Public Schools Need Improvement

For the first 2 years of high school, I attended a high school with a predominately White student body, located in a middle class area.   During my junior year of high school, my family moved to a different city due to a change of circumstances.  I was transferred over to a high school where the student body was predominately Black, located in a low-income, high-crime neighborhood.  The two schools are located within the same county, but are in different cities. The differences in quality between the two schools was like night and day.  There are huge disparities in the quality of education that students would receive going to those schools.

I am sure there are people who went through the public education system during the same times that I did, had similar experiences.  There are probably others who would say they don't know what I am talking about.  I can only speak to my experience.

Most of the teachers employed at the predominately White high school, were competent and really serious and committed to their jobs.  The faculty and administration seemed to take a real interest in the students, no matter what race or ethnicity the student was. In fact, I credit my high school Spanish teacher (who happened to be White) for recognizing that I was "college material".  She wanted to get me into college prep school.  Unfortunately, that wasn't possible for my circumstances at the time.  If it weren't for her, I probably wouldn't have given much thought or planning to attending college.

In contrast, many of the teachers employed at the predominately Black high school were substandard in their teaching.  I can only speak to the quality of teachers that I was assigned to, and most of them were not good teachers.  Out of 7, only 2 were good at what they did, and 1 was mediocre.  Out of the remaining 4 teachers, I could tell that 2 of them at least tried but the students were so disruptive, that they would not allow these teachers to do their job. 

I can say with confidence that I didn't learn nearly as much as I should have during my last two years of high school. Some of the information that I learned, was self-taught from reading textbooks.  It’s a wonder that I even graduated from high school because I sometimes skipped school to go to the library to study. 

When I went to school, neither the FCAT nor “No Child Left Behind” existed.  Students in my school district took the California Achievement Test.  I always did very good in reading and comprehension but my math skills were lacking.  So, I had to take remedial tutoring to get myself up to par to pass the math part of the CAT test.  I never did fully grasp some mathematics concepts and it spilled over into my college years.  I had to take nearly an entire academic year of remedial math courses just to get to college level algebra.  So, I was taking middle and high school level math during my first two semesters in community college. 

I blame the fact that I was behind on the school system, the teachers, my parents, and myself. Even though I know that my parents did the best that they know how and I did the best that I knew how, I think that we all share some of the blame in the public school system's failure to so many people.  I now realize why so many people slip through the cracks and can’t read, write and count as adults.