Educational Outcomes

I just finished scoring two sets of essays. Every time it reminds me of hitting myself on the head with a hammer because it feels so good when I stop. While there are different paths to the same outcome, theoretically schools, parents, teachers, and the students themselves want students to succeed. If that is correct, then serious steps need to be taken far earlier than the involvement I have with students which usually starts at tenth grade. Our schools are overcrowded and underfunded with Utah scoring at the lowest in per pupil spending of all the states and territories. Money alone is not a panacea and cannot guarantee any outcome, but cramming over 35 students into an AP English Literature class when at least half of those students are not native English speakers does foreshadow failure on multiple levels.

There are dozens of languages spoken at the high school I work with. Everything from native English speakers to Mandarin Chinese, to Russian, to Croatian, to Somali, to Spanish--well you get the idea. Most of the students in the AP English classes are also IB Diploma hopefuls which usually means they are advanced in math and science--separate languages in a very real sense. But that doesn't mean that they read or write easily in English. But the district and the state have declared that STEM classes are where the effort and money will go despite knowing that success in college often depends on being able to write. Even the native English speakers get very little if any instruction in grammar, syntax, style or anything anymore. Everyone pats them on the head because they don't want to damage their egos.

Add to that problem the growing issue of parents forgiving all of their students' sins. Time was when students were expected to learn without parental intervention or at least without the excuses that modern parenting advocates. Gone are the days when I could tell a student to do some work on her own and to know that she would follow through on that. I tutor for free so one might expect that I would be inundated with students asking for help. Unfortunately they either don't understand that they really do need to learn to write, or they think that their brilliance in science will make up for their shortcomings in language, or they simply don't want to do work that isn't required.

Harvard had nearly 40,000 applicants this year. It stands to reason that the ones who are chosen are the ones who excel in all areas rather than the ones who stand out in one. Harvard is not the be all and end all of college and isn't a good fit for many students, but it is the one school that virtually all of the students I work with yearn for.