Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Is current traditional schooling accepted cruelty?

I am expecting and hoping that this will get some interesting reactions...

Wolf has been doing Independent Study for three years now. He's been in Cub Scouts the same amount of time. I am a Den Leader and the Chairperson for his Cub Scout Pack. We know a bunch of kids both in homeschool/charter school situations and many more in traditional schools.

My observations of the children who go to traditional school vs alternative options have started to lead me to feel that traditional schooling has become a socially accepted form of cruelty to children.

The children in alternative education never seem overly stressed out. The children from traditional schools nearly always seem wound so tight they could snap. Alternative kids know how to play and are able to focus their attention when asked politely. Traditional school children, once they are out of school, always seem hard pressed to focus on anything other than physical movement of some kind.

Parents tell me horror stories of hours of homework in third grade, of fighting their children to get it done when they are already exhausted from school and a myriad of structured activities, of it taking three times as long because the children just can't handle anymore work or structure.

In addition I am now reading articles about how universities are having to deal with children spat out of the traditional school system who don't know the basic interpersonal concepts that are learned mainly through unguided group play.

All of this is really pushing me into the opinion that traditional school, as it stands now, is socially accepted cruelty. Someone looking in from the outside would be hard pressed to see it as anything else, but because that is how our world works, people just don't notice. The status quo is "normal" so it can't be wrong.

Comments?

Absolutely! I think it's like the frog in the pot, it happened so gradually no one questioned it (public school changing from a useful and reasonable institution to a horrible prison for children where they have no rights and are at the mercy of oftentimes incompetent and downright mean adults for most of their days).

It's unconscionable that this is the accepted norm and that we are legally obligated to subject our children to it and bled for tax dollars to pay for it. Then we accept camping out for the few spots in good schools as a fact of life. There is no accountability for the schools. After watching "Waiting for Superman" I understand a lot of the problem is due to the tenured status of school teachers, no matter how rotten they are they cant be fired? That seems like it would just attract despicable and or incompetent people to the profession. The good teachers become frustrated at not being recognized for their efforts because they are treated the same as the bad ones...

Okay, my vent over, my DD is in a better place now and all of that is behind us. My prayers go out to those that are still trapped in the system.

As a public school teacher, I don't get up in the morning to torture children. I've never assigned homework that takes hours. My students aren't doing structured activities for 7 hours a day and we go outside to play as a class.

Here is what I see from my angle. Charter Schools like the ones in Waiting for Superman are a joke and a half. A public school is designed to educate everyone, a charter school gets to pick and choose. Usually a charter school will flat out deny a child because of a disability, which is highly unfair to special needs students or 2E students. They can also deny a child if the parents aren't going to offer support. The teachers in charter schools are also not the happiest people in the world because their working conditions are ridiculous. I'd sooner leave teaching than work in a charter school. However, no matter where I go I'm treated as the problem.

Well, the charter school situation varies GREATLY from state to state. In TX charter schools are required to meet all the same standards and rules/laws as regular public schools. They have to honor IEPs, they cannot be selective regarding entry (unless given a specific waiver from the state - ie, there is one charter school that is boys-only) but they certainly wouldn't be granted one to not accept a child with a disability.

Wow, this is totally not my experience! I'm quite shocked by your characterization. My kids love school and their friends there, have plenty of time to play, etc. Of course, it isn't absolutely perfect, some of the academics are off kilter for their abilities, but there are many benefits that make up for it. And they certainly are filled with joy when they think about school, their teachers, and friends.

I suppose there must be kids for whom any particular type of schooling would be a terrible fit (whether that be public, private, home, charter, other), and might seem cruel or torturous for that particular child, but to consider traditional public school as cruel seems bizarre to me. But a fun & thought provoking topic, perhaps?

Well I don't think it's "meant" to be cruel. I wouldn't say you could point a finger at the traditional schools for all the kids' woes.

There has been public school for awhile now, I think it's roots have always been to sort of churn out citizens who will be productive in society based on their class.

The whole assessment thing seems to have gotten out of control as far as how much time is spent "teaching to the test". And using schools as curriculum and social experiments doesn’t always have a good outcome and the people who suffer the most are the kids.

