It’s so hard to figure things out

[Anonymous]

Persons A and B say on one thread that they have been really happy with FCPS

Persons C and D complain on another thread that FCPS does not have textbooks, teachers are wasting their valuable planning time finding and copying a mishmash of worksheets, kids are online much more than they should be.

*If* the facts that Persons C and D give are accurate, I agree with them. Paper learning is much superior to online learning. And teachers should not have to find their own materials. They should be given a standard set, which they are allowed to deviate from if they like. But why are Persons A and B so happy then? Did they luck out with a school that has textbooks and/or teachers who are experienced enough that they have essentially developed their own curriculum and the kids don’t have to be online all the time? If so, that is a big deviation across schools.

[Anonymous]

"Happy" parents can be translated as parents of children with good grades and possibly in separate AAP class despite the lack of textbooks and despite other issues.

[Anonymous]

I happened on this thread from Recent Topics. My kids are in MCPS, and the same could be said of that school system!

OP, the truth is that education starts at home. Kids with highly-educated parents who prioritize their kids' education already start with a distinct advantage. These parents will encourage their kids to read great books at home, they will engage them in discussion at the dinner table or elsewhere, expose them to current events, history, science, etc outside of school. They will do their best to live inbounds for the best schools, and be aware of any special programs their kids can benefit from. Since they pay attention to their children's progress, anytime their kid's content mastery fails, they will be ready to re-teach or hire a tutor, because they know learning builds on itself year after year. These parents are informed about the newest college admissions strategies and statistics, and plan their children's tracks through middle and high school according to their child's level and what they can realistically achieve.

So in this context... it doesn't really matter what teachers fiddle with which copies of what textbooks! I deplore the fact that MCPS has no textbooks except in AP classes. I had beautiful and engaging full color textbooks in my private school. But this is decor. It's illusion. Real instruction can and does happen without all these nice extras. YOU need to be on the ball, OP. The school is just one of the tools in your toolbox. You need to fill in the gaps and teach your children whatever you want them to know that the school is not addressing. This is how my kids learned to write in cursive and read the classics, because God forbid MCPS delve into these things!

[Anonymous]

I'm Team A And B. My kids have never had textbooks, which means some time wasted cutting and pasting into notebooks and probably time wasted by teachers creating their entire curriculum from scratch. But the teachers that my kids have had have all been very good at creating very good curriculums. My kids have learned a lot, including how to spell, punctuate, write topic sentences and paragraphs and essays as well as mastering math, without homework. There's a lot that I think FCPS and modern schools could be doing differently, for various reasons, but what they are doing is working.

Disclaimer: I am leaving out the pandemic which was just a disaster academically for one of my kids. That wasn't FCPS, it was the pandemic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I happened on this thread from Recent Topics. My kids are in MCPS, and the same could be said of that school system!

OP, the truth is that education starts at home. Kids with highly-educated parents who prioritize their kids' education already start with a distinct advantage. These parents will encourage their kids to read great books at home, they will engage them in discussion at the dinner table or elsewhere, expose them to current events, history, science, etc outside of school. They will do their best to live inbounds for the best schools, and be aware of any special programs their kids can benefit from. Since they pay attention to their children's progress, anytime their kid's content mastery fails, they will be ready to re-teach or hire a tutor, because they know learning builds on itself year after year. These parents are informed about the newest college admissions strategies and statistics, and plan their children's tracks through middle and high school according to their child's level and what they can realistically achieve.

So in this context... it doesn't really matter what teachers fiddle with which copies of what textbooks! I deplore the fact that MCPS has no textbooks except in AP classes. I had beautiful and engaging full color textbooks in my private school. But this is decor. It's illusion. Real instruction can and does happen without all these nice extras. YOU need to be on the ball, OP. The school is just one of the tools in your toolbox. You need to fill in the gaps and teach your children whatever you want them to know that the school is not addressing. This is how my kids learned to write in cursive and read the classics, because God forbid MCPS delve into these things!

