How Is The Rapides Parish School District Performing? (“Is Our Children Learning?”)
To download the report, click here.
(We place 27th out of 68)
How Is The Rapides Parish School District Performing? (“Is Our Children Learning?”)
To download the report, click here.
(We place 27th out of 68)
CenLamar 
Rapides Parish Schools still suck. I mean, my Mexican kids are far more ahead of them in English than most RP kids. Heck i’d venture to say that in the year they’ve been learning English they’ve accomplished more than the average kid in the parish.
Should we be proud that we placed 26th? Fuck no. The level of education should be much higher but as it stands area education is a complete joke. Feel bad for the black kids, let the jocks pass ahead, let the pretty ones slide, and generally teach to the dumbest kid in the class. It is no wonder Alexandria lags behind in so many ways. If only we could test them on cooking crawfish or late night binge drinking.
NCLB puts all special ed kids in regular classes. Sure, there are sped kids who are labeled such for the monthly check, but—the “real” special ed kids are totally lost in a regular ed room and that is unfair to all of the students. The teacher can only teach to the weakest student!!! I do agree with the above comment—however crude. Rapides is really not committed to education. It is all about who knows who and who can promote who. Sad but true. There are some great teachers in classrooms in the parish as well as wonderful students who have supportive parents. Hopefully things can improve before it is totally too late.
Rapides is commited to education. They are just following the law of NCLB. What can you expect from a high school teacher with a science class with 35 students and 8 of them Special ed?? How much individual attention do you think anyone gets?? the good, smart, quiet kid is the one left behind.
Shows how little you know about public education. Mainstreaming has been around for many more years than the past 6. I’ve been out of public education since 1997 and it was around long before that! Please educate yourself before you prove your stupidity. The sorry state of education has been around since the feds got involved in it!
Besides the fact that the IDEA needs to be thrown out, public education will always be in a sorry state as long as we keep confusing reality with fantasy.
For example, I was told to research Brain Based Learning, as opposed to Foot Based Learning I assume, at the last teaching job I held. This bullshit ideaism stated that if we allow a child to learn to read when they feel ready, they will have NO learning disabilities or dyslexia. The people I worked with took this seriously. They wanted to bring the author of the book this is based upon to the parish for his 34,000 speaking fee. Good work guys.
My current teaching job, down in Mexico, is much more enjoyable because I have control over who passes and who fails. Don’t do the work? Fail. Fall asleep and miss a section? Your fault. YOU DON’T BABY STUDENTS! Why? Because it breeds laziness and irresponsibility. I had La students who knew they didn’t have to study nor did they have to actively try. They knew the system would reward them in the end.
You want to know who else is being left behind? There are scads of intelligent kids in Rapides Parish who are shunted to the side because they aren’t popular or athletic. This is especially true of students who carry outside interests and may be seen as being ‘different’. They don’t get recognized for their efforts and their ideas often fall on deaf ears. What do they then do? Withdraw and don’t give a shit. Walk the halls of Tioga, Pineville, Bolton, and ASH and you will see this in full motion.
Remember this: Bolton High School use to be one of the most competitive academic schools in the state. Look at it now and you see a mediocre school where sports is placed ahead of achievement. Things will continue to fall apart if the gyre keeps loosening.
OH, I know what you mean. It seemed like every damned year, before school began we had workshops to introduce something “new” under the sun to “teach” our children. Most were the most inane bullshit ideas put forth, but we had to incorporate them into the curriculum for that year. Lesson plans had to reflect that new idea.
Intelligent children are being pretty much left behind because teachers are forced, by the liberal agendas of the NEA, to teach to the low “average” student. Imagine a 55 minute classroom period and you have first take roll to make sure you have all your students accounted for. Taking into consideration the percentage of students who show up unprepared for class and you have to deal with them. Developmentally slower students have to be read to or otherwise taken into consideration. The paperwork alone on them can drive a teacher to madness! To make matters worse, since mainstreaming (placing slower students in with the regular classes) accountability has grown as it pertains to paperwork and documentation on handicapped students. I really don’t understand how teachers cope with it today! There literally aren’t enough minutes in a class session to effectively deal with ALL that is required and that makes it virtually impossible to NOT leave someone behind.
I can tell you that mainstreaming in Rapides Parish just started in the high schools, maybe not just started, but was expanded HEAVILY in the last two years. Two years ago, because of a federal “issue” (rule they were not following) ALL the special ed students were placed in regular classes, except the EC Hayes kids.
