It’s so hard to figure things out

[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.

OP of this thread here. I am with you. For us, it is not even a childcare issue as one or the other of us can WFH all days of the week. But it is my principled stance that young children should not have to spend hours doing academics outside of school unless they are a) behind their class or b) genuinely interested in going deeper. I don’t understand why young children should have less free play and physical play than my generation had.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Yikes, sounds like the answer to why some parents are happy is because they invest a lot of time and energy at home. This sounds like a lot of pressure to put on parents compared to a generation ago, and this is on top of longer work hours and commutes. Is it any wonder that everyone is stressed out and has no time to build a real community? When I went to school (graduated 16 years ago), my parents were not involved except for providing an environment conducive to studying and some “fun” supplementing like museums, travel, and of course SAT prep books. I still did extremely well. I am now feeling stressed out that I will have to spend hours teaching my children at home to fill in the gaps from their school education. It will be stressful for me to take on a second job as private tutor, and stressful for the children because they will get very little break from academics. Even if I were to invest in a private tutor, it would give me a break but not the children.

You are in Fairfax County. Yes, it is a lot of pressure to be in the rat race in this area. If your kid is a high achiever, the "gaps" you fill are the ones that get your kid ahead. Have to do a little bit of everything-- revamp your household schedule to prioritize things for your kids. If you don't want to be in that rat race, you can totally opt out. But I'll tell ya, once you hear that Larla is doing ballet and piano, and taekwondo and kumon, you're going to feel that you aren't doing enough for your kids if they aren't overscheduled like everyone else.

Yes it is stressful. Been there. And it doesn't really end when your kids get out of FCPS-- ha, go take a look at the college forum!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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.

Teacher and parent here. Some kids will thrive in just about any environment. You can give them the worst teacher in the worst school, and they will still thrive. They are easy to teach and basically teach themselves. Other kids only thrive if the circumstances are right. A bad teacher can set them back significantly, and several bad years in a row can affect them permanently. Add to that the fact that FCPS has little consistently from one school to another, and parents themselves react differently to different things, and you get a lot of different experiences and different opinions.

The reason I have a low opinion of FCPS is because of the inconsistency. There are good schools and good teachers in FCPS, but there is no guarantee that you'll land there. If you have a kid who is sensitive or anxious or shy or who doesn't fit the perfect easy-to-teach FCPS mold, and doesn't have an IEP to legally protect him or her, there is a fair chance you will have at least one year that is a total disaster and leaves you reeling from the complete indifference, incompetence, and outright lying and ass-covering at FCPS. Likewise, if something bad happens to your kid at school, you'll probably find the same. But those parents who have lucked out with incredibly resilient, optimistic, cheery and lucky kids will pat themselves on the back for their excellent parenting (never acknowledging the role of pure luck in this outcome) and claim that FCPS is just wonderful. After all, if nothing bad has happened to them then it can't possibly have happened to anyone else, and if it did, then it's probably just bad parenting.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

OP, this is it. FCPS works fine for a decent chunk of the population. They know it’s a million times better than their own education in Arkansas, Nevada or wherever. The other half dislike it and can probably articulate the 3-5 things that bother them the most.

As a parent of a neurodivergent student, school is not always easy for our DD, but that would be the case in any US school district - so we fill in gaps ourselves, rent textbooks from Amazon, help with writing, make sure she has books to read, and pay for extra services. We know we are lucky and not all families can do that. But even with our experiences, I still think the school district is “good” but not a “good fit” for every family. I learned a long time ago, that we cannot wait for FCPS to be the #1 solution for our family, we adjust as needed. But I still know it’s one of the best in the country and we are happy here versus some place else.

FCPS is not, by any defensible and logical measure, one of the best school districts in the country. It's not even in the top 100. This is FCPS propaganda. Marketing.

[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.

Good lord, some people are gullible. FCPS is NOT one of the best districts in the country, except according to FCPS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Good lord, some people are gullible. FCPS is NOT one of the best districts in the country, except according to FCPS.

No, Debbie Downer, you're not right. Sorry...

[Anonymous]

I think way too many people expect public school to cater to exactly what their kid needs. If that's the case, you are going to be severely disappointed. If you realize the purpose of public school is a basic level of competency for the masses, FCPS is doing a great job. A kid who participates will graduate knowing how to read, write, and do math at a level where they are ready to go to college should they so choose.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

Teacher and parent here. Some kids will thrive in just about any environment. You can give them the worst teacher in the worst school, and they will still thrive. They are easy to teach and basically teach themselves. Other kids only thrive if the circumstances are right. A bad teacher can set them back significantly, and several bad years in a row can affect them permanently. Add to that the fact that FCPS has little consistently from one school to another, and parents themselves react differently to different things, and you get a lot of different experiences and different opinions.

