Reply to If You've Had Kids in Private and Public, Which Did You Like Better?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I think if the child has educated parents, the benefits of private really start in middle school.  That's when we moved our kids to private.  Before that, if there are any deficiencies, they can usually be made up at home.[/quote]

I disagree. IME private has afforded my child with critical social/emotional learning opportnities in the early grades that publics don't have the luxury to provide since [b]they must obsess from day one of K about performance on standardized tests.[/b][/quote]

I think that parents who have not had a child in public school may overestimate the effect of this. Here is a list of all of the standardized tests that children take in MCPS in K-2:

Maryland Kindergarten Readiness Assessment (once, at the beginning of kindergarten)
MAP-P (three times a year, in K-2)

That's it.

More about the Maryland Kindergarten Readiness Assessment:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/marylands-kindergartners-face-important-early-test-of-their-readiness-for-school/2014/10/31/62a11caa-60fd-11e4-8b9e-2ccdac31a031_story.html

The MCPS elementary school testing calendar: http://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/sharedaccountability/calendar/estesting.aspx[/quote]

You've missed my point entirely.  I have had a kid in public and the problem is not with the testing itself, but with tying the testing to school funding and promotion and tenure for teachers.  The incentives you provide drive behavior.  This particular incentive drives teachers to focus on teaching to the test, which is what the administration forces them to do.  It's all about the money, outcomes, numbers on a spreadsheet.  And most decidedly not about my kid.  I know of what I speak, because I was in junior high when my state passed a "reform" bill similar to NCLB, and I know the effect it had on my experience at school (i.e. not good).  It's only gotten worse in the past 30 years.  I personally know a handful of former public school teachers who left for privates or left the profession altogether.  Which is sad, because they were all smart, good people who cared deeply about their profession and about their students.  But their intelligence, drive, and creativity were increasingly stifled by a system that treats them like crap, and the students even more poorly. [/quote]

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