To Increase your Blood Pressure, Read: "If you send your kid to private school, you are a bad person"

[Heathermomster]

I just don't care what this person thinks...My brain is like, whatever.

[Alte Veste Academy]

I think the author—hyperboles aside—is basically correct.

 

When people of means and high personal education keep their children in public schools it makes a huge difference in the schools. I see this first hand being is just such a school with our child. The parents are a factor. They do have clout. And the school thrives.

 

No ones education is "sacrificed." And where people of education and means pull out of the public schools, those schools suffer. 

 

She is (in her somewhat over-the-top way) telling it like it is.

 

Bill

As you have been told here many, many times, you are in an enviable position, lucky and idealistic enough to be capable of even assuming the possibility of a universal experience. Many people have envied your experience because of your tales about the apparently excellent public school your son attends, mostly because they tried their local schools themselves and found the situation not at all similar, despite high hopes and good intentions.

 

I am absolutely not one who assumes all public schools are awful, and I believe it is equally biased and naive (not to mention offensive) to believe that all schools can be equal to your son's because, as I am sure you well know, all variables are not equal, ever. Essentially, the author of the article just ignorantly and simplistically attempted to serve up a heaping helping of guilt for all of those not lucky enough to be zoned to a magical school where no child is sacrificed or just slips through the cracks. Gosh, all you parents whose kids are having a (euphemism alert) less than ideal educational experience should just stick with it and try harder. Sacrifice your child, your sanity, and your family dynamics for as long as it takes so that the greater good might potentially be served...eventually...maybe. But probably not.

 

She's telling it like she imagines it could possibly be. That's sure sweet.

[Crimson Wife]

I think the author—hyperboles aside—is basically correct.

 

When people of means and high personal education keep their children in public schools it makes a huge difference in the schools. I see this first hand being is just such a school with our child. The parents are a factor. They do have clout. And the school thrives.

 

No ones education is "sacrificed." And where people of education and means pull out of the public schools, those schools suffer. 

 

She is (in her somewhat over-the-top way) telling it like it is.

 

Bill

Except that, like the Ms. Benedikt, you live in a district that has special schools for the highly gifted. Most places in America don't have those. If my district were willing to operate a school like Hunter or Anderson in NYC or Mirman in L.A. I'd enroll my kids in a heartbeat. I'm not homeschooling out of some ideological opposition to public education. I'm homeschooling because my district doesn't give a cr@p about educating kids like mine.

[marlowefamily]

The article has at least four major weaknesses:

* It assumes that parents can make a difference in the school.  Nothing I've seen suggests this is true.  You can volunteer all you want, participate in school groups, attend school board meetings, etc...but if you live in states like California, good luck.  The system is meant to destroy any change that doesn't work to the benefit of the teachers unions and the politicians the unions have arrangements with.  The unions give significant campaign contributions to the politicians, the politicians in return isolate the teachers unions from any accountability for results.  Then both sides participate in obfuscating how the system works and simply cater to whatever is the educational fad of the moment.  As long as everyone claims they are working hard to do something, nothing actually has to get done.  And if anyone tries to hold them accountable, they blame the parents or loudly advertise to the ignorant that all will be better if the taxpayers just funded the system at a higher level....despite the fact that the system is already bloated and wasteful with dollars as is.  I was on a school site council for two years and tried to get some changes made...getting anything done meant proving to the district that parents wanted it, having the various teacher groups buy into it, ensuring the district didn't have to spend any money on it, getting teachers trained, making sure that it didn't conflict in the slightest with any other priority dictated from above, and then realizing that the school really only had the resources to pay attention to no more than 1 issues raised by parents each year, and even then only to extent that it shielded the entire system from being called out on other problems.  The response was always a minor improvement at the very best, a fig leaf at worst.  Sorry, no.  I won't put up with this anymore.

* Second, if one reads up more on the history of public schooling, it becomes obvious that it has been a failure from the beginning and was designed to be so.  The entire purpose of mandatory attendance at public schools was not educational excellence.  There is no reason to believe this will ever change, short of a revolution.

* Thirdly, the article also assumes that we as a society can agree on what makes a good school in the first place.  I'm confident that this is not the case.  Parents have strongly different opinions on what values should be taught in school.  Removing values from school is not a neutral choice, it just is a different choice.  

* Lastly, there are at least two major systems of belief with regard to human nature....one suggests that human nature can be significant altered for the better, the other says that the best we can do is to make everyone aware of the pitfalls of human nature, make people contemplate the costs of their choices, and then arrange societies to minimize the harm that any individual or group of individuals can do.  These two systems of belief produce different visions about how effective a public school can be.  The pessimistic view of human nature simply believes that no one will ever be as motivated or dedicated to teaching children as the parents. Therefore, the best education has the parent as the center (home school, or small locally run public schools w/ minimal state involvement).  The optimistic system thinks that society can bypass the parent and do a better job, that in essence the child belongs more to the state than the parent (e.g. Germany which bans home schooling).  You are not going to get agreement from these two groups as their philosophies are antithetical to each other..  

