Plan For Failure

Here you are in a school identified as being persistently dangerous and that performs below average on every city and state-wide exam. You’re standing in front of 30 or more kids; many of the kids are identified with some form of learning, behavioral or emotional disorder. Some of them can’t read. You have no aid to help them and the school gives you no copying paper to run off something else that might make everyone’s life easier.

You have a ten-year-old Elements of Literature 6th Edition book and the Canterbury Tales is the next thing in your plan book. Good luck!

This is the book the students are supposed to be able to read if it’s what the school gives me, right? If not, then please give me some modified materials because the tax break for teachers isn’t big enough to buy or make new materials for each kid everyday. I always figure the “experts” who write about education don’t take into regard city schools like mine that are so incredibly far behind and backwards. They must not have lived this reality.

In our school, it’s not uncommon for a classroom teacher of 30 kids to have at least a third of those kids under what’s called an Individual Education Plan (IEP). Each teacher, under law, is supposed to make accommodations and modifications for each of those students for every step of the lesson plan.

So if you teach 12^th grade, as I do, and have an IEP student who tests at the 3^rd grade reading level, it’s up to you to accommodate that student appropriately all the way through the reading of what are very difficult materials for even the best readers. IEP students should have aids to help out too, but anyone who teaches in a dysfunctional inner city school knows this doesn’t happen. The materials I have to teach 12^th grade English revolve around an Elements of Literature 6^th Edition book that traces British Literature from Beowulf through post-colonialism. The book is a huge anthology full of reading that is anything but “modified.”

It’s no knock on the student who reads poorly, but does it really serve a purpose to have that student in a senior English classroom? No Child Left Behind has served a good purpose of identifying exactly what level students are performing at, but what to do for those 16, 17 and 18 year-olds who read at pre-primer and primer levels?

Many teachers spend their own money buying easy reader books or video players as ways to modify lesson plans. Many teachers, similarly, do nothing because they feel helpless, especially once the reality of it all sets in and they tire of trying to invent appropriate materials each day.

I’ve spent a good chunk of change trying to find materials that my students can read and understand. Our school has a ridiculous copying rule because we are so short on copy paper, so I’ve spent way more at Office Supplies than any young bachelor should.

Behavior problems in English classes occur when those students who are labeled as “low readers” or “non-readers” are asked to do reading, analyze that reading and write coherent responses to it. To modify each lesson for a third of a class that reads at primer levels while maintaining a collegial atmosphere for the mid to upper level readers is a recipe for failure, especially at schools such as ours that do not offer any advanced classes.

And though everyone seems to be arguing to pour more money into science and math classes, no one talks about doing the same for English classes. Well, if the student reads at a third grade level, he or she isn’t going to do well in those highly funded science and math classes. Definitely, an equal amount of money should go towards pushing all students to read at an 8^th grade level so they can at least read a newspaper.

IEP students are supposed to be getting help – it’s mandated under the Individual with Disabilities Education Act. They are also supposed to have IEP meetings a few times per year. Of the dozens of IEP meetings I have attended, parents have been in attendance a handful of times. Each of these IEP students has a file folder several inches thick. The state has all kinds of rules, but I feel confident saying most of the rules are broken or skirted past. What’s the result of all that work and of all those laws if after all the years the kid is still reading and behaving well below grade level?

Any new solutions to close the achievement gap must take into consideration the insanity of the current situation in our worst schools. Teachers always complain of being overwhelmed, whether they teach in a good or bad school. I often pooh-poohed all the whining until I saw the madness of being a public school teacher in a low-income area.