I went to the University City School District in St. Louis. It was actually a pretty strange place because it's the main district that Wash U (Washington University in St. Louis) is in, so about 10% of the students are children of (mostly white) professors and other very education-oriented professionals (doctors, lawyers, etc). Because of that, top classes (honors and AP) were actually pretty good. I, and many of my classmates went to Wash U and other top universities.
The rest of the student body was made up of poor, mostly black students who came from families where education wasn't a priority. Every single year I was in high school the state tried to revoke our accreditation and we just barely passed a state audit to keep it. I was a math tutor, and it was common for students to come in who couldn't do basic addition (in high school).
To make matters more confusing, the gap between the good students and the bad was almost entirely caused by economics (wealthier parents resulted in smarter kids, as is normally the case) but because the economic divide was almost identical to the racial divide, many of the educational issues were easily conflated with racial issues. This led to the (mostly black) teachers and administration demonstrating favoritism toward white students, and it also created tremendous social pressure on black students not to try to succeed academically (otherwise you're an oreo).
I wouldn't trade my experience there for anything. I received a pretty good education, and I experienced a part of America that more privileged kids should experience, but most of the students at my school were definitely being left behind.
I can co-sign for the quality of the district he mentions. My nieces and nephew are there now. It's totally an economic issue. My sister-in-law really does care about the education of her kids and their potential future, but she has to work 2 jobs to barely support them adequately. It's a case of survival knocking education down a notch on the priority scale.
What class were you in to be taught that incorrect stuff from your OP? I can't imagine those professors and doctors would let it slide if their children were being taught such nonsense.
The honors and AP classes were generally pretty good (in math and science anyway) but those weren't always options. For example, in 10th grade, there wasn't an honors world history class, so I had to take the normal class. That's where I was taught what the big bang theory was. I knew it was wrong and tried to argue, but the teacher was pretty sure she was right. I immediately went to my adviser and got switched to a different teacher, but the rest of the class didn't know any better (many of them probably thought the teacher was right).
As for parents not getting involved, I'm not sure I ever told my parents about that stuff because I thought it was normal. Middle school was by far the worst part of the district, and a few years ago my brother and I were telling my parents stories about how about once per week there were school-wide riots in the lunch room that the FAs (bouncers) couldn't contain and we could do basically whatever we wanted for 30 minutes because of the chaos. It turns out my parents had no idea this was happening (my mom said she wouldn't have let me go back to that school if she'd known). We never told any parents because we thought every school had riots like that.
I have no idea how it happens, but I recall having more teachers that I referred to as "Coach" instead of "Mr.", "Ms.", or "Dr." while in middle school and early high school.
I'll add to this since I think these types of stories occurs more often than people think. I went to Baker High School in Mobile, Alabama (that might be your first clue).
In the 8th grade I took a required course called Earth Science, also of course taught by a coach. I recall that the last question of one of the exams was "The Universe was created by _____________". Odd. I thought this was a fairly complex answer for a simple fill in the blank question, especially for tests which were typically always multiple choice or fill in the blank. So I just assumed that the empty space below it (since it was the last question) was for writing a short answer.
So, I did my best to mention the Big Bang Theory and associated information about red shifts and such for scientific evidence. In the end, my answer was about a paragraph long, and I felt really good about my answer.
I did get full credit, but I noticed that other students also got full credit but wrote only in the blank itself. So I checked with the teacher for how I could have been more concise. Turns out that the correct answer that he was looking for was "God".
I guess the question was a simple fill in the blank after all.
I've wondered that myself, particularly in regards to the recent evolution vs. "intelligent design" debates in school as of late. I'd be interested to here what other HN readers think.
This is the most dramatic instance I experienced, but in Honors English we spent at least a week on the Bible, but never any other religious texts. Conveniently, at the same time I had read some vampire fiction by Anne Rice and concluded that it's possible that Satan is actually the hero of the Adam & Eve story. It turns out, however, that this is not a good opinion to express when trying to do well in English in a conservative public state school.
As to Earth Science, I was not penalized for my response; had it been, this would have been clearly objectionable. On the other hand, at the time I did feel that it was unfair in that one could give what I considered a cop-out answer for full credit. It may be a theologically true response, but it does not give us any scientific insight and understanding into our Universe.
Given the two examples above, I'm not really sure. It can certainly be uncomfortable for someone who is brought up as an atheist, but I'm not sure it's outright illegal. And this is where the avenue for standardized testing comes in -- it's not necessarily to demonstrate student learning but perhaps rather to better identify egregious issues in school districts.
> It can certainly be uncomfortable for someone who is brought up as an atheist, but I'm not sure it's outright illegal.
I'm quite sure it is illegal according to federal law. The question is whether state law trumps this. Because if it does, no doubt Alabama has passed a law making it legal to teach creationism in schools.
Even at good schools with non-religious teachers, students are undoubtedly taught lots of information that's false. Teachers are of merely average intelligence and often just don't know that what they're teaching is false.
Which is fine because if the subject matter actually matters, there will be ample chances to relearn it later. Having teachers teach stuff that is wrong is only a big problem if you think teachers need to be infallible. But the fact that teachers can be wrong seems to me one of the more important true things kids learn in school.
The rest of the student body was made up of poor, mostly black students who came from families where education wasn't a priority. Every single year I was in high school the state tried to revoke our accreditation and we just barely passed a state audit to keep it. I was a math tutor, and it was common for students to come in who couldn't do basic addition (in high school).
To make matters more confusing, the gap between the good students and the bad was almost entirely caused by economics (wealthier parents resulted in smarter kids, as is normally the case) but because the economic divide was almost identical to the racial divide, many of the educational issues were easily conflated with racial issues. This led to the (mostly black) teachers and administration demonstrating favoritism toward white students, and it also created tremendous social pressure on black students not to try to succeed academically (otherwise you're an oreo).
I wouldn't trade my experience there for anything. I received a pretty good education, and I experienced a part of America that more privileged kids should experience, but most of the students at my school were definitely being left behind.