The kids who need extra help in reading or math get pulled out. The gifted kids get pulled to enrichment classes. In this sense, the extra funding for additional teachers focused on those in need of special instruction probably pays off. As for parent involvement, I know our school places a high priority on that. They constantly reinforce that learning should take place at home and parents are encouraged to engage kids in what they are learning and get them to read at home.
Do the parents do their job? I think our school and district do the job pretty well, but so much of it goes back to the parents needing to care and place education as a high priority. The support that came from private was invaluable. Very well put. I think your kids will find going to school with a bunch of kids from different backgrounds will help them in the future. I went to private school 1st-8th grade and then I attended the worst public high school in the city.
I had a really great experience in public school! The class sizes were very small, which meant that the teachers were very involved with the students. I was also in the advanced curriculum, so my class sizes were even smaller than other classes. The only bad class I had was 9th grade history. My mom talked to the principal, and shortly afterwards, the school added an advanced history class.
Education wise, I had a really great experience. Student wise, the bad language and obscene conversation topics were hard for me after coming from a private school.
I know I got a great education, but I wanted to escape the student environment. After the experience that I had in high school, I chose to go to a private college. Thanks for sharing your experience. I can see how the older kids in high school could be negative influences on my own kids.
At the elementary level, most of the kids that will turn out to be rough kids are merely a little misguided. Probably plenty of lessons in middle and high school too. I went to a low income school and I really treasure those moments of growing up with people from different backgrounds. When I hear a story about a struggling kid, it reminds me of my friends growing up. For my last two years of high school I went to a really good school. NCSSM since you are from the area. Many of my high school classmates bailed and went there.
Some for the social aspects getting away from parents and others for the academics. I started applying and took and passed some screening tests but lost interest and dropped my application. I visited NCSSM once on a field trip and was so jealous of your mega campus and more freedom over our school. It absolutely sounds like the best decision for the whole family. Yeah, I probably would. Another thought-provoking post!
This speaks to the important of financial freedom. With Mini Maroon 1 quickly approaching three years old, Mr. Maroon and I discuss the umpteen zillion education options available to us over and over. I must say that on the surface, most people — me included — would question your decision to use the worst school in the district.
You have opened my eyes to keep digging and find out more and more about everything, but particularly something as important as education. I attended private school for 14 years. In contrast, Mr. Maroon attended public school for that period. Academically, I think we were equally prepared for college. Despite both being engineers, we vary considerably in our approach to education and problem-solving.
In the end, a child will be as successful has his parents encourage and assist along the way. The social setting of school is also really important. So thanks for sharing all of these details.
You are welcome! Good luck in whatever you end up choosing. With my kids, so much of the learning was happening outside of the school — despite them being tired after the school day — that we went to homeschooling. Much different pace of life now, and our family at least is better off for it. We are lucky to have the school here in the neighborhood, so we walk out the door at 8 and they are back home by or so. Very little travel time. They do okay after school with homework and tend to have some time each day for play time.
The biggest down side for traditional schooling in my mind is the rigid calendar. This is the path I took, and I like to think it prepared me to interact well and be a leader in general society while being able to relate to the well-educated upper class without being too pretentious about it. This is roughly the path my kids will follow. All the high schools in our county district are varying forms of good or great and all offer the AP track with many also offering IB track as well.
Many of friend who went to public school learn about the same events, in that happen but in my private school we learned about why and in which more depth. Now maybe it was just my school but comparing my base to the base of friends from across the country, my base was stronger. We thought it was silly to choose schools based mainly on SAT scores, the number of kids who need help learning English, and the number of kids who need help buying their meals at school.
Before enrolling our kids, it struck us that everyone who trashed the schools did not have kids enrolled there and knew nothing about the schools.
I spoke to a former principal at one of the schools who became a school district administrator; he said that all the schools in the school district followed the same challenging curriculum, the only difference was the students enrolled at each school. What really sealed it for us was that so many high school students who could have afforded to go to private schools said they really liked the public school. Fast forward a couple of decades, and I can honestly say that we never regretted our decision.
Both of our children have received a wonderful public education. My son got into the college he wanted to go to also subsidized generously by our fellow state taxpayers and my daughter really enjoys high school. I have the same reservation about the parents trashing the schools just because the test scores are low. Like so many things in life, those are averages. Some kids are well below the average and some are well above the average. Our test score average was well above the county and state average, but nothing spectacular.
Picking a school for your kids is a big choice. I am sending my kids to a private school because I want them to have more opportunity than I had. I just skated by at school and was never encouraged. My school had a very high immigrant level and English was primarily the second language for over half of my school. That alone took away from extra curricular activities offered and more more time toward the ESL students. This alone I think its enough to make a difference.
One on one teacher time will ensure my kids do not fall through the cracks like I did. Nothing wrong with public systems especially with active involved parents. You just have to spend more time coordinating extra activities the schools may be deficient in.
From your experience, it sounds like we are lucky to have all the resources dumped into our school. And the class size at our kids school is better than most private schools. In higher grades, they have had around kids in each class, with this year in 3rd grade being the largest ever with 20 kids. And, your insights about learning outside of school really resonate with me too. We hope to emulate this model one day :!
Go for it. You can turn just about any experience into a learning opportunity. Great discussion, and yes once you mix in poverty and diversity, all of a sudden a school is labeled bad. If you do some research and interview the teachers to see how a new student will experience learning. I assure you it will not be as bad as those ratings suggest.
