MONEY MONEY MONEY.... MONEY!

My school is in a situation that most urban schools are not. We have seemingly endless amounts of funding coming to our school. Our test scores are bottom of the barrel, the families our students come from make so little money that they are barely surviving. For many kids breakfast and lunch at school may be the only meals they eat. Faculty frequently buys clothing for students and sends food home in a secret backpack from the kitchen staff. But back to the money situation. We recieve funding from 2 separate sources to help our school. We have smartboards on the way, we just recieved 48 brand new laptops and 3 carts to put them in. Our principal recieves funding to buy supplies for our classrooms. We have a private philanthropist who has an attachment to our school, and our 7th grade students are paid, literally, for good report cards and attendance. With all of this in place, you'd think we would really be able to turn things around, and I am optimistic that in the future, we will be able to.

Two things specfically I'd like to touch on are the privitization of projects in school, and also on my students levels of achievement.

Those 48 computers and 3 carts I mentioned earlier have been sitting in the computer room and in the hallways for the past month. We have a private company and apparently we are 6th on the list for setting up the carts. I'm not quite sure what this means, but it is troublesome to see all of this technology sitting here for all this time, when the reality is that all you need to do is open the laptops up, put them into the carts, and plug the carts in. It seems like anyone with a brain could do that with minimal skill and effort. We currently have 6 other laptop carts in the school, 3 of which are barely functional. These "old" laptop carts are missing keys, don't charge, have broken screens, and functionality problems. Students abuse these computers rather than take advantage of the technology. We also recently had another company come in an install about a dozen wireless routers into the school's hallways and remove the routers from the carts themselves. This seemed to be a decent idea, except that the signal strength doesn't do too well passing through our concrete walls, and the computers now work slower than they did before. Our upgrade might be considered a downgrade. The computer tech guy assured me that the signal strength will be increased, so hopefully that won't be a problem once the tech department gets around to addressing it.

With all of the funding pouring into our school, it is almost embarassing to see the scores of our students on standardized tests and their academic performances overall. My students' writing, reading, effort, and work ethic are far below grade level, and it has gotten to the point where I don't feel like I have a legitimate perspective on what a 7th or 8th grader should be able to do in the classroom. Next week I am visiting one of the best school districts in our area to try and regain my perspective on what good work is. The cycles of poverty are a harsh reality at our school, but I feel that the elimination of the middle schoolers and transition to just an elementary will help bring success to the school in the next couple of years. My fears now are that my current students are already too far behind and have already given up on themselves to a point where they can't recover. A 50% dropout rate reduction is not looking so promising if your sampling is the K-8 school where I am currently employed. As a professional, I frequently doubt my own abilities as an educator, as I continually see that what I'm doing in the classroom is not helping my students become more successful. I try to work with the research and with the things I've learned in education classes, but I get the feeling that no one has quite yet figured out what to do about poverty or how to bring about drastic changes for a significant portion low income student populations.

If it isn't possible, then is my profession hopeless? Spending my life in hopes that I can help maybe one or two percent of my students each year certainly makes things disheartening for the remaining 98-99%. I want to be a part of something more successful and more productive and I have yet to figure out how I can do that.