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

Forum Index » Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS)

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

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Our friends who have moved here from the Midwest and Southern states told us that their kids were behind when they got to FCPS and that they needed help to catch up with FCPS classmates. Our friends who move in from California have varying experiences, based on if their kid attended a charter school or their local public schools. Most of the local public school kids need to catch up, the charter school kids tend to slide in fine.

The only people I hear grumbling about FCPS not being a strong school district come from the middle class to high SES sections of New England where the school districts are small and class sizes are smaller than in FCPS.

FCPS is a huge public school system with large classes. You are not likely to hear from your kids teacher unless there is a serious problem. A C is not a serious problem. ES teachers have classes between 25-32 kids. MS and HS teachers have 120-150 kids, I can never remember what the max is. They don't have time to contact parents whose kids are getting Cs or Bs, no matter how much parents want that. They have to focus on the kids getting Fs and Ds because those are the kids who are in need of the most help.

Public schools are meant to educate everyone and the metrics for success are set so that the kids who are failing don't fail.

If you want a more individualized education, with more teacher contact, and limited issues in the classroom you have to go private. Private schools screen out the kids who are going to get Fs - Cs and the kids with behavior issues, never mind the emotionally dysregulated kids that the public schools have to deal with.

Kids who are engaged, or kids who have engaged parents, will get an excellent education in FCPS but it is not something that is handed to them. You have to learn what is available and work towards it. Your HS kid who is getting a C or a B should be reaching out to their teacher asking for help with your support if needed. [/quote]

You make it sound like it's always parents and it's their failure, and if they desire timely communication and reasonable time grading and reporting and answers to their emails then they have to pay for private school.

For example, my youngest is getting a D in 7th grade for one class with overall A- avg in other classes, most of which are honors.  I had contacted the teacher, and not only the teacher didn't reach out to me like you said they are suppose to do for kids getting Ds, they didn't respond AFTER I had contacted them.  Could be that there are ungraded assignments that no longer add up to a D? IDK, grading is INCREDIBLY SLOW across the board for my MS and HS kids, to the point where it's difficult even for involved parents to know what's going on and if your kid is doing well or failing and what to concentrate on if getting help.  Some teachers do better job than others despite their classes being crowded.  It's not uniform. it's just low standards IMHO.   If the issue is extra tedious paperwork they have to do, then it's the Administrators domain to fix this, don't you think? Whatever they are doing with this paperwork isn't adding to quality education.

[/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