DS7 has been grumbling. I'm trying to remain cheery about school but he's not having it. He seems to view it as a big waste of time when there's so many more interesting things he could be doing instead. He is passive/laid back so he hasn't made too big of a deal about it, but it bothers me that if I gave him the choice to homeschool he would choose that in a second.
Here a lot of the teachers seem to spend 2 months testing the kids (or getting around to testing them), so there is no differentiation in the classroom. Then, they get in maybe 1 month of instruction, and if the child is lucky, the teacher is attempting to do some sort of differentiation based on the tests that took 2 months to administer. Then it's the holidays and no one is thinking about school. Then in Jan., the schools are thinking about the standardized testing and the fact that they better start teaching the kids because they are getting behind. But instead of teaching the kids they teach to the test, and they do practice test after practice test. State mandated testing occurs in March or April. After the test, no one cares anymore and there is little instruction. It's too late to fix the kids who failed the test so let's just get to summer break and let the next teacher deal with it. Ok, there is my jaded/cynical view, but that's kind of what it seems like.