This includes students that have been in self-contained special education almost their entire lives.
Can you imagine being a 16 year old special ed student learing comsumer type mathematics in a small class, where you were learing to add, read packages, cook simple recipes, shop in the community, etc. to a high school geomerty class, of 33 students, where you are not learing shapes, but writing proofs, learing all the properties of parallelograms, doing trigonometry. Not only are you lost, you are not successful, and look foolish in front of other children your own age. How is this helping the special education student??
And what about the regular student that now has 5 special ed student in their class, how much attention is that student getting now from their teacher, how much time is the teacher devoting to their regular students?? or is the teacher spending all of his time looking for activites for the special student. The regular child is being left behind.
I feel bad for these special students as well. What are they doing while the regular students are writing research papers?? How about the complexities of civics/free enterprise? How about high school Biology? Chemistry? Think back to the tough classes in high school, then explain to me how mainstreaming is successful.
How do you think test scores for high school will look in 2 years when all the students that failed the 8th grade LEAP test, but were promoted anyway, take their 10th grade test?
How did we do these students a favor? Lets send you off to something that you are in no way shape or form prepared for, and put you in classes with students who are. Great job, I can’t wait to hear from their parents in two years.
Perhaps I didn’t make myself clear, so let me elucidate. I don’t and never did like mainstreaming. It hampers both the special ed AND the smarter students. As long as the liberal agenda of the NEA is involved in educational ideas public education will suffer. You cannot base education on “feel good” crap that hinders both the special ed and the smarter students.
As a teacher in Rapides Parish, in Alexandria, I can tell you that there is no other group that I’m aware of who is less compensated monetarily or otherwise and more committed to our children’s welfare, academically and in all other ways. Please consider that the NCLB act was passed by a president who, apparently, believes that one score on one test given in one form on one day is a valid indicator of a child’s cululative learning over seven (not nine–tests are given in March which measure an entire school year’s progress) months. Testing: by all means, intelligently authored, mandated, and interpreted. Accountability: absolutely. One-shot, politically motivated programs which don’t benefit the public or educators: you decide.
Sorry I misspelled cumulative. I’m an English teacher. Mea culpa!!!!
NCLB is doing nothing but harming all our students. What good does it do to put a special ed student in an English class with regular ed students. That is just setting him/her up for failure.
Typical governmental intervention into programs they have no real knowledge of in the first place. Virtually every time government gets involved in a program you can almost always bet on its failure.
This one has NEA’s liberal agenda all over it.
The History of No Child Left Behind
The principles of No Child Left Behind date back to Brown v. Board of Education, when the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed racial segregation in public schools and determined that the “separate but equal doctrine” was unconstitutional. That decision is now 50 years old.
Just after the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act became law in 1965. No Child Left Behind is the 21st-century iteration of this first major federal foray into education policy–a realm that is still mainly a state and local function, as envisioned by our Founding Fathers.
On Jan. 8, 2002, President Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (P.L. 107-110) into law with overwhelming bipartisan support. The final votes were 87-10 in the Senate and 381-41 in the House. Senators Ted Kennedy (D-MA) and Judd Gregg (R-NH) and Congressmen George Miller (D-CA) and John Boehner (R-OH) were its chief sponsors in the Senate and the House.
No Child Left Behind ensures accountability and flexibility as well as increased federal support for education. No Child Left Behind continues the legacy of the Brown v. Board decision by creating an education system that is more inclusive, responsive, and fair.
I was in the education system for 23 years and social promotion has been around for as long as I can recall. I hated it then and I hate it now, but teachers have next to no say in their classrooms and that has been true for as long as I can recall as well.
As long as the federal government has its hand in public education it will continue to go down the tubes. Give control back to the individual parishes/counties/states and we’ll see immense changes. Local control whereby supervisors can remove bad teachers on the spot can improve things also.
Tenure can be a good or bad, depending on the strength of the local supervisors as well. Supervision needs to take place on a regular basis of teachers in their first three years to ensure quality teachers only are in the classrooms, thereby weeding out the ones who don’t cut the mustard.
The problem is, at least at the High School level, there is no one to take the place of the incompetent teachers. No one qualified to teach math or science is unable to get a job in this parish. If we also fired the incompetent, or partially competent, the students would have a substitiute, which only requires a GED. Scary.
How about helping new teachers instead of trying to weed them out??
I think it must be easier to train someone you already have, than to start over with someone with even less experience.
