Lately our local newspaper has been focussing in on the issues at our city schools. Mostly the troubles at the middle school and the disparity in the number of disciplinary referrals & special ed services among the minority students. The paper suggests that the minority students are being targeted for a disproportionate amount of referrals & special ed services. They suggest that the teaching staff, mostly white, needs better training in dealing with classroom management & acessing who needs special ed services.
I substitute teach in a few of the city schools. My experiences are that out of a class of 25, 16 to 19 of those students will be monority students. In todays paper, there is a picture taken in one of the schools. Of the 22 students pictured, 20 looked to be minority students. So if 64 to 76 percent of the students are minority students , wouldn't it follow that 64 to 76 percent of the disciplinary referrals and the special ed students would come from that same body of students? How is that targetting minority students?
There is a serious lack of minority teachers in schools today. The lack of these positive roll models has to hurt the minority students. I'm not sure how to change this. I supervise student teachers for a local college & in my 4 years supervising, I haven't seen many minority student teachers.
The environment the students all come from, their homes, plays a major roll in the kinds of behaviors and attention to learning you get from students. Not really sure what schools can do to address this. Mandatory pre-school & more after school programs may help. They cost. Maybe parenting classes could be offered.
What I do know is that blaming teachers at a time when schools are undergoing more upheavel with APPR's & the implementation of the Common Core & adding to all the testing, is not the answer.
Schools & Communities need to work together hand in hand to protect, guide, & educate our children...Our Future. The finger pointing must stop & the local newspaper needs to help put out not add fuel, to the fire.