The reason I have a low opinion of FCPS is because of the inconsistency. There are good schools and good teachers in FCPS, but there is no guarantee that you'll land there. If you have a kid who is sensitive or anxious or shy or who doesn't fit the perfect easy-to-teach FCPS mold, and doesn't have an IEP to legally protect him or her, there is a fair chance you will have at least one year that is a total disaster and leaves you reeling from the complete indifference, incompetence, and outright lying and ass-covering at FCPS. Likewise, if something bad happens to your kid at school, you'll probably find the same. But those parents who have lucked out with incredibly resilient, optimistic, cheery and lucky kids will pat themselves on the back for their excellent parenting (never acknowledging the role of pure luck in this outcome) and claim that FCPS is just wonderful. After all, if nothing bad has happened to them then it can't possibly have happened to anyone else, and if it did, then it's probably just bad parenting.

This is so true!

The inconsistency in Special Ed was so difficult to handle. I asked if the same tone/approach/method/procedure can be used by ALL my kid's teachers so that my kid isn't whiplashed from class to class. My kid just wasn't able to thrive.. one bad transaction after another, school days never going well, not finding a good, strong advocate within the school who could really DO things. It really just snowballed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Yikes, sounds like the answer to why some parents are happy is because they invest a lot of time and energy at home. This sounds like a lot of pressure to put on parents compared to a generation ago, and this is on top of longer work hours and commutes. Is it any wonder that everyone is stressed out and has no time to build a real community? When I went to school (graduated 16 years ago), my parents were not involved except for providing an environment conducive to studying and some “fun” supplementing like museums, travel, and of course SAT prep books. I still did extremely well. I am now feeling stressed out that I will have to spend hours teaching my children at home to fill in the gaps from their school education. It will be stressful for me to take on a second job as private tutor, and stressful for the children because they will get very little break from academics. Even if I were to invest in a private tutor, it would give me a break but not the children.

Hours, no. 1-hour of quality time is sufficient.

[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.

OP of this thread here. I am with you. For us, it is not even a childcare issue as one or the other of us can WFH all days of the week. But it is my principled stance that young children should not have to spend hours doing academics outside of school unless they are a) behind their class or b) genuinely interested in going deeper. I don’t understand why young children should have less free play and physical play than my generation had.

“Young children” in FCPS don’t have hours of homework. MANY, MANY ES schools give zero homework besides for reading for 20 minutes. Maybe a page with 10-15 math problems or finishing classwork that didn’t get finished.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Yikes, sounds like the answer to why some parents are happy is because they invest a lot of time and energy at home. This sounds like a lot of pressure to put on parents compared to a generation ago, and this is on top of longer work hours and commutes. Is it any wonder that everyone is stressed out and has no time to build a real community? When I went to school (graduated 16 years ago), my parents were not involved except for providing an environment conducive to studying and some “fun” supplementing like museums, travel, and of course SAT prep books. I still did extremely well. I am now feeling stressed out that I will have to spend hours teaching my children at home to fill in the gaps from their school education. It will be stressful for me to take on a second job as private tutor, and stressful for the children because they will get very little break from academics. Even if I were to invest in a private tutor, it would give me a break but not the children.

You are in Fairfax County. Yes, it is a lot of pressure to be in the rat race in this area. If your kid is a high achiever, the "gaps" you fill are the ones that get your kid ahead. Have to do a little bit of everything-- revamp your household schedule to prioritize things for your kids. If you don't want to be in that rat race, you can totally opt out. But I'll tell ya, once you hear that Larla is doing ballet and piano, and taekwondo and kumon, you're going to feel that you aren't doing enough for your kids if they aren't overscheduled like everyone else.

Yes it is stressful. Been there. And it doesn't really end when your kids get out of FCPS-- ha, go take a look at the college forum!

Or the job forum, the money forum, and the real estate forum. Always comparing. Trying to measure up. It’s not worth it. There is a continuum between totally off hands and tiger mom.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Yikes, sounds like the answer to why some parents are happy is because they invest a lot of time and energy at home. This sounds like a lot of pressure to put on parents compared to a generation ago, and this is on top of longer work hours and commutes. Is it any wonder that everyone is stressed out and has no time to build a real community? When I went to school (graduated 16 years ago), my parents were not involved except for providing an environment conducive to studying and some “fun” supplementing like museums, travel, and of course SAT prep books. I still did extremely well. I am now feeling stressed out that I will have to spend hours teaching my children at home to fill in the gaps from their school education. It will be stressful for me to take on a second job as private tutor, and stressful for the children because they will get very little break from academics. Even if I were to invest in a private tutor, it would give me a break but not the children.

