Reply to Article on Maury/Miner merger proposal

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]If they really wanted to try something like this, I wonder if it wouldn’t be better to start with two schools that are closer together in terms of at-risk population (DME’s stated concern) or test scores (correlated but obviously not the same).

People who bought within the Maury boundary paid a premium to do so because of the school. That’s not to say they are entitled to go there — boundaries change sometimes, etc — but just to say that these are people for whom going to a school with a certain cohort of on-grade level or advanced learners was important enough to pay a lot more money than they would have if they had bought a couple of blocks over. They are not going to “come quietly” if you are all of a sudden going to organize things in a way that will put their kids in classrooms that are now 50% below grade level.

If you start by evening out two schools closer together on those measures, you are likely to get less vociferous opposition, because the changes will be less dramatic, and in the process of doing it are likely to learn more about how to make this model both more effective academically and more attractive to families (important for retaining the more invested families/higher performing kids you are trying to spread around). [/quote]

Or if there was more trust that all kids are going to get the level of instruction they need, instead of pretending it is wrong to want your kid to get that. And of course the current fad for disregarding, you know, actual teaching and learning methods, is much worse for poor kids than rich kids. If instruction at Maury hadn’t been so haphazard already it might have been an easier ask. [/quote]

This for sure. Even now at Maury, several teachers have told me how difficult it is to effectively teach the range of children they are presented with in each class. Broadening the range — or weighting it further in one direction — would only make it that much harder to provide the needed education to each student there. If a school offers tracking, and you can be confident your kid will be taught content at their level with a cohort around the same level, you can fill the school however you want. [/quote]

But you kind of miss my point. The teaching methods are horrible now, no matter the track. all computers, no homework, no drilling, no tests to study for, no books, no consistently corrected papers. No independent research. It’s bad for our privileged kids and even worse for unprivileged kids. [/quote]

What school are you at? I have to give kids HW and teach PK4…
The upper grades only use the computer for iReady or exams. We also have physical books…
Also the drill and kill method has proven to be subpar at least a decade ago. 
Kids also do projects and as far as testing it’s frequent because iReady tests, paper tests are kept to a minimum to avoid going even more overboard, teaching to test is something people try to reserve for CAPE. 
[/quote]

You literally just listed at least 5 things in there that reinforce what I am saying about instructions. (and no, there are not text books.) [/quote]

In fairness growing up I did not have text books until middle school at the earliest.[/quote]

I can’t remember when I got text books, but the work was definitely paper based and went back home to my parents. Unlike everything being done on the computers.

Maury had an absolutely fabulous curriculum and teaching staff for K and 1st - literacy and writing were top notch in all respects. I actually would have total confidence in the Maury ECE team that my kid had handling an influx of higher needs kids - not the least reason being the team had been at the school a long time and already knew how to teach all kids. But the wheels almost completely fall off in the upper grades. Some of this was covid but a lot of it was just a complete societal cratering in pedagogy for older kids where we have diminished the structure and practices that actually work to teach. [/quote]

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