But, as far as all the organized activities and the kids being frazzled or whatever...that's not the school's fault. Kids have been going to school for many, many years, but they would have free-form play in the hours not in school. Now when they’re not in school they’re in a steady stream of school-like organized activities for sports, music, dance, art...whatever, from a very young age. Some of it is due to duel-income or single-parent household situations where the kids need to be in a supervised situation since nobody’s home to let them come home and play (though single-family households weren't uncommon in previous times, but people lived in different multi-generation family structures, or neighborhoods that were more supportive).

But it can also be the case that the parents choose to place their children in all these activities, for whatever reason, to get their children all the exposure to whatever it is they want them to be exposed to as far as becoming "well-rounded".

I’m VERY far from thrilled at the public school experiences we’ve had. Part of that is that my child is “an outlier”, not her fault, but the system is not design to handle outliers, and since the law does not force them to accommodate her I'm left to figuring out how to advocate in my own time and on my own $$. But, the private school choices have their own issues and cost alot of $$ on top of the taxes you have to pay to support the public education, and it’s a gamble to have your child change schools and see if it will or won’t work. Charters may or may not be any good, and unless you can get a spot in one that has already established a good reputation, (and charter schools might not be supported by the local bussing) competing against hundreds of others...well that option doesn't work. Magnet schools also have competing spots and you might not live in the right location to try and win the lottery. Homeschooling is really a cool idea but can be very isolating if you don’t live in place where it’s common, at least when the child is young.

I don’t care for the whole system, perhaps because it is “a system” and any organized system can get big, bad and corrupt. It's hit and miss like most of life in general. There are certainly many wonderful teachers, social workers and counselors trying to work within the constraints of “the system” to really help their students, just like there are many wonderful healthcare professionals trying to work within our nightmare healthcare insurance system to try and provide the best care for their patients.

I'm not saying this statement applies to you, but I've found through experience and talking with teachers that it's common to underestimate how long it will take to do an assignment.


Wow. Sweeping Statement Alert.

AFAIK, charter schools have exactly one way to pick students: lotteries. They're publicly funded and have to take all comers. If they don't have enough spots, they have to use lotteries to choose students.

Where are you getting your data about the horror of working at charter schools? Citations please (peer-reviewed, ideally).

Around here, we have "parent participation" PUBLIC (not charter) schools. In those schools, the parents are required to commit a lot of time to the school or pay the school if they don't.

Reasonable people can disagree about this subject, and I like to see new perspectives that present reasoned arguments and force me to think in a new way. I've learned a lot here in that regard.

IMO, however, sweeping statements that segue a discussion into pitting charter schools against public schools don't help. Neither does wallowing in feelings of offense.

This is just my opinionated opinion.

Back to the OP: I've observed a misconception in the education world that more homework = rigor (more likely in private schools? Not sure) and that academics are important enough to squeeze out other subjects like art, music, PE and even, in some schools, recess (more likely in public schools? Not sure). We've had numerous discussions on this forum around the idea that compliance is a big theme in many schools.

Personally, I feel that the high-stakes-test driven atmosphere that pervades the United States is forcing schooling to resemble training for multiple choice tests more than education in the classical sense of the term. I can see that kids would be dissatisfied with this (possibly without even knowing what was bugging them and why), and that it could stress them out and make them antsy after school.

There's no denying that the vast majority of public schools focus primarily on the non-gifted, so we could be biased with respect to how we see the answers to the OP's question. NCLB forces this (as well as the testing mania) but it was already a problem before NCLB came along. NCLB formalized things, I suppose.

Charter schools typically have an "at will" contract. This means you can be fired for any reason at any time. While this sounds reasonable to most people, things work slightly different in a school system. The union was the only thing that protected my job. I had a parent rage and complain about me and the supposedly awful thing I said to her darling daughter. The union stood in my corner and brought evidence forward that the mother made her false accusations when I was out for a week with the flu. The mother still thinks I drove in that week to torment her daughter.

If you are let go from a teaching job during the middle of the year, you are dead. There is no coming back from that. No one will ever hire you. You never know when an administrator or parent may have it in for you.

