Only 47% of Florida’s black males graduated in the 10-11 school year

Pretty depressing. Some people think a potential solution is our black males have more black teachers. That is pretty depressing too. I don’t care if a teacher is white black or any other color, we should be striving to put our best teachers in front of our most challenged kids and we should also put in place things that help our kids not hinder them

Some districts, Duval included, would rather put Teach for America teachers in our toughest classrooms. These rookie teachers not only don’t have education backgrounds but they are unlikely to grow into being great teachers because 95% of them are gone within two years.

Standardized testing scares many of our veteran teachers away. Why would an excellent veteran risk their career to teach the kids that need excellent veterans the most? Would you roll that dice?

Class size, an average teacher could teach a class of forty if all the kids were motivated, and had parental involvement. A great teacher would struggle with a class of 20 if the kids didn’t care about school, lacked parental involvement and had the street dictate their priorities. In our poorer neighborhood schools, class sizes should be about 12-15 so teachers can really get tot their kids.

Extras, like electives and social workers, and believe me friends many of these things have become extra in the schools that have to drill incessantly for tests. We can’t make school drudgery for kids and wonder why they don’t do well and we can’t ignore what happens to kids when they aren’t at school if we want them to be successful.

No friends, unless we plan to wall off the races then just putting black teachers in front of black students won’t work.

To see a different opinion hit the link below.

http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2012-09-22/features/os-ed-darryl-owens-black-males-graduation-092212-20120922_1_black-males-schott-foundation-black-men