This boy was VOTED OFF THE ISLAND.

He either would not or can not 'conform'.

He is an OUTCAST, an ABERRATION, a SECOND-CLASS Non-Person.

Public Education has NO PLACE for a boy like this, nor anyone else that cannot follow lock-step the 'policies' and 'procedures' of a bureaucratic bunch of baby-sitters.

We are training a nation of lemmings, thoughtless sheep who bleat with the rest of the flock, rather than be thought not worthy to stay on 'the Island'.

Kudos to the mother of this boy. Maybe she will remove him and home school him, and prevent further ostracizing and ridicule because of his 'differences'.

To all of you who parrot the idea that 'diversity' is something that makes us strong, and then don't immediately recognize the inherent bias and discrimination occurring here, SHAME ON YOU!

You are hypocritic idiots, defenders of the 'status quo' of an educational system created for migrant workers and transients (it's in Flori DUH), and unable to comprehend the true problems here.

Not only should the TEACHER be fired, the District sued, and the investigating officer reassigned, but the Superintendent and School Board should re-evaluate their 'policies' or be tossed unceremoniously out on their collective fat-cat asses.

If you think I have an ax to grind, you are MOST correct. Having been in this abysmal system, and attempt to change from within, it became painfully evident that I, too, am a non-conformist.

While leaving their employ has not harmed me, the arrogance, incompetence, and mishandling of our most precious resource, and hope for the future, continues unabated.

Florida schools score below failing, ie 60%, using their OWN standards. I dread to see how they compare with other, more enlightened states.

But, the main reason nothing substantive is done is because the employees value their 'government' jobs, poor teachers get rewarded as well as excellent ones, outstanding teachers cannot discipline (and, this fiasco was not DISCIPLINE, merely a self-serving attempt by a fluff-brained idiot who cannot see past a television screen), and administrators are turned into real-estate developers.

The schools care not for your child, other than as a metric to report to the State for accounting purposes.

If they DID, then there would not be drop out and failure rates in excess of 40%.

I hope Alex's mother sues them, wins, and is able to provide him the care he deserves.

BoyHowdy

Howdy, BoyHowdy. I really enjoyed this post. I don't agree with all of it, but I surely did like reading it. You're a firebrand, and I like that in a forum poster. I'm still learning the ropes around here, so forgive me if posting in lots of threads is a n00b faux pas.

<-- Public school teacher, eight years working with kids with pervasive autism, before that I worked in various other programs serving individuals with disabilities. I teach in a self contained room, but all of my students spend at least part of the day in a general education classroom with varied amounts of support, ranging from a 1:1 aide to assistive tech devices that allow my non-verbal kids to participate in discussions and conversations. As a result, most are performing on grade level in all subjects, and all are within one year of their chronological peers. I'm no babysitter, bucko. ; )

I'm also smart enough to realize that my situation isn't typical. The teachers in my building are almost all on board with inclusion, we have wonderful and supportive parents, our principal is pretty open minded and intelligent for a building administrator and we all really like what we do. Our building also performs very well under the Giant Thumb of NCLB, so we have breathing room and resources lower performing schools don't.

You're entirely correct that the system as a whole is hosed in a most spectacular way, but I think you're only scratching the surface of the underlying causes. The system itself is antiquated, designed to provide workers for agricultural and manufacturing jobs that were plentiful when public education began. The schedule, the trivia-based general curriculum, ability grouping and direct instruction are all tools that worked pretty well when Little Johnny was going to grow up to be a fireman, a farmer or a factory worker and Little Suze was going to grow up to keep Little Johnny's house tidy and full of children. Clearly, our culture is no longer filled with factories and homemakers, but we still cling to an educational system that began failing forty years ago.

Instead of fixing the core of the problem, however, the entire educational landscape has become politicized and corrupt. Blaming teachers and building level administration is akin to blaming the child laborers when your WalMart merchandise falls apart. Sure, there are really, really crappy teachers and principals out there, but you can usually trace a line from a bad employee up through a string of bad bosses who either didn't do what was necessary to get rid of them or didn't take the time to train them properly. Combined with the culture of fear and sanctions fueled by NCLB, increased testing pressure (some schools are administering standardized assessments EVERY TWO WEEKS) and non-stop negative press it's really no surprise that our educational system is a gigantic clusterfrak.

