This is the third and final My Two Cents on the Student Assessment Data report on the Oshkosh School District
The root of the Oshkosh School District’s struggles to get kids up to state standards in key educational areas was hinted at during a recent School Board meeting as Board President Barb Herzog tried to provide some support to teachers after approving a health insurance plan that will end up costing taxpayers a couple million dollars more than an HMO plan opposed by the teachers’ union. Herzog sounded wistful as she told the teachers that had just given the Board a standing ovation, “We realize you have a very hard job. The kids of today are not like the kids of 20 or even 10 years ago. It’s just………….very hard.”
You could tell that Herzog wanted to add more, to take a shot at the real reason why only 40% of kids are proficient at reading and writing, why only 42% can do math and why just half understand science. But she hesitated, perhaps knowing that identifying the real culprits might lead to backlash when played back here on WOSH–or might undermine the argument that everything that ails public schools today can be fixed by spending more money. But I am under no such restrictions and I’ll gladly identify the underlying problem that continues to decimate our public schools.
Parents are failing their kids–and the rest of us in the Oshkosh School District too. When I see 60% of kids below proficient in reading, I see 60% of parents not making sure their kids are reading something other than social media posts and writing something other than text messages. When I see 58% of kids struggling in math, I see 58% of parents not caring that the only numbers their kids deal with are the body counts on Fortnite. When I see 50% of kids below the grade in science, I see half of parents that keep the TV on Netflix and Hulu all day–and never on Nat Geo or the Smithsonian Channel.
What compounds the problem is that those within education let parents skate on this. They make the tired arguments that “some kids just don’t do well on tests” or that “tests are not a valid measure of knowledge”. Well if I took a test on Mandarin Chinese vocabulary and didn’t get any answers right, would you say that I don’t do well on tests, or would you say that I don’t know Mandarin Chinese. And you know what, everyday life is a test of what you know. You can learn how to run a machine or fill out important documents–but unless you do it correctly almost all the time–no one is going to hire you.
And don’t use social status as an excuse for our children’s failures. The 60% not up to snuff on reading exceeds the percentage of low-income, minority and special needs students in the district. Oshkosh parents are sending kids to class now that are not only not prepared to learn, but lack the discipline and social skills to even learn how to learn. And when those kids fail, those parents just blame the schools themselves–or support the efforts to “spend more to fix this problem” that shifts the blame to taxpayers–who had nothing at all to do with raising those failing students.
It’s almost come to the point where I am ready to support the liberal education agenda that calls for children to be taken from their parents as soon as possible for early childhood education and pre-kindergarten programs and before school and after school and summer programs–because it’s clear those who should care the most about their kids don’t.