[Spy Car]

As you have been told here many, many times, you are in an enviable position, lucky and idealistic enough to be capable of even assuming the possibility of a universal experience. Many people have envied your experience because of your tales about the apparently excellent public school your son attends, mostly because they tried their local schools themselves and found the situation not at all similar, despite high hopes and good intentions.

 

I am absolutely not one who assumes all public schools are awful, and I believe it is equally biased and naive (not to mention offensive) to believe that all schools can be equal to your son's because, as I am sure you well know, all variables are not equal, ever. Essentially, the author of the article just ignorantly and simplistically attempted to serve up a heaping helping of guilt for all of those not lucky enough to be zoned to a magical school where no child is sacrificed or just slips through the cracks. Gosh, all you parents whose kids are having a (euphemism alert) less than ideal educational experience should just stick with it and try harder. Sacrifice your child, your sanity, and your family dynamics for as long as it takes so that the greater good might potentially be served...eventually...maybe. But probably not.

 

She's telling it like she imagines it could possibly be. That's sure sweet.

 

But what you are missing is most of the local elementary schools in my area had really slid two decades ago. Many parents pulled their kids out, and it just cascaded. The families one would have least wanted to leave, did so.

 

But then parents, first at one local school, decided to take their local elementary schools back. They got parents active in classrooms, they raised money, they had a presence in running the schools. And those schools transformed. Soon people were dying to transfer in from out of that school's zone, and the neighborhood kids returned.

 

With the first school operating as a "demonstration effect," other local schools followed suite, using the same model, and were similarly transformed. 

 

"Magical schools" happen when parents band together to help create them. It is that simple.

 

i understand people "pulling out" and/or giving up. But, that does nothing to improve the public schools. Quite to the contrary. Where smart, hard-working, energetic, dedicated, and involved parents working with (and in) schools does.

 

That is the truth.

 

Bill

[Spy Car]

Except that, like the Ms. Benedikt, you live in a district that has special schools for the highly gifted. Most places in America don't have those. If my district were willing to operate a school like Hunter or Anderson in NYC or Mirman in L.A. I'd enroll my kids in a heartbeat. I'm not homeschooling out of some ideological opposition to public education. I'm homeschooling because my district doesn't give a cr@p about educating kids like mine.

 

Mirman, which is very nearby to us, is not a public school. There are some "highly gifted" magnet schools in the school district, but I'm talking about local (non-magnet) elementary schools. 

 

Where parents are involved and committed (and having means and good educations themselves doesn't hurt) neighborhood public schools can thrive. When the schools lose these sort of families to private schools (or even homeschooling) it hurts these schools. This is not difficult to understand. That's just the truth.

 

I get people may have personal reasons for choosing private schools (or home schools) over public schooling, and that doesn't make them "evil." But it is folly to think losing the people who could make a difference (if they had the will to see to it) doesn't make a difference. It does. And the author is spot-on on this point, even if her points are made in a grandiose fashion.

 

Bill

[Alte Veste Academy]

But what you are missing is most of the local elementary schools in my area had really slid two decades ago. Many parents pulled their kids out, and it just cascaded. The families one would least wanted to leave, did so.

 

But then parents, first at one local school, decided to take their local elementary schools back. They got parents active in classrooms, they raised money, they had a presence in running the schools. And those schools transformed. Soon people were dying to transfer in from out of that school's zone, and the neighborhood kids returned.

 

With the first school operating as a "demonstration effect," other local schools followed suite, using the same model, and were similarly transformed.

 

"Magical schools" happen when parents band together to help create them. It is that simple.

 

i understand people "pulling out" and/or giving up. But, that does nothing to improve the public schools. Quite to the contrary. Where smart, hard-working, energetic, dedicated, and involved parents working with (and in) schools does.

 

That is the truth.

 

Bill

I believe this. I absolutely believe this can happen. But what you are missing is all the stories where people tried, tried, and tried again but, for myriad complex reasons, were unable to gain any traction. There is nothing simple about it.

[Alte Veste Academy]

Where parents are involved and committed (and having means and good educations themselves doesn't hurt) neighborhood public schools can thrive. When the schools lose these sort of families to private schools (or even homeschooling) it hurts these schools. This is not difficult to understand. That's just the truth.

 

I get people may have personal reasons for choosing private schools (or home schools) over public schooling, and that doesn't make them "evil." But it is folly to think losing the people who could make a difference (if they had the will to see to it) doesn't make a difference. It does. And the author is spot-on on this point, even if her points are made in a grandiose fashion.