This is where we need more help from the universities who are training the teachers in the first place. I went to college with a fellow who couldn’t speak proper English and we took a number of classes together and I was amazed that the professors never did anything to correct him and allowed him to do his student teaching and became a teacher. If universities are held more accountable for the teachers they’re turning out we’d be ahead of the game in that respect.
You’re right in the fact that it will be easier to work with the ones who we already have, but on the other hand, there should be a new way of applying tenure for the ones who are needing remediation. The time shouldn’t start until they complete remediation.
When observation comes into the play you have to consider what the supervisor is looking for. My vision of how I conduct my classes is much different from the what the new standard is. I was chastised in my previous parish job because I lectured to my English students. The preference now seems to be that you play games and use multiple intelligence based activities (jumping jacks for nouns!, wiggle for verbs! etc).
If I am to be graded solely based on shit like that, I would rather return to grad school and get my PhD instead of having to motivate students by wiggling. It is a sad state when education considers this the mark of a good teacher.
Truly stupid shit, I agree. As long as the NEA and its liberal friends have a say in what goes on in the classroom this stupid shit will continue. Teachers must be able to regain control of what goes on in the classroom. States need to weed out the federal government from control of every facet of education. Minimum standards are fine but how it is achieved should be left to the professionals in each state and school district.
“Give control back to the individual parishes/counties/states and we’ll see immense changes.” Are you kidding? With the politics involved in this parish and state? No way.
“Tenure can be a good or bad, depending on the strength of the local supervisors as well.” AMEN to that! Just because someone’s been teaching for 31 years, doesn’t mean they’re doing it right.
The teacher shortage will continue until the powers that be get off their asses and raise teachers’ salaries.
Also, let us not neglect to mention that there are far too many morons out there procreating. The quality of parenting leaves much to be desired and the majority of parents will not pay one iota of attention to what their child is doing in school, much less assist the school system in any way with their child’s education.
Exactly right. I’ve had parents tell me “What about ‘every child, every day, whatever it takes?'” Those are words to inspire teachers, not to use as an excuse for a child who won’t work and a parent who doesn’t care.
Amen. I have witnessed so many sorry parents in my years in the classroom that I can’t count them all. I’ve heard every sorry excuse in the book, many from my own classes or the classes of co-workers. We’ll never get ahead of the game if parents don’t start pulling their share of the load, and so far there so tons of parents who don’t even come close.
oooops! “there so” should be, there are tons…
Sorry
But btdt, don’t you know that your job is to be the parent? They gave birth to the kid but it is your job to teach them morals, ethics, and everyday living. When my mother was a Kindergarten teacher she was told outright by parents that her job was teach their kids everything from potty training to morals to religion.
The parents here in Mexico give a shit about their kids education. They want them to succeed and make sure they attend the right Secondaria or Prepotorio in order to help them get into college. They make no excuses and will make sure their kid studies. It’s good to see people giving a shit.
Compare this with my experiences in both Allen and Rapides Parishes. Parents could give a fuck less and the same went with the students. This was especially true with the black community. Everything was racist from the grades to the books we used. If there was an excuse that could get their kid an A, it was said. We need to stop catering to this crowd. You either do the work, fail, or dropout. No more handouts. No more guilt. The same goes for Tioga area residents who pulled the same shit but only more centered towards “This isn’t Christian,” or “I come from the country and we don’t need no…” attitude.
When we keep accepting the lowest common denominator as our basis for achievement then we lose. The same goes for accepting the worst of the worst when it comes to teachers. Certified or not, if you think reading to 11th graders is education you need to be shot. If you think arts and crafts is a good way to get students involved in British Lit, please off yourself. These are the reasons why our students would hit my basic English 1010 class and FAIL. That and they could write a paper like I can surf. Horribly. I’m not expecting prose worth of Harper’s or The New Yorker but two, five word sentences does not a paragraph make.
You want examples of good teachers in the Parish? Here are some from my travels:
Tioga HS-
Horaist, Sanders, McNeil, The Art teacher whose name I can’t remember, Drayton, and Ard.
Bolton HS- (93-99 era)
Barry Lee, Numa Metoyer, Heather Cooley, Dewayna Sanders, Nancy Monroe, Kelly Self, Mr. Bordelon, hell pretty much the whole staff.
Pineville HS-
Great Administration from Principal down to Asst. Principals, Vines (English), the whole Biology department, the whole Art Department, and the rest of the English Department.
These people, though limited since I forgot half the names due to interruption, give more to their students and expect a high amount of work for their efforts. I would gladly take their classes, and in the case of Bolton I did take their classes, because they invest time and place a premium on education. No excuses, no arts and crafts, and definately no shame.
