To Fail or Not to Fail?

In my nearly one and a half years of teaching, one of the most frequent problems myself and my colleagues is what to do with the students who come to class with no intention of learning or and no intention to succeed. A current trend in education today is 100% graduation and passing standardized tests for certain subjects to make sure students are "proficient" in those subjects. Even if you have absolutely no knowledge about education today, you should still be able to see a big issue here. School systems, principals, and teachers are all responsible for student performance on end of course tests, so the responsibility does not fall on one individual to make sure that all students succeed. The question that comes to my mind is "What lengths should school systems, principals and teachers go to in order to ensure that every student not only passes their classes, but also passes the end of course tests?"

Each and every day, all across the country, students show up to school with no intention to learn anything in any subject, no matter the teacher. There are some students who will respond better to certain teachers and actually make some kind of attempt to learn, but ultimately 100% of their ability is not applied to learning. When students come to class with no intention to learn, they eventually begin distracting others from the learning process, requiring teachers to stop in the middle of lessons to constantly correct the behavior and attempt to get problem students on task. Many schools around the country want teachers to make numerous attempts to stop disruptive behavior without the administrators having to directly deal with the problem. Personally, I am a huge fan of this process and I believe that sending a student to the office should be avoided if at all possible, but there will always be times when this becomes necessary. The issue here is not who is responsible for disciplining the students, but to what lengths should teachers and administrators go to for each individual student if the problem never ceases?

Discipline in the classroom usually starts with non-verbal warnings, such as a simple stern look or a shake of the head to let the student know they are in the wrong. Next, a verbal warning may be necessary, but should still be quick and simple. If the problem continues, the teacher may want to hold the student after class to have a one on one discussion about how the problem can be resolved. From this point, a call to a parent or guardian may be a good step. Once all else has failed, send the student to the office for further and more severe discipline. But after all of this has been done and nothing has changed, what happens next? This may not seem like too much work for an individual student, but when the average teacher has 20-30 students in each class, suddenly there is not enough time to take a few minutes to deal with each individual's behavior while completing the daily lesson.

Teachers and administrators want to see students succeed, but there is only so much we can do to make sure a student passes a class and passes the end of course tests. When a student, or students, comes to class unwilling to learn, teachers are presented with a battle from the minute the bell rings to start class: "Do I want to spend my time disciplining two or three students or do I want to make sure that the remaining 20-something students learn what they need to know for the day?" Personally, I do not have the right answer for this question, but I am willing to hear any suggestions. I want to make sure all of my students succeed and learn the necessary information to pass my class. Also, I am happy to say only two of my approximately 75 students earned a failing grade in my class last semester, but at the same time I do not feel like some of the students are as prepared to move on as other students.

This is an ongoing battle that we will face in education every year, but maybe one day a solution will be available. Starting next year in the state of Tennessee, 30% (give or take) of teacher evaluations will come from student results on the end of course tests given by the state. In theory this seems like a brilliant idea to boost teacher performance, but what about those students who come to school with not intention to learn or succeed? Should teachers be held accountable for students who refuse to do everything they are asked to do? What happens if a student purposely does bad on a test, knowing they control a certain percentage of a teacher's evaluation, possibly affecting if the teacher is rehired or not? What if teacher salary is affected by student performance? These are all issues that we are facing in education today, so what is the answer to these problems? Only time will tell.