Reply #127: No, students in high school and college don't have to have done the [View All]

[DemBones DemBones]

prerequisite work to take a class. High school and college teachers face pressure to pass most students and not give too many Ds or even Cs. Every kid is supposed to get an A or a B according to their parents and the administrators want to keep the parents happy. At the same time, teachers aren't supposed to contribute to grade inflation! It's all crazy.

When I was in high school, the guidance counselor decided who got in college prep classes. In the high schools where I taught, the kids just signed up for college prep and probably half of them didn't belong there and weren't going to go to college,anyway. Being in college prep was just a style thing and something many parents wanted.

The only way to solve our educational problems is to stop passing kids who don't do the work or pass the tests. Kids who are years behind in math and/or reading should have to get up to speed before moving on. Most if not all schools have remedial, compensatory, and special education programs but parents can refuse to allow their child to be remediated so the problem is passed on to the teacher. Most kids can learn at least at general level but some of them need a lot of help to get there, more individual help than a teacher can give during class, especially if it's a college prep class.

Teachers are required to teach a lot of objectives -- on which the students will be tested with standardized tests. I was teaching 9th and 10th graders things they would be tested on in 12th grade graduation tests, which is a little crazy. We covered way too much material for the average student to retain for two or three years.

Having also taught college, I know that my high school students were being expected to learn college biology before they were ready for it. The text I had to use in general and college prep h.s. classes was no different from a college text. Today's h.s. biology texts include a lot of chemistry but kids haven't yet studied chemistry or have studied only elementary chemistry in a physical science class. And the reading level of the text was way above the average reading level of the students. It's all ridiculous.