Is your private K academic?

[Anonymous]

I think there must be wide variation on what is taught in K at the various privates generally discussed on DCUM. I will go out on a limb here and name names ... my child attended K at Burgundy Farm a few years back. This is a school that is somewhat known for play-based, collaborative learning ... especially at the K level. I won't say that I was completing thrilled with the curriculum all the time ... but it was nothing like the Dora the Explorer description described hilariously above. It started off slow while the teachers got a feel for where each kid was ... then things picked up quickly.

Maybe parents finding the curriculum too babyish are only seeing what is being done at the very beginning of the year? For this kind of tuition ... I certainly hope so.

[Anonymous]

Our K student and second grade student are having the same experience - it seems like not much is getting done these first few weeks of school. The Second Grader is complaining she hasn't even had homework yet. What neither of them knows is that the first few weeks of school are always like this because our school offers differentiated instruction in reading/writing starting at K and for math starting at first grade. They are sorting the kids out into groups those first few weeks. I would be very surprised if OP's child's school isn't doing the same thing.

[Anonymous]

What neither of them knows is that the first few weeks of school are always like this because our school offers differentiated instruction in reading/writing starting at K and for math starting at first grade. They are sorting the kids out into groups those first few weeks. I would be very surprised if OP's child's school isn't doing the same thing.

Our school does that too, for reading and for math. Of course it doesn't for science and social studies, etc., and so we are left with the 'polar bears live in the Arctic' issue.

[Anonymous]

If you don't like non-academic classrooms in the early grades, please don't apply to these schools...it'll leave more spaces open for those of us who firmly believe that our young children will thrive best in non-academic settings.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Well for starters, more than one family who has swum with the dolphins in Mexico and Florida. So they know dolphins don't live in chicken coops. No what I meant was, it's a small class and I'm 100% positive that every child in that class attended a solid preschool like NCRC and Little Folks and Adas Israel, and has smarty-enough parents.

So no, I don't understand why so much time was spent counting by 1s and learning the difference between hot and cold in K. I think the baseline could've been a bit higher.

Can we add this statement to the "most obnoxious statements by private school parents" list? Please? The failed attempt at being self-deprecatory is especially nice.

Hear hear!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:"Sure, to make you feel more at ease I will pretend that my kid's class isn't made up of smart children who attended excellent preschool programs and have accomplished parents in intellectually demanding jobs. I will further pretend that her class is exactly like a Appalachian Head Start class in every respect, that there's no difference in what the children know at age 4.

I'll even go on to stipulate that there is no difference between the 10th grade class at Sidwell and the 10th grade class at Springarn HS, and so both groups of kids should be offered the exact same instruction, at the same pace.

It's really fun to live in this parallel reality! Bring out the unicorns "

PP, I love you. Spot on and too funny.

I had exactly the same reaction when my first kid started private kindergarten. I literally could not believe how stupid the curriculum was and that they had no plans to make it any more interesting for the 2/3 of the class that already knew how to read. (You should have seen me the day the kid came home with cotton balls glued to a piece of paper in the shape of the letter "C", to help learn the letters). Our child hated it - came home complaining about the baby work being boring nearly every day.

We spoke up, tactfully and quietly. I think it helped; they started pulling the kids out in groups to read with a teacher, etc. But it was more or less a lost year for the child in terms of academic development. It gradually gets better, and by 4th grade there is proper differentiation in most schools. But I think the top third of the classes in most schools are just left to wallow in boredom before then....

I share your shock that, in a sea of high intellect parents with high intellect kids, few of the schools offer differentiated instruction in the early grades. A real bummer for the kids, who just have to hang in there, trying to stay interested, until they get older.

Why did you bother to apply to that private? I've done two tours of privates for two DCs over the years and none of them "hide" what is going on in the PreK/K/1st grade classroom. They are all fairly upfront on the curriculum and nearly all of them explain that most, if not all, children will read by the end of 1st grade. We went independent precisely so our kids would not have to be educated under NCLB. If you want academic, then you should go public or apply to traditional schools. Both of our DCs had 99+ scores and both read before entering K. No complaints of tedium in the early grades, but both have a real zeal for learning and I continue to marvel at their inquisitiveness and industriousness in the academic realm.

[Anonymous]

I get it. You're saying that if you: (1) spend the time to go through the rigorous admissions process for a top school and (2) spend $30,000 per year in tuition, you expect the curriculum to be more advanced than the average Kindergarten. I don't think there is anything wrong with your assumptions. I probably would feel the same way except we had friends who warned us that the academics don't ramp up at most privates until 2nd or 3rd grade. We were told that most privates spend the first few years promoting a child's self esteem and social development.

Anonymous wrote:Sure, to make you feel more at ease I will pretend that my kid's class isn't made up of smart children who attended excellent preschool programs and have accomplished parents in intellectually demanding jobs. I will further pretend that her class is exactly like a Appalachian Head Start class in every respect, that there's no difference in what the children know at age 4.

I'll even go on to stipulate that there is no difference between the 10th grade class at Sidwell and the 10th grade class at Springarn HS, and so both groups of kids should be offered the exact same instruction, at the same pace.

It's really fun to live in this parallel reality! Bring out the unicorns

[Anonymous]

I had to go back re-read the OP but did not find an answer.

What does "academic" mean to all of you? To me it doesn't really mean a thing in this particular context. It's one of those non-words. I think we should define our terms.

A couple of PPs seem to suggest it means teaching to the test or NCLB. A couple of other PPs imply that it has something to do exclusively with reading. Reading-early reading-reading level is a frequent fixation on DCUM.

Obviously, in 2010 there is no kindergarten left in DC in which the kids just play with stuffed animals and eat crackers and nap. Those days are gone, which means that every kindergarten teacher is teaching something. If we all agree that all K teachers are imparting -some- instruction, then what is "academic" and what is not?

[Anonymous]

I'm the poster who cheered on OP above (The "PP I love you" poster).

A few clarifying remarks.

I believe that school is about a lot of things: socialization, learning to be a good person & part of a community, exploring art, music, science, eating lunch in a cafeteria, sorting out conflicts and games on the playground, etc.

I also firmly believe that it should be a place where kids feel they have a chance to make their world a little bigger every day.

For me, the core issue was keeping the children engaged in the learning process and in the classroom. No kid *needs* to know long division or *needs* to read in kindergarten. I am not interested in "getting my children ahead", I don't care whether they go to an Ivy League College, none of this is relativist. Nor do I have any interest at all in pushing them forward - there are no tutors coming to our house after school, we aren't busy with the flashcards.

My job as a parent is to make sure the classroom is a place where they can be engaged and vibrant; not where they are bored and feel dumbed down. I want them to love school and what it allows them to do. Being stuck in a classroom learning letters when you already know how to read produces the same bored agony we all know from being forced to sit through a long, dull power point presentation in which the speaker hands out the deck and then reads the slides one by one. Agony! To go to that every day kills the joy of school pretty quickly.

Why did we go to private school instead of our local public? We went to private school first and foremost for the smaller class sizes (17-18 vs. 30+ in our local public); for the very high quality of the "extras" program (music, arts, technology, etc); and because we found a school community that shared our values (the girls aren't dressing in cut off tank tops and going to rock concerts in third grade, the boys aren't playing guns and wearing their pants below their bums. I'm not saying all publics are like this, but ours is - very materialistic, very "old" kids.) Moreover, local publics don't differentiate until 4th grade, either.

I wasn't expecting (and didn't want) "drill and kill", rote memorization, teaching to some test, etc from our private. But I did expect that teachers would make some adjustments to ensure that children could actually engage and learn something every day.