Here we go again.
This time it’s a pro-Bloomberg parent group, StudentsFirstNY, that is planning on filing a civil rights complaint calling for an investigation of what it says is “an unfair concentration of ineffective teachers in the city’s highest needs schools.”
The group wants the Department of Education to look into why there are more unsatisfactory teachers in schools that have a high proportion of low-income and minority students.
Can we please get on with reality, stop litigating, investigating, and blaming? Just take responsibility for your children, fix it, and be done with it.
Here’s a thought: how about filing a civil-rights complaint calling for an investigation into ineffective parents, which there seems to be a plethora of all over the city.
In order to have effective teachers, in effective schools, you have to have effective parents. Yes, that means that the buck stops in the house. Parents need to be present in their children’s lives and their education, because the most important job of any parent is to parent. In fact, our very good mayor even has a program in place that pays parents who come from a low-economic spectrum a yearly stipend to be better parents (Remember that old Opportunities program?). Take your children to the dentist, show up at open school week, open a checking account, blah, blah, blah.
Obviously, the Opportunities program hasn’t lived up to the mayor’s expectations, nor given anyone a better opportunity. But I digress.
I am so sick and tired of the he said, she said, they said, and no one gets anything done. Our schools are a mess, the children are out of control, and the teens are violent and rude. The parents don’t give a rat’s rear, and blame teachers for their failings, and the teachers don’t care either, and are busy blaming the parents. In the end, the only ones that suffer are the children, and no amount of investigating, litigating, and blaming is going to fix that.
This city and the Department of Education has become a runaway train wreck, with all its civil liberties actions, nanny-gate rules and regulations, and a whole bunch of hogwash, with very little substance.
Why can’t we get back to basics? Let the teachers teach and the parents parent. Let’s put discipline back in the classroom — which means that children respect the teacher and keep their phones away, and their attitudes in check.
If the student does not behave properly, the parent gets a call. If that doesn’t help, the student gets detention, if that doesn’t solve the problem, the student goes to juvenile hall and serves a little R&R washing floors, cleaning toilets, and getting a shot of reality to discover what their world will be without an education. The old “three-strikes-you’re out” routine worked well for past generations. I don’t see why it won’t work just as well with this one.
Not for Nuthin™, but sometimes getting back to basics is not only the simplest solution, but the best one.
Follow me on Twitter @JDelBuono.
Joanna DelBuono writes about national issues every Wednesday on BrooklynDaily.com. E-mail her at jdelbuono@cnglocal.com.
