Are public schools everywhere in the US getting bad post-pandemic?

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Put the disruptive kids in virtual public school and let the well behaved kids meet in person. Would cost virtually nothing and solve everything.

As long as you don't care about the kids, their families, or the impact to society when those kids get older.

Why are the parents not responsible here?

We could say the same thing about you. Pull your own kids out if you don't like inclusive public schools. NT kids are going to be much easier to homeschool or virtual school effectively than those with special needs.

Yeah, no. But keep it up with the attitude. The tides of public opinion are changing, and the laws, and, more importantly, judicial interpretations of the existing laws, will follow suit. Count on it.

DP

There's no evidence that there's broad support to segregate kids with special needs. If it had mainstream support, someone would be willing to openly advocate for it.

People might secretly like all kinds of discriminatory practices, but the inevitable backlash stops almost all of them from going anywhere as a matter of public policy. Democrats aren't going throw kids with special needs to the wolves, and Trumpers don't particularly care about this issue except to the extent they can use it to push for private school vouchers.

Shame on you for using the word segregate. Different kids have different needs.

Then you're going to have to convince people that separate can be equal, despite history to the contrary.

Proposing to prevent kids with special needs from going to school isn't going to help your case for that.

When these laws were created, people were thinking about dyslexia and kids in wheelchairs. They weren’t thinking about integrating kids who disrupt learning for all the other kids and give them PTSD from enduring classes with them every day. The laws need to be clarified. What people call a “disability” these days simply isn’t what people had in mind when they supported these laws. They would never have passed in this format if people knew that kids would be screaming in class and throwing chairs and there’d be literally nothing that anyone could do about it.

This sums it up in a nutshell. The expansion of the ADA to include mental health was well meaning but has led to serious unintended negative consequences because the same rules apply to Down's Syndrome and Oppositional Defiance Disorder. Paralysis and ADHD are not equal disabilities but under the law there is no clear distinction between them.

[Anonymous]

As most countries in the world consider Americans in general to be borderline rtarded, the shouldn't we all be classified as such so we can have a level playing field.

[Anonymous]

If I had it to over again, I would absolutely send my children to private school. They are in HS now so the ship has sailed, but I am saving up knowing I may want to help my grandchildren attend private. It’s sad, but this is the result of IDEA done amok and parenting responsibility gone out the window. I regret that I didn’t pull the trigger in late elementary when I first started to realize it. Hope springs eternal I guess.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If I had it to over again, I would absolutely send my children to private school. They are in HS now so the ship has sailed, but I am saving up knowing I may want to help my grandchildren attend private. It’s sad, but this is the result of IDEA done amok and parenting responsibility gone out the window. I regret that I didn’t pull the trigger in late elementary when I first started to realize it. Hope springs eternal I guess.

I agree that things fall apart in late elementary. I’m in a district that ends elementary at 5th grade, and my DC’s public elementary is very esteemed. The kids who have issues - parental, emotional, behavioral, educational, IEP or no IEP - have gotten worse and more numerous, and since the kids are getting bigger, some have phones, some are more independent in terms of getting to school and back home, some are entering puberty and so forth, parents are stepping back so any extant problems are just what they are. Parents do not have the social expectation of reaching out to other parents to help resolve things - a little (every bad word that has ever existed) kid who has used every insult and threat imaginable is now totally free to do what he’s always done since K as a 5th grader, and his parents have totally given up on even the minor courtesies like apologizing to the family after their kid threatened to murder another and set the victim on fire, or tripping and beating another kid. These parents seem to think it’s only on the school to deal with this stuff by late elementary. It’s a different world from my own childhood.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If I had it to over again, I would absolutely send my children to private school. They are in HS now so the ship has sailed, but I am saving up knowing I may want to help my grandchildren attend private. It’s sad, but this is the result of IDEA done amok and parenting responsibility gone out the window. I regret that I didn’t pull the trigger in late elementary when I first started to realize it. Hope springs eternal I guess.

