New York City Schools under Mayor Bill DiBlasio are taking the kinder, gentler route on student discipline. In order to make the numbers look better, DiBlasio has instructed his education chancellor to strictly limit the types of infractions for which principals in NYC schools can administer appropriate, firm discipline. Fighting, cursing, defiance--any discipline for students engaging in these behaviors requires "approval" from downtown. Sounds familiar to me...minimize the significance of the misbehavior, water down the consequences, marginalize what impact such disturbances have on class learning time----then claim victory and "mission accomplished" when the "numbers" are lower.
Like he did for crime rates in NYC by eliminating proactive policing and "stop and frisk" policies that worked- leading to escalating crime rates--DiBlasio is now socially engineering schools to fulfill a campaign promise to make discipline more "fair."
And now he's claiming victory.
Appeasement does not equal solution, though.
from Staten Island Live:
"The system will basically bend over backward to cater to those who disrupt lessons and break the rules. The kids who actually behave and do their work be damned. It will also remove a measure of local control from borough schools and consolidate more power in the hands of the central authority, the DOE.
De Blasio is pushing the plan in response to data that indicates that minority students are more likely to be suspended or arrested. So it's basically a DOE version of stop-and-frisk reform. The message will be a powerful and simple one for disruptive kids, no matter what race they are: Don't worry. They can't touch you."
The administrator's Union has filed a protest.
Teachers hate this plan.
Parents are appalled.
Media have panned the plan.
But the numbers for school discipline, not surprisingly, are looking better!
Horrible plan! It just may leave New York City with a lot less teachers. This will lead to a lot of protests, and maybe a good ole fashion riot. You can only push people so far before they explode. How can laws like this actually get passed?
ReplyDeletehere's the way this works, in a nut-shell: Liberal ideology projected onto schools with an uncompromising mandate that everything be "fair" with no statistical anomalies tolerated leads to a watering down, a dumbing-down, of discipline. These hands off, milk-toast discipline protocols and procedures give students who do not take school seriously at best, or who are violent asocial or antisocial predators at worst, and gives them all the power. They know there will be no real consequences for their bullying of students and teachers, their defiance and disrespect toward school officials. They know they can stand up in class as often as they want and say Mother F this and F that--and they'll, at most, be walked around the halls and "talked-to". This lack of support for a safe, respectful, positive school climate, in turn, destroys schools by accelerating flight from such schools by parents and students with means leading to a greater concentration of dysfunctional discipline nightmare students, which leads to staff and administration churn at such schools. Then, when allowed to be fully implemented and such schools become totally dysfunctional and must be closed, the same liberals who demanded that liberal school administrators implement "no discipline" will howl the loudest when these schools are shuttered. And they won't even be attenuated enough to know they got exactly what they demanded because their simple, dogmatic, ideologically driven and ultimately destructive ideas actually "got implemented."
ReplyDeletePeople always want to complain when the school gets closed. People always want to complain when some kids are always getting suspended, saying that the suspension rates are unfair to minorities. If people would just care about the overall school instead of their individual career, then maybe we'd get somewhere. When I was a teacher everybody was always playing the blame game, oh it's that teachers fault, no it's this teachers fault, or maybe everybody just needs another classroom management workshop.
ReplyDeleteIt's simple, the adults should spend less time worrying about sports and gossip, team up, get out of fantasy land, and get these students in check. The liberals who support these policies must not have anything else to do but make up BS laws from their ivory towers to pass down, the out of touch crappy policies to be implemented to the soldiers in the field.
This just takes some thinking from parents, teachers (who have heart) and scaredy cat administrations. Some long term plans and thinking to prevent these crappy laws from getting passed. WE NEED TO TAKE THE SCHOOLS BACK FROM THE LATCH KEY SPOILED BRAT NEGLECTED KIDS. Adults need to be willing to care enough to do this.