they know we know they know

I think that may be at the heart of it

-- CatherineJohnson - 19 Nov 2006

You guys should all go start Yahoo listservs.

Just do it.

You don't need to be political or critical or any of that stuff - just have your conversations in plain view.

The politics will follow naturally, when it's time.

-- CatherineJohnson - 18 Nov 2006

Every town needs an on-line parent group.

absolutely, and I think everyone should just go ahead and start setting them up

setting up the listserv here was pretty fraught for me, because Ed and I are embroiled in politics.....

....there may be ZERO parents in U.S. who would willingly be as publicly critical of their school district as we've been. I still can't quite believe it myself, and I think our situation just kind of evolved from the unique set of cirumstances we have (two autistic kids, years in special ed, a husband in academia, writer wife, age, etc....)

so it was nervewracking setting up the listserv & hoping people would actually join....

we're up to around 50 members now - not too many duplicates, I don't think, and just a couple of non-Irvington members, including one or two reporters

plus the posts are obviously being forwarded all over creation

(I'm going nuts today, actually, because two people asked me to add them to the list, and I can't get YAHOO to do it.)

Meanwhile I'm probably spamming them with "Add New Member" notices.

gorrr

He said that another parent documented that the high school math teachers think the kids from our town have a poor math preparation.

It's AMAZING the amount of information parents have in the aggregate.

The whole "wisdom of the crowd" business is absolutely true.

Districts maintain power by restricting insofar as possible the number of opportunities for horizontal peer-to-peer conversations.

Actually, it's more subtle than that.

Remember when the Math Chair told me I "couldn't speak" for other parents because anything I said was "hearsay?"

That's how it works.

As long as all the peer-to-peer conversations are taking place at the supermarket or the soccer field, they don't "count."

They're gossip; they're private; you can't tell an administrator who said what; etc.

As a result, every problem a child or parent has can be handled as a "private" problem, a difficulty pertaining to that child and family alone.

The really subversive feature of an open listserv is that the administration can see that we know they know that we know that other people have had the same difficulties and hold the same views.

Amazingly enough, this effect probably works even when a listserv is still small.

No one on the Irvington list serv, at this point, is chiming in about their child's bad experience in math.

But no one actually needs to chime in - that's the weird thing.

Anyone can read the posts, which means the administration has to assume anyone is reading the posts. The posts stay put; they don't disappear once the conversation is over.

They can be found on the website; they can be forwarded around from parent to parent etc.

If one person publicly criticizes TRAILBLAZERS & nobody chimes in to say, "Gee, I love TRAILBLAZERS," a point is made in a way it can't be made in an Email to the Board.

It's quite interesting, and I didn't foresee this.

The very fact of a school district Forum existing completely alters the dynamics of communication and power.

-- CatherineJohnson - 18 Nov 2006

"All school districts need Yahoo listservs."

Every town needs an on-line parent group. Soccer games work well, but the season doesn't last long. There is also the local supermarket. That's a great place in our small town, but there is not enough time.

Last night I talked with a parent at the market whose kids are now in high school. I learned that the reason we only have CMP+algebra lite for everyone in 8th grade is because of one 8th grade math teacher. He was the one claimed ignorance of the "Math Wars" a few years ago when I talked with him. They just want to force their opinions of education on everyone else.

The father I talked to says that they put their son into a private school over the math issue. Now he is back in the public high school and is happy with honors track. He said that another parent documented that the high school math teachers think the kids from our town have a poor math preparation. (Our kids go to the next town for high school.) Our lower schools claim that our kids "hold their own".

Parents need to organize and talk. The PTO/PTA just doesn't do it. In fact, they suppress discussion. Schools complain about pushy, aggressive parents, but I find that most parents are very timid.

-- SteveH - 15 Nov 2006

Regarding the above, I think at some point it registered with me that this was invisible tracking. We probably first learned about it by talking to other parents at soccer games. I'll tell you, I don't know what we have done without the soccer parent network.

ditto

All school districts need Yahoo listservs.

Ours is still quite small and already the amount of knowledge I've gleaned from it is huge.

Parents HAVE to have a way to talk to teach other.

Schools don't tell parents what they're doing if they don't have to.

That's just the way it is.

What schools do and don't do is Top Secret!

-- CatherineJohnson - 14 Nov 2006

I think Christopher was tracked out of calculus at the end of 2nd grade.

Nobody told the parents.

Nobody tells us how they're going to be tracking them for the rest of their Irvington careers, either.

-- CatherineJohnson - 14 Nov 2006

All of the rules have to be written down on ppaer where parents can see them.

In special ed, that's law.

-- CatherineJohnson - 13 Nov 2006

Our school does a sort of tracking in fifth grade. Kids can test into enrichment math and language programs. (This is in addition to the program for the gifted, which is extremely hard to get into.) Not everyone can take the test. You have to be selected by the school.

Then, there is a "resource room" for slow learners in math and language. So, the really fast learners and the really slow learners are have their own classes.

Kids take algebra in seventh grade, eighth or ninth grades, depending on ability.

Although this all sounds sensible to me, I am concerned that the school does not explain the rules to parents. I'm guessing that getting into the enrichment program determines when the child will take algebra and whether the child will take calculus in 12th grade.

