those problems are solved by booting kids who don't want to be there. However, I'd argue that most ACTUALLY smart (not just high-GPA, high-compliance smart) kids aren't going to take the financial limitations that come with teaching. Better to get 2nd career experts and have a cadre of admin who deal with all the... administrative tasks -- shocking idea, I know -- including interventions and teaching appropriate behavior.