Anyone else feel like school fundamentally doesn’t work?

[Anonymous]

Just got back from chaperoning a 2nd grade field trips. Usually volunteer several times a year with two kids in lower elementary.
These are my biggest complaints:
Class sizes are too big - over 20 kids is too much

School size too big - some kids eat lunch at 10:30 to fit everyone in the cafeteria. It’s unmanageable

Curriculum matters: phonics is essential. School boards should not be allowed to buy curriculums that are not evidence based

Regarding disruptive kids, I agree that violence is not acceptable in a classroom. Evacuating classrooms more than once for a child is not acceptable. But I think it’s not as common as people describe. At our school in other years we haven’t had this problem. Ime it seems like good principles really make a big difference for this.

Teachers have too much busywork and not enough planning time.

Parents make a big difference. Both as volunteers and obviously at home working with their kids.

Every public school should be required to have 20% low income students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am very happy with our schools. But, we supplement with other things- museums, extracurriculars in music and art, travel, etc. One had a tutor for LDs when younger.

Same. Although we didn’t need a tutor for ours until recently, high school. The elementary school had the best learning specialist. We were so lucky.

[Anonymous]

Every homeschooler in the country thinks that schools don’t work. So do most people who pay money to send their kids to private schools.

[Anonymous]

My daughter is at a Title 1 school with a large number of English language learners in Arlington, and although I have my complaints, she's getting a fantastic education there. There are some kids with behavioral problems, but the teachers deal with it. She could be challenged more, but she's learning a ton. I haven't seen the magnitude of problems that other people describe. And she's both gifted and has special needs, so I feel like she has lots of needs that have the possibility of going unmet if the school were doing a crap job of things.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My daughter is at a Title 1 school with a large number of English language learners in Arlington, and although I have my complaints, she's getting a fantastic education there. There are some kids with behavioral problems, but the teachers deal with it. She could be challenged more, but she's learning a ton. I haven't seen the magnitude of problems that other people describe. And she's both gifted and has special needs, so I feel like she has lots of needs that have the possibility of going unmet if the school were doing a crap job of things.

What grade is she in?

[Anonymous]

I think it generally works well. My main issue with it is we should really take parents entirely out of the equation when it comes to learning: Identify struggling students early, and provide free IN-school tutoring for students who struggle in specific subject. In middle school dd really struggled in Math and without dh at home to help, she would have completely lost the ability to progress. I think there is a lot of this happening, so kids with parents who are subject experts or who have money for tutoring keep doing fine and the others are left behind. This is something done for issues like speech, and I don't see why it cannot be done for academic subjects.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think it doesn’t work but for very different reasons than what you’re stating. I think far too much time is lost to transitions and having every kid in the class wait for the very slowest or worst behaved kid. My DD could accomplish everything she does at school with two mornings of 3 hours’ of work. We send her to socialize and have fun opportunities, like learning new sports in PE and doing art projects that we wouldn’t be able to help with.

And she’s at a fancy private school.

My public elementary in the 80s worked far better than anything I’ve seen lately. Unfortunately I think it’s because it had standalone ESL classes, standalone special education classrooms, and leveled classes for reading and math plus entire semesters of pull-out work for gifted kids. Modern schools cannot do all of that without pushback from parents and legal issues. Nevermind that the 80s were probably the last years of truly professional, trained teachers. Many people who would have gone into education when I was growing up have been exposed to far more opportunity than there was back then, and they’re making other career choices. With occasional exceptions, my DD’s teachers have been not-bright and not talented at the art of teaching children or classroom management.

It worked terribly for students warehoused in those classrooms, effectively denied an education because society didn't think they were worth educating.

And so now no one is getting an education, because disruptive kids are making it hard for my child to learn.

What is frustrating is that there are places in between these extremes. Most kids with special needs can be successfully integrated in a mainstream classroom. However, truly disruptive or violent kids need to be elsewhere.