Here's an NPR article on how charter schools rarely serve special needs students: http://www.npr.org/2011/12/14/143659449/florida-charter-schools-failing-disabled-students

I obviously can't speak for other school districts in other cities and other states, but my son's school is nothing like this. The only homework they get is spelling. Plus - the "myriad of structured activities" are nothing to do with the school, surely ? My son attends Cub Scouts, swimming lessons, and soccer - but none of them are through the school. Surely if the child doesn't have time to do his homework, it's the fault of the parents, not the school.
I have to admit I'm a bit ignorant as to what the exact definition of a charter school is - but on the subject of discrimination, I know a child who is deaf, and was not accepted into our state school for the deaf (which his dad had attended when he was in school)- because he also has cerebral palsy.

Ditto. My son in third grade has like 30 seconds of homework a night. Our traditional public school offers so many wonderful clubs that many charter schools, I think, can't offer- Chess Club, Choir, Nature Bowl, a student orchestra open to everyone that starts in 4th grade.
I've read that only 20% of charter schools surpass traditional school and maybe 30% equal traditional schools, leaving at least 50% below.
We left a private school b/c my son had 30 minutes of (stupid, mindless) homework a night in kindergarten!

Are these kids in public, private or charter schools? My experience around here is that private schools tend to pile on homework and public schools don't. Example: the private school two of my kids attend makes it a point to say, "We have a low homework load." My kids (3rd/4th grades) have 45-60 minutes of work a night, four nights a week, and it's banned on weekends and over vacations. I know parents who chose this school to escape homework burdens at other local private schools. One school advertises 90-120 minutes of homework a night, starting in 6th grade, with projects over vacations.

Then there's the high-prestige prep school that gives 2-4 hours every night in high school and is described as a competitive pressure cooker.

Public school parents I know complain about how little their kids get ("He's in 8th grade and gets it all done during lunch, and he gets good grades.")

I've met a lot of private and public school kids around here who go to school, then go to an academic after-school program, and then go to music (or whatever) lessons. These kids eat dinner in the car. They're the extremes, but I know many kids with scheduled activities every day, Monday-Friday. I know kids (early elementary!) who have three scheduled activities every weekend (in addition to something like church). We meet them at birthday parties. They arrive late in dance/gymnastics/soccer etc. clothes and leave early.

There are also kids who don't have these demands on their time, but I've met too many ultra-busy kids to call them outliers. I can definitely see that being overscheduled could make them behave in ways the OP described. I can also see that the focus on test prep in schools could have that effect too.

The kids at our public school where DS7 goes, and DD5 will start next year, are not tightly wound after school, but they do have a very hard time focusing on homework after spending 7 hours stuck inside an overly hot school with only 20 minutes of recess, and gym only twice a week for four weeks on a 12 week rotation. Our 1st grade teacher gives too much homework and underestimates the time it takes the kids to do it. We have about 45 minutes a night, which is too much for 1st grade - the standard is supposed to be 10 minutes per grade. She's gotten a lot of pushback from parents, and has backed off a bit in the past month.

I think back to my elementary school days, and we had at least two recesses plus gym daily, but the rest of the school day was pretty similar to DS's in terms of being inside classrooms at desks learning. I thought it was fine as a kid. The difference is that we got science, social studies, and foreign language daily, and spent only an hour on reading/writing and an hour on math. DS's school spends 3 hours every day on reading and writing, and they get very little science or social studies. They are definitely teaching to the test, as are all other public schools in our area. It's why they have no recess time anymore.

I think the children I know at our school and other public schools are happy. One little boy in DS's grade (the one other giftie I know about) told me after winter break that he was lying awake the previous night so excited about coming back to school, he just couldn't wait to be there. I think my kids would be happier in a less traditional school environment, or one that challenged their smarts better, but I could say the same thing about my generation as well. Those options just weren't available then and we didn't have those models to compare to. On the subject of over-scheduling kids, yes it creates problems as children need that unstructured play time. I can see that homeschooling allows for activities like piano lessons and physical activity during the regular day, while traditional school kids have to do those after school. But overscheduling kids is the parents' choice, not the schools'.

