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View Poll Results: Do you think students in Washington are getting jipped in the amount of time they are educated?
yes 5 41.67%
no 7 58.33%
Voters: 12. You may not vote on this poll

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Old 03-26-2012, 03:23 PM
 
Location: Sacramento, Ca.
26 posts, read 35,427 times
Reputation: 27

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I have never seen kinder have full day. My kids all had half days in kinder. They have choice of am or pm.
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Old 03-26-2012, 03:36 PM
 
138 posts, read 462,780 times
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I moved here from Madison, WI and I, too, was surprised that "free" Kindergarten is only provided for on a half day basis. Kindergarten there is run on the same full day hours as the rest of the elementary school. My property taxes were higher in Madison but still less than the cost of property taxes here combined with the $3300 fee to pay for full day Kindy.

It's annoying and is information that's good to know ahead of time but it wouldn't have affected our decision to move here. I don't think it's very productive to compare the amount of school instruction hours at your old residence with your new residence unless you plan to remedy that with private school. Otherwise, you're just setting yourself up for needless aggravation.
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Old 03-26-2012, 04:48 PM
 
Location: Greater Seattle, WA Metro Area
1,930 posts, read 6,524,382 times
Reputation: 907
Lived in TX and WA...Austin Independent School District in TX and now Issaquah School District. HANDS DOWN ISD is the much better school district. No comparison whatsoever.
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Old 03-26-2012, 07:34 PM
 
510 posts, read 887,377 times
Reputation: 289
A long, long time ago I went to school in Texas. Pre-K through 12 were all 7:45 am - 3:30 pm, M-F, last week of August through first week in June. With the school bus schedule, left the house at 6:45 am and got home about 4:30 pm. That was going to the nearest school, to go to a specialty school (med HS or science HS) would've added about another hour to the bus ride.
Could only imagine how jipped I felt when getting to WA. My neighbor's HS program was 9 am-12 pm/1 pm, T-F. Roughly 1/3 the hours, and started mid Sept and ran through mid May.
It still irks me to think about it. Quality of instruction beats quantity.
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Old 03-26-2012, 08:49 PM
 
Location: Outer Space
1,523 posts, read 3,894,598 times
Reputation: 1816
Quote:
The most recent shock was that my kindergartener's techer didn't know her reading level and reading groups aren't happening in her class.
Well, that particular teacher may not have it together, but I have been pleased with my daughter's kindergarten teacher. They spend the vast majority of their class time focusing on reading, writing, and arithmetic, in addition to some science and the music/art/library/PE modules. I do have to pay for FD kindergarten, but it is worth every penny. I am moving soon and am most definitely looking carefully at the school districts for my next rental.
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Old 03-26-2012, 09:22 PM
 
7,743 posts, read 15,838,159 times
Reputation: 10451
Quote:
Originally Posted by debfromtx View Post

Quote:
Originally Posted by debfromtx View Post
I thought all schools in the US had to educate kids for the same amount of time, but I thought wrong. I wanted to share this so that you can make an informed decision about your child's education. I am only comparring Everett SD, and do not have experience with the other districts. But, it might be worth looking into if this is a concern.

This is my purpose for this post.
The original OP statement of this post did not have that bolded part. You did assumed how Everett SD did things was the same for the rest of the state. You may be disappointed with how things are done in your school district, but the state by state... WA schools actually performs better.

How's Your State on Public Education? - Education - GOOD
State Education Rankings: The Best And Worst For Math And Science
Best High Schools: State-by-State Statistics - US News and World Report
Newly Released State-by-State Snapshot of Educational Performance | ED.gov Blog
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Old 03-27-2012, 12:49 AM
 
Location: We_tside PNW (Columbia Gorge) / CO / SA TX / Thailand
34,660 posts, read 57,778,624 times
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Time sitting in class has very little to do with Educational content... WA public schools generally 'Teach-to-test', so if it only takes 140 days to get your class to test well, that's enough time in class. (Many great WA teachers have left the profession due to this).

If you want more time in class, consider Homeschooling on a Dairy Farm... 24x7 seemed to work for me and mine. Best thing going for WA EDU is Running Start.

As always, YMMV...
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Old 03-27-2012, 01:09 AM
 
138 posts, read 462,780 times
Reputation: 79
Quote:
Originally Posted by StealthRabbit View Post
Time sitting in class has very little to do with Educational content... WA public schools generally 'Teach-to-test', so if it only takes 140 days to get your class to test well, that's enough time in class. (Many great WA teachers have left the profession due to this).

If you want more time in class, consider Homeschooling on a Dairy Farm... 24x7 seemed to work for me and mine. Best thing going for WA EDU is Running Start.

As always, YMMV...
Thanks for your anecdotal confirmation about "teaching to the test". My oldest is only in 2nd grade. Just tonight I was upset at my first real "teaching to the test" moment. He had been doing addition in this way also but I guess I didn't mind as much about the rote memorization of what they call "math facts". Since he just finished the last tier of math, he got started on multiplication which, as far as I can tell, they are also teaching by rote memorization through repetition! I thought that teaching methodology went out in the 50s.

Tonight's homework was for me to time him to complete 40 multiplication problems (any # X 1) and the goal is to finish under a minute. That's exactly 1.5 seconds on each problem to read it, process and write the answer. I think it's pretty unrealistic for his 1st multiplication homework but what do I know - I'm just the parent. I felt pretty poopy telling him what I consider a cheat method of ignoring the 1 and just copying whatever the other number is as his answer. This is not going to instill a solid understanding of multiplication. I guess I'll wait to see what comes next for 2s and 3s.

I feel pretty spoiled - I attended a montessori based school for my elementary years and I (mostly) loved it.
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Old 03-27-2012, 07:33 AM
 
Location: Arvada, CO
13,827 posts, read 29,859,427 times
Reputation: 14428
Quote:
Originally Posted by mrsincredible View Post
Thanks for your anecdotal confirmation about "teaching to the test". My oldest is only in 2nd grade. Just tonight I was upset at my first real "teaching to the test" moment. He had been doing addition in this way also but I guess I didn't mind as much about the rote memorization of what they call "math facts". Since he just finished the last tier of math, he got started on multiplication which, as far as I can tell, they are also teaching by rote memorization through repetition! I thought that teaching methodology went out in the 50s.

Tonight's homework was for me to time him to complete 40 multiplication problems (any # X 1) and the goal is to finish under a minute. That's exactly 1.5 seconds on each problem to read it, process and write the answer. I think it's pretty unrealistic for his 1st multiplication homework but what do I know - I'm just the parent. I felt pretty poopy telling him what I consider a cheat method of ignoring the 1 and just copying whatever the other number is as his answer. This is not going to instill a solid understanding of multiplication. I guess I'll wait to see what comes next for 2s and 3s.
On the bright side, they are teaching him multiplication in the 2nd grade!!!
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Old 03-27-2012, 10:29 AM
 
21,989 posts, read 15,668,264 times
Reputation: 12943
Quote:
Originally Posted by David Aguilar View Post
On the bright side, they are teaching him multiplication in the 2nd grade!!!
Exactly. I remember learning multiplication as pure memorization - worked fine.
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