Texas education - from a Yankee's perspective (homes, buy)

[traceyr13]

Originally Posted by Dr.Mom

Tracey,
Thank you for taking the time to write a thoughtful and engaging post. Hopefully over the summer we will be moving from PA to Austin with two little ones. In originally researching schools there, I was overwhelmed at the class sizes. As the child of an English teacher, I know how hard my mom had to work and she never had a class size of more than 20, at most. I honestly don't know how teachers there are able to keep up with the workload. The more research I do about schools there, the more it looks like we will go the private school route. Between the housing costs and private school tuitions, it will actually cost us more to live in Austin than in our suburb of Philadelphia. I'm still trying to accept that one. Thanks again, your post was extremely helpful.

Thanks. I am finding the workload unmanageable, and understand why so many of my colleagues give scantron tests, don't assign longer papers, etc. Our senior paper is, per the district curriculum, 3-5 pages long (as a comparison, it was 8-10 pages at my school in Rhode Island). On the one hand, I'm disgusted that this is the "capstone" paper for seniors in high school.

On the other, I have no idea how I would ever have the time to grade longer papers.

I have 3 young children, and am working 9 hours a day just at school, with another 2-3 hours most weeknights, and easily put in 10 hours on a weekend (and that's not when I have a "busy" weekend, like this past weekend, when I literally logged 20 hours grading). My entire family is paying the price, which is why both my husband and I have decided it's not in our best interest to have me return next year.

[S&AMOM]

Many of the reasons we are trying to sell our house and move out of TX by the time our oldest starts school!

[Jennibc]

Originally Posted by S&AMOM

Many of the reasons we are trying to sell our house and move out of TX by the time our oldest starts school!

You know what's interesting is people are talking about 22 being a large class size - up in Washington state most of the elementary classrooms had 24 students and I remember attending Catholic school in LA as a kid and there were 28 in my class as an elementary student. Where in the country are there class sizes less than 22 (which here is the mandated limit from what the school told us). In Seattle there was a heavy emphasis on teaching to the test there as well. Are all states grappling with this since NCLB came into effect?

[centralaustinite]

Yes, all states are grappling with teaching to the test and curriculums are becoming more rigid as a result (to make sure every teacher teaches every thing that is on the test).

22 is not a bad class size for a public school. I applaud AISD for it. it is a very rare private school however that has classes that big, Catholic schools are one of them. Even very expensive and well-to-do St. Gabriel's here has 22 as their stated class size. In many private schools however classes will be more in the 14-18 student range.

Other than some charter schools, I think that it would be very unlikely to find public school classes under 22 students.

[TexasHorseLady]

When I attended elementary school back in the dark ages, 25 was a good size for a class. We were taught to think, we were taught reading, writing, arithmetic, we didn't have computers or calculators to do it for us so we had to actually learn it, we got an excellent education. (Yes, in small town East Texas.) The teachers didn't have any trouble handling the class size, but they weren't expected to parent us, either, though many of them did, I now realize. Our PARENTS were expected to parent us, imagine that.

My daughter attended the Waldorf School here in Austin a while back. 25 students to a classroom was not unusual at all. However, the students had the same teacher from 2nd through 8th grade (something my sister and nieces the teachers - and parents - sighed over when they heard it, and said, "At the end of a year, you're just figuring out what the student needs and they're just getting the hang of it, and then you both have to start over!").

In fact, I can't remember a school, including Highland Park, in the top ten in the nation at the time I attended there (and teaching to the test in a way that boggled the mind), where the class size was less than 24. And yet, most of them managed to educate us, nonetheless.

I do feel for the teachers who have to work long hours, in class and at home. I can't remember visiting my sister when there weren't stacks of papers and she wasn't grading papers while having out of town company (that would be us). Well, at least not before she retired after 30 years of teaching.

It's not so much the class size, though that's part of it, that's the problem.

[miche111e]

Originally Posted by traceyr13

Here is a link to an article that talks about common banned books in Texas: Banned and Challenged Books in Public Schools in Texas I was told by my department head that American Lit teachers are instructed not to teach Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Catcher in the Rye or Color Purple due to the "problems" it creates. Those were standard books in the curriculum back East.

As another example of the low standards, I am getting ready to teach Lord of the Flies. To seniors. It was done in 8th grade for Honors kids and 9th grade for "regular" classes in Rhode Island and MA. Here, it's the standard senior novel.

I think this has to vary by district. I read all of those books in public school (except The Color Purple), and To Kill a Mockingbird, Of MIce and Men, The Crucible and Bridge to Terabithia.

I graduated in 1992, though. I'm not sure how much public education has changed across the state (and, granted, it was before NCLB).

[houstoner]

Originally Posted by miche111e

I think this has to vary by district. I read all of those books in public school (except The Color Purple), and To Kill a Mockingbird, Of MIce and Men, The Crucible and Bridge to Terabithia.

I graduated in 1992, though. I'm not sure how much public education has changed across the state (and, granted, it was before NCLB).

It not only varies by district, it varies by school. I don't remember there being any banned books at the school I attended in podunk East Texas. I read all those books in class, with the exception of TCP and BtT which I read on my own. They were available in the school library. We also read CinR, LotF, and Huck Finn. These books aren't banned in public schools all over Texas. I found an updated banned books list here. http://www.aclutx.org/files/Free%20P...ely%202008.pdf It lists the books banned or challenged by district and school. It appears that the ACLU lumps books that may have been challenged by one parent together with banned books in this report.

[Trainwreck20]

'Back in the day' (pre computer days, really) there was some talk of 'appropriate' and 'inappropriate' books for school. The most guaranteed way to get a kid to read a book is to lable it 'banned' or 'inapporpriate'. Even though the books weren't officially banned in the school, the English teacher posted a list of the books that were considered inappropriate (or whatever the wording was), and I bet half of those books got read on the kids own time . It actually could be considered a motivator for getting studented to read .

[Mamazalez]

A maximum class size of 22 sounds great to me! Our son's 5th grade class has 29 students/one teacher, and there are some public kindergartens with 30 kids in NE Seattle.

Jennibc is right when it comes to testing. Schools in WA practically shut down for three weeks in April for the WASL. No field trips, no outside visitors, no special events, no real teaching/learning. Just the test. I imagine NCLB has made this the reality everywhere.

[readymade]

I went to a terrible TERRIBLE high school in Massachusetts. The school itself (during my senior year) was named in the bottom 10 in the US in regards to school ratings. And I got awful grades at this school. And my mom didn't pay any attention to my schooling. And, yet, I'm considered by many (especially me) to be pretty intelligent.

I think the key is to read to your kids A LOT when they're growing up. I don't remember reading MOST of those books listed in a classroom. Often times, they would bring in a TV and show a movie of the book because they knew no one would read it! But, I read them on my own. Usually years and years before they taught them. (Hell, I read Huckleberry Finn when I was about 8. I think it was banned from our school, 'cause they never taught it)

I guess my point is, it's great to be in a really good school system. Obviously that's ideal. But I think parents making reading a big deal is key. My mom didn't pay attention to my schooling (i.e. I signed all of my report cards) but she DID recommend great books for me to read and then discussed them with me after I'd read them. Not in a "you're going to have a test on this" type of way, but a "why do you think Holden Caufield acted like that" way. And she read to me from before I can remember.

I remember by the time they taught "Catcher in the Rye" at my school, I was all "Isn't that a little kid's book?" Heh.

(that being said, I still use my fingers to add numbers!)