Wyldkat, based on going to observe in quite a few schools now, I agree with your comment, at least in regards to kindergarten. I might not use the word cruelty, but would be happy with something like "Orwellian personality modification experiment".

I've seen 4 public Ks now and simply by walking into a classroom and looking at the kids appearance I can tell without hearing a word uttered roughly how that school ranks nationally. It appears to be entirely due to socio-economic status. They could do away with testing and just average the parental tax returns.

At the lowest ranking one the kids enter with many not knowing colors, and none reading. There is an incredible task for the teacher and they do achieve an amazing amount of catch up. At the highest, all are reading by mid-year and there is all along a little bit of time for extra content and the occasional child directed moment.

At almost none of the public schools (and definitely not at 2 privates) have I seen examples of children rewarded or encouraged in independent thought, personal self expression, or creativity. On average, children's comments not directly in answer to a teacher question were just tolerated without response. At the worst they were squashed. At one single school, the highest socioeconomic status public, I saw one instance of a child expressing a personal experience relevant to the class activity which was given respect: a reply and exchange lasting a few moments.

Kindergarten at every one of the 6 I've viewed appears to be simply the first of many years of immersion therapy to shut up and listen to an authority figure who will tell you exactly what you are supposed to know.

At every school, a 10 or 15 minute break with access to toys or the outdoors seems to be a frantic rush to expel pent up tension. At no time did I see cooperative complex interactions between students such as complex imaginary scenarios or a child invented game (and this would be the main time they are allowed to speak to one another besides lunch).

In K a child can get through 6 hours straight without speaking other than reading specific words they are instructed to or answering primarily rote memorization type questions. If anyone noticed the child was silent it might be to think the child was well behaved and possibly reward them for that.

It seems really strange to me that the school system does this to 5 year olds.

The children at most of the schools (excepting the strictest private and 1 public) seemed happy and engaged, but I put that down to children being resilient and flexible and to their teachers being generally extremely friendly and energetic people. Happiness in a 5 year old does not necessarily mean it's a system that prepares them well for life after 17.

My husband recently helped interview high achieving high school grads that are looking for money to attend selective colleges. He commented to me that virtually none of them have anything interesting to say, they give no hint of the type of deep thinking or individuality that actually thrives at university. They can not come up with a real answer for what subject interests or excites them. They are consumed by an obsession over grades and promoting themselves via their glowingly long list of run of the mill extracurriculars. And they seem to have no sense of how vacuous they sound, they seem not like individuals but like a herd of hoop jumping monkeys.

I'm sure there are exceptions of course but I have to wonder if the exceptions survived the system rather than were benefited by it.

It is just hard not to jump to conclusions about causality, seeing the school system and then hearing about the product.

Polly

So much misinformation in one little thread!

Nearly all charter schools in the US are required to have a lottery for admission. Some schools are allowed "preference" categories for students that have a particular need/desire. For example, an arts academy may have an audition and 30% of the kids that are accepted in the lottery first, will have had to pass the audition with a high score. Or a school may focus on language immersion and declare that 50% of the lottery must be students who do not speak the primary language of the school (say Spanish.)

Charter schools that received public funding (which is the federal definition of a charter) are NOT allowed to discriminate against nearly all categories of IEP students. However, charter schools ARE allowed to exclude students who would not have an appropriate educational placement in the least restrictive environment. If an IEP team has decided that a student needs a severely emotionally disturbed, self-contained classroom and a charter school does not have one of those, the charter is allowed to say no.

Students who are on full-inclusion plans cannot be excluded from nearly any charter in the US. Whether they are appropriately served in that setting, is a different matter. As a former teacher and vice-principal at a charter, I can tell you that many parents chose to not disclose a child's true needs before applying. It's not good for anyone to find out that a child is severely autistic and needs assistance in a regular classroom on day 5 of 7th grade. But I've had this happen because of the misinformation that charters don't accept students with IEPs. So parents feel compelled to lie, which is completely unnecessary and does harm to the child.

