There will be a hit comedy for the movies written from this one.
Educators lower the standards for teaching, yet again
Number two pencil blog
I cannot believe that even a big-city educrat thought this was a good idea (from the New York Resident , current issue not yet online):
On July 1st, several thousand high school students will start to reap the rewards of their alma mater rap sheets for indulgences from assault to malicious vandalism and extortion. They will tutor failing third-graders in exchange for a five-hundred dollar scholarship and classroom credit towards their own graduation.
Only students who have made the lives of their school communities a living hell need apply.
The Department of Education wants to kill two birds with the stone of a single program. It wants to address the problem of troubled students who, having failed themselves and the hopes of others, have taken out their resentments on themselves and the innocent victims of their school community.
It also wants to help third graders, at minimal taxpayer investment, by providing them with academic aid. To achieve these commendable goals, they have embarked on a daring and fatuous experiment. They have instituted a project that enfranchises these troubled youths by entrusting them with elementary school guinea pigs.
Who thought this was a good idea? I mean, seriously. Who assumed that third-graders would benefit from tutoring from a group of older students who were selected not for reading skills but for criminal behavior? Yes, I'm familiar with the idea that those who have done bad can be reformed by being asked to do good; we've all seen the heartwarming shows about convicts who learn to help others behind bars (Cell Dogs is one of my favorite shows). But it's folly, and dangerous folly, to assume that any old juvenile delinquent who feels like earning some easy cash can provide an instructive, much less safe, environment for a third-grader.
These high school students, who have been suspended from school for the most serious violations, some of them full-blown crimes, will be thrown into confidential settings with eight-year-old kids to provide tutoring in areas in which the older child may not be competent himself. It is the poster program for the "hell is paved with good intentions" philosopy...
Among these "shake and bake" tutors are students who have been suspended for ninety days and reassigned to "Second Opportunity Schools." The general public is clueless how horrific a student's behavior must be, in terms of gravity and frequency of actions, for the educational authorities to approve such a suspension and transfer. Only the worst of the worst, whom public schools cannot expel by law, are welcome.
As author Ron Isaac points out, it is grossly counterintuitive to to offer young criminals the opportunity to earn $500 for tutoring when honor students who haven't been in any trouble don't have this chance. These wayward students aren't being offered the opportunity to help repay their debt to society; they're being offered money to do a job for which they may or may not be held accountable. I know of no other "redeeming" program for criminals that offers them money for "redeeming" themselves.
Tutoring is not a job that everyone can do, and it's bizarre that the DOE seems to be suggesting that even juvenile deliquents can do it. Does this mean that their standards for hiring teachers are much lower than we suspect?
Isaac's conclusion is worth reading, as he notes that the program requires that a student "apologize" for his crimes:
The question is not whether these troubled children/instant tutors are siphoning pay from legitimate teachers. The argument is whether totally unfit people should be entrusted with providing educational critical care to our most vulnerable students: third-graders who recently failed the test for promotion...
To build an educational foundation, the terrain cannot be quicksand. "Tough love", not end-stage "rehabilitation" is the answer. Failure to believe in oneself guarantees more failure. By all rational means let's cure students of the false idea that they are born losers in the serious game of learning.
But a student's antisocial behavior can only become "water under the bridge" when he builds new bridges for and by himself. Any fresh water under that new bridge must be in terms of that student's self-improvement before we can let him gamble on the improvement of others. Even if they mastered third-grade skills, which many such high school students do not, the first step must be with themselves. Just saying "sorry" doesn't cut it.
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