Regret public school for your kids?

[Anonymous]

Yeah, and there was corporal punishment back in the day. That worked well too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Is your child at one of the 2 magnet schools, a school with foreign language immersion, or a school with high percentages of free lunch and esl [poverty indicators]?

We are at a Title I school.

Thanks for clarifying. Otherwise your post gives an extremely false positive on FCPS and class sizes as compared to Montco and privates.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Is your child at one of the 2 magnet schools, a school with foreign language immersion, or a school with high percentages of free lunch and esl [poverty indicators]?

We are at a Title I school.

Thanks for clarifying. Otherwise your post gives an extremely false positive on FCPS and class sizes as compared to Montco and privates.

Absolutely, since there are only 35 Title I schools in FCPS. Add that in with the other 28 FCPS elementary schools that have mandated smaller class sizes, it makes it appear that every FCPS elementary school has smaller class sizes when, in reality, it is only 45% of the elementary schools that have such provisions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Absolutely, since there are only 35 Title I schools in FCPS. Add that in with the other 28 FCPS elementary schools that have mandated smaller class sizes, it makes it appear that every FCPS elementary school has smaller class sizes when, in reality, it is only 45% of the elementary schools that have such provisions.

And only 71% of FCPS elementary schools have full-day K, as compared to all Arlington elementary schools.

[Anonymous]

Is there a list somewhere of the 28 FCPS elementary schools that have mandated smaller class sizes, even though they are not Title I schools?

[Anonymous]

Is there a list somewhere of the 28 FCPS elementary schools that have mandated smaller class sizes, even though they are not Title I schools?

I was wondering that too. Our FCPS elementary is not a Title I school, but there are a fair amount of ESOL kids and free/reduced meal students at our school.

My DD has 21 kids in her second grade class (the other 3 second grade classes have 22-24). Our school just got full day K last year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is there a list somewhere of the 28 FCPS elementary schools that have mandated smaller class sizes, even though they are not Title I schools?

I heard at a recent School Board meeting that it is not 28 schools but 33 schools.

[Anonymous]

I regret not homeschooling.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Is there a list somewhere of the 28 FCPS elementary schools that have mandated smaller class sizes, even though they are not Title I schools?

I was wondering that too. Our FCPS elementary is not a Title I school, but there are a fair amount of ESOL kids and free/reduced meal students at our school.

My DD has 21 kids in her second grade class (the other 3 second grade classes have 22-24). Our school just got full day K last year.

Some schools have more than 30. Other schools with no extra funding have stuff like foreign language immersion where a principal has a lot of discretion and might have about 8-12 in the immersion and really bump up the other classes . it never shows up in the stats. Dale has slush fund type of allocations in teacher leadership and young scholars so no one really knows where the money goes. FCPS is such a croc - some schools got full day kindergarten long before others that needed it. Some don't need it and could have used a good SACC program. SACC is partially parent funded on-site childcare and used to be available at many schools before closing to handle kindergarteners in half day programs. It's a real budget dance since FCPS research showed that full day programs did not produce academic gains except for children from disadvantaged homes. FCPS certainly had enough schools to get valid academic data to use as information on this issue.

So FCPS would rather have huge class sizes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Is your child at one of the 2 magnet schools, a school with foreign language immersion, or a school with high percentages of free lunch and esl [poverty indicators]?

We are at a Title I school.

Thanks for clarifying. Otherwise your post gives an extremely false positive on FCPS and class sizes as compared to Montco and privates.

Absolutely, since there are only 35 Title I schools in FCPS. Add that in with the other 28 FCPS elementary schools that have mandated smaller class sizes, it makes it appear that every FCPS elementary school has smaller class sizes when, in reality, it is only 45% of the elementary schools that have such provisions.

Virginia has a K-3 reduced ratio program that provides extra funding based on demographics at a school. Some of them are title 1. Mandated by the State or Federal Government? Some are FCPS program driven which is not a mandate.