I'm the OP of the textbooks thread. To a great degree, I agree with what you say. And as parents, we do try to engage our kids in discussions on current events and academic topics outside school. Not necessarily in structured basis, but as it comes up (except for during COVID, when we had to take on a more active role in teaching). The problem isn't a desire or an inability to teach our kids outside of the classroom...it's that we also want our kids to have a life. If we have to reteach everything our kids should be learning in school, they'd never have any time to play with their friends. FCPS' absolutely asinine bell schedule means our elementary age kids, who consistently wake up at 6:30am regardless of what time they go to sleep, don't start school until 9:20am and don't end until 4:05pm. We have to get ready and leave for work, so the dead time between when they're up and ready till when they leave for school isn't an effective time for teaching them. Since school ends so late, and one of ours takes a bus, he doesn't get home till close to 5pm...during a good chunk of fall through now, it's dark, or close to it by the time we get home. If we teach right when he gets home, it means he'll have no time to play with friends or participate in any sports, so we let them both play till around 6:00-6:30pm, then they do home work until dinner, then finish homework and are in bed by 8:30pm. If elementary schools started at a more reasonable hour, like around 7:45-8:00am, We'd have no problem letting them play for a bit, then spending an 1-2 hours teaching them after school, but as it is, I think it's wrong to screw over our kids and take away any fun they have because their school system can't get its crap together.
Unfortunately, we don't have the luxury of having one of us stop working to home school or to send our kids to a private school. I admit, we screwed up when we moved here and didn't do any research on the schools. I just remembered when I grew up here in the 1980s, the school I went to in the same neighborhood we're in had very good teachers and a challenging curriculum (that included textbooks ). I remember back then FCPS was considered one of the best schools systems in the country. So we failed to consider the changes that had happened over the intervening 30 years when we moved back to my old neighborhood...shame on us. It's all still so frustrating to hear one of your kids say they're bored and feel like they're not being pushed to their full potential. At least the one in AAP feels somewhat challenged; we just hope the others get in when they're old enough.

[Anonymous]

FCPS is still considered one of the best school systems in the country.

I liked the late start for ES because my kids weren't early risers.

Different strokes for different folks.

[Anonymous]

Factor 1: FCPS is ginormous. Your experience will largely depend on your school and your specific teachers, and on your specific student. There is no one perfect solution for everyone.

Factor 2: Some people are glass half full people who find the good in everything. Other people will always find something to complain about. Especially on a random anonymous message board.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:FCPS is still considered one of the best school systems in the country.

I liked the late start for ES because my kids weren't early risers.

Different strokes for different folks.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I happened on this thread from Recent Topics. My kids are in MCPS, and the same could be said of that school system!

OP, the truth is that education starts at home. Kids with highly-educated parents who prioritize their kids' education already start with a distinct advantage. These parents will encourage their kids to read great books at home, they will engage them in discussion at the dinner table or elsewhere, expose them to current events, history, science, etc outside of school. They will do their best to live inbounds for the best schools, and be aware of any special programs their kids can benefit from. Since they pay attention to their children's progress, anytime their kid's content mastery fails, they will be ready to re-teach or hire a tutor, because they know learning builds on itself year after year. These parents are informed about the newest college admissions strategies and statistics, and plan their children's tracks through middle and high school according to their child's level and what they can realistically achieve.

So in this context... it doesn't really matter what teachers fiddle with which copies of what textbooks! I deplore the fact that MCPS has no textbooks except in AP classes. I had beautiful and engaging full color textbooks in my private school. But this is decor. It's illusion. Real instruction can and does happen without all these nice extras. YOU need to be on the ball, OP. The school is just one of the tools in your toolbox. You need to fill in the gaps and teach your children whatever you want them to know that the school is not addressing. This is how my kids learned to write in cursive and read the classics, because God forbid MCPS delve into these things!

