LETTER: Clark County’s low education ranking is no surprise
After teaching in Las Vegas for 20 years, I retired in 2019. I am not surprised that the Clark County School District ranks 49 out of 50 (Friday Review-Journal).
For the past 12 years of my career, I taught fourth grade. I can’t even count the number of students who were not on grade level — and yet they were promoted to the next grade. In a class of 40 students, it is difficult to help those students who are reading on a kindergarten or first-grade level. And yet we are told to follow the standards set for each grade. As you can imagine, if students are that far behind, they cannot complete grade-level work.
This causes huge behavior problems, but discipline is completely lacking. Misbehaving students get sent to the office only to return to class in five minutes. Students are “punished” for misconduct by having them sharpen pencils or giving them treats.
Why not ability-group students regardless of age so they can be taught the skills they are missing? Also, such large classes prevent teachers from building relationships with students.
The disrespect of 9- and 10-year-olds is what made my decision to leave my career. Parents rarely back the teacher. My daughter, also a teacher, asked a parent if she would work on letter recognition, as the child was not able to identify letters. The response was, “I thought that was your job.” Not shocked about our ranking.