Reply to tell me about your experience with regular ed in FCPS

Forum Index » Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS)

Reply to "tell me about your experience with regular ed in FCPS"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I do not find general ed to be fine or FCPS fine in any way.  I am at one of the supposed best elementary schools.  The quality of the educational is very disappointing.  A lot of time moving room to room, very large classes, lots of time giving iready or DRA testing and during that time the single teacher is out of the room.  No snap words, no spelling correction at the young age or basic spelling later. AAP available is known to be better because at least those teachers find it unacceptable that 4th and 5th graders who have been deemed advanced cannot spell or do basic math quickly. It makes me super angry and sad because we bought here for the school and are now applying to private school.  Most of the teachers are less than 28.  Way too young without a balance of older more seasoned teachers.  As I tour the privates, I recall all the negativity public school advocates say  about private school teachers and qualifications and what I see are mature and career teachers who hold masters or phds In their fields.  I see private schools require spelling and handwriting in addition to all of the other subjects.  They don’t use the gimmicks of iPads to show that they are using tech.  They don’t move the kids room to room in endless stations so that no single teacher actually has an idea what the kids are capable of.  Neither of my kids abiltiities or weaknesses are known to their teachers because they are taught by assistance so or by each other or by iPad.  It is so incredibly disappointing.  Public school has a bigger mission than private but at my school, the FARMs and esol  are less than 2%.  The administration is not loaded down with other challenges.  It just thinks this is ok.  There is a feeling that if the kids can pass the state standards, that is enough.  If you take the time to review the state standards for each grade  and subject, you will agree that it is definitely essential to learn the items listed but you will also probably find that you actually expect much much more and they just don’t do it.[/quote]

+1,000,000
FCPS actually was an excellent school system - decades ago.  I'm a product of FCPS during the 70s and 80s and feel I received a superb education.  I can remember learning ACTUAL grammar and writing skills.  The schools simply aren't the same anymore.  The curriculum has been dumbed down to the point where people are panicking to get their kids into AAP - and even AAP isn't anything special.  I've had kids in both AAP and Gen Ed and found both to be exactly as the PP described.  Lots of wasted time.  In middle school, rather than write real book reports, the English teachers give them "cute" and "fun" assignments to make a video or movie poster of the book.  The teachers are now taking the lazy way out and passing it on to the students.  A movie poster?  A video/trailer?  I was appalled when I saw what my kids English assignments were.

The PP is also right about private school, or at least good private schools.  We took two of our kids out of FCPS and placed them in private, more or less as an experiment since we knew we wouldn't be able to afford permanent private school.  It was truly unbelievable the amount of knowledge they learned during one year of private school.  They were taught classic literature, geography, in-depth history lessons - and WRITING.  Lots and lots of writing, spelling, grammar.  They learned about famous artists, from their works to their lives, in great detail.  None of this one hour "let's tell the kids about an artist whom they'll never remember or talk about again."  To this day, my kids who attended this school for only ONE year are able to recite poetry and passages from great works of literature that they would *never* have been exposed to in public school.  It truly broke our heart when we had to put them back in FCPS due to financial constraints.

To sum up, FCPS - whether AAP or Gen Ed - are just skimming the surface of a quality education.  There's no depth.  We found ourselves providing that ourselves, at home.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics