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The decision to send our oldest child to a private high school is, hands down, the most difficult decision we have ever made as a family. It's difficult on so many fronts, not the least of which is financial. But there's also, inconvenience and the whole issue I have in giving up on public education. I believe public education is the best hope we have as a nation, as a civilization, as a community. The problem is, we don't have any more time to waste waiting for public education to get its act together and there is simply too much at stake to risk our son's future.
Our son is starting as a 10th grader, having gone to a science magnet school last year as a freshman. Our local public school is scoring "well" on the mandated state tests and won some kind of improvement award two years ago. It isn't a failing high school by any means. It is a pretty good high school and delivers an adequate education for a reasonably motivated kid.
But our son is not well-motivated, he's skated through for years, making high honors for rather mediocre efforts.
First, we aren't rich by any measure, and this decision is causing lots of financial hardship for us. But, two weeks into the school year, I'm feeling this is absolutely the right decision. So what do we get for the $30,000+? (Which does not include text books or transportation -- time for me to stop complaining about public schools spending $10,000 per kid).
1 -- every time I've called a teacher, administrator, coach, anybody -- my calls were returned the same day. With an answer. With reasonable answers. All concerns are addressed square-on. The same day. This was the biggest shock to me. I rarely get calls returned in the public schools, much less on the same day. Even rarer still is a thoughtful answer that addresses my concern.
2 -- a heavy emphasis on facts. We were told "facts matter" on day one. How can we send kids out into the world to solve world crisis if they don't know facts? How do address the Iraq situation if you don't know the difference between a Sunni, a Shiite, and a Kurd?This is what the told us on day one.
3 -- a tough curriculum where rich white kids are given Fs with no apologies. If a paper deserves an F, it gets an F. You are welcome to talk to the teacher about it, but no grade inflation. This is the biggest problem facing my son. He is working very hard and he's not very confident that he's going to do well.
4 -- no projects. no coloring. no building anything with popcycle sticks.
I am worried though. He's in precalculus and his lousy Algebra II course is starting to show. On Monday he remarked that the class periods are too short and the teacher doesn't cover everything in class that's in the homework. He's expected to READ THE BOOK to do the homework. He is struggling to learn from the reading, rather than the lecture. He's never done this before.
And I am no help. My precalculus skills have waned, as have my husbands.
What really astonishes me is how much we like the school, but for none of the reasons that add to the price tag. There are critically important things that need to happen in public schools to make them better (i.e., reform them), but these are not things that can be solved by throwing money at the problem.
A school should set a high standard, at times a very high standard, and fairly and consistently hold students to it. Give out Ds and Fs for poor quality work, even if the kid made high honors last term. Expect most kids to be able to read for knowledge, to read assigned material before they come to class, don't spend class time simply repeating what was in the text. Put content first -- facts are important. Return your phone calls.
Is this really asking so much?
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18 comments:
I think it is really wonderful that you've been able to do this for your son. I'm sure he'll be really appreciativ when he's older.
Being someone who pretty much understood everything with no effort in high school, it was a big shock going to a fairly elite college. I really had no experience with not getting something right away or how to learn from studying and I don't think I got anywhere near as much as I should have from my undergrad ed.
As for helping your son with his math, try having him read the book aloud to you and encourage him to note anything he doesn't understand so he can ask the teacher about it the next day.
Also, is there any possibility he could study with another student?
For what you are paying, he should be getting all the catch-up help he needs.
You are right, Susan. There is lots of help and support available at the school, whether he wants it or not.
He is required to meet with his advisory weekly (who is also my main point of contact). When I've asked the advisor questions by e-mail, I got a long detailed thorough response answering each question specifically. Even the stupid ones (which I realized were stupid only when I saw the response, but he was so nice about it that I'm not in the lease offended).
Okay, so the individual weekly advisor adds to the price tag, admittedly. There is no way our guidance dept at the public HS could offer that kind of support with their short staff.
If S. doesn't seek help on his own or talk to his advisor about the difficulties in precalculus, or get a handle on it, I'll raise it with the advisor. I'm trying to let S. have a little room here to struggle and find his way to help on his own. If he doesn't, we'll push him a little harder to get help on the way.
I'm afraid I don't see public schools as our hope for anything. Public schools have no incentive to change until enough people have pulled their kids out, and by then it will be too late.
Wow.
My husband and I are struggling with this decision today - pull out of our reform minded, progressive hungry, fad seeking public school and put all of the kids in private or parochial. One is already in private (grade K).
We have experienced ALL you have written from the public school system - delays in getting answers, getting no answers but much rhetoric, having standards set so low, and so forth.
And this from an affluent suburban public school district.
Indeed, pulling kids out would result in change - but it is unfortunately not the easiest (cost, finding alternative schools) to do.