You are in Fairfax County. Yes, it is a lot of pressure to be in the rat race in this area. If your kid is a high achiever, the "gaps" you fill are the ones that get your kid ahead. Have to do a little bit of everything-- revamp your household schedule to prioritize things for your kids. If you don't want to be in that rat race, you can totally opt out. But I'll tell ya, once you hear that Larla is doing ballet and piano, and taekwondo and kumon, you're going to feel that you aren't doing enough for your kids if they aren't overscheduled like everyone else.

Yes it is stressful. Been there. And it doesn't really end when your kids get out of FCPS-- ha, go take a look at the college forum!

Or the job forum, the money forum, and the real estate forum.
Always comparing. Trying to measure up. It’s not worth it. There is a continuum between totally off hands and tiger mom.

*Hands off

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Yikes, sounds like the answer to why some parents are happy is because they invest a lot of time and energy at home. This sounds like a lot of pressure to put on parents compared to a generation ago, and this is on top of longer work hours and commutes. Is it any wonder that everyone is stressed out and has no time to build a real community? When I went to school (graduated 16 years ago), my parents were not involved except for providing an environment conducive to studying and some “fun” supplementing like museums, travel, and of course SAT prep books. I still did extremely well. I am now feeling stressed out that I will have to spend hours teaching my children at home to fill in the gaps from their school education. It will be stressful for me to take on a second job as private tutor, and stressful for the children because they will get very little break from academics. Even if I were to invest in a private tutor, it would give me a break but not the children.

You are in Fairfax County. Yes, it is a lot of pressure to be in the rat race in this area. If your kid is a high achiever, the "gaps" you fill are the ones that get your kid ahead. Have to do a little bit of everything-- revamp your household schedule to prioritize things for your kids. If you don't want to be in that rat race, you can totally opt out. But I'll tell ya, once you hear that Larla is doing ballet and piano, and taekwondo and kumon, you're going to feel that you aren't doing enough for your kids if they aren't overscheduled like everyone else.

Yes it is stressful. Been there. And it doesn't really end when your kids get out of FCPS-- ha, go take a look at the college forum!

This poster nailed it. My daughter is now a surgeon. She went through Haycock, Longfellow, and McLean HS. She received a pretty solid education, but what pushed her to excel was a lot of parent help at home (writing help) and paid work with a tutor (mastering chem, calculus, etc). It was exhausting and expensive. The extra work wasn't necessary, but realize (in the classroom) that the squeaky wheels get the grease. The kids who are struggling get the teachers' (extremely limited) time. Average kids and above just float on by, maybe grasping the material, maybe not.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

OP, this is it. FCPS works fine for a decent chunk of the population. They know it’s a million times better than their own education in Arkansas, Nevada or wherever. The other half dislike it and can probably articulate the 3-5 things that bother them the most.

As a parent of a neurodivergent student, school is not always easy for our DD, but that would be the case in any US school district - so we fill in gaps ourselves, rent textbooks from Amazon, help with writing, make sure she has books to read, and pay for extra services. We know we are lucky and not all families can do that. But even with our experiences, I still think the school district is “good” but not a “good fit” for every family. I learned a long time ago, that we cannot wait for FCPS to be the #1 solution for our family, we adjust as needed. But I still know it’s one of the best in the country and we are happy here versus some place else.

FCPS is not, by any defensible and logical measure, one of the best school districts in the country. It's not even in the top 100. This is FCPS propaganda. Marketing.

3 years ago it was ranked in the top 15.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Yikes, sounds like the answer to why some parents are happy is because they invest a lot of time and energy at home. This sounds like a lot of pressure to put on parents compared to a generation ago, and this is on top of longer work hours and commutes. Is it any wonder that everyone is stressed out and has no time to build a real community? When I went to school (graduated 16 years ago), my parents were not involved except for providing an environment conducive to studying and some “fun” supplementing like museums, travel, and of course SAT prep books. I still did extremely well. I am now feeling stressed out that I will have to spend hours teaching my children at home to fill in the gaps from their school education. It will be stressful for me to take on a second job as private tutor, and stressful for the children because they will get very little break from academics. Even if I were to invest in a private tutor, it would give me a break but not the children.

OP, it looks like you’re one of the problems. If you consider helping your kid with homework a “second job” then you’ll be unhappy and stressed. It called parenting - and involves helping with school work.