How do you supplement if public school education not meeting student's needs?
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Anonymous
Did you read the entire book assigned to you in MS? I was in a different state with a gifted program and never fully read books assigned. Pretty much didn't until I got to a special world lit class in HS. The class had awesome books that I wanted to read. |
Anonymous
This! Your kid’s education is only as good as the effort he/she/they put into it. |
Anonymous
| Agreed. My DH graduated from North Arlington schools 20 years ago and reported he never read a book cover to cover until college. If books are assigned, it's a lazy kid problem, not a school problem. |
Anonymous
Yes, that's why I value it. Others didnt though. But the issue isnt whether the kids are reading them. Rather it's whether the curriculum expects them to do so. Excerpts don't count and just reinforce the short attention span, shortcut seeking, lack of nuance, and poor critical thinking skills that have become endemic to our society. Take Malcolm X as an example. The value is in the arc. The totality of the book. Not isolated out of context chapters. |
Anonymous
OMG I'm not going to post three years worth of weekly updates from six different teachers. They read the full primary book every advisory and them some, plus other books for different assignments. The whole premise of the Deal bashing post is false. |
Anonymous
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My kid was at Deal for 8th this year and was not assigned whole texts. He was assigned excerpts on Canvas--one or two paragraphs only
Also, his ELA teacher called out at least once very other week continually, often with zero notice for things like internet issues, Pepco problems, colds, and no reasons at all. it was something almost every week. I spoke to the AP about her several times, as did other parents. He (the AP) was as frustrated as we were. |
Anonymous
No, you were bamboozled. What is printed in the newsletter is not necessarily what is done in class. I watched my kid's actual homework this year like a hawk (and worked in the same room as his calls) and they rarely, did the newsletter material match up to the class. The newsletter makes it look far more impressive than it is. But whatever, keep your head in the sand. |
Anonymous
| So it was a COVID issue then. The kids pre-COVID got a better education. Hardly surprising. |
Anonymous
Except it's actually very odd. Book reports would be an ideal distance learning assigment. |
Anonymous
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My kid is going from Deal to a top private high school. The process is interesting because these schools do placement testing for math and foreign language. My kid placed into honors pre-calc for 9th grade and the school was impressed with how much math she knows. However, she is having to repeat both years of Deal Spanish (7th and 8th grade which count as high school classes) based on oral and written comprehensive exams administered by the private. All of her friends (representing 4 other high schools) are also repeating all Deal language classes based on comps administered by the receiving schools.
My kid had an A in every subject, every quarter at Deal. if it was taught or required, she did it so her knowledge base is pretty representative of the curriculum. |
Anonymous
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That your daughter learned little Spanish at Deal doesn't surprise me. Fact, is DCPS, and DCPC for that matter, has limited capacity for teaching languages beyond the beginning level, and even less ambition to improve. Until very recently, DCPS language study sequences were so poorly thought through that Wilson students who were Adams grads were unable to take HS Spanish past the AP level at school. You've got Deal with IB Middle Years Curriculum not leading to Spanish IB Diploma studies at the Higher Level at Wilson (a standards one to two years past AP), which makes no sense.
What we've got in the District is PS language instruction that's too little too late across the board, and chronically high language teacher turnover. Part of the problem is that most DCPS language students lack access to immersion study, along with the encouragement to pursue it. In a nutshell, DC PS families either home school for language study, relying heavily on outside inputs (e.g. au pairs, heritage school weekend programs in the burbs, immersion camps etc.), or the kids don't really learn languages. Things are different in the burbs in the public school sphere. Too bad you have to pay for a private. |
Anonymous
| NP who is already fed up with how much we’ve had to supplement in the upper ES grades at our DCPS’ particularly for reading, writing and a language. No wonder so many DCPS parents go private or move to the burbs for MS and HS…. |
Anonymous
OMG, do you want your kid to hate reading? Tuck Everlasting and Inside Out and Back Again are wonderful middle grades literature? Do we have to be stuck in previous centuries reading inappropriate literature by dead white guys? |
Anonymous
Tuck and Inside Out are charming little books, definitely staples for choice reading, but not terribly challenging. And yes, Virgil is dead and probably white, but that doesn't seem like a good reason to deny the delights of the classical epics to Middle Schoolers, especially when so many of them relish Greek mythology, which I must admit, can be terribly inappropriate. |
Anonymous
The problem is that excerpts send that message that reading is unimportant. We demand that kids are pushed in math. No one says kids will hate math so let's stop teaching algebra. Reading whole works of fiction is important. Not only does it increase vocabulary and attention spans, it also inspires critical thinking and creativity, as well as improving spelling and writing. Working through progressively harder texts is how people learn and expand. This principle isn't questioned for any other subject. |