I agree we as parents have to teach our kids even more than what they learn in school. Yes, the good stuff gets mixed up in the averages unfortunately. But for those value seekers, it can work out pretty well. Interesting topic. You make some good points. As a matter of fact, some of them have a great work ethic…sometimes being born in one of the wealthiest countries in the world makes you take working hard for granted. A classmate of our 4th grader just got suspended for having an emotional outburst and pushing a new kid.
As far as immigrants and work ethic, I have a purely anecdotal theory that they have MORE work ethic on average than native born Americans. You have to work hard if you show up here with nothing. And immigrants tend to be a self selecting lot.
Here is something fun we started just this week — Duolingo. Duolingo is a language program you can use on your phone, tab or computer. I had started Spanish myself and was impressed at how fun it was to learn in this manner and then one night my son jumped up on my lap and became immersed in the game like feel of the program.
So now it is 30 minutes of dad and son playing learning Spanish together each night and stickers labeling everything in the house in Spanish. I got pretty far in the French section before traveling to French speaking Canada last summer. Next up for me is German, since I hope to visit Germany sooner rather than later. This may seem like a step in the right direction, but nonfiction generally assumes even more background knowledge and vocabulary than fiction does.
When nonfiction is combined with the skills-focused approach—as it has been in the majority of classrooms—the results can be disastrous. Teachers may put impenetrable text in front of kids and just let them struggle. Or, perhaps, draw clowns. Read: Why I support the Common Core reading standards. I n a small number of American schools, things are beginning to change. A few years ago, there was no such thing as an elementary literacy curriculum that focused on building knowledge.
Now there are several, including a few available online at no cost. Some have been adopted by entire school districts—including high-poverty ones such as Baltimore and Detroit—while others are being implemented by charter networks or individual schools.
The curricula vary in their particulars, but all are organized by themes or topics rather than skills. In one, first graders learn about ancient Mesopotamia and second graders study Greek myths. In another, kindergartners spend months learning about trees, and first graders explore birds.
Children usually find these topics—including and perhaps especially the historical ones—far more engaging than a steady diet of skills. At schools using these new curricula, all students grapple with the same texts, some of which are read aloud by teachers. Children also spend time every day reading independently, at varying levels of complexity. Teachers tend to be amazed at how quickly children absorb sophisticated vocabulary like fertile and opponent and learn to make connections between different topics.
As promising as some of the early results are, it seems reasonable to ask: With inequality increasing and a growing share of American students coming from low-income families, can any curriculum truly level the playing field? The relatively few schools that have adopted knowledge-building elementary curricula may have trouble using test scores to prove that the approach can work, because it could take years for low-income students to acquire enough general knowledge to perform as well as their more affluent peers.
And yet, there is evidence—on a large scale—that this kind of elementary curriculum can reduce inequality, thanks to an unintentional experiment conducted in France.
Hirsch Jr. If a child from a low-income family started public preschool at age 2, by age 10, she would have almost caught up to a highly advantaged child who had started at age 4.
Over the next 20 years, achievement levels decreased sharply for all students—and the drop was greatest among the neediest.
By American law and custom, curriculum is determined at the local level. School data isn't always easy to find, but new research shows that when parents evaluate their choices based on student growth instead of student achievement, they are more likely to pick the less white and wealthy district. And some states are beginning to offer more nuanced information about schools , thanks, in part, to the federal Every Student Succeeds Act.
When searching for schools, experts say parents need to shift their mindset from focusing exclusively on achievement, test scores, and special programs to also considering the community inside the school and out.
Integrated Schools recommends families tour two schools that aren't on their community's list of sought-after options to see them in action—and also, perhaps, witness the segregation that's still occurring. Keep in mind that schools are constantly changing communities. Mykytyn has no regrets about sending her kids to a lower-rated school and calls the experience "tremendous" even though her children have often been one of the few or only white kids in their classes.
Because of their experience, Mykytyn said her own kids have a different view of the world than many of their white peers who attended mostly white schools. Hubbard also has no regrets about the school she chose for her children.
Today, the family's four kids, ages 5 to 10, live in Missouri and attend a low-rated school. The kids are flourishing. Her newly minted fifth grader is reading at a 12th-grade level even though the school has test scores in the bottom 5 percent of the state. It's not a sacrifice," Hubbard said. It turns out that what matters most for kid's to succeed in structured school situations is that there are other kids and a seat for them in a classroom.
And do good test scores make good people? That's hard to answer, but Mykytyn does say that from her experience, communities do all benefit when they have diversity and inclusivity. And she has no doubt that her kids are in a good school for them:. Isn't it every good parents goals to give their children everything they never had? To give them the best start in life so they can succeed? We work our hearts out to be able to live in a neighborhood where the schools are great. I was born and raised in the inner city where and attended public schools.
It's a wonder I made it out alive. Gangs violence, sexual abuse inside the school, teachers who didn't care, just to name a few things we had to endure. Yet you're telling me it's not ethical to want to give my children better than that?? I worked harder than hard to make the most of what was given me to endure and in fact succeed.
Frankly this article was a huge insult. I will never feel guilty for trying to give my children a better life. Be the first to comment, you said. I was the first to comment, but my comments never appeared. Wonder if it's because I expressed the idea that giving your child the best start in life that you can is more important than political correctness?
How ethical is it to move to a neighborhood for its school rating? How ethical is it to send your children out into the world without the best education you can give them?
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