As for accepted cruelty, it has been my observation that as schools move towards more heavily scripted curriculum, more testing and more test driven curriculum, students' spirits are being crushed. It is heart-wrenching for anyone, including the teacher in the classroom, to watch 1st graders go through a scripted program like Open Court where you have to read in chorus and respond to a clicker like a dog for hours upon hours a day.

Until the pendulum swings back to a more moderate educational setting and parents stop valuing the quantity of homework as an indicator of school quality, it's going to be rough in public education.

After a 3rd grade year of 60 min of worksheets every single night, sometimes the SAME worksheets as yesterday for "more review", we are homeschooling. I realize not everyone has that option, but I couldn't watch my son's desire to learn and his spark be worksheeted out of him.

Thank you everyone for your replies. This is exactly what I was hoping for.

I would like to mention that at NO point did I place any more blame on the teachers than I did on any other member of society. The vast majority of teachers are good people doing a hard and very often thankless job.

I am basing my growing belief on observations based in a very liberal, relatively high socioeconomic bracket area.

I was talking about conventional public brick and mortar schools vs non-traditional school options (charter, IS, homeschool). Although I know a few people with children in private schools, I don't really know them well enough to have any idea what the schools are like.

Charter schools often have lower rankings (in my area) because most of the students opt out of testing. However, the students who do test tend to blow the lids of the tests. I've also been told by teachers with experience in the area that non-traditional school students often over think the tests unless they are trained in proper test taking skills.

I also never said that some or even most kids don't enjoy traditional school. Even the kid I know who is most affected by the system LOVES school, not because he is learning but because he is in the same room as his friends. In fact he would rather stay with his friends than switch to a school that might support his learning style. He isn't there to learn you see and he's only in 3rd grade. However, due to lack of a better example coming to mind at the moment, I read an article the other day about modern slavery and how the salves are "happy" and don't want to be freed because that is the way it has always been...

If we want creative thinkers something has to change. The universities are speaking out about it. What is going on in the majority of schools isn't working or it wouldn't be an issue for the universities. I'm not saying we should toss traditional schools (bad idea on SO many levels), but that people have to stand up and say that kids need to be kids. They need to move, to be engaged in an environment that doesn't cause them to shut down, to be allowed to play even as they get into the higher grades. Exercise boosts test scores. Creativity boosts innovation.

Well put, CAMom.

I highly recommend watching this video, which is an animation of a talk given by Sir Ken Robinson. It is eye opening to see how our schools developed, based on the way factories are run. He talks about different ways of grouping kids and how schools are designed to reward convergent thinking and not divergent thinking.

It's not to bash schools, but it certainly raises questions about whether our schools are the best they can be.

Open Court is a "direct instruction" (DI), and some research has found that DI helps students from disadvantaged backgrounds learn to read. DI may not be fun for teachers, but students spririts' are more likely to be "crushed" if they never learn to read. Different schools may need different curricula.

I agree with Wyldcat's general idea about the spirit-sapped children. I hate to be a pessimist but I don't see it changing anytime soon. For differnt reasons in different area and socio-economic groups, it seems as though the schools have "taken over" the care of the kids, not just education but character development, fitness, health...things that would have traditionally been the responsibility of the family structure, and the kids were in school to actually learn things like their own language, maybe another, history, geography, literature, arithmetic and mathmatics. To be honest, my grandparents and great-grandparents came out of 6th-9th grade, whatever the case, with more knowledge of world history and geography, command of the English language (spoken and written) and in some cases another language as well, arithmetic to run a household budget and more advanced math as well, poetry, music, literature...and these were the "poorer" kids who were expected to start working full time at age 13-15 and never go to college or university!!!

Where I live, too many parents have a "dump and run" approach, even expecting their child to get their morning snack from the charity of the teacher making sure there is something for them in the classroom, when in fact they can afford to fly to Disney World a couple of times per year and drive really nice cars etc. It sort of morphs into the school, having so much responsibility for these kids, taking on an attitude that your child is a ward of the state or the district when you send them there, and if you're the sort of parent that looks to the school more or less for the academic education of your child and you feel that you will take care of the rest, you're in the majority.

