My kids attend a public school. I attended public schools most of the time (military brat, not every move allowed for us to get enrolled in the school so home schooling happened from time to time). My wife attended the same public schools my kids are in now. (we are recently moved back to her home town)
Prior to being here, we had our kids in a public school system in another state.
But what makes me ignorant about public schools? I'm not dumb, having two college degrees, one with honors. My wife is not dumb, having a degree and two advanced degrees. But we have no idea how to tell if the schools our kids are in are good.
More after the squiggle - long.
Some basic details of the school and school district. The school district is county wide for about 800,000 residents. The schools are broken up geographically into "clusters" to try to balance the income classes in each cluster. Each cluster has schools you can request your kids attend with one school that has to take your kid even if they don't have room. Each cluster has a "magnet" school and a "traditional" school that any kid in the county can apply for with priority going to kids in the cluster.
Magnet schools have some theme, like Math/Science or Music/Art or Environmental studies. They call themselves "charter schools" but are not private schools. They are public schools with public school teachers who have to be state certified and are not employed by business or churches getting tax dollars.
Traditional schools are, well, traditional. You go to class, go to lunch, go to class, go home. You sit in rows and it is like schools were in the 70's and 80's. No special stuff just traditional schooling.
The rest of the schools are not magnet or traditional and are free to do things as they want to teach.
So what is the problem?
The state rates every school on a standard developed by the state with a lot of input by the NEA. It does a "report card" every year and tells you how the school stands compared to the 'standard'. So you get something in the mail saying "your cluster's schools are rating in the 98% - school X; 87% - school Y; 21% - school Z;
My cluster has six elementary schools. The top rating of five of those schools is 11%, the lowest is 3%. Over the past three years, the 3% has stayed 3%, the 11% school has improved from 5%. The sixth school is a "traditional" school and is 88%.
We moved in to the school district in middle of summer. You make choices and requests for schools in January/Feb of the year before. Our only choice was the school that has to take your kids no matter what (half way across the city with two bus rides for a total of 45 min on the bus for a 6 year old and 9 year old) or a close school request (three schools with in four miles and they will do their best to fit you in…no guarantee of the same school for both kids). Or pay the super high cost of private schools (a choice strongly recommended by many to include teachers in the cluster).
We lucked out an got the magnet school for two reasons: one of our daughters needs speech therapy and we hand delivered the request and the sectary took a liking to us and called out the assistant superintendent who was a retired Marine. (i'm currently in the Reserves) He said he understood the whole move a lot thing and was going to help us out.
The School
The school is serving 950 students K to 5 (or as they put it P to 5) with the stated goals of:
* Academic achievement in the basic skills areas.
* A sense of pride and self-worth.
* Behavior appropriate to the school setting.
* Parental/Guardian involvement and commitment.
* Creative problem solving and students projects.
* Concepts of patriotism, courtesy, and moral values.
* A clearly established dress code.
When we saw this and visited the web page, we were very happy. We did not expect to get the following info at the new student meeting at the school. The average family income is $27 to $32k a year (slightly below what our family makes), 95% of students are on free or reduced lunch, and all students are on free breakfast.
We felt that the emphasis on good behavior and the promises of a rigorous academic environment would be a good combination. In our last school district our oldest was in the accelerated program working two grades higher in reading and one grade higher in math. With the documentation we expected something like this here. The school district does not do this, they rather encourage you to enroll your child in the magnet school that focuses on the subject.
Still the promises were there that they would challenge our children. Since I have a work schedule that gives me a few days off each week (as well as working nights the other days) I volunteered to help out at the school. Once approved (that is a very long nightmare post for a different day), I was able to help out twice a month. I saw young kids walking in straight lines, dressed to standard, saying "Mr", "Ms", "Dr", "Sir" and "Ma'm".
I saw kids sitting in classrooms doing work, raising hands to talk, and generally behaving. No running in the halls, no shouting, generally well behaved and strictly controlled in class taking turns answering questions. Everything that I would expect a school to be for learning to take place.
What my kids brought home
Where the disconnect came was with the homework brought home. Rather what little was brought home. The kindergardener was getting letters to color in and bring back. The second grader was given Dr. Seuss type reading assignments, math assignments to add numbers of items around the house to make 20 while drawing pictures of doing this.
I would use my time at the school to ask the teachers why such easy assignments. Basically the answer is I was expecting too much from my daughters. You can't expect someone to start reading till the end of the first grade/first part of the second. You can't expect kids to be able to add or subtract above 20 till third grade and multiply/divide till the end of the fourth. At that point getting assessed for acceptance to a Math/Science/Tech school would be done.
So I as a lay person was just over expecting too much from kids.
The important thing, according to the experts - actual teachers, is that you become solid in the basics. Know all the common words so you can read them at a glance with out having to slowly sound them out, that you know how numbers add together to make number bonds to get addition/subtraction done quicker. You have to teach kids how to think before they can learn.
But most of all, they need stable time in their life. School is a great place to provide the stability kids lack at home, with mom and dad working all weird hours, sports on random days of the week for a few weeks at a time, etc. If school does not provide the stability, then the only thing they have to fall back on is the stability of the TV schedule. (which is not who you want teaching your kids)
I was using my idea of how to learn as an adult as the baseline for how kids should learn.
The School Report Card
Last week we got the state's report card. Our kids school was rated in the 11%. I went to the school and talked to the vice-principal, wanting answers. The school seems to be doing what they are suppose to be doing. Why such a low rating? (A failing school according to the state is one at 75% or less) The answer: No Child Left Behind and the recent (last two years) change to the adoption of the new Common Core methods of teaching.
Remember teaching kids requires them to learn the whole word and number bonds at the early years. So that they can become high level learners starting in the third grade, which is where the state testing starts. The kids being tested this year are the last of the old sound out each letter and rote memorizing of number combinations. So they are not able to test as well as the kids getting the common core.
This means we should see a major jump (for 3rd graders next year) in standing over the next few years. This low score by the state only shows that the old way is not working. Between that and the voters refusing to increase the budget to improve the schools (as well as some of the more wealthy areas trying to break away from the county school system) it is not amazing that all the schools in the cluster are doing poorly.
But what about the "Traditional" school?
It was 88%, down from 92%. It has long focused on rote memorization aimed at the standards test. They get homework just like the test over and over, have more funds because they are funded with a different method - they get a full amount of funds for each kid, while the other schools get a base amount with a little more for each kid.
So they do well because they have more money and spend all year studying for the test rather than leaning to think.