Hell, you want to have a real Civics/ Free Enterprise class? Teach it like Numa Metoyer did at Bolton. We studied Locke, Machiavelli, Sun Tzu, Plato, and others without looking at exerts from our crappy textbook. We had real conversations, the ones most people get in trouble for since they cover things that ain’t in the bible, and were expected to operate on a higher level. Try that now and you’ll be written up for not following the GLEs. Because we all know the GLEs are a good guide.
“The parents here in Mexico give a shit about their kids education. They want them to succeed and make sure they attend the right Secondaria or Prepotorio in order to help them get into college. They make no excuses and will make sure their kid studies. It’s good to see people giving a shit.”
If all the people in Mexico “give a shit” why is it so many millions of them are coming here illegally? All countries have their bad apples, so before you go bragging about Mexico, make sure you’re on solid ground.
You mean Numa Metoyer that got two students pregnant within a month of each other, but continued to teach because his mother was on the school board?? Great role model.
Moron!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Anonymous, get your facts straight. One of the mothers was in college and the other was the same age (give or take a couple years) as Mr. Metoyer at the time of the pregnancies. You’re a great role model with your gossip…
Teachers don’t have a choice anymore about what they want to teach. In Louisiana, teachers are mandated to follow the Louisiana Comprehensive Curriculum. Which, contrary to its name, is NOT comprehensive. Check it out on the Louisiana Departemtn of Education website. There are REQUIRED activities for every core class from Pre-K to 12th grade.
The clown in Mexico is probably there for a reason and should stay. Rapides Parish has a good school system and it is reflected in test scores and student success. There are good, dedicated teachers all over the parish. Teachers that put their students first. General Jones has done a great job as superintendent and is not afraid to get the job done.
Jones is a “yes” man for John Sams. Get your head out of your ass and realize that. He has no backbone.
But he has a lot of GUNS.
Yes, because everyone who travels outside of the US is obviously either a screwup or a scofflaw of some sort.
Jones is a slight improvement but the Parish is still fucked beyond belief. Test scores do not mean a damn thing in the real world. Anyone can learn how to take a test, but genius comes with being able to solve abstract problems that aren’t limited to A-D answers. citing test scores is akin to citing perfect attendance as a reason you should get a raise at work. Good job, but does it really matter?
I’d venture to say our teachers are both good and bad but most teachers lack true intelligence. I mean, they became education majors for god’s sake. That amounts to taking a bulletin board making class. I may be generalizing but hey I am allowed to do so.
Anyhow, i’ve taught on the secondary and college level. I’ve seen a smidgeon of the problems but what I have seen in Rapides Parish is scares me. It seems the motto is “Keep em dumb and they won’t want higher wages!”
el jefe,
Some of us choose to teach; we see it as a calling, a noble way to spend a life as we help others find ways to think clearly, to participate in our democracy, and to develop a real desire to continue learning as long as life lasts.
If you are afraid, you should be. The 21st Century will have few jobs to sustain a family for those who do not have more learning than a high school education. We need good teachers, people who care about people and who still believe that the individual, armed with a good mind and a courageous heart, can make a real difference. No dedicated teacher wants dumb students. What do you contribute to the betterment of our society by disrespecting those of us who work to create and maintain an educated electorate? Like John Sams, you can criticize, but can you be constructive?
I think one of the problems I have involves the rhetoric used by yourself in the last post. Choosing to refer to teaching as a ‘calling’ and a ‘noble way to spend [ones] life’ makes it sound as if you are going into the priesthood. Myself and other educators have found that such usage only heightens personal pride while making a mockery of the field. Teaching is in no way ‘noble’ as it isn’t a stately field nor does it ring of aristocratic virtue. Nor is teaching something that involves a high degree of skill. I think it is much easier and pragmatic to refer to being a teacher as being an integral part of society, but not as part of a loftier realm. If we were paid in the six figures, then we could consider ourselves nobles.
Your other points in the first paragraph ring true and are worthwhile.
Anyhow, you want constructive thoughts? How about we fix education so that it provides students with an option instead of locking them in a classroom until they are 18. Give students the ability to study the fields that are interested in at either a public school or trade school. Let the trade school student apprentice for two years as part of their education. Also, reduce the emphasis on sports and put more money into building science and technology schools. The fact that we lag behind China, India, and even wee lil Serbia in math and science does not help our case as the leading developing nation.