Add that to all the mandates and assessments and constant changes of those everything is formula-ized and packaged up and same-y. The more conformity the easier it is for the teachers and administrators to knock off all the requirements.

I don't see enough people taking a stand any time soon, they're just too busy and as long as they see the school accommodating their children's needs they wouldn't join up to demand a higher quality education or critical thinking, individualism, etc.

That's just what I see and strictly my opinion.

Some good books on the general subject that I read recently. The chapter in Mei Ling's book on Japanese school discipline was very interesting. As was how parents in S America deal with sleep time.

http://www.amazon.com/Eskimos-Keep-Their-Babies-Warm/dp/156512958X

How we do not let kids be kids. And how adults exercise absolute control over kids and how this is damaging.

http://www.amazon.com/Thou-Shalt-No..._6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1332509810&sr=1-6

IMHO, the schools suffer from too much centralized control. Put the power in the principals' hands, get rid of most of the non-school staff, and then actively supervise the principals. Make sure the schools have good textbooks and LOTS Of books. Break up school districts into smaller ones.

Student teacher ratios are the best indicator of learning success in early grades. getting rid of non-school staff will allow schools to hire more teachers. There should be an associates degree for elementary schooling.

My DD's soul is being crushed in traditional public school, but this is based entirely on the district and school administrations' idiotic biases and how they're aggressively preventing DD's placement in an appropriate learning environment. If she weren't gifted, she'd be just fine.

Her homework load is pretty light. She's in GT class half the day, and they tend to go from one project to another, with a week or two deadline which allows us to help DD budget time appropriately, without having a negative impact on her sleep or her extracurriculars. The rest of the day she's in a normal 1st grade class, and she gets most of that homework done on class time.

She's on a soccer team full of kids from a private, Catholic school. Those first graders are doing an hour of homework a night, often stretching out beyond that because they're burned out. Between the homework, soccer, and ordinary daily activities (eating, bathing, etc.), they're not getting enough sleep every night.

It also helps that DD's school day starts nearly two hours later than the private school. That makes a huge difference. It means we're not trying to send her to bed while it's still daylight to ensure she gets enough sleep. It also means she gets some Daddy time after dinner.

The charter we used to attend required a long application. Supposedly there was then a lottery among applicants who met the desired requirements. I suspect the students were actually handpicked.

They also did indeed find ways to kick out kids with LDs. I don't know how they do it, legally, but they have done it.

That said, the school also had some great teachers and did some great stuff. It was a mixed bag.

Anyway. Are there dumb, soul-crushing things happening at schools? Yes. Are there are also wonderful teachers doing great things? Also yes.

Ultramarina- Lotteries are required to be held publicly. Did you go and observe?

As for finding a way to kick out kids with LDs, I hate to say it but traditional public schools do this all the time. If you don't believe that to be the case, I suggest you find out how many expulsions your local high school had last year. How many kids transferred to the continuation or credit recovery school? How many simply dropped out?

In my former charter, and all over California, charters do not simply "kick out" kids with LDs. There is a progressive discipline policy as well as a progressive academic policy. Often we find that kids with LDs, with support and assistance can be successful in our school. Sometimes they can't.

Let me give you an example to illustrate. In my former school (where I worked for 10 years and my son is now there in the umbrella as a homeschool student), high school students ALL take college prep classes. There is no credit-recovery or remedial academic track. Students are physically at school from 8am to 4pm, at a minimum, then have one to two hours of homework a night. Students are all required to participate in an art major and an art minor. Some students are dancers, musicians, actors, game designers, painters etc. Students may be at school until 11pm for several weeks before a big show. The school has a minimum GPA requirement of 2.5 at all times. If you fall below 2.5, you get extra tutoring, assistance with homework etc. If you fall below 2.0, you have one semester of no activities allowed, plus additional support, 3 different SST meetings and a special afterschool class 2x a week for assistance with homework.

Sometimes, even with all of that built in, a kid cannot make it in the system. If we know this in advance, they have an IEP or a 504 in place when school starts. They may have modified homework, different books to read or extra time on tests (as examples). If the parent doesn't tell us, it will take a full school quarter (by law) to get a 504 in place because of the required meetings and evaluations that have to take place.

