Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Another Happy Plainview Parent":
A recent post on this blog compared the time our kids spend in school to how much babysitting costs. Do we send our kids to school because we need a place for them while we're working or doing our errands and we’ve already pre-paid the babysitting fees with our taxes?
Kindergarten parents are wondering why their kids had more academics going on in nursery school. Elementary school parents wonder why their kids come home from school with homework they can't do and need after school instruction in reading, writing and math. Middle school parents are busy helping their kids study for tests by filling out study guides for science curriculum that they don’t have a textbook to reference and high school parents readily sign their kids up for Regents review courses conveniently located at the JCC.
Parents on this blog have brought up alarming concerns focused on education. These problems transcend the union job actions and have plagued our district for years even when the teachers had a contract they were happy with. Parents have been helping their kids with reading, writing and math for years - even when teachers didn't wear Contract Now buttons and classrooms were decorated on the first day of school. There has been concern about 4th grade science test prep being a 2 week cram session during years when teachers wore colorful outfits and didn't come in early to carry picket signs.
It's time to make some changes in the classroom - all classrooms - so school isn't so readily compared to babysitting for reasons beyond financial ones and more instruction is happening in school and not after school. The focus needs to be on what the teachers are doing, not just what they are getting. If the community was happy about what they were getting, they would be less inclined to grumble about how much they are paying for it.
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This is from a "happy Plainview parent."
ReplyDeleteYou bring up serious concerns and I agree that I had questioned why my daughters were going over the same work that they did in pre-school. However, I realized that many of the dittos that they "completed" in he pre-school they attended were done with considerable assistance from the teacher. The dittos that they completed in kindergarden were done on their own ... at least, that is our experience.
As for the challenges you describe of elementary school children, I am sorry if these are the difficulties you face. I do not have these challenges and, in retrospect, my blog posts start with the experiences I have with my two grade school children. Maybe I am "out-of-touch" with the larger district-wide perspective.
As for my comment on the "cost" relative to baby sitters. This was not to equate the teaching profession to that of babysitters, but to bring a somewhat different perspective to the consistent use of the phrase: "high cost of taxes." Stated another way, taxes are not that high on a "per hour" basis and are equal to baby sitting, camp, or a vacation. So, hopefully we can drop that aspect of the discussion.
Cheers to all!
I think that the parents of Plainview sound uneducated at worst or illinformed at best.
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