Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy How do you feel about the public school system?

LOL-- even assuming that were true--

how exactly does a business model translate into education?

Most people coming at that assume that STUDENTS are customers.

Most educators will tell you that is flatly WRONG.

Taxpayers and society are your customers. Your graduates are your "product."

Students are participants in the process of generating a good product. They aren't "end-users."

^This on both counts. In my opinion, most teachers don't like smart kids and administrators view their equally smart parents as a problem.

Intelligence is not desirable or attractive to the masses.

I have held these viewpoints since I sent my three year old who could read, write and do basic math to preschool, and he was clearly despised by his teacher. It was obvious she preferred kids who would sit quietly and color not those who wanted to read to the other kids.

As for my opinion of public school, let's just say it is not positive. I will go one step further and say the same goes for my opinion of the education system as a whole. I think it used to be true that you could buy a better education through a private school. I don't think this is the case anymore.

I say this based on my observation of the education my kids have received in comparison to the education I received years ago. Times have changed, and not necessarily for the better.

The public schools are a mirror of the society in which they exist as far as I can see. In US (and UK) society it seems that scholarship and academic excellence are not valued anymore.

We've seen both good and bad public school districts.

Our daughter went to Kindergarten in local district A, had a horrible experience and was extremely bored with what they were "teaching" her. We were discouraged from talking about acceleration options and when the discouragement did not work, we were given the run around all summer until being told "NO" the week before school started.

Side trip to a private school, where one grade skip was done.

Four years later, open enrolled to local district B. Here we found a district that is willing to listen to parents and look into acceleration options. One more grade skip, add in further subject acceleration, and last year they allowed her to take 3 high school classes while still in 8th grade.

What local district B does, in my opinion, is the easiest and cheapest way to deal with HG/PG kids - accelerate them (whole-sale, or subject only, or both). If testing says they are ready for 7th grade, but the calendar says they should be going into 6th - skip them into 7th. If they're ready for Algebra and Biology in 8th grade, send them to the high school (and let them take a world language while they're there). In fact, plan for this and make sure you have high school classes first thing in the morning that advanced middle schoolers might take, and arrange for a bus to go back to the middle school after second or third period. It amazes me how many districts don't do this. If you already have a classroom where Geometry is being taught, and you have a student ready for Geometry, put their behind in a desk in that classroom. If you do enough of this, there won't even be a stigma (or at least much less of one) attached to the kids being accelerated.

In our experience there are both good and bad districts out there. We got lucky that our state allows us to open enroll out of the bad one and into a nearby good one.

--S.F.

Private schools can be less bad. Around here (Bay area, CA), public K-8 schools have short days, except on Wednesdays, when they have very short days (the kids go home after lunch). Private school buys you a school day that lasts until 3 or 3:15 every day, and no furlough days. Overall, this translates to one extra day per week compared to public schools. So they have ample time for things like art, music, science, and so on. They also have time for field trips (Alcatraz, the Beethoven museum, and a local art museum, for example).

Of course, my public school education in the 70s and 80s looked just like this.

At the same time, a lot of private schools still fall into the same bad thinking that hinders the public schools: fad mathematics, every child is gifted, rigor = more homework, and so on.

A guy who grew up around here once told DH and I not to spend more money on a smaller house in a better school district because the success of the district was due to the parents more than to supposedly exceptional schools. Now that we've lived around here for a while and now that our eldest is a bit older (13), I see what he meant.

In contrast to a few other people here, I do think it's possible to judge the US education system as a whole. This is primarily because of our consistently mediocre results on international exams like the PISA, the watering down of course content, the watering down of high school exit exams, and the high number of students who end up taking remedial classes in college. Sure, there are some good schools out there --- but there are more good parents.

My experience very much agrees with this. When open enrolling to a neighboring district for middle school, 3 of the six middle schools were "full" and not accepting out of district students. Of course, those were the three schools with the highest test scores. So my daughter ended up at one of the "failing" schools, yet she absolutely thrived while there.

From our observations, and comparing notes with friends who have kids in other schools, the curriculum, class opportunities, quality of teachers, and passion of the teachers were pretty much all the same. The biggest difference between the populations of the schools was parental involvement. At the failing schools, some parents don't even care if their kid goes to school.

--S.F.

Great points, Val.

I completely agree about parents. I am no longer paying for education for my children because they are intelligent and I am involved. Those are the factors that contribute most to their academic success.

I attended a private schools in the 80s and 90s, and my children attended private school for a few years starting in 2007. As a kid, I had half day Wednesdays where we left before lunch. We had art, music and Spanish where we not only did arts and crafts, sang and learned Spanish words but learned about art history and how to read music and about different cultures. My kids got out of school one hour early on Wednesdays but were getting a watered down education. Their art was just arts and crafts, they just sang in music class and there was no foreign language. This certainly contributed to my disillusionment.

I will say there was one year of private school for my children where they had an exceptional music teacher. This particular teacher fostered a love of music and introduced reading music. Both of my kids became interested in music after one year with this teacher and my son taught himself to play an instrument. More parent involvement and rock star teachers like this one music teacher are necessary to bolster our education system.

Yes. However, that would require such a paradigm shift in the public education system that I cannot believe it would ever happen.

That said, we saw exactly what you described in our former town's Montessori school. It worked very well, but the school was small and many people want a big school and associated amenities for their children. Thus the school struggles financially most years.

To answer the original question, I feel sad about, discouraged, confused and frustrated by the public school system. I do not, however, have personal experience with it as a parent, because it has not yet been a viable option for our PG son, even before we knew he was PG.

Montessori worked when he had an excellent primary teacher, didn't work so well when one teacher he had wasn't following the true tenets of the method. I still believe there is much about that approach that could benefit the majority of children. When we relocated last year, we were scared off by a very highly rated public school system that didn't have anything G&T until third grade. Follow being oversold a pricey private school that functions very well for within the box children, but with an administrator who could stand in for any of the Wicked Witches. Now at a private, parochial school with a fantastic principal who truly moves obstacles to help every child, from what we have seen.

My biggest concern when I reflect on our experiences so far, as well as my own in the P.S. system, is that quality and flexibility truly do come right down to the individual principal and then to the classroom teacher. Without both being very smart and dedicated, we don't get much.

I have the opposite view. The fiscal reality is that, in most of the developed world, demographic change will necessitate a shift in resources away from programs serving the young toward end-of-life support. Like it or not, the public is going to have a bitter pill to swallow in making choices about what to prioritize. Sadly, voters tend to be myopic and cut value-generating resources at the expense of consumption.

In my province in Canada, education will butt heads with our sacred cow, public healthcare. Because boomers carry the political clout, and health costs are expected to consume 70% of every dollar of public revenue in 5 years, we can read between the lines about what the priorities are. It ain't special education! Gifted public programs are being shuttered faster than you can say "inequality".

Economies of scale are needed to make ability-grouping viable, and public schools have scale in spades. Schools are averse to change when it means rallying new resources, but ability-grouping leverages pre-existing resources more efficiently to better meet the needs of all students. So while I agree it's a total paradigm shift, I believe the fiscal backstory makes disruptive change in public education necessary for its survival.