We have to place more emphasis on foreign language education. Students should be fluent or close to fluency by the time they leave high school. This includes English where most students are horribly outclassed. In todays job market, a person who can speak two to three languages with a high school diploma can have more value than a college graduate who can barely speak English. It just depends on what sector you are going into. A BS in Biology and knowledge of Arabic or Bangladeshi can get a 22 year old several jobs in laboratories. It is vital that our students engage themselves in other languages because it also strengthens their knowledge of English and gives them another skill set to utilize on the job market.
NCLB should be removed from law as it enforces dangerous budgetary standards for states and holds everyone at gunpoint. Taking tests does not measure the intellectual wealth of a student nor does it justify a teachers salary. Even the worst teachers can teach students how to memorize a test set. The only testing that should matter is a comprehensive examination that takes into account a variety of subjects students have learned over a given time. Base this off the German Abitur.
As much as we wish we could easily solve these problems quickly, we must face that it will take time. BUT we can observe the trends in the marketplace and consumer realm to track ways in which we can improve education. Instead of babbling on about selfesteem and lack of parenting, we should actively do something in that realm by taking a stand. The main focus, regardless, is that we should prepare students by offering them a choice instead of keeping them till their are 18 and letting their brains go to waste for a piece of paper. Selection, future vocation, and oppurtunity give more to look forward to than just a minor accomplishment. If we keep on the current track we will continue to notice a stagnation as education presents little oppurtunity other than knowing how to take a test.
As to my dislike of the professionals involved. I admit i’ve been a bit hard in my prose. My mother teaches in the Parish (I think she taught Lamar) and has done so for 14 or so years. My main complaint comes from what I observed in the high schools of the parish last year. I saw more arts and crafts than education at some schools in their English departments. Though I will hand it to Dewayne Vines at Pineville HS as he runs a great department. I think we should repair our jargon and stop caring if a teacher is dedicated as this word can mean a lot of things other than educated, knowledgable, and fluent. Maybe I spent far too long in higher education and am not able to seperate the two fields (secondary and higher) and the professionals involved.
/Former Composition Instructor (NSU)
//Former 7th Grade Teacher
///Current ESL=TOEFL Instructor
El jefe where in the hell would you be without teachers?
What are these “arts and crafts” you are talking about?
What the hell is a bulletin board making class?? I have taught for ten years and NEVER made a bulletin board. I guess i missed that class.
Many, many high school teachers have degrees an anything but education. They do go back and get certified to teach, but so what.
Teaching is a great job, the money sucks. But the hours are flexible if you have children.
I know many, many moms who worked in the real world, but after having children, went into teaching. (I also know many moms who quit their real jobs after having children, and now do nothingm they even have somone to clean their house, etc.)
I could have a “real job”, but I choose to teach. Some of you make it sound like the most wasted profession in the world. I teach because I think my children deserve to have family time, and friend time. Full time jobs make hoilidays rough, and summers worse. Don’t assume because someone teaches that they can’t cut it in the real world. Maybe they are just doing what is best for their family.
Or maybe they are doing what they love to do.
I wonder if the teacher-bashers have every been thrown up on by one of their clients in their “real job” and then had to clean it up. I wonder if they’ve ever had to deal with a 15-year-old who tells them to “fuck off” in front of 30 people. Big deal? Just punish the kid? What if the kid didn’t have dinner the night before or breakfast that morning and his mother spent the night smoking crack? I wonder if the teacher-basher has ever had to go buy clothing for a client with his/her own money.
I bet not.
Arts and crafts- That would be the class projects where you create a tiger out of construction paper or you create a senior memories book. Various other arts and crafts projects I have seen involved paper mache chemical compounds for a junior chem class. Official time wasters that you get a grade on. Some classes have spent a week constructing such things. At the elementary level this is okay. After 7th grade it becomes less acceptable in my book.
Sadly, I think you are under the belief I do not consider teaching a real job. It is. I am doing it, my brother has done it, and my mother is currently doing it. I consider it a full time job and know that you can work 100 hrs/wk easily. I did that too.
As to the last poster, I have had people throw up on me at work. I had to clean it up. Plus 8 year olds have told me to fuck off. This was called working at a hotel in Alexandria. I’ve heard the sad stories many times and I have contributed clothing and money to a couple students who had nothing. I made sure they ate lunch everyday. Do I deserve a humanitarian award? Nope. Been there, done that.
Remember kids, you can enjoy teaching but still find faults in the field. Being critical is important if not vital. But I guess being critical means you’re just a basher.
You all are ignorant!