 

Bill

I acknowledge that public schools can thrive, and that they are most likely to do so with outstanding parental involvement and support. I do not disagree with that at all.

 

I don't know how things work where you live, but where I lived (and worked in or with public schools for years), there were rich schools and poor schools, respectively located in the (you guessed it) rich and poor areas of town. So all the people who can afford to put their kids in private school? Just LOL about them helping to turn around an entire school. Generally speaking, there would be no need for their kids' zoned school to be turned around. And they certainly would not be helping to turn around a poor school by keeping their kids in the rich school. Heck, even if they improved their rich school, how would that help make things better for education overall? It would simply widen the gap between rich and poor. These parents are obviously not going to have their kids bussed to the poor schools, so again...just how are these financially privileged people going to bring about a revolution in the quality of public education?

 

So maybe schools everywhere don't work this way? Fabulous! (Sincerely, because I think it is truly rotten that there is such a thing as a rich and poor public school!) But this is a weakness of the argument. There is not one simple, universal answer.

[Spy Car]

 

The article has at least four major weaknesses:

* It assumes that parents can make a difference in the school.  Nothing I've seen suggests this is true.

 

Exactly the opposite of my experience, and the experience of all the school aged parents I know. We know we can make a difference, and we are living it. 

 

 

You can volunteer all you want, participate in school groups, attend school board meetings, etc...but if you live in states like California, good luck.

 

I live in California. What your saying does not conform with reality.

 

 

The system is meant to destroy any change that doesn't work to the benefit of the teachers unions and the politicians the unions have arrangements with.

 

What balderdash!

 

The vast majority of teacher are in the profession because they want to make a difference in young people lives. the notion they want to crush any positive change that doesn't benefit themselves is insulting and offensive.

 

 

The unions give significant campaign contributions to the politicians, the politicians in return isolate the teachers unions from any accountability for results.  Then both sides participate in obfuscating how the system works and simply cater to whatever is the educational fad of the moment.  As long as everyone claims they are working hard to do something, nothing actually has to get done.  And if anyone tries to hold them accountable, they blame the parents or loudly advertise to the ignorant that all will be better if the taxpayers just funded the system at a higher level....despite the fact that the system is already bloated and wasteful with dollars as is.

 

Ideological much?

 

 

 

I was on a school site council for two years and tried to get some changes made...getting anything done meant proving to the district that parents wanted it, having the various teacher groups buy into it, ensuring the district didn't have to spend any money on it, getting teachers trained, making sure that it didn't conflict in the slightest with any other priority dictated from above, and then realizing that the school really only had the resources to pay attention to no more than 1 issues raised by parents each year, and even then only to extent that it shielded the entire system from being called out on other problems.  The response was always a minor improvement at the very best, a fig leaf at worst.  Sorry, no.  I won't put up with this anymore.

 

I've been on the site council too. So has my wife. It is one vehicle of change at schools, but not the only one. Changing things take work. That's the way it is. 

 

Parent group can effect bigger (faster) changes than a typical district will. So you make the local changes you can, and work for district-wide changes more incrementally, knowing mounting minor improvements add up (and are much better than giving up and seeing decline).

 

 

* Second, if one reads up more on the history of public schooling, it becomes obvious that it has been a failure from the beginning and was designed to be so.  The entire purpose of mandatory attendance at public schools was not educational excellence.  There is no reason to believe this will ever change, short of a revolution.

 

Good grief.

 

 

* Thirdly, the article also assumes that we as a society can agree on what makes a good school in the first place.  I'm confident that this is not the case.  Parents have strongly different opinions on what values should be taught in school.  Removing values from school is not a neutral choice, it just is a different choice.  

 

"Values" are not removed from the schools, just overt religious indoctrination. Big difference.

 

 

 

* Lastly, there are at least two major systems of belief with regard to human nature....one suggests that human nature can be significant altered for the better, the other says that the best we can do is to make everyone aware of the pitfalls of human nature, make people contemplate the costs of their choices, and then arrange societies to minimize the harm that any individual or group of individuals can do.  These two systems of belief produce different visions about how effective a public school can be.  The pessimistic view of human nature simply believes that no one will ever be as motivated or dedicated to teaching children as the parents. Therefore, the best education has the parent as the center (home school, or small locally run public schools w/ minimal state involvement).  The optimistic system thinks that society can bypass the parent and do a better job, that in essence the child belongs more to the state than the parent (e.g. Germany which bans home schooling).  You are not going to get agreement from these two groups as their philosophies are antithetical to each other..  

 

You've created a straw-man. "Optimists" can (and do) believe people can be bettered and transformed, while understanding that the role of parents is a paramount part of process. Parental involvement is critical. but parents, teachers, students, and schools can (and should) work together. It takes the effort of all parties. "Pessimists" just quit, or leave. That's the point the author is making. 

