Pendragons Princess

I know this story comes from Chicago which has one of the worst public school systems in the nation, but this one takes the cake:

http://cbs2chicago.com/local/bradwell.elementary.8th.2.1047246.html

June 16, 2009

Nearly 60% Won’t Graduate At South Side School
44 Of 77 Students At Bradwell Elementary Did Not Pass Eighth Grade
by

Jim Williams
CHICAGO (CBS) ―

A startling number of children are falling through the cracks at one Chicago Public School. More than half of the kids didn’t even pass the eighth grade. As CBS 2’s Jim Williams reports there is fierce debate about who’s to blame.

It is a debate that has gone on for years in poor communities: do you blame the schools for the students’ poor performance or do you blame their parents?

The mother of a one student who failed eighth grade says she got no warning her son was struggling. The school says she was notified, and other parents insist she did not do enough.

Tatianna Dennis’ son, Tarrell, took his eighth grade photo complete with cap and gown, but the day before his grammar school’s graduation, Tarrell learned he would not be marching down the aisle.

“I asked him why but he was so heartbroken, he couldn’t really talk,” said Tatianna Dennis.

Dennis says she had no idea her son was about to fail English; no written notices from Bradwell Elementary, she says, and no warning from his teacher.

Tarrell had failed English two times before, but Dennis thought he was doing better.

“They told me that he was fine. He was starting to come around and his grades were picking up,” Dennis said. “They never gave me any indication that he was going downhill.”

It was a disastrous year for the eighth grade at the south side Bradwell Elementary school in a tough neighborhood with high poverty. More than half the class, 44 of 77 students, did not graduate.

Loetisis Billingsley’s nephew is one of those failing students.

“It’s horrible because these kids were under the impression they were graduating, and they let them know at the last minute that they wasn’t,” Billingsley said.

The Board of Education insists the Bradwell school did everything possible to keep the students’ grades up, offering extra credit and school on Saturday. And the Board says written notices did go out.

Some parents came to the defense of the school.

“You have to be in your kid’s life, you have to know what’s going on in their world,” said parent Vanessa Ewing. “I’m up at the school. The teachers know me. I stay on them. I stay on my kids.”

“It was something that child must not have been doing right in order for him to stay behind,” said parent Sharon Shavers.

Tatianna Dennis’ son is now in summer school. She works nights as a security guard, leaving her little time with Tarrell to supervise his homework.

“Especially now, when I need the help the most, with situations like this,” Dennis said. “And there’s nobody but me. But I get through it.”

On an encouraging note, Dennis says her son is so upset he failed eighth grade, he is now determined to be a better student, pass his classes this summer and go on to high school.

In that south side neighborhood, another mother said she has all the cell phone numbers of her kids’ teachers and she calls them all the time, and her kids are doing well in school.
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Lack of parental involvement is one of the biggest questions to arise when a child fails in school. Of course, the parents accused of not being involved in their student’s education then like to point the finger at the teachers. Are teachers to blame? While I am sure there are many good teachers out there who actively do their part in helping the students learn, the students also have to do their part in order to learn, too. But how does a teacher keep the attention span of a class of thirty plus students who are too busy socializing in class? That in itself is a challenge. But you know what the argument is nowadays for those who advocate public education - socializing is far more important than academics (then they wonder why their kids wind up living on street corners smoking dope all the time and can never hold down a job of any kind). So that must be the answer to the student’s failure in school - they were too busy socializing and not learning anything. What a great way to waste tax dollars, isn’t it. The more serious students - the miniscule handful that did manage to graduate from Bradwell Elementary - will be those who will hopefully graduate from high school then go on to college. I’m pretty sure those kids are not wasting their times socializing constantly during class time. Instead, they actually learned something, even though the school they attend is in a place of heavy poverty. Poor people are notorious for holding each other down in an attempt to disallow their own from trying to become “better” than them. The few that escape get places in life, and by that I do not mean the local prison.

In the end, maybe the one to have the finger pointed at is Bush for his “No Child Left Behind” act. All that was about, was testing students. The program had nothing to do with learning academics, and proved to be a complete failure for kids across America.