Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
"Susan Drews, 49, who lives in Yorktown Heights, in Westchester, said that art in the first grade at her son’s public school, for instance, involved “half-baked projects” like gold-sprayed macaroni glued to paper plates."
The art at our Yorktown Heights primary school was excellent. The teacher is a very good artist herself and the projects were excellent, mixing art and art history. The kids studied work by a particular artist or of a particular style and then did their own works with similar materials and in that style. My son, who has delayed fine motor skills and doesn't like doing art, created some amazing works and really liked art class. He also became very interested in art and started to love going to museums. The school has an art show every year and the works kids produce are amazing. Far better than what I recall making at my NYC private school, and far better than what the kids created at the NYC private school I taught at.
LOL...it is FIRST grade!! At any rate, I would agree that you might be better suited to sending your kids to private school if you are as obsessive about education as some of the parents quoted in this article. I wouldn't WANT my kids around kids from those parents. Really? Subjecting a 5 or 6 year old to 2 subway rides each 13 hour day, 5 days a week, all because they weren't stimulating their child quite enough in their (excellent) home school? Parents like this will never be satisfied until their kid goes to Harvard (and hates their parents as much as they hated theirs.)
Kids are not machines. Not every kid can or should go to an Ivy League school. Enjoy your kids, live where you are happiest (all things considered), send them to good schools, make them study hard, make it your job to see the world through their eyes (not the other way around), and all will fall into place. People take schools far too seriously in NY, IMHO...
My inquiry isn't focused on increasing the odds of going to an Ivy League college. It's just about academics taught in the classroom.
That said, I wouldn't invest in an expensive home and pay very high taxes for my child to attend a school with laid-back academic standards (assuming that standards are indeed laid back). I can get that from a cheaper neighborhood where taxes are lower.
Different people have different priorities and in our case, academics supercedes other priorities.
The other problem you face when dealing with the public schools is that they are tied to the State curriculum standards. The teachers have to teach what they have to teach - they can't really deviate. If you want really high level academics during school hours you're going to have to go private.
This is a plausible exolanation. However, I've been reading and hearing about how the "best" NY suburban public schools are supposedly "comparable" to private schools. However, there was no further explanation of what is meant by "best" nor was there any elaboration of the reasons why, especially when it came to academics. Is that comparison unfounded, perhaps? Or probably based on non-academic factors such as similarly affluent students, extra-curriculars, etc.?
This is a plausible exolanation. However, I've been reading and hearing about how the "best" NY suburban public schools are supposedly "comparable" to private schools. However, there was no further explanation of what is meant by "best" nor was there any elaboration of the reasons why, especially when it came to academics. Is that comparison unfounded, perhaps? Or probably based on non-academic factors such as similarly affluent students, extra-curriculars, etc.?
When you speak of "academics" do you mean the curriculum and the specific skills that are taught? If so, Streetsmart is certainly correct that you will find essentially no difference between public schools since all grade-level curricula are tied to the state standards. Compare the curriculum of local schools (available on the district sites) and you will find only minor differences. The differences between schools are in how things are taught, and how much focus is put on the state tests, not in what is taught.
However, the biggest emphasis in education right now is on differentiated instruction and teaching students at their level. I think most public schools will have a good deal of differentiated instruction, especially in the elementary grades. While the bottom line is still making sure all kids are at grade level and are learning the state standards, most schools now emphasize giving students work at their own individual level. For example, since kindergarten my son has been reading text and doing ELA work at at least two grade levels above his—and he has been doing math work at a lower grade level than he should be. Meanwhile his best friend in the same class is doing much higher level math work, and is reading at grade level. This emphasis has fixed one of the traditional problems with public schools—that advanced students weren’t challenged and had to wait for the others to “catch up.” Nowadays most classrooms should be set up so that the advanced student is doing advanced work a good portion of the time.
As to comparing private and public schools, that depends on what you’re after. My friends' kid goes to one of the best private schools in NYC and she spent 6 months of 3rd grade doing an in-depth study of ancient Greece. That isn't something you'll get in a public school. On the other hand, I saw the work she had and the skills that she was being taught--the "academics"—were the same as what my kid was being taught. On the other other hand, she was learning about ancient Greece and learning how to do an in depth, long-term project—good things to learn.
When you speak of "academics" do you mean the curriculum and the specific skills that are taught? If so, Streetsmart is certainly correct that you will find essentially no difference between public schools since all grade-level curricula are tied to the state standards. Compare the curriculum of local schools (available on the district sites) and you will find only minor differences. The differences between schools are in how things are taught, and how much focus is put on the state tests, not in what is taught.
However, the biggest emphasis in education right now is on differentiated instruction and teaching students at their level. I think most public schools will have a good deal of differentiated instruction, especially in the elementary grades. While the bottom line is still making sure all kids are at grade level and are learning the state standards, most schools now emphasize giving students work at their own individual level. For example, since kindergarten my son has been reading text and doing ELA work at at least two grade levels above his—and he has been doing math work at a lower grade level than he should be. Meanwhile his best friend in the same class is doing much higher level math work, and is reading at grade level. This emphasis has fixed one of the traditional problems with public schools—that advanced students weren’t challenged and had to wait for the others to “catch up.” Nowadays most classrooms should be set up so that the advanced student is doing advanced work a good portion of the time.
Differentiated instruction is good to hear. So I assume it's theoretically possible for a student to study both higher level math and english at the same time, to the extent that he is able to. What is the process for determining what level to place a student?
Also, I posted earlier about some people, including a Greeley teacher, saying that he had to water-down the difficulty of his class to accomodate the mix of weaker students - implying that he had good students in his class mixed with weaker students. Is there any truth to this claim? I also saw a similar comment in greatschools.org.