 

Bill

[8filltheheart]

Bill,

 

Even teachers do not have any real freedom to change the system to improve the quality of instruction In a classroom. Everything that occurs in a classroom is regulated. After being told that that I could not do x,y, and z in my classroom (which was exactly what I learned while earning my degree about how to integrate projects and cross curriculum teaching in order to promote higher order critical thinking skills) and being forced to conform to a system where every classroom was essentially a replica of another......which focused on very single dimensioned, knowledge-based, easily quantified output, I swore I would never teach in a ps nor would my kids ever attend ps.

 

I disagree with you. I disagree with my brother (with whom I have had this conversation repeatedly and it makes his eyes bug out that my kids have the non-traditional education they have.....which has nothing to do with income since they have far more money than we do). And I disagree with anyone that puts forth the same old argument that it is the fleeing of better educated parents or higher income families that inhibit better quality instruction in the classroom.

 

The system is fundamentally flawed. Spin it any way you want. Argue that the good schools prove it isn't true. Whatever. From my perspective, everything you say is nothing more than the splat of a paint ball hitting a bureaucratic wall.

 

I truly give thanks to the Lord that my children have had the opportunity to not be forced into govt education. Their presence in a classroom would not have changed a single outcome for the positive in a classroom and would have inflicted a whole lot of negatives on them personally. Just a single example out of our 7 school age or older kids.......our 12th grade dyslexic ds would have been labeled as very behind and slow. His real potential would not have been recognized. he wouldn't have even been able to do the math bc he couldn't read the directions or problems. It makes me truly weep to imagine what could have been happening with him this yr. Instead of applying to top schools around the country, what is the outcome of the avg ps student that couldn't read well until 5th grade or write basically anything readable until then and spelled horrifically? Do you really think they are taking 300 level college classes their sr yr of high school, fully confident in their abilities, and have zero stereotype or stigma attached to their abilities......including reading college level philosophy works and writing their own novel (he is close to 50,000 words)?

 

Yep, my keeping my kids out of ps has definitely had a positive effect on their lives......but no way you or anyone else can spin a tale about how it hurt the ps classroom. The system is not equipped to teach individuals. The system is created to teach the masses. Unfortunately for children, they are not "masses" but are individuals.

[NoPlaceLikeHome]

I think the author—hyperboles aside—is basically correct.

 

When people of means and high personal education keep their children in public schools it makes a huge difference in the schools. I see this first hand being is just such a school with our child. The parents are a factor. They do have clout. And the school thrives.

 

No ones education is "sacrificed." And where people of education and means pull out of the public schools, those schools suffer. 

 

She is (in her somewhat over-the-top way) telling it like it is.

 

Bill

I basically agree with you to a point but if I sent my kid to the locally assigned public school I really believe his education would be sacrificed. The local school has a 9% and 13% proficiency rate in reading and math and that really means basic proficiency since the testing sets the bar very low. Unfortunately many of the schools in this city have very low expectations of the students in terms of academics and behavior which I think is a shame since it is not helping the kids at all. There are not enough educated parents to make an impact yet in the school's boundaries. I do want to see the school improve but not at the expense of my kid. We chose homeschooling previously and now a charter school. The one thing that seems to be helping the public schools in this city is competition from school choice which I strongly favor as a liberal. The public schools here are finally just starting to offer innovative programs and other things to try and attract parents.

[Crimson Wife]

Double post, sorry!

[Crimson Wife]

In the district where I lived from 2006-2009, there was a parent-led effort to get Singapore Math adopted when the math program was up for review. The bureaucrats denied the petition on the grounds that Singapore "wasn't appropriate for English Language Learners", which was totally ironic since many of the biggest supporters of adopting Singapore were immigrant parents whose first language wasn't English. Instead, the bureaucrats adopted the horrendous Every Day Mathematics program.

 

Parents have very little ability to make a significant improvements to public schools these days. Sure, they can fundraise and volunteer & make things a tiny bit nicer but to actually raise the quality of education in this day and age is virtually impossible.

[Spy Car]

I basically agree with you to a point but if I sent my kid to the locally assigned public school I really believe his education would be sacrificed. The local school has a 9% and 13% proficiency rate in reading and math and that really means basic proficiency since the testing sets the bar very low. Unfortunately many of the schools in this city have very low expectations of the students in terms of academics and behavior which I think is a shame since it is not helping the kids at all. There are not enough educated parents to make an impact yet in the school's boundaries. I do want to see the school improve but not at the expense of my kid. We chose homeschooling previously and now a charter school. The one thing that seems to be helping the public schools in this city is competition from school choice which I strongly favor as a liberal. The public schools here are finally just starting to offer innovative programs and other things to try and attract parents.