Sometimes a kid just doesn't do their work. Period. It's that simple. I can beg and plead, their parents can bribe and cajole. But sometimes, they just don't do it. There really isn't much I can do about that. Why would I hold a spot at a coveted arts academy for a kid who isn't going to try when I have a waiting list of 200 who are dying for the opportunity?

And while I'm on a roll, let me also say that the rumor that schools kick kids out right before standardized testing is also baloney. In CA, and most other states, the date of enrollment determination is in October. The STAR test is in May. It doesn't matter if a kid left my school the day after the determination date or the day before the actual test, his STAR scores still count in our final tally.

Class size is a huge inhibitor to fostering creative thinkers. In a class of 30 kids, it is nearly impossible to facilitate dialogue among the children on a topic. Instead, the dialogue is between the teacher and each individual child who has something to contribute. Our school breaks kids down into ability groups of 8 to 9 kids during reading and math centers (with 3 to 5 kids going to a remedial teacher in another classroom), which helps with that dialogue during those times. But most of the day is about behaving, being quiet, listening, and "contributing productively."

The teachers value most the children who are able to behave and be quiet and comply. Kids who want to do things differently are disruptive when you have large class sizes. This means that the kids who are most successful in our school system are not the ones who will be most successful in life beyond school, where leadership, creativity, and critical thinking put you ahead.

This whole thread is depressing me, along with the thread on the parenting and advocacy board about the 3rd graders who've lost their fire for learning because of their school environments. Both threads are really hammering on the things I already don't like about our school. But I haven't been able to find a better school, and I've looked at a lot. Our current system has problems, I think people recognize there are problems, but we have a long way to go to solve them. For any parents on this board who had children in elementary school prior to NCLB, I'm wondering if there's a marked difference between then and now?

That is an overstatement. The correlation between success in school and in life (however one measures life success) is not 1.0, but it is certainly positive. IQ imperfectly predicts success both in school and in life, as does the ability to get along with others.

Bostonian- Every study I've seen that showed an advantage for disadvantaged students using Open Court was funded by the publishers of Open Court.

"This study analyses the research that supports Open Court, describes its translation into instructional policy in California, and compares the average SAT 9 reading scores of English-only children in schools using Open Court against comparable schools using non-scripted programs in one large urban school district. It found no significant difference in the average second grade SAT 9 reading scores in Open Court and comparison schools. Furthermore, it found no Open Court school had positive differences of 10 or more percentile points between second and fifth grade whereas 21% of the comparison schools did. Long-term Open Court schools had negative differences of 10 or more percentile points between second and fifth grade twice as often as schools using non-scripted programs. Finally, long-term Open Court schools serving communities where 97-100% of the children receive free / reduced-price meals were significantly more likely to be in the bottom quartile of the SAT 9 reading assessment than schools using non-scripted programs serving similar children."

http://instructional1.calstatela.ed...o_Instructional_Policy_in_California.htm

What's Open Court? My Google searches led me to online viewing on trials and parent-produced sites that didn't tell me much.

Could someone provide a link? Thanks.

Yes, I agree, it's an overstatement, a broad generalization, as is much of this whole thread.

Val- I'm having trouble finding a specific link for you. Open Court Reading is published by SRA McGraw-Hill and is vaguely referred to on their website and in their "Direct Instruction" section. They are also doing a national study to determine the effectiveness of Open Court and Everyday Math.

Open Court was implemented in many CA schools in the early 2000s. Lots of schools are still using it either because they liked it or they didn't have cash to replace it. It is a scripted, direct instruction curriculum. In districts that required implementation and did not allow teachers to deviate, it is a fully scripted program that does not allow teachers to change, modify or move away from the text. And by fully scripted, I mean it says "Students, now we will read the next work. Read ___. Good. What word is the next word? ___. Good." As originally published, it came with a clicker to cue student response, like in clicker training for dogs. Really.

