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Thank you all for your input, I will go ahead and dig into these links to learn more. I suppose 1 year will not harm a kindergartener as long as there are no safety concerns. I should have learned enough about the school and the triangle school districts before his first grade to help me decide what will be best for him longer term.
FWIW, we went through the DPS madness and ended up going with a charter school that had better "scores" or ratings or what-have-you than the base assignment. Still high minority (my daughter) and low income (not my daughter) student population but .
She didn't have a teacher/classroom for the first 2 weeks. They just shuffled kids around while they did assessments, etc. but they could not tell me where my daughter was when I called. Tons of worksheets every day plus bullying and teachers saying my daughter was "not accustomed to a classroom environment" after 3 years of daycare/pre-K and 1 year of immersion pre-K. Transportation to and from took an hour or more, and no contact info when 2 hours passed and my kid still isn't home.
Put the house on the market after 1 month (at the height of the housing bust) and ran.
Lessons learned:
I thought 1 year of kindy in a "meh" school would be fine. I was wrong.
I thought a school with better scores would be better. I was wrong.
I thought that being an engaged parent with sufficient means was enough. In fact, I thought SO highly of myself that I thought that I could actually HELP the school, with all of my volunteering and first-time-parent enthusiasm. I was SUPER wrong.
3 kids and countless school changes later, here is what I have learned:
For kindergarten and pre-3rd grade, emotional and social support is more important than academics.
Teacher satisfaction is a huge indicator of how the community and staff support them. When teachers have to struggle for the most basic resources, everyone suffers.
For kindergarten and pre-3rd grade, emotional and social support is more important than academics.
Teacher satisfaction is a huge indicator of how the community and staff support them. When teachers have to struggle for the most basic resources, everyone suffers.
An elementary school underperforms when: kids start K and that's their first schooling environment and they are behind on learning OR parents get the kids out the door of the house, and see them sometime after school, and never get involved to see how the child is doing.
This is not true. Unintelligent children who receive good parenting and schooling will not produce high scores.
This is not true. Unintelligent children who receive good parenting and schooling will not produce high scores.
Well, now...
Schools suffer without community and family support. "Unintelligent" kids also deserve solid opportunity to meet their potential. High test scores are a false god that many worship.
A good school will, like an incoming tide, float all boats.
This is not true. Unintelligent children who receive good parenting and schooling will not produce high scores.
Schools with low scores do not convey a student body comprised of "unintelligent" children, statistically that's ridiculous to even suggest. The worst performing schools are almost always in low income communities and are suffering from a lagging home support system.
Do you have any firsthand experience with lower rated schools?
Schools suffer without community and family support. "Unintelligent" kids also deserve solid opportunity to meet their potential. High test scores are a false god that many worship.
A good school will, like an incoming tide, float all boats.
in the best schools, the "haves" spend their time working to help the "have nots", and not most of their effort making sure their "haves" are catered to at the expense of the "have nots".
At least in the 3-5 schools I know well that involve haves and have nots.
You said that there are only two causes of low school ratings:
1. uninvolved parents
2. students get behind the curve
I'm saying those are valid, but there's also a third cause: students performing poorly because of limited potential.
try as you might ...
Quote:
An elementary school underperforms when: kids start K and that's their first schooling environment and they are behind on learning OR parents get the kids out the door of the house, and see them sometime after school, and never get involved to see how the child is doing.
I said a SCHOOL underperforms, not individual students.
There's no school that has an outsized number of limited-intelligence children that has a significant portion of high-functioning children.
Obviously, an intelligence-impaired student will score less (ratings) than one who has no such limitation.
Unless you're trying to say those who are of lesser socio-economic are somewhat doomed because of "limited potential".
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