Reply to Is FCPS overhyped? even top rated schools seem meh?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My oldest attends a NOVA Catholic high school (certainly a sports-focused environment) where the class sizes are reasonable and we don't get phone calls or emails about poor performance. The thing to remember is that the kids are in high school now so they're expected to manage their work load and be proactive in reaching out to the teacher for help if they need it. 
[/quote]

Ew. Any public school comment always brings out the supposed non MAGA Catholics. [/quote]

DP. I’m not a MAGA Catholic, but I am a person who has taught in both public and Catholic high schools. They simply don’t compare. In public, I was tasked with performing miracles with no resources. I burned out. In private, I am given the resources and respect to do my job well.

It’s about teacher support and teacher morale, and the publics aren’t doing well on either front right now.

And this has nothing to do with politics or religion. It’s about resources. [/quote]

But, no when you teach or have your kids attend a Catholic school, it absolutely IS about the religion.  That is the point of their religion classes and chapel.  It is very, very clear.  You may be happier with being able to kick behavior issues out, or problem parents out or whatever, but that doesn’t change the fact that religious schools teach religion.  They aren’t sponsoring public schools, they aren’t tending to the poor students en mass.  These are Catholics who accept money from people to teach their children reading, writing, socialstudies and religion.  [/quote]

The question was about teacher support and morale, which is absolutely about resources and not religion.

At the Catholic school, I’m provided with time to grade papers (additional planning periods), whereas in the public it had to be done at home.

At the Catholic school, I have a max of 90 students, whereas my largest load in the public was 176.

At the Catholic school, I have a small administration tasked with supporting teachers. At the public, I had a large admin and a ton of “specialists” who created work for me in order to justify their positions outside of the classroom.

At the Catholic school, I can be intentional with my curriculum. At the public, I was given a poor curriculum I had to spend time tailoring and altering to fit the needs of my students.

And you’re wrong about kicking kids out. We have many students with learning plans and behavioral issues. The difference is we can help them better because teachers have more time and more supports.

So say what you will about Catholic schools, but my direct experience with both leads me to believe teachers are better supported in Catholic. That can lead, understandably, to better student outcomes. [/quote]

It explains why grading is so slow, which is the only tool parents have to monitor their kid's progress here.  It's a huge issue, if it's not timely then parents have little they can do in terms of allocating any resources to help their kid.  Grading has to be fast, no matter what and it's asinine that over-bloated FCPS administration doesn't f-ing understand this.  I am beyond mad.  Half of these people should be fired and don't deserve half of their salary if they don't understand this. [/quote]

I'm not even sure what this is in response to, but I'm both a parent and a teacher in FCPS and "overbloated" admin is the best and most succinct description of the county.  I just started teaching after a long stint in a private and I'm just beyond shocked at the nuclear-level red tape and pure bureaucratic stupidity I'm encountering.  The whole grading/assignment/digital resources system could not be clunkier and more difficult to use if someone tried to design it that way.[/quote]

I appreciate your perspective.  Do teachers complain clunky systems they are forced to use? Or do you think change can be and has to be spearheaded by parents? What can we do to initiate any sort of change to this system, so that we have visibility in our kid's performance and challenges to help them in a timely manner before they slip with more and more material piling up?  What is your opinion as a teacher forced to be  part of this system and as a parent.  When you see a test going ungraded for 2 weeks or missing assignments that don't get processed for multiple weeks and you keep nagging your kids but really have no control over this, what do you advise to do?  I am a little lost because i do not have experience with this school system .[/quote]

I've only been dealing with this system since the beginning of this year and I'd be lying if I said I actually understand it.  If your concern is that grading isn't transparent enough, there are several issues.  First, the county mandates a certain number of assignments and test per quarter, meaning I'm doing more grading than I want to in the first place.  Second, all that stuff you see in Schoology isn't actually the grades.  We have to take all that stuff and enter it separately into a different grading system because Schoology doesn't communicate with the gradebook program.  Which is insane.  We also don't have enough time to do all the grading.  I have 5 periods of 3 different classes and only 1 hour planning time 3 times a week.  I stay about two hours late every day to get more done, but I still can't catch up.  I need to actually plan lessons or else your kids will just sit there doing nothing for 1.5 hours.  Finally, the rolling gradebook means that kids are handing in assignments at different times, and I'm spending a lot of time figuring out who handed in what and trying to remind them to do things that are missing before they become zeroes.  And since people are handing things in at different times, I can't just put aside a certain amount of time to get all the grading done, because I never know when something will be handed in.  And don't get me started on the ten or so additional platforms that we use to create assignments, none of which communicate with Schoology or the gradebook, and many of which are just difficult to use.  It's just a huge, disorganized, scattered system that causes grading tracking assignments to take about 10 times the amount of time it took back when everything was just on paper.  I truly wish we could go back to that.  It was much, much better.  And of course, the county spends a ton of money on all this stuff that actually makes teaching and learning worse and not better.  No one asks us what we think, and no one listens when we tell them.

I don't think there is much parents can do - if you complain that grading is not fast enough, we'll just get some mandate to grade everything within 24 hours and send more emails to parents, and that will just mean even more of a burden.  [/quote]

My kid has paper tests. Its not outlawed. Just give your kids paper tests. [/quote]

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