I'm the OP of the textbooks thread. To a great degree, I agree with what you say. And as parents, we do try to engage our kids in discussions on current events and academic topics outside school. Not necessarily in structured basis, but as it comes up (except for during COVID, when we had to take on a more active role in teaching). The problem isn't a desire or an inability to teach our kids outside of the classroom...it's that we also want our kids to have a life. If we have to reteach everything our kids should be learning in school, they'd never have any time to play with their friends. FCPS' absolutely asinine bell schedule means our elementary age kids, who consistently wake up at 6:30am regardless of what time they go to sleep, don't start school until 9:20am and don't end until 4:05pm. We have to get ready and leave for work, so the dead time between when they're up and ready till when they leave for school isn't an effective time for teaching them. Since school ends so late, and one of ours takes a bus, he doesn't get home till close to 5pm...during a good chunk of fall through now, it's dark, or close to it by the time we get home. If we teach right when he gets home, it means he'll have no time to play with friends or participate in any sports, so we let them both play till around 6:00-6:30pm, then they do home work until dinner, then finish homework and are in bed by 8:30pm. If elementary schools started at a more reasonable hour, like around 7:45-8:00am, We'd have no problem letting them play for a bit, then spending an 1-2 hours teaching them after school, but as it is, I think it's wrong to screw over our kids and take away any fun they have because their school system can't get its crap together.
Unfortunately, we don't have the luxury of having one of us stop working to home school or to send our kids to a private school. I admit, we screwed up when we moved here and didn't do any research on the schools. I just remembered when I grew up here in the 1980s, the school I went to in the same neighborhood we're in had very good teachers and a challenging curriculum (that included textbooks ). I remember back then FCPS was considered one of the best schools systems in the country. So we failed to consider the changes that had happened over the intervening 30 years when we moved back to my old neighborhood...shame on us. It's all still so frustrating to hear one of your kids say they're bored and feel like they're not being pushed to their full potential. At least the one in AAP feels somewhat challenged; we just hope the others get in when they're old enough.

So your main issue is that you need childcare earlier?! Unbelievable. Not everyone is an early riser. We trained our kids at an early age to sleep in. No one was even allowed to be out of bed at 6:30 am.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I happened on this thread from Recent Topics. My kids are in MCPS, and the same could be said of that school system!

OP, the truth is that education starts at home. Kids with highly-educated parents who prioritize their kids' education already start with a distinct advantage. These parents will encourage their kids to read great books at home, they will engage them in discussion at the dinner table or elsewhere, expose them to current events, history, science, etc outside of school. They will do their best to live inbounds for the best schools, and be aware of any special programs their kids can benefit from. Since they pay attention to their children's progress, anytime their kid's content mastery fails, they will be ready to re-teach or hire a tutor, because they know learning builds on itself year after year. These parents are informed about the newest college admissions strategies and statistics, and plan their children's tracks through middle and high school according to their child's level and what they can realistically achieve.

So in this context... it doesn't really matter what teachers fiddle with which copies of what textbooks! I deplore the fact that MCPS has no textbooks except in AP classes. I had beautiful and engaging full color textbooks in my private school. But this is decor. It's illusion. Real instruction can and does happen without all these nice extras. YOU need to be on the ball, OP. The school is just one of the tools in your toolbox. You need to fill in the gaps and teach your children whatever you want them to know that the school is not addressing. This is how my kids learned to write in cursive and read the classics, because God forbid MCPS delve into these things!

