[Rangel]

Coming from an inner city school where the 95 percent of the population is on free and reduced lunch I can relate to what Art is saying. My interpretation may be a little different since the majority of our school is Hispanic and probably half of our students in the school are undocumented. One of the first things that catch my eyes is the different culture. I came from a moderately wealthy middle school to a very down under high school so it was very easy for me to notice the different. The first thing I noticed is the difference in parenting. It seemed to me that the majority of my friend's parents were harder on them in the moderately wealthy middle school then my lower class high school. This is because of a lot of issues such as parents working longer hours and being more tired at the small amount of time they are home. This reason though is a lot harder to fix than any of the other reasons there may be.

As far as how to fix the other problems, its also a political thing. I'm sorry but having even 30+ students in a class is hard. A budget needs to be increased to have more classes and there needs to be a cap on how many students can be in one class. In my opinion as well teachers should be paid a lot more and be looked at as great in society because they are teaching the future engineers, doctors, scientists, and heck even politicians. A teacher needs to be looked at as one of the highest figures in society and they should be. Of course that's not to take away from volunteer mentors as they are teachers as well and should fall into the same height of admiration.

On a side note the moderation of teacher evaluations needs to be moderated as well. We had a new evaluation system last year in our school that evaluated teachers on the number of kids failing and if they taught on what is essentially a script or teaching to the test. So teachers got docked as a result of getting a higher number of kids that don't care more than the other teachers, they were criticized for teaching kids valuable skills such as critical thinking or just simply thinking. This much evaluation led to the eventually quitting of some of the best teachers we had on campus and a lot more retirements than usual. The best people to come up with evaluation methods are the teachers themselves in my opinion. That's how this year our school has a new attendance and grading policy which has been working fantastic in my opinion at least. Those were the main things I see as a student anyways.