Reply to Who to vote in November in BOE for More Challenging Curriculum for Advanced Students

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm just curious why you think it's the responsibility of a public school to provide a more challenging curriculum for advanced kids? Really, that's not what public education does. If that's what you desire, you should pay for it and go private. Because what you're asking for usually comes at the expense of meeting the basic needs of all students. [/quote]

To me, this thread is about voting for the BOE.  Curriculum is just one part of my dissatisfaction with the current BOE.  I don't like their budget priorities and lack of transparency either  I also don't like their attitude about parents as witnesses by the poster above who called me a moron for just expressing a one sentence call for change.  I want more parental/taxpayer input on the board.  It is just that simple.

[b]As for a challenging curriculum, I fundamentally disagree with you on several layers.[/b]  First, where do you get that public education is supposed to provide basic or minimal education?  Is that in the constitution or something? It seems to me that public education can be whatever we citizens want to make of it.  My view may not carry the day, but what is wrong with advocating for it?  Second, as I have stated elsewhere on this board, there is no cost to differentiating kids.  The Math Pathways in MCPS prior to C2.0 did just this.  It uses the same number of teachers, but reorganizes the classes.  Other school systems do this as well.  I just doesn't cost more and may cost less because you can tolerate higher class sizes with more homogenous groupings.  Finally, many people can't afford private school.  Your argument suggests that kids of poor people should not have access to a challenging education.   I disagree with that premise.

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Of course you do. Because you're a helicopter parent with a snowflake child. You probably even think your child is gifted.

The fact is (and try to stay with me, because I know facts may not be your strong suit) that public education is, indeed, to ensure that all children receive a basic level of education. That's why we have NCLB -- that's why we have SOLs. There are BASIC standards of learning that are imparted.

Public schools should strive for excellence, but it's not their role to differentiate or provide "more challenging curriculums for advance students." Some choose to -- hurrah! But it's not the mission of public education. Yet, you seem to view it as an entitlement.

[/quote]

I am not the PP to whom you respond but I absolutely view education differently from you.  Public education (for me) has 2 main purposes -- to develop the knowledge, skills and critical thinking of our future voting citizenry and residents so they can make good decisions to guide the stability and growth of our democracy, and 2) to fully develop the human capital of our citizenry and residents so that our country and economy can grow and be productive.  Both of these goals require the public educational system (paid for with tax dollars) to develop the skills and knowledge of each student to the fullest.

I don't view that as an "entitlement", I view it as the minimum obligation of the system to which I give my tax dollars.

We have NCLB and SOLs, etc. because, unfortunately, the history of our democracy is that good education has been limited to those in certain groups.  We have NCLB, etc., to make it clear when the public education system is not meeting the needs of all the sub-populations (poor, minority, SPED, ELL, etc. ) You are not right that NCLB tracks only Basic educational goals, because it does track advanced performance on the NCLB state tests. [/quote]

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