The biggest complaints I heard from teachers at the time, was that you had to read the same story for five days in K and 1st. It didn't allow the teachers to change anything and there were assignments that went with the story. It took an average of one and a half hours to get through the daily lesson. If you had an assembly or field trip etc, you had to double up on a day to catch back up again.

You can see samples on Amazon.

Oh no, Mister Bill! Everyday Math!

Your reply gave me the vocabulary I needed to find information. Thanks.

This site notes that Open Court isn't very effective, but there aren't any citations.

This seems to be the paper you found. It has a lot of citations and presents details that don't support the advertised effectiveness of Open Court.

"Ultramarina- Lotteries are required to be held publicly. Did you go and observe? "

I don't think this is true in my state. I have never seen such a public lottery advertised or mentioned in any of the charters we've dealt with or investigated. I have a friend who helps run a charter in another state and she's often commented that our laws are quite different from hers.

When we were looking at school, we visited a highly sought after "option school" within our district. It is a lottery school and has some of the highest state testing scores in the district. People self-select for this school so it is hard to know what is a function of involved parents versus the actual curriculum. They used Open Court reading. I witnessed one mind-numbing session and vowed that I would never subject my kids to that curriculum.

My kids seem fairly content in their gt classrooms within a regular neighborhood school. My kids enjoy their peer group and general community. They use various curricula developed for gifted programs. I don't know if they would feel the same way if they were in traditional classrooms. I do agree that the two weeks of onerous standardized testing are sheer torture.

My kids have one testing session per day for two weeks -- 3 math, 3 reading, 3 writing and 1 science (only fifth grade). I'm not sure how long each session is -- I have one kid who gets extended time so for her it's longer than for the average kid. It's two weeks of anxiety (even if we tell the kids we don't care about the results, the teachers send the opposite message) and messed up schedules. This is compounded in our state by the fact that we "spring forward" in the middle of the testing period.

Ultramarina- if a charter school is receiving funds under the NCLB designated Charter Schools Program, they must conduct a public lottery. This does not mean that they have to advertise it, tell anyone about it or even put it in their application. However, the lottery must be held in a way that can be observed by any member of the public who requests it.

Siegfried Engelmann was one of the developers of "Direct Instruction" , and his site http://www.zigsite.com/ has his published works supporting DI. An overview of DI is at http://psych.athabascau.ca/html/387/OpenModules/Engelmann/Engelmannbio.html .

Someone who wants to have an informed opinion of DI could browse these sites as well as those of the critics of DI.

"This does not mean that they have to advertise it, tell anyone about it or even put it in their application. "

Well, I wouldn't exactly call it public, then. The law has no teeth if that's how it works.

Anyway, do they all get funds from NCLB? I wouldn't be surprised if the school we used chose not to, if doing so imposes restrictions.

That sounds like how law works in general.

My favorite part about law is when bureaucrats have no idea what the law is but give you an answer off the top of their head.

Always read the law.

Nobody is going to tell you what the law says.

Remember:

"Ignorantia juris non excusat or ignorantia legis neminem excusat (Latin for "ignorance of the law does not excuse" or "ignorance of the law excuses no one") is a legal principle holding that a person who is unaware of a law may not escape liability for violating that law merely because he or she was unaware of its content. In the United States, exceptions to this general rule are found in cases such as Lambert v. California (knowledge of city ordinances) and Cheek v. United States (willfulness requirement in U.S. federal tax crimes).
European law countries with a tradition of Roman law may also use the expression from Aristoteles nemo censetur ignorare legem: nobody is thought to be ignorant of the law."

And yes, this is somewhat insane.

In our local schools- one lottery is held in a giant auditorium with a thousand people in attendance, another in a small library with a few parents who care enough to attend. It depends on how the school addresses it. Just like school board meetings are held publicly but only a handful of people attend, public is public only if the public cares to show up.

I encourage anyone working with schools to not trust what anyone at the front counter tells you. If you do, you will believe that you have no access to your child's cumulative record, that if you want to see it it will cost you money, that you can't see what your child's score was on a particular test, that you can't attend the lottery and that your child has become a ward of the school from 8-4 and you have no say in the matter.

These are all things I've heard people here were told by the front counter.