Regarding "differentiated instruction", many parents have been unhappy with the failed attempts to provide effective instruction for all students in mixed proficiency classrooms. It's nice to hear the success in dma's example, but I have had the opposite experience with my kids. My advanced learner wasted a lot of time and developed bad habits from years of heterogeneous class groupings, while my other child was cheated out of the additional time and practice she needed in order to progress satisfactorily.
The comments of the Greeley teacher ring true for me.
My inquiry isn't focused on increasing the odds of going to an Ivy League college. It's just about academics taught in the classroom.
That said, I wouldn't invest in an expensive home and pay very high taxes for my child to attend a school with laid-back academic standards (assuming that standards are indeed laid back). I can get that from a cheaper neighborhood where taxes are lower.
Different people have different priorities and in our case, academics supercedes other priorities.
I'm not totally sure what you are getting at. As I said before, the "standards" are the same in every school in NY State. There are no laid-back standards or advanced standards. The teachers must teach what is in the curriculum standards for each grade, and make sure they cover what will be on that grade's test. HOW these things are taught are often left open, but even then, you will find the same things happening in all (elementary) classrooms - guided reading groups, independent reading, read alouds, shared writing, guided writing groups, plus math instruction following generally one of 2 curriculums, Everyday Math or Investigations (TERC).
The differences in schools lies in the other part of what a teacher does - classroom management. Now, if you have a classroom full of well-behaved kids who have high expectations placed on them by parents and who have respect for authority, you can spend all of your time on academics, do fun experiments and projects, etc. If you have kids who don't care about education and just goof off all day, you have to keep a tight ship, you spend a lot of time dealing with behavior problems, and you can't do fun special projects for fear of what might happen.
The former is more likely to happen in the "good" districts that you talk about. The latter is more likely to be seen in the "not-so-good" districts. So sure, buy a house in Mt. Vernon to save some cash, but your kid is going to have a different experience than if you bought a house in Chappaqua. Even though the topics covered WILL be generally the same.
So what exactly do you want from a school district? There are going to be smart kids and not-so-smart kids in every classroom in every school. You can't avoid that, although that's what you seem to want. Your kid isn't going to get a completely individualized education anywhere. But if you are so worried about academics your best bet is going to be to get him into a school that has entrance requirements (ie. Hunter College School) so that the students are at a more similar intellectual level.
Per my earlier posts (maybe I didn't make it clear enough when I alluded to the comments of Tom Corwin, the Greeley teacher), aside from breadth of topics, I am also interested in the level of challenge that motivated students are made to undergo in the classroom. What Corwin lamented was the fact that even if he had some motivated students in his Greeley class, he had to water-down the level of difficulty to accomodate the mediocre students. Obviously, this comes at the expense of his motivated students. If that's the case, then might as well for a family that prioritizes academics to send kids to private school (if they can afford it) and move to a less expensive neighborhood; one of the biggest plus points about "top" suburban public schools is that they supposedly offer the same level of academic rigor as private schools.
Your last paragraph actually touches on my point - schools can segregate the smarter students so that they can learn in a more challenging environment. Catholic parochial schools, for example, assign better-performing students to "honors classes" where they can both study advanced topics and take the same lessons as the regular classes but at a more difficult level.
The "differentiated instruction" program that dma1250 talked about is actually a form of this. But I was wondering how to reconcile this with accounts like that of Corwin of Greeley (mediocre students mixed with morivated students), and also how effective is the teaching in these "differentiated learning" classes.
Differentiated instruction is good to hear. So I assume it's theoretically possible for a student to study both higher level math and english at the same time, to the extent that he is able to. What is the process for determining what level to place a student?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Forest_Hills_Daddy
Also, I posted earlier about some people, including a Greeley teacher, saying that he had to water-down the difficulty of his class to accomodate the mix of weaker students - implying that he had good students in his class mixed with weaker students. Is there any truth to this claim? I also saw a similar comment in greatschools.org.
Differentiated instruction is most common in subjects that are easier to assess and to determine what level a student is at. Its relatively simple to develop appropriate work for multiple levels for math, reading, grammar, spelling, and writing--and they are skills that can easily be taught in small groups. Other topics are harder to teach in a differentiated approach.
Every single class in every school (private schools with entrance requirements included) will have kids at many different levels. And the vast majority of kids are above level in some areas but not in others. There are many approaches to dealing with this, but the teacher who deals with it by "watering down" the topic or avoiding creative projects is (in my opinion) a poor teacher. And you'll certainly find some of those in every school, too.
Reading this string made me think of the excellent documentary currently (and briefly) in theaters: The Race to Nowhere.
It would be great if all parents, educators and education policy makers see it.
Here is the synopsis of the film:
"Director Vicki Abeles turns the personal political, igniting a national conversation in her new documentary about the pressures faced by American schoolchildren and their teachers in a system and culture obsessed with the illusion of achievement, competition and the pressure to perform. Featuring the heartbreaking stories of young people across the country who have been pushed to the brink, educators who are burned out and worried that students aren’t developing the skills they need, and parents who are trying to do what’s best for their kids, Race to Nowhere points to the silent epidemic in our schools: cheating has become commonplace, students have become disengaged, stress-related illness, depression and burnout are rampant, and young people arrive at college and the workplace unprepared and uninspired."
"Race to Nowhere is a call to mobilize families, educators, and policy makers to challenge current assumptions on how to best prepare the youth of America to become healthy, bright, contributing and leading citizens."
Just thought I'd pipe in and recommend the film.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