I agree that things fall apart in late elementary. I’m in a district that ends elementary at 5th grade, and my DC’s public elementary is very esteemed. The kids who have issues - parental, emotional, behavioral, educational, IEP or no IEP - have gotten worse and more numerous, and since the kids are getting bigger, some have phones, some are more independent in terms of getting to school and back home, some are entering puberty and so forth, parents are stepping back so any extant problems are just what they are. Parents do not have the social expectation of reaching out to other parents to help resolve things - a little (every bad word that has ever existed) kid who has used every insult and threat imaginable is now totally free to do what he’s always done since K as a 5th grader, and his parents have totally given up on even the minor courtesies like apologizing to the family after their kid threatened to murder another and set the victim on fire, or tripping and beating another kid. These parents seem to think it’s only on the school to deal with this stuff by late elementary. It’s a different world from my own childhood.

Yup. The attitude is that if anything bad happens at school related to their little $hithead, it must be a problem with the IEP and the school should figure it out.

[Anonymous]

FCPS was bad before Covid

[Anonymous]

When people say things fall apart toward the middle or tail end of elementary,,, when people say they regret not going private… are you also including wealthy coveted districts like McLean, North Arlington, Potomac, etc with very few FARMS and non-English speaking kids and I assume lots of entitled kids and parents who outside outside enrichment?

Or are you talking about HOCO, MOCO, non-Langley FCPS, and other “normal districts” that are still well off?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:When people say things fall apart toward the middle or tail end of elementary,,, when people say they regret not going private… are you also including wealthy coveted districts like McLean, North Arlington, Potomac, etc with very few FARMS and non-English speaking kids and I assume lots of entitled kids and parents who outside outside enrichment?

Or are you talking about HOCO, MOCO, non-Langley FCPS, and other “normal districts” that are still well off?

A PP here. We were at a wealthy, Great Schools 10 ES that fed into a more diverse middle school. If I had it to do over again I’d do private K-12 if I had the money and MS/HS if I wanted to save some money. They problem is the “good” schools don’t get you away from all of the IEP and behavioral issues, and if anything good schools are given more of those kids (the district assigns them over to you) because a “good” school has more bandwidth to deal with problem children. Also, “good” public schools are still obsessed with test scores which means their strong focus is on the kids who might not pass and the kids who will definitely pass are largely ignored.

[Anonymous]

Great scape goat. The pandemic is the reason for all America's problems. Everyone look away from the billionaires who benefitted from the pandemic and off of workers impoverished and uninsured butts.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Great scape goat. The pandemic is the reason for all America's problems. Everyone look away from the billionaires who benefitted from the pandemic and off of workers impoverished and uninsured butts.

Of course, fomenting constant panic and anxiety and the public led to crazy profits for those who owned Clorox/Lysol.

Of course this panic led to Jeff Bezos in particularly getting even more spectacularly wealthy as people stayed home and ordered off Amazon rather than risking the death of their family and everyone on their block by going to the local hardware store or grocery store.

Of course this panic led to crazy profits for pharma companies whose experimental product was required for many to go back to work/participate in sports/go out to restaurants.

Of course this panic led to the closure of many small gyms, restaurants and other businesses not owned by huge corporations.

I bet new millionaires were made in plexiglass and industrial stickers.

Of course this panic led to the extended school closures and boosted the popularity of private school and homeschooling as well as causing many to view school vouchers more favorably. I wouldn't be surprised if the panic actually made a few millionaires in the homeschool curriculum field.

As you said, it was the already-richest who benefited the most.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:When people say things fall apart toward the middle or tail end of elementary,,, when people say they regret not going private… are you also including wealthy coveted districts like McLean, North Arlington, Potomac, etc with very few FARMS and non-English speaking kids and I assume lots of entitled kids and parents who outside outside enrichment?

Or are you talking about HOCO, MOCO, non-Langley FCPS, and other “normal districts” that are still well off?

We're zoned for a "normal" but still well off FCPS elementary school in a good-but-not-Langley FCPS pyramid. People move here for the schools when they can't afford Great Falls/McLean but still care about schools.

I thought the education was bad from kindergarten on up, starting with the lack of phonics instruction (somewhat fixed now), moving through the lack of deep social studies/science/content instruction, encompassing the lack of solid writing instruction (again I think Benchmark is maybe a hair better from what I've heard?), and including how boring math was until advanced math in 3rd. And now FCPS watered down advanced math for new 3rd graders!

Individual good teachers could salvage that, but it was a lot of work on their parts and no guarantee you'd get the good one.

My kids are now at private and while there are drawbacks there (fewer STEM APs in high school), it's a trade-off we're happy to make for all the benefits.