 

If my choice was a public school with 9% or 14% proficiencies in basic subjects, I'd be looking at other options too. I get it.

 

And I'm for being creative when school's are failing, and opening up choices for parents and students.

 

It remains that when motivated families leave the schools systems it becomes ever harder to rescue those schools. And conversely true that when motivated parents band together amazing things can happen. One person can not do it alone. And I'm sure some situations look pretty hopeless. I'm not so altruistic that I'd send my child to a failing school just because. I wouldn't.

 

It doesn't change my belief (born of direct experience) that parental participation and support, in conjunction with a dedicated teaching staff and school administrators, can transform schools. It takes work and the commitment of many. That doesn't happen everywhere, I know. But when it does the results are huge.

 

Bill

[wapiti]

I haven't read the article (or the rest of the thread) but there's a basic point that rarely seems to get addressed in these sorts of discussions.  Say that Student A comes from a disadvantaged background, the family won't or can't be involved in the student's education, Student A is constantly surrounded by adults who do not value education, etc. - a recipe for failure.  Say that Students B, C, and D, with involved parents who value education, move to the school and sit around Student A in the classroom.  Suppose the classroom is filled with such students whose parents successfully push for changes, etc.  Obviously, now, as a whole, the school's test scores will be much higher and perhaps it would no longer be considered a failing school.  However, how much effect will that have on Student A's chances for success?  Group test scores don't tell us much about individuals.  Will Student A's chances for getting a decent education increase only slightly or increase by a lot? I should rephrase that - will Student A become more motivated to do the necessary work to become educated or will the value that Student A puts on education not change much due to stronger family and non-school cultural influences?

 

This is an honest question.  Is the answer somewhere in between?   Has there ever been an attempt to measure this sort of difference on an individual basis?  This is not a simple matter.  What is a "good school" - is it only measured by aggregating student scores - and what difference does that make for an individual student?  It must make some difference, at least for a few such students, but how do most disadvantaged students fare at a good school?  Just thinking out loud (always a dangerous activity for me, lol).....

[8filltheheart]

I haven't read the article (or the rest of the thread) but there's a basic point that rarely seems to get addressed in these sorts of discussions.  Say that Student A comes from a disadvantaged background, the family won't or can't be involved in the student's education, Student A is constantly surrounded by adults who do not value education, etc. - a recipe for failure.  Say that Students B, C, and D, with involved parents who value education, move to the school and sit around Student A in the classroom.  Suppose the classroom is filled with such students whose parents successfully push for changes, etc.  Obviously, now, as a whole, the school's test scores will be much higher and perhaps it would no longer be considered a failing school.  However, how much effect will that have on Student A's chances for success?  Group test scores don't tell us much about individuals.  Will Student A's chances for getting a decent education increase only slightly or increase by a lot? I should rephrase that - will Student A become more motivated to do the necessary work to become educated or will the value that Student A puts on education not change much due to stronger family and non-school cultural influences?

 

This is an honest question.  Is the answer somewhere in between?   Has there ever been an attempt to measure this sort of difference on an individual basis?  This is not a simple matter.  What is a "good school" - is it only measured by aggregating student scores - and what difference does that make for an individual student?  It must make some difference, at least for a few such students, but how do most disadvantaged students fare at a good school?  Just thinking out loud (always a dangerous activity for me, lol).....

 

Wapiti,

 

I don't have answers to your questions, but I wanted to point out another possible outcome that you did not include in your scenario.   Students B, C, and D sit around student A and student A constantly vocalizes lack of value for education and school.   Transmission of "values" is not realistically only from positive to negative.   The opposite outcome is also possible.   Student A's negative attitude could be transmitted to B, C, or D or any combination of the 3.  

 

Just a thought.

[8filltheheart]

Good girls do like to hang out with the bad boys.​ Don't ask me how I know.  :rolleyes:

 

Exactly......unfortunately.

[Mrs Twain]

According to the premise of the article, the public schools should be phenomenal by now.  After all, countless thousands of smart kids have been attending the public schools for decades.  If sending smart kids with involved parents to public schools is the way to improve them, then the public schools should be a utopia after all of this time.  How come the public schools (except for a few exceptions) are not succeeding?

 

No one has brought up the issue of how education philosophy has changed in the last century.  The public schools rejected the standard classical education which was offered in the 1800's and early 1900's in favor of progressive educational philosophy promoted by John Dewey and others.  The results of the progressives taking over the public education system is what we are seeing today.

 

Putting more smart and wealthy kids back into the public school system is not going to change its predominant progressive education philosophy.  Neither is having more smart and wealthy parents join the PTA or volunteer to be teachers' aides.  Neither is doing more fundraisers to buy the schools extra laptops.  If the educational philosophy is not working, the only solution is to get rid of it.

