How do private schools manage to get through everything?
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Anonymous
| They have shorter school years and longer recesses. How do they manage to get through their curriculum? Or are they behind public school? |
Anonymous
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They don’t get through much at all.
Total teacher autonomy. Go deep, do 6 week units, your favorite ones. Lots of group work. Reading to yourself. Video tape the instruction or lesson, then run Q&A during class time and see if anyone says anything. No worries about ERBs or MAp- just say you teach different things (way less), at a different pace (way slow). |
Anonymous
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Also, for our “different learners” we do lots of goofy hands on teaching units where kids and teammates can frustrate the heck out of each other for weeks of moodiness and disagreement. Maybe they’ll learn some history too from their Survival Island Project. Who cares!
Sure good students could learn more by reading, writing or listening about a topic and having discussions, but that’s more work for me. Rather slow them all down and do multimedia, hands on, visual learner, touchy feely learner, music learner, manipulatives learner, and cover all the styles for a topic. Nevermind that half the kids grasped it after reading the workbook page. We need to slow it down and go deep. |
Anonymous
| The private school student population does not have the behavioral issues that exist in public school because they don't have to accept everyone. The parents are also.motivated enough about education to research different educational possibilities, which in turn correlates with parent involvement and desire for children to be held accountable for their work. Private school parents tend to be wealthier, which means they are able to pay for tutoring or extra supports if the student is struggling. All these factors make it possible to cover the same topics in a shorter amount of time. If the student cannot keep up, they get counseled out of the school. |
Anonymous
| Depends on the school, I suppose. Ours has a longer school day than publics do. Their middle school gets out at 2:40; ours gets out at 4:00. They also don’t have as wide a range of ability in the classroom, which allows teachers to move faster. |
Anonymous
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1. Perhaps their school days are longer?
2. If they have small classes, perhaps they get through more material in the same time frame than other schools with large classes. 3. They don't have multiple days spent on state-required standardized tests. 4. Their standards are lower and they don't teach as much as some public schools? That's all the reasons I can think of. It's likely a mix of several of the above. |
Anonymous
Agree with the bolded. |
Anonymous
I'm not sure what school you are speaking of, but this has not been my experience as someone who went to private school and kid in private now. Our K-8 has 8 periods. There are no video taped lessons (not even during COVID). The kids take standardized test each Spring. I think the lack of behavioral issues allows the teachers to get through things quicker. Also, each student takes an entrance exam so the school knows all the kids can keep up with the pace. |
Anonymous
What an uninformed view. I believe they get through more material because there are few discipline problems and the student aptitude is more tightly defined. Our school did both ERB and MAP testing- and we received the MAP results many weeks, if not a few months, before MCPS released them to families. It was quite interesting. |
Anonymous
| We don’t get graded work or tests back and we have yet to see any writing or revisions make it home this year. A generic email comes out on a general topic covered in one or two subjects. Report cards are the same, mainly go over what the grade covered that trimester. No specialists work with the class for reading or math, unless substituting. Homework is formulaic and kids rewrite the question as the response and get a star. Once some flashcards got emailed to the parents since half the grade didn’t get taught the times tables. Mainly conceptual math, no numerical accuracy or math facts taught or expected. Lower school. |
Anonymous
I’d love to see the last 10 years of ERB or MAP scores at our school. I think they release them over the summer so no concerns or questions get voiced. |
Anonymous
| My family's experience with public school was only K and 1, but at that early level there was A LOT of classroom time spent waiting for slower kids to finish up, or waiting until it was your turn to work with the teacher in small groups. There was also a ton of time on tests, which were frequent and lengthy. Maybe it's different for older kids: I don't know because we switched. |
Anonymous
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Slower kids or kids with discipline problems aren't accepted or are counseled out.
Some schools emphasize academics but others do not; the non DC area private school I attended has moved from being academically rigorous to being sporty and all about extracurriculars. |
Anonymous
The first part of what you’ve written is what I “thought” I’d find in private schools. The wealthy part is obviously true. Adding in all of the woke social-emotional learning nonsense, my kid is barely learning anything at all. |
Anonymous
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Agree. Socio emotional lessons are not adding any value. Kids put same thing on the new age worksheets every time.
Plus it’s hypocritical. Now when my kid sees kids bullying at recess and the aides or teacher doing nothing, they know the lessons are not taken seriously. Between that and the lying of by others at the principals office and retaliation after restorative justice attempts with the bully and victims, forget it. |