[Anonymous]

Here's a very recent quote from Jay Matthews, the Washington Post education writer:

"This is an excellent report on what was a very complex and varied discussion. My only correction would be I didn’t say that private schools are better under my breath because I do not believe that is the case. I have said many times that the data show clearly that if a public and a private school have the same demographic slice of students, at least on the high end of the scale, their achievement levels are going to be pretty much the same. I have often told parents who call seeking my views on this that if they are living in Montgomery County, or Northern Va., they are nuts to send their kid to a private school unless the child has some very special need... In Bethesda, with one kid left, I voted for the public school, Whitman, but my wife and daughter liked Sidwell, so I lost. I am quite convinced that she would have gotten just as much at Whitman as at Sidwell, and I regularly goaded the Sidwell people about their laid-back attitude toward AP, and their refusal to release their AP data. They liked Katie, who got a lot out of the school because of its athletic program, a surprise to me, but they were happy to see me go."

From this link, about half-way down the page:

http://themorechild.com/2009/03/10/jay-mathews-live/#comment-1357

(sometimes this blog makes me cringe, but there's also some useful stuff on it)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We love our public school in Fairfax County. My DC has two teachers that are team teaching her class (21 students, 2nd grade) and the school principal looped all the 1st grade teachers to 2nd grade, so the teachers already knew their students, etc. (One teacher said they gained at least 6 weeks of instruction time at the start of the year thanks to looping.) We are very pleased!

We were pleased with FFx Cty public schools from K-1. We were lucky enough to have full day K and my DD was in a K-1 class and since DD entered K knowing how to read, she spent a great deal of time in the 1st grade group (Just to be clear, I do not believe in teaching preschoolers to read, so we did not teach her, she just kinda deciphered the "code" for common words around 4 and built on from there. we did read a LOT of picture books) . First grade continued with the same fine teacher, with DD having the opportunity to spend Math and Reading in a 2nd grade class. But then in 2nd grade she moved to a new class, a terrible teacher who doled out candy for right answers in much the manner one trains a puppy with treats. Not knowing what else to do, I planned on homeschooling for 3rd grade, but DD is very much an extrovert and wanted to go to school. We went back to aforementioned elementary and DD was assigned to the class with a seasoned teacher with an excellent reputation. One problem, teacher was retiring that year and already had one foot out the door. We did a search and found a private school that was a great fit for DD and started in 4th grade. My only regret is not taking her out in 2nd grade, as she literally wasted 2 years at our public school.

Fast forward to high school. Our local public has an excellent reputation. We looked at all of the Northern Virginia independent privates, and even a couple of Catholic schools. Nothing was a fit. We felt DD was too young to maneuver the metro by herself and did not want to do a DC commute (great schools, but quality of life issue ). We decided to give our local public high school a shot. As a parent, I did not like it from day 1. It was cold, impersonal, disorganized and for volunteering the parental cliques had already been formed and seemed to have some sort of private handshake. However, DD loved the first year. 3 out of 5 of her core teachers were WONDERFUL, 2 were the finest I have ever seen. All was well.
This year different story. 1 great teacher the rest mediocre at best. DD was not able to compensate for this via getting satisfaction out of her extracurriculars as that situation is very disorganized at this school.

We decided that we can not take the "crap shoot" regarding teachers, and started looking at private schools finding one in DC that looks to be a great fit. DD will be starting in the fall.

That said, every school is different and even what is an unfit school for one student, can be a perfect fit for another. But yes, I regret every going back to public school. I wish we had just taken the time to educate DD on being Metro/commuter savvy and sent her to a school in the city.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Here's a very recent quote from Jay Matthews, the Washington Post education writer:

From this link, about half-way down the page:

http://themorechild.com/2009/03/10/jay-mathews-live/#comment-1357

(sometimes this blog makes me cringe, but there's also some useful stuff on it)

Thanks for posting this!