FCPS Summer School program for ES and MS-are they really sticking the kids on laptops to do ST math?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is the summer school curriculum on line anywhere?

Yes, it was given to the teachers. (By the way, FCPS doesn't use a "curriculum" for their grades/subjects. It is just a Google HyperDoc with a list of state standards with miscellaneous files and websites listed as "resources". It has been this way for a very long time.)

Yes, and as a teacher, I can tell you that it's awful. So much time is spent looking through the resources and trying to figure out which ones are good and which aren't. It's overwhelming.

Yes. I have almost 30 years in FCPS and I spend way too much time searching when trying to plan, especially for small groups and workshops.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I asked for the summer school curriculum.

I was told it was proprietary and they sent me a link to ST Math. I kid you not.

How is public school curriculum proprietary? Paid for by tax dollars? I'm stumped.

Do you ask the sheriff’s department, DMV, or county court house for access their systems? No.

I don't want access to their systems....I want the outline for the curriculum that will be covered. I can get information from the courthouse without having a login to the internal courthouse database.

All of that is accessible on the VDOE website. There is no FCPS curriculum, only a list of VDOE standard and links to Google Slides.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Like everything in FCPS, it depends on what the principal lets the teachers get away with.

A teacher who had all the kids on laptops all year watching Mr Math Youtube videos and typing in powerpoints will have them on laptops in summer school too.

Welcome to our new public “education” system. Wise parents are joining their neighborhood homeschooling groups, and figuring out how to make it happen.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I asked for the summer school curriculum.

I was told it was proprietary and they sent me a link to ST Math. I kid you not.

How is public school curriculum proprietary? Paid for by tax dollars? I'm stumped.

Do you ask the sheriff’s department, DMV, or county court house for access their systems? No.

I don't want access to their systems....I want the outline for the curriculum that will be covered. I can get information from the courthouse without having a login to the internal courthouse database.

All of that is accessible on the VDOE website. There is no FCPS curriculum, only a list of VDOE standard and links to Google Slides.

Our school said there was a specific fcps summer schol curriculum, but refused to share it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I asked for the summer school curriculum.

I was told it was proprietary and they sent me a link to ST Math. I kid you not.

How is public school curriculum proprietary? Paid for by tax dollars? I'm stumped.

Do you ask the sheriff’s department, DMV, or county court house for access their systems? No.

I don't want access to their systems....I want the outline for the curriculum that will be covered. I can get information from the courthouse without having a login to the internal courthouse database.

All of that is accessible on the VDOE website. There is no FCPS curriculum, only a list of VDOE standard and links to Google Slides.

Our school said there was a specific fcps summer schol curriculum, but refused to share it.

That actually seems like a great use of fioa

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I asked for the summer school curriculum.

I was told it was proprietary and they sent me a link to ST Math. I kid you not.

How is public school curriculum proprietary? Paid for by tax dollars? I'm stumped.

Do you ask the sheriff’s department, DMV, or county court house for access their systems? No.

I don't want access to their systems....I want the outline for the curriculum that will be covered. I can get information from the courthouse without having a login to the internal courthouse database.

All of that is accessible on the VDOE website. There is no FCPS curriculum, only a list of VDOE standard and links to Google Slides.

Our school said there was a specific fcps summer schol curriculum, but refused to share it.

That actually seems like a great use of fioa

How would someone do this and how expensive would it be?

[Anonymous]

Yes, teaching has moved that way now. They use laptops for the kids to “learn.” That way they can ‘imagine’ learning.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kids are liking SOAR. One hasn't used her computer at all. THey have been doing a decent amount of independent reading which I'm not sure about since my DD is ADHD and tends to check out. Hopefully she is reading and not staring at the birds out the window. She has mentioned doing MAth games that are not computer games which is good for her. She is a rising 4th grader. My youngest rising 2nd grader has used it a bit but I Know her teacher well and it seems that use it while the teacher has a small group and then they switch. Really hard to get information especially since came at the same school drops off and picks up for me.

My DS is a rising 4th grader with ADHD as well. I had to smile at your description of your daughter staring at the birds out the window because my mental image of my son during SOAR is pretty much the same.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I thought the ES summer school was meant to be more fun learning so that the kids shored up skills and did not regress as opposed to learning new material. We have had friends send their kids and tell us that their kids really enjoyed SOAR and that it was fun.

And I do know people who use it as summer camp, my friends who stay at home send their kids because it is free and it gives them 4 hours of down time. It breaks up the summer for their kids and they have the afternoon to go to the pool or hang out at home.

But I don't think SOAR is suppose to be super intensive or anything like a regular school day.

That's ESY-summer school for kids with IEPs

SOAR-summer school for kids in general ed, usually the ones who flunked their SOLs. They are absolutely supposed to be teaching information--the information that they didn't learn during the school year. Why they are wasting what few instructional hours they have on laptops, I have no idea.

A HA! I figured thats why my son was invited to SOAR. He flunked his SOLs. He also has an IEP though, but he doesn't require enough support to be eligible for ESY.

[Anonymous]

It’s an absolute disgrace how fcps goes about summer programs. This summer of ESY was the worst I’ve seen. No materials, supplies, nothing. High school teachers teaching k/1/2 graders in a bare classroom and clearly with lack of experience with that age group. I’d imagine SOAR is similar unless they were able to get teachers to teach at their own schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s an absolute disgrace how fcps goes about summer programs. This summer of ESY was the worst I’ve seen. No materials, supplies, nothing. High school teachers teaching k/1/2 graders in a bare classroom and clearly with lack of experience with that age group. I’d imagine SOAR is similar unless they were able to get teachers to teach at their own schools.

This is how ESY was ten years ago when my daughter went. Completely bare classroom, literally nothing but worksheets and pencils, a group of students thrown together with no similarities and an hour long bus ride one way on an unairconditioned bus. Its an embarassment.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s an absolute disgrace how fcps goes about summer programs. This summer of ESY was the worst I’ve seen. No materials, supplies, nothing. High school teachers teaching k/1/2 graders in a bare classroom and clearly with lack of experience with that age group. I’d imagine SOAR is similar unless they were able to get teachers to teach at their own schools.

This is how ESY was ten years ago when my daughter went. Completely bare classroom, literally nothing but worksheets and pencils, a group of students thrown together with no similarities and an hour long bus ride one way on an unairconditioned bus. Its an embarassment.

yikes. That sounds awful. Is this what SOAR is like? Bare room, mixed grade level, random review? No specific targeted problem areas?

[Anonymous]

We pulled our child out of FCPS summer school early b/c they were spending HOURS on the laptop. Imagine Reading, ST Math, and some other online reading program. My child claimed there were no books in the classroom and nothing came home on paper.

I get the lightspeed reports and there were hundreds of pages per day.

Very disappointing from what is supposedly a good school system.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Certainly a good teacher could come up with something more valuable then the complete waste of time that is st math.

We are strongly encouraged by our Instructional Coaches to use ST Math. Even if we don't think it's worthwhile. For some reason they do, and they cite statistics that prove its worth.

FCPS need to justify the money spent on it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We pulled our child out of FCPS summer school early b/c they were spending HOURS on the laptop. Imagine Reading, ST Math, and some other online reading program. My child claimed there were no books in the classroom and nothing came home on paper.

I get the lightspeed reports and there were hundreds of pages per day.

Very disappointing from what is supposedly a good school system.

How do I get the computer reports? My child said they were on the laptop all the time too but I didn't believe him .