 

The best way to get rid of progressive educational philosophy in the public schools is to allow more school choice, including school vouchers, homeschooling, private schools, and public charter schools.  In this way, the natural desire of parents to provide the best for their children will breed competition between the different school options.  As an exodus occurs from the failing public schools, those schools will be forced either to improve or else to shut down. 

 

The reason progressives fight to stop school choice is that it will endanger the teachers unions.  The tenured teachers will lose their positions and valuable benefits if their performance does not match up to the competition.  The result of trying to prohibit school choice (or trying to convince citizens to forgo school choice by employing "liberal guilt" as in this article) is that the welfare of teachers unions are placed at a higher priority than the education of children.

 

For a good example, read about the success of the charter schools in New Orleans post-Katrina.

[AimeeM]

But what you are missing is most of the local elementary schools in my area had really slid two decades ago. Many parents pulled their kids out, and it just cascaded. The families one would have least wanted to leave, did so.

 

But then parents, first at one local school, decided to take their local elementary schools back. They got parents active in classrooms, they raised money, they had a presence in running the schools. And those schools transformed. Soon people were dying to transfer in from out of that school's zone, and the neighborhood kids returned.

 

With the first school operating as a "demonstration effect," other local schools followed suite, using the same model, and were similarly transformed. 

 

"Magical schools" happen when parents band together to help create them. It is that simple.

 

i understand people "pulling out" and/or giving up. But, that does nothing to improve the public schools. Quite to the contrary. Where smart, hard-working, energetic, dedicated, and involved parents working with (and in) schools does.

 

That is the truth.

 

Bill

This argument is ONLY valid in areas that take parents into CONSIDERATION. Many schools in my area actively DISCOURAGE parental involvement... even going so far as forbidding parents from teaching their children things outside of school or helping with homework - my friend was recently reamed a new one for teaching his first grader multiplication (she had asked Dad to teach it to her); he received a personal call from the teacher for that one... "we prefer the parents not teach the children outside of school - thank you for being considerate of our rules".

[AimeeM]

If my choice was a public school with 9% or 14% proficiencies in basic subjects, I'd be looking at other options too. I get it.

 

And I'm for being creative when school's are failing, and opening up choices for parents and students.

 

It remains that when motivated families leave the schools systems it becomes ever harder to rescue those schools. And conversely true that when motivated parents band together amazing things can happen. One person can not do it alone. And I'm sure some situations look pretty hopeless. I'm not so altruistic that I'd send my child to a failing school just because. I wouldn't.

 

It doesn't change my belief (born of direct experience) that parental participation and support, in conjunction with a dedicated teaching staff and school administrators, can transform schools. It takes work and the commitment of many. That doesn't happen everywhere, I know. But when it does the results are huge.

 

Bill

How do you make them HEAR us though? You can't. Period.

Example: parents are up in arms in my area about the Common Core deal. They want it gone. There has been meeting after meeting, petitions, etc. The parents are actively, vocally involved (whether you agree with CCS or not, my point is in the validity of your argument, not CCS themselves). Bottom line - state doesn't want to lose funding, they aren't going to listen to us.

Perhaps it's different elsewhere. Here, some (many) things are on a state level. I found out that my state doesn't recognize dyslexia as a special need - sure your kid can get an IEP to implement accommodations within the classroom, but we all know what accommodations without remediation and special tutoring will do (develop CRUTCHES, not results); they have a "resource room", but no reading specialist (at our locals anyway).

You're talking about change on a local school level - I'm saying that often what dictates the difficulty in obtaining CHANGE isn't on a local level - it's on a state level or a district level and we start talking politics, at that point, not "what's best for the children".

[NicoleMarie]

While her theory might be right, I'm not willing to sacrifice my child to a mediocre education while the system is trying to catch up. She sounds like everyone else who gives an opinion no one asked for...

[Spy Car]

I've heard getting the name of the curriculum being used can be difficult. It's all super secret educational materials that we just wouldn't understand.

 

1) If you want to know what materials are being used you need to ask what textbooks thy are using, as "curriculum" has a different meaning for classroom teachers than the prevalent usage on this forum. 

 

2) While i don't doubt you've heard such things, it's just one of those many urban legend (black helicopter) type untruths that spread in the homeschool community. The textbooks school districts use are not secrets.

 

Bill

[Dana]

There is a new book out on this very topic: The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way by Amanda Ripley.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Smartest-Kids-World-They/dp/1451654421

 

"In a handful of nations, virtually all children are learning to make complex arguments and solve problems they’ve never seen before. They are learning to think, in other words, and to thrive in the modern economy.

What is it like to be a child in the world’s new education superpowers?