I'm the OP of the textbooks thread. To a great degree, I agree with what you say. And as parents, we do try to engage our kids in discussions on current events and academic topics outside school. Not necessarily in structured basis, but as it comes up (except for during COVID, when we had to take on a more active role in teaching). The problem isn't a desire or an inability to teach our kids outside of the classroom...it's that we also want our kids to have a life. If we have to reteach everything our kids should be learning in school, they'd never have any time to play with their friends. FCPS' absolutely asinine bell schedule means our elementary age kids, who consistently wake up at 6:30am regardless of what time they go to sleep, don't start school until 9:20am and don't end until 4:05pm. We have to get ready and leave for work, so the dead time between when they're up and ready till when they leave for school isn't an effective time for teaching them. Since school ends so late, and one of ours takes a bus, he doesn't get home till close to 5pm...during a good chunk of fall through now, it's dark, or close to it by the time we get home. If we teach right when he gets home, it means he'll have no time to play with friends or participate in any sports, so we let them both play till around 6:00-6:30pm, then they do home work until dinner, then finish homework and are in bed by 8:30pm. If elementary schools started at a more reasonable hour, like around 7:45-8:00am, We'd have no problem letting them play for a bit, then spending an 1-2 hours teaching them after school, but as it is, I think it's wrong to screw over our kids and take away any fun they have because their school system can't get its crap together.
Unfortunately, we don't have the luxury of having one of us stop working to home school or to send our kids to a private school. I admit, we screwed up when we moved here and didn't do any research on the schools. I just remembered when I grew up here in the 1980s, the school I went to in the same neighborhood we're in had very good teachers and a challenging curriculum (that included textbooks ). I remember back then FCPS was considered one of the best schools systems in the country. So we failed to consider the changes that had happened over the intervening 30 years when we moved back to my old neighborhood...shame on us. It's all still so frustrating to hear one of your kids say they're bored and feel like they're not being pushed to their full potential. At least the one in AAP feels somewhat challenged; we just hope the others get in when they're old enough.

So your main issue is that you need childcare earlier?! Unbelievable. Not everyone is an early riser. We trained our kids at an early age to sleep in. No one was even allowed to be out of bed at 6:30 am.

Our ES has a first bell at 8:30 and they start at 8:45. Dismissal is 3:30. When our DS was preschool age we covered up the minutes on his digital clock and he knew he couldn't get up until it read "7". We'd leave a Ziploc bag of cereal, a sippy cup of milk in the fridge and the TV on a channel he liked so he could go downstairs until we got up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
So your main issue is that you need childcare earlier?! Unbelievable. Not everyone is an early riser. We trained our kids at an early age to sleep in. No one was even allowed to be out of bed at 6:30 am.

How they heck can you stay at home so late? Are you one of those families who are privileged enough to be able to live off of one income and have a stay-at-home parent, or have a work-at-home parent? Some of us actually have both parents that have to be leaving for work in the morning. Not all kids get into SACC, and paying for before *and* after care just isn't an option for everyone

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
So your main issue is that you need childcare earlier?! Unbelievable. Not everyone is an early riser. We trained our kids at an early age to sleep in. No one was even allowed to be out of bed at 6:30 am.

How they heck can you stay at home so late? Are you one of those families who are privileged enough to be able to live off of one income and have a stay-at-home parent, or have a work-at-home parent? Some of us actually have both parents that have to be leaving for work in the morning. Not all kids get into SACC, and paying for before *and* after care just isn't an option for everyone

Not the PP but I work in an office and my company is flexible with arrival times, as is my husband's.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:"Happy" parents can be translated as parents of children with good grades and possibly in separate AAP class despite the lack of textbooks and despite other issues.

Ha! All of my kids were gen ed and we are very happy with FCPS. *Somehow* my kids managed to learn something — my oldest is rocking it in his first year of college! I think teachers have been providing their own worksheets for ages. I remember writing the worksheets on mimeograph paper for my teacher when I was in elementary school (I write like a typewriter).

[Anonymous]

Because people really are largely happy with the system. I honestly believe, and I am not in this cohort, that the only parents with legit beefs are those who have kids with IEP/special needs.

A lot of the yammering you hear is people who are terminally online. IRL, most parents don't get into the micro-weeds that DCUMers do.

There are almot 200K kids in Fairfax. The online complainers represent such a tiny, small portion.

[Anonymous]

People have different expectations of what schools should teach. Some like moderate instruction and no homework so kids can play. Some want more rigorous instruction.

A lot depends too on how closely parents follow day-to-day school activities. If you ask your kid what they did in school that day -- not general as in how was your day, but rather, what did you do in science or reading today --, you can get interesting answers. Sometimes you get answers that disappoint, which causes frustration. If you don't ask questions about specific courses, however, you might not know.