Wake up public education system - your customers and bosses (both are the taxpayers and parents of the children) are unhappy with your performance.
I think you are right to let your son struggle a bit but not to the extent of hurting his self confidence.
He needs to appreciate that it isn't his fault he had a poor previous educational experience. I can't tell you the number of times I've struggled to understand something and later found out that the reason other people seemed to understand it so much more easily was not because they were intrinsically smarter than me but simply because they'd had a better teacher or the right book or I didn't realize I was missing a crucial piece of information. I certainly had no idea how to ask for help.
When I was in college I took a literature course in French. (We were required to take one literature course and since I had to take a foreign language to graduate this made sense at the time. It seems crazy now.) I kept getting poor grades on something called "explanation of text." [I can't remember the French terminology.] Finally I did something I'd not done before and asked another student who was getting good grades if I could see one of her papers. I was shocked to learn that what the teacher wanted was something much simpler than what I'd been attempting. Essentially the assignment was simply to write a summary of the reading, not to analyze it.
Though the private religious school I teach at has problems of its own, you're right about the positives! With smaller classes and concerned parents, I can keep track of each student's work and behavior and keep parents notified daily.
The tuition is only $5,000 at my school (and unfortunately we teachers only make about 70% of public school rates), but I always return phone calls and emails the same day. Also, if I give a detention or a student doesn't turn in an assignment, I call or email their parents that afternoon so that behavior can be stopped immediately.
I'm not afraid to RECORD the grades kids earn, even when they are poor. Notice, I don't "give" grades, they earn them and I record them. I'm available to help at lunch, before and after school, and during study hall, so those who need & seek help get it. I sometimes even MAKE them get help by keeping them in for a "working lunch." (6 were in today!)
I have little patience for worthless busywork and projects. Yes, we do some hands-on things in my math classes, but they are always toward an important goal, not just to decorate my classroom for open house. In fact, my classroom is quite bare, which is the way I like it--uncluttered and serious so that it encourages studiousness not daydreaming.
While I plan to home school my own kids (not yet born), this private school is a much better alternative to the public schools.
andyjoy
I'm not afraid to RECORD the grades kids earn, even when they are poor. Notice, I don't "give" grades, they earn them and I record them.
I love this statement! Can I put it on vormath.info and attribute it to a teacher/you?
Congratulations on your decision... it sounds like you've found a REALLY good place.
Having a special needs kid makes it hard to go the private school route. If you send your kid to a school for 'normal' kids, and they decide your kid is too much trouble, they'll quietly give up on him and wait for you to get the message. If you send your kid to a school for 'abnormal' (ha) kids, then (essentially) there goes your dream of inclusion, plus the quiet-giving-up thing can still apply if your kid is too much trouble.
Only in the public school are they mandated to keep trying and do their (provable!) best by a special needs kid. But if you want them to do what they're mandated to do, there's only one place to make it stick if they are obstinate, and that's in court.
is it really 30K? My gawd.
Congrats on the decision. Sounds like a good school. Not all of them are. Being private is no assurance that it is good, so you do have to be selective and persnickety. Some private schools use EM or other bad programs. In once case, the son of some people I know did NOT want his parents to send him to a particular private school and wanted public. The parents checked it out; someone there was trying to sell the parents on how good the school was and told them about "the farm project" the kids were working on. Kids were working all year on building a scale model farm. They told them about the project with their eyes full of rapture for this straight-out-of-ed-school crap. The parents supported their son's decision to go to the public school which in this case, was quite good. (Doesn't always happen that way, I realize).
Haven't read everything yet (usual whirl around here) ----- BUT PLEASE KEEP US POSTED.
I'm very interested in learning about the differences you see between private & public school, good, bad, or indifferent.
Thanks for all the encouragement. S is keeping a pretty good attitude about the work load and the tough grading. He got his first 70 on an English test -- lost points on every single question. But, he wasn't the lowest grade in the class, and it was largely what he deserved.
The best thing about this whole decision is that the school is pushing so hard and is so rigorous in keeping their standards high, I can assume the role I've always wanted to play -- loving, supportive, encouraging mom. I can make all the soothing, "its okay" "You're learning a lot, and you'll get better grades" noises I want. Finally getting to be a supportive mom is almost worth the price tag by itself. Last night we struggled through six pages of vocabulary work -- really only about 20 words involved, but definitions, matching, and then the killer antonym exercise. Made my head hurt and I'm good at vocabulary. Unctuous, petulant, lurid, expostulate. . . the list goes on.
"This is so going to help you when you take the SAT in 2 years."
Can you hear the supportive mom in me? Since so many kids are struggling and getting grades below A, he is not really suffering a crisis of self-esteem.
Maybe fairness in grading is better for self-esteem than high grades undeserved?
Those of you considering private school, heed Barry's warning. There is no simple equation public=bad, private=good.