 

In a global quest to find answers for our own children, author and Time magazine journalist Amanda Ripley follows three Americans embed­ded in these countries for one year. Kim, fifteen, raises $10,000 so she can move from Oklahoma to Finland; Eric, eighteen, exchanges a high-achieving Minnesota suburb for a booming city in South Korea; and Tom, seventeen, leaves a historic Pennsylvania village for Poland.

 

Through these young informants, Ripley meets battle-scarred reformers, sleep-deprived zombie students, and a teacher who earns $4 million a year. Their stories, along with groundbreaking research into learning in other cultures, reveal a pattern of startling transformation: none of these countries had many “smart†kids a few decades ago. Things had changed. Teaching had become more rigorous; parents had focused on things that mattered; and children had bought into the promise of education."

This is an excellent book. I read it, had my husband read it, and having our son read it so we can discuss what he should be getting from an education and who he'll be competing with worldwide for jobs!

[Spy Car]

Well that's getting nit-picky. ;)

My district has everything from textbooks to videos of how to implement lesson plans on it's website, so I wouldn't have any trouble finding out what I needed.

 

I have heard forum members here complain about their districts not giving them any information regarding what is being used in the classroom.  

 

Our public high school will not tell me what textbooks they use

 

 

Not nit-picky.

 

If you asked the most open Third Grade teacher in the world (for sake of example) what "curriculum" they used (or followed) for Language Arts, you would likely see the teacher take on a "deer-in-the headlights" look, because what they are (essentially) hearing is "what standards, objectives, scope, and sequence" are you following for Language Arts this year." And that could take a very long answer, unless they sad something like, "we follow the Common Core."

 

They would not be answering the question you hoped to have answered, because "curriculum" has a different meaning in "teacher-speak" than it does in WTM-speak.

 

Ask the teacher what textbook they use and they can immediately tell you, "we use use Open Court (or Treasures, or whatever)."

 

There is a genuine semantic difference between the way teacher use the term, and the way it is used on this forum (i.e. as a synonym for textbooks or programs).

 

Bill

[Crimson Wife]

So long as bureaucrats care more about trying to create some utopian society where all demographic groups have equal outcomes ("reducing the 'achievement gap'") rather than helping each child maximize his/her individual potential, they will adopt policies that serve to drive out those parents who care most about education.

 

Things like my old district denying the parent-led petition to adopt Singapore Primary Mathematics Standards Edition. Can't adopt an excellent math program if it allows high achievers to soar even higher.

 

Things like my current district not having any GATE and not offering honors courses before 11th grade. Can't have GATE programs or honors classes if students from demographic groups A & B are overrepresented while demographic groups C & D are underrepresented.

 

Look at all the political pressure on some of the very best public schools in the entire country because their student population does not perfectly mirror that of the districts in which they are located. Thomas Jefferson near D.C., Boston Latin, Stuyvesant in NYC, etc. There are plenty of bureaucrats in those districts who would love to get rid of the exam schools entirely because they are seen as "elitist" and "undemocratic". As if it is somehow "democratic" to reserve a rigorous education for only those students from families wealthy enough to afford $35+k per year per child.

[Dmmetler]

1) If you want to know what materials are being used you need to ask what textbooks thy are using, as "curriculum" has a different meaning for classroom teachers than the prevalent usage on this forum. 

 

2) While i don't doubt you've heard such things, it's just one of those many urban legend (black helicopter) type untruths that spread in the homeschool community. The textbooks school districts use are not secrets.

 

Bill

 

That makes a big assumption. Not all schools use textbooks (although I do think standardized tests have pushed the pendulum in that direction).

 

When I started teaching (eek-almost 20 years ago!) a big deal was "Models"-and most of them looked more like Sonlight than a basal. That is, they were big stacks of trade books, from which a teacher could pick and choose, and a bunch of activities, usually in a several inch thick binder, to use with them, with several days or even weeks of training on how to use them. Workbooks were nonexistent, and worksheets weren't encouraged in most models. Math was about the only hold-out-and in some schools, books weren't even used there.

 

In my district alone, there were probably at least a dozen of these. If a kid moved from school A to school B, there was no continuity whatsoever. For that matter, what was happening in 2nd grade classroom A might not relate at all to what was happening in 2nd grade classroom B.

 

If you asked what curriculum was used and you heard "roots and wings" or "Core knowledge" or "accelerated schools" or any one of the others, you'd have been no farther ahead than you were when you started. In fact, you probably knew that this was an "Accelerated School" because that was on the school's signs, student t-shirts, and every thing that came home from the school-but had no clue what it meant.

 

If you talk to older homeschoolers in my area, the lack of a clear curriculum was a major reason for homeschooling.

[briansmama]

This is an excellent book. I read it, had my husband read it, and having our son read it so we can discuss what he should be getting from an education and who he'll be competing with worldwide for jobs!

