Frazz by Jef Mallett for September 09, 2014

Found out!

I can’t think of a better use for pickles.

I am sure that comicsfan is relating his experience exactly as he remembers it. Extrapolating one person’s experience to the whole of US public education is not very accurate, but newspapers do it all the time.

As a school district data analyst, at one point I had to learn some of the things the students in our detention center (jail) had been through. Comicsfan’s experience is alien to me, but I’m afraid it would seem tame to many of those students. Unfortunately, there is a vicious cycle that happens to many children from abusive backgrounds. They arrive at school full of mistrust, fear, and often anger. Unless someone manages to reach them, it can easily be all downhill from there. Parental engagement in education is the best predictor we have of how well students do at the elementary level. Students who do not perform well at the elementary level are assigned to the lowest-level classes in middle and high school. Those classes are full of disengaged students, and the better teachers are able to avoid being assigned to them. I think that may well be what happened in comicsfan’s case. It is apparent from the stories he tells that there were some high-quality teachers even in his personal experience. I would be willing to bet that if you asked other students at the same schools about their experience they would sound like very different places. That makes it no less real when you are the one experiencing it.

I don’t pretend that education or teachers are perfect. My district certainly has its struggles. Over 1,000 of our students are homeless each year, and our graduation/GED rate is only around 80%. I don’t think it is from lack of caring or lack of trying though, a few bad apples notwithstanding.

You equate a GED w/ a HS Diploma?