My Single Mom Life

Kat, I know it's the school because of what happened to a friend of mine from childhood. He had moved to Florida in 1984 and when he moved back in 1986 he was not at the level of education he was supposed to be at for 9th grade. In the two years he lived in Florida he really wasn't taught much of anything by the schools like he would have been had he stayed in Pennsylvania.

Here's what I think, and it is a mix of the two, the system and parenting. Not specifically you, or me but the great majority of Americans. There are always exceptions to that. It can also be county or state specific. Our schools do the testiing as well, and you are right in that they spend WAY too much time focusing on that instead of teaching them.

I think I just hear so much about the teachers being crappy that it gets my hair up. The teachers do what they are told (for the most part) or they lose their jobs. The administrators and politicos are so worried (as you stated) about losing federal money that they will do anything they can do keep it. The solution to that is to give the education system back to the states where it belongs and get the federal government out of it.
With some things I tend to agree with you, but in others I have to disagree. All three of my children started out in private school, my son having attended the longest. I loved having them in private school, but it had nothing to do with the education. It was the social environment. There are just things that I don't want my children exposed to. My son attended a Montessori until High School and then attended a pretty decent private school through his sophomore year. He has actually had the opportunity to learn more in the two years that he has been in public school than he would have had the chance to where he was.
I was originally very skeptical about putting them in public school, but it is just something we have to stay on top of every day.
What gets me is when I hear (and I get to listen to the rant almost daily) about kids that skip most of the semester, don't do homework, and spend tests with their heads down on the desk sleeping, and then on the last few days of the semester their parents want makeup work. That is horsecrap. I review my children's grades weekly, as our county has made them accessible to parents via the net and they understand that anything lower than an A or B in any subject affords them the loss of computer or TV time. We tried using rewards, but that doesn't work quite as well unfortunately. They have to apply themselves in order to succeed in school, just like real life. That is what I think the great majority of American parents DON'T teach their kids, that in order to achieve anything, you have to work hard for it. They let the school administrators give them the grades, and it teaches them that doing nothing gets you taken care of. millions of welfare recipients can't be wrong.
Didn't mean for this to turn into a rant. I can be a bit long winded occasionally. I may post a bit more on my blog later.
Thanks for letting me take up space

It's not the teachers who are crappy, it's the requirements on the teachers by the county to get better grades on those damn tests,
It's not about parents being lazy and not teaching our kids. It's about the county forcing our schools to teach them crap for that damn test.

I review my kids grades weekly as well, I'm a very involved parent. That's why when I posted about them not knowing the presidents, i was speaking from experience, from knowing that my kids weren't taught that.
When I and you, went to school, it was different. We were taught all these things, math, science, history etc.
In elementary school, they do teach the basics, but once they reached testing level grades, which is third grade here, the basics sort of disappeared.
It's hard on parents to teach our kids and help with homework if all they are doing is studying for a single test.

The test not only impacts how much money the schools get, but it impacts housing sales. In counties where the schools have low scores, home sales don't do very well.
Almost every single industry here is affected by the FCAT. It's no wonder our students here spend so much time studying for it, they have pressure from their entire county to do well on it.

I think I added the link back to you about the same time you were posting your comment. Sorry about that.

Kat,
It's the same here in Texas. The kids spend the majority of their time drilling for the TAKS test (Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills).
In 3rd grade (1st year of testing), my kids spent 1/2 the day for weeks doing nothing but drilling on how to take a bubble in the answer test. Learning when to guess, when to skip a question, etc. School rankings and teacher pay raises are based on results and real estate values hinge on the school rankings. We have the highest ranked elementary and middle schools in our attendance zone and our houses sell for $20-50k more than similar houses in the next school attendance zone over from us.

It's worse this year in 4th grade, and having graduated one child from this sytem already (who is in first year of college), I can tell you - the kids do not learn to THINK in school. My older son learned more from being on a "Current Events" team that did competitions with other schools up to a State level competition. The "advisor" for that team was a history teacher and he supplied Newsweek, Fortune, Wall Street Journal, Business Week, and USA Today with assigned reading and discussion each week.
I swear he learned more from that than from going to classes.

I believe it's a mix of a lot of things; teachers' ability to teach, those damn tests (here they're called CSAP tests) and the environment in which the children are forced to "learn". I pulled my 14 year old daughter of Middle School this year (she BEGGED me to) in order to homeschool. There was WAY too much time spent on CSAP prep (as you said), and the teachers basically don't take control of their classrooms as they should (which has NOTHING to do with administration's directives) and practice blatant pigeonholing of students in stereotypes based on past behavior, some of it from waaaay back. The teachers are as bad as the kids! Yet they get mad at the students for doing the exact same thing! Oh man, I better not get too wound up. LOL This is a sore subject with me. Basically it boils down to where you live, really. Unfortunately, I live in an area where the school system more or less sucks.

Richard made some valid points, but it was pretty asinine of him to just jump to the conclusion that parents are lazy, and I hope he didn't insinuate that you are.

I have heard a lot about how awful the schools are in places like Mississippi (where we came from) and Alabama, where we are now. But I am glad we don't have something so important as an FCAT here. My 6th grader had to know all the presidents earlier this year for a test. That, at least, I can be confident they are being taught!

He did make valid points, but he also just jumped to conclusions about parents being lazy and uninvolved with their kids.
Richard and I both agree on many of the points, but about the school testing we completely disagree...LOL

I thought this might interest you.
http://dam2.vox.com/library/post/more-about-education-testing-and-discipline.html