We just left a private school. Here is a sample from the 8th grade English preview: We will begin the year with the Quote Project in which each student creates a mobile that illustrates a meaningful quote, writes a short personal narrative, and then shares his/her findings in an oral presentation. Here is 6th grade math: We will use Techniques of Problem Solving (TOPS) cards, go shopping and role play through Math Quest to relate and internalize the material.
What I learned is that in private school-speak, beware of an emphasis on "experiential learning."
Also, many of them use the middle school model. Your money might be much better spent elsewhere.
Happily, we live in the land of charter schools and have found a great one for my 6th grader. Fairly traditional education, and a unique format that is MTW in the building, ThF at home (lots of homework, some on line and some the old-fashioned type). Caters to the homeschool community, which is typically where you'll find more traditional approaches to education.
Fairly traditional education, and a unique format that is MTW in the building, ThF at home (lots of homework, some on line and some the old-fashioned type).
Wow, Vicki,
I'm jealous.
I'll chime in about the public/private school question. Some people spend lots of money for a private school to get a variation of the same thing. You have to be very selective. Then again, some see private K-8 schools as a necessary pipeline (SSAT and all) for private high schools. (Although our public school is now going to offer a SSAT prep course after school.)
As you know, my son is now back in sixth grade in our public school after 4 years in a private school. Private school was better for him in the lower grades for content, skills, and expectations, but the difference grew less and less.
The upper grades in our K-8 public school have dropped the mandatory full-inclusion philosophy and the fuzzy learning of K-6 and started using real textbooks and teach real content and skills. Sixth grade seems to be a transition year - some real education, but almost no textbooks or workbooks in sight. But they've allowed my son to go into seventh grade pre-algebra, which uses a real textbook. That's something the private school wouldn't do.
In the end, however, the public/private school decision came down to a matter of just a few choices. Looking forward to high school, we weren't going to send him off to boarding school; we weren't going to have him travel an hour by bus each way to some good day schools, and we didn't really want him to be a day student at one of the fancy boarding schools nearby. Our public high school isn't THAT bad, and we can save $25,000 per year. Maybe we will change our minds when he gets to high school.
I'd like to tell you that my wife and I have done some fancy investigations and analyses, but we just don't have much choice. Like Lynn, I think you have to review your (limited) choices as you go along. Nothing can be ruled out.
I have no idea whether your son will appreciate this school or not, but I wanted to tell you how important his difficulties are, and how important it is to address them now rather than in college.
I was in decent college prep schools and always skated by with no effort. I never learned how to read a book to learn material, because I'd always figured out the material by listening to half of the class lecture. I only knew how to read books to memorize material--and that didn't help me with math or physics at all. I never learned how to study because I was never asked to do any problem that required study.
College was an unmitigated disaster, because it was too late to learn those skills then. Everyone assumed I had them, and even teachers trying to help didn't actually understand what it was that I didn't understand--like how reading was supposed to help me solve a problem. (Instead, it led to more questions, which led to more books and more reading, down down down the rabbit hole deeper and deeper, never actually just *Working Problems*.)
He'll struggle. The best thing you can do to help him to understand how to turn reading into active studying. The material isn't the issue, the skill is. You don't need to know precalc.
You need to know how to help him unpack what he's reading, how to do problems, how to note for his teacher where he's stuck, how to self test honestly rather than carelessly. If you can teach him those skills, the rest will solve itself. How do you do the above? Teach him to read the assignment before class, and take notes, especially on the parts he doesn't understand. Teach him to work a problem, even a pre calc problem in a 2 column for, one column with his work, the next with his reasoning. Ask him to ask himself "if you were writing a test on this material, what would you be testing" and design actual problems--and then solve them.
And teach him to ask for help! This is what the bright coasters are most afraid of--finding out they are dumb, afraid others will think they are a fraud. They resist asking for help for fear of others seeing they are a fraud. They think it of themselves, but if they can learn to ask questions, they will gain real mastery in what they know and don't know, what is fraudulent and what is real.
Allison -- you've described the problem well, and I think many many hs and college kids suffer from the same issues. I know I did, as did virtually everyone I knew. Very few of us ever read anything in hs to learn. The lecture covered everything on the test. The teacher told us what to study. It was so easy and never required us to do the hard work of learning on our own.
K-12 education typically teaches kids to be spoon fed learners. The new push for hands-on, real world, creative problem solving has changed non of the underlying dynamics. Kids aren't learning how to read to learn, and they aren't learning how to study.
I love the term bright coaster! That describes perfectly what I was in high school.
However, I think my problem in college was not so much being afraid of appearing dumb but more simply not realizing what kind of help I needed.
In fact, I still don't understand what (let alone how) you are supposed to learn from reading in humanities subjects. Thank goodness for math and science!
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