What a great idea! I'd love to have my son read it as well, thanks for mentioning that. I'd love to know how old your son is if you don't mind sharing :)

[briansmama]

Not nit-picky.

 

If you asked the most open Third Grade teacher in the world (for sake of example) what "curriculum" they used (or followed) for Language Arts, you would likely see the teacher take on a "deer-in-the headlights" look, because what they are (essentially) hearing is "what standards, objectives, scope, and sequence" are you following for Language Arts this year." And that could take a very long answer, unless they sad something like, "we follow the Common Core."

 

They would not be answering the question you hoped to have answered, because "curriculum" has a different meaning in "teacher-speak" than it does in WTM-speak.

 

Ask the teacher what textbook they use and they can immediately tell you, "we use use Open Court (or Treasures, or whatever)."

 

There is a genuine semantic difference between the way teacher use the term, and the way it is used on this forum (i.e. as a synonym for textbooks or programs).

 

Bill

I agree, I really had no intention of enrolling my ds in the local ps but I did call and ask the principal about his 4th grade class and he went down the list and told me what they were using/covering for each subject. If the teachers won't tell you, I'd suggest asking the principal.

 

After learning what they are using for 4th grade I felt more certain than ever that the local ps would not be a good fit for my ds, despite recent frustrations we've been having over math. Instead, we've decided to outsource math. But the principal was very helpful and answered my questions thoroughly.

[Spy Car]

That makes a big assumption. Not all schools use textbooks (although I do think standardized tests have pushed the pendulum in that direction).

 

When I started teaching (eek-almost 20 years ago!) a big deal was "Models"-and most of them looked more like Sonlight than a basal. That is, they were big stacks of trade books, from which a teacher could pick and choose, and a bunch of activities, usually in a several inch thick binder, to use with them, with several days or even weeks of training on how to use them. Workbooks were nonexistent, and worksheets weren't encouraged in most models. Math was about the only hold-out-and in some schools, books weren't even used there.

 

In my district alone, there were probably at least a dozen of these. If a kid moved from school A to school B, there was no continuity whatsoever. For that matter, what was happening in 2nd grade classroom A might not relate at all to what was happening in 2nd grade classroom B.

 

If you asked what curriculum was used and you heard "roots and wings" or "Core knowledge" or "accelerated schools" or any one of the others, you'd have been no farther ahead than you were when you started. In fact, you probably knew that this was an "Accelerated School" because that was on the school's signs, student t-shirts, and every thing that came home from the school-but had no clue what it meant.

 

If you talk to older homeschoolers in my area, the lack of a clear curriculum was a major reason for homeschooling.

 

It doesn't change the fact that when teachers hear "curriculum" they do not think of the term as a synonym for "textbook or program" in the same way a WTM member likely would. So if one want to know what textbook is being use it it a good idea to ask "what textbook do you use" and not "what curriculum are you following?"

 

The answer to "what textbook are you using" might (or might not) be, "we use a blend of things", but at least both parties will be "speaking the same language."

 

Bill

[Dana]

What a great idea! I'd love to have my son read it as well, thanks for mentioning that. I'd love to know how old your son is if you don't mind sharing :)

He's 11. I need to put back my signature one of these days! He's also a really good reader.

He just finished it tonight, so I expect some discussions over dinner. He says he's glad not to live in Korea, although he'd like me teaching at a hagwon and making millions ;)

 

There's been a lecture posted in the accelerated learner board by Rusczyk from AoPS. It dovetails nicely with the book.

http://mathprize.atfoundation.org/archive/2009/Rusczyk_Problem_Solving_Presentation_at_Math_Prize_for_Girls_2009.pdf

[Spy Car]

I agree, I really had no intention of enrolling my ds in the local ps but I did call and ask the principal about his 4th grade class and he went down the list and told me what they were using/covering for each subject. If the teachers won't tell you, I'd suggest asking the principal.

 

After learning what they are using for 4th grade I felt more certain than ever that the local ps would not be a good fit for my ds, despite recent frustrations we've been having over math. Instead, we've decided to outsource math. But the principal was very helpful and answered my questions thoroughly.

I would think most well-thinking Principals who be very happy to share the information, in no small part hoping that if the homeschooled student ever transitions into their school, and the parent/student has been following the same texts, that the "gaps" (from their perspective) would be minimized.

 

In any case school books are not "secrets" (as you know).

 

Bill

[LucyStoner]

I owe my children more than making them sacrifices to any political or ideological position.

[Desert Strawberry]

Good girls do like to hang out with the bad boys.​ Don't ask me how I know.  :rolleyes:

Good boys also like to hang out with bad girls. Don't ask me either.

[Georgiana Daniels]

The article is just silly. What kind of parents CAN do better for their children but DON'T? How will their kids feel when they come to this realization? Good gravy, it makes my head hurt.