However easy it is to understand why this teacher might be frustrated, it still doesn't excuse the decision she made to humiliate this kid. It's our job to be fair and impartial in a world that very often isn't either. We may not be able to change the policies or sway the politicos making all the big decisions, but we can ensure the culture in our individual classrooms is conducive to ALL students' learning. It's disingenuous to hold her up as an example of What's Wrong With Education Today, but that doesn't mean she's not responsible for the travesty that happened in her classroom last week.

Even though you left teaching, I appreciate that you still want to fight for education. In spite of your anecdotal evidence to the contrary, there are still many of us out here who are fighting the good fight from the inside, and we'll continue to do so as long as there are kids who need someone to fight for them. I encourage you to use your wordsmithery and knowledge of the inside workings of education to educate others and push for change.

fondly,

chamalla, long-winded and proud of it.

More bizzaro world logic coming out those who use their feelings as a guiding force through life. Using your logic, if I had a neighbor who at 3AM every morning, went outside and played the drums on their front lawn, I should welcome their presence in my life because they are simply being different than all their lemming neighbors and are adding a touch diversity to my life. It's this pin headed thought process (along with the inept meddling of politicians) that has brought the US educational system to it's knees. Thank you very much.

Screaming_chicken:

More bizzaro world logic coming out those who use their feelings as a guiding force through life. Using your logic, if I had a neighbor who at 3AM every morning, went outside and played the drums on their front lawn, I should welcome their presence in my life because they are simply being different than all their lemming neighbors and are adding a touch diversity to my life. It's this pin headed thought process (along with the inept meddling of politicians) that has brought the US educational system to it's knees. Thank you very much.

Yeah, that was my goal. Bringing down Big Ed by my dastardly underworld maneuvers of teaching kids with autism to read. I'm a regular nuisance to society. ; )

If we're not going to educate all the kids in the PUBLIC school system, where do you suggest we do it?

>>>In spite of your anecdotal evidence to the contrary, there are still many of us out here who are fighting the good fight from the inside<<<

I have no doubts that there are plenty of misguided, naive fools who feel they are doing things 'for the good of the children'.

You are wasting your time and life.

In my four years working in the system, one of my duties involved creating applications that made it painfully evident not only who the 'bad teachers' were, but why.

Initially an interesting problem, it occurred that no one was seriously interested in this political hot potato, because it clearly showed hard data that these employees, some of whom had inflicted their 'methods' on almost three decades of children, were under performers compared to their peers.

And I mean you could click a button, see the scores of a given teacher, press another button for comparisons to peer group, and see the aggregate GPAs of the students under each tutelage.

These 'teachers' stood out like sore thumbs by every statistical mean available, and you could see the trend of how their students, although normative, were at the shallow end of the grading pool, consistently, year in and year out.

And, no, they were not all in 'disadvantaged' schools, either, or had 'free and reduced lunch' students, ESE, ESOL, LEO or ABCD or whatever other acronym amalgam turned out to be the 'word' of the day.

They were cronies.

Pure and simple, they were people who knew people, met minimum requirements, and, short of outright molestation of the kids, had careers for life.

They knew how to play the system, kept their noses clean, and benefited from their seniority. And who knows how many children have lost a love of learning, or hated school or became disillusioned, because of these people?

When I presented my 'superiors' with the cold, hard facts, derived from the very records of their own databases and distilled with the exacting criteria THEY requested, I was told to redesign the program to allow for more variables favorable to the desired outcome.

It was virtually impossible to cast these employees in a good light, unless you altered the data to accommodate for their inability to teach.

I was then removed from the project. Someone less of a 'firebrand' was able to massage the data into a non-truth that met the feel-good requirements and allowed these cretins to continue to remain employed and collect their pay.

That is why I decided I no longer wished to 'fight the good fight' within the confines of a corrupt system more focused on real estate development and propagandizing the illiterate children of semi-literate parents than giving my children and others like them the tools needed to become successful in the 'real world'.

If you think I am bitter about it, you would be wrong. I did better economically after leaving.

If you think I am seething over the fact that these dolts are then given a pass when they play "Survivor", you are correct.

Luckily, it is no longer MY problem.

But, one day, when the products of this system emerge to run the businesses, schools, and other mechanisms of our world, we may ALL have a problem.

BoyHowdy

>>if I had a neighbor who at 3AM every morning, went outside and played the drums on their front lawn, I should welcome their presence in my life because they are simply being different than all their lemming neighbors and are adding a touch diversity to my life.<<

Of course you should! Don't you pay property taxes to learn just this thing?

People who want to be early morning drummers just need to be 'relocated' to an area where they can bang away with their like-minded peers.

Isn't that the theory behind busing?

My, you are being narrow-minded indeed! </sarcasm>