-- RobynW - 13 Nov 2006

Regarding the above, I think at some point it registered with me that this was invisible tracking. We probably first learned about it by talking to other parents at soccer games. I'll tell you, I don't know what we have done without the soccer parent network. However, KTM has really raised my awareness level about the potential problems in this approach.

I still consider the friends who told us about KUMON as a godsend. I now tell everyone who will listen about its benefits.

-- KarenA - 12 Nov 2006

Our middle school "tracks" as well with regards to both math and a foreign language. Previously, if you were on the fast track, you would be in an Advanced Topics Math class in 7th grade and Algebra in 8th grade. The kids who take Algebra in 8th grade are on track to take Honors Geometry in 9th grade. I believe that to take Honors Biology in 9th grade, you also have to be enrolled in or have taken Honors Geometry (it used to be that way; it may have changed). This track puts kids on the "Royal Road to Calculus" by senior year, if they so choose. Some of the kids instead choose to take AP Statistics. Some kids take both classes.

This "tracking" has never been particularly well-publicized. There are, I am sure, many parents who don't know that it is happening.

My understanding is that the faster track better prepares the students for the ACT, which many of them take at the end of their junior year.

However, just this year, our middle school started an even more aggressive approach to math. It is now possible to take Algebra in 7th grade and Honors Geometry in 8th grade.

Our high school offers a significant number of AP and Honors level courses, which is good, for the most part. However, having gone through the experience with one child, I would offer the caution that it is essential that parents understand that there is an appropriate balance.

That is, the kids are still in high school; many of them are also actively involved in extra-curricular activities as well.

-- KarenA - 12 Nov 2006

In our public schools, all they offer in 8th grade is CMP with a little bit of algebra. It's the other side of tracking - no tracking - no chance for anyone to stay on the AP Calculus track without outside help. Our schools did a (self)study that "proved" everything was fine. "Our kids hold their own", even though the next town over offers an Advanced Algebra course in 8th grade. (They must be pretty bad.) Our schools send our happy (ignorant) kids with high self-esteem off to high school for a big dose of reality.

-- SteveH - 12 Nov 2006

"She has warned me that I might have to ‘prove that Ben is ready’"

They decide on your child's future without telling you, and then they want to prove they are wrong, EVEN THOUGH it's your child that will have to do the work!?!

The arrogance is palpable.

-- SteveH - 12 Nov 2006

Which isn't really the same thing.

-- CatherineJohnson - 11 Nov 2006

I'm not demure.

Although I am occasionally tongue-tied and mortified.

-- CatherineJohnson - 11 Nov 2006

You're demure!

You ARE!

-- CatherineJohnson - 11 Nov 2006

the bit about being a grasping ambitious stage mother was exaggeration.

I actually think of myself as rather demure...

-- CarolynJohnston - 11 Nov 2006

It's unjust.

To put it mildly.

-- CatherineJohnson - 11 Nov 2006

Seriously, though...

I've mentioned this before.

The "Ben situations" make me crazy.

My own school pretty much rules out the idea that any kid has a special talent.....but if you're "classified," that's it.

A "classified" kid can't have a talent.

-- CatherineJohnson - 11 Nov 2006

When did they decide Ben wasn’t a ‘phase 4 kid’, and forget to tell me about it? And when will they tell all these other parents, who didn’t know to ask, that their kids were deliberately left off of the fast track way back when?

hey!

that's my question!

-- CatherineJohnson - 11 Nov 2006

nothing to do with the fact that I am a grasping, ambitious stage mother

oh come on

-- CatherineJohnson - 11 Nov 2006

the very definition of Hell

gorrrr

-- CatherineJohnson - 11 Nov 2006

And when will they tell all these other parents, who didn't know to ask, that their kids were deliberately left off of the fast track way back when?

It is my own opinion that they aren't going to tell parents anything. It feels as though the fast track begins in kindergarten. You are either in the loop or you aren't.

-- PaulaV - 11 Nov 2006

invisible tracking

Ben is having a difficult year, socially (it’s 7th grade for him, which I think is the very definition of Hell, although I can’t tell him that). However, he’s having the best year he’s had in a long time, math-wise.

He’s taking Math 2, from Prentice-Hall’s traditional middle school Math Course 2 book, the middle book of a series of 3. Last year, our middle school adopted constructivist Connected Math as a curriculum, along with the traditional Prentice-Hall series it had before, so the teachers use both; but which curriculum is emphasized is completely up to the teacher. Last year we had a Connected-Math-heavy teacher, and I took him out of the class and had him do Saxon for the year. He did well, but was very unhappy about feeling different from the other kids. So this year he’s in the regular (not accelerated) Course 2 class, with a teacher whose approach to teaching math is Prentice-Hall major, Connected Math minor. He is happy to be with all the other kids, and math is his most effortless class; he needs no afterschooling whatsoever. He is quite unchallenged, actually, since the course requires almost no work from him; but his confidence, at least, is recovered from any beatings it might have taken in the past.

His teacher has been raving to me about how well he is doing, so last week, at our parent-teacher conference, I asked her what his natural trajectory into high school would be.

“Well,” she said, “it would look like this”:

• 8th: math 3
• 9th: algebra 1
• 10th: geometry
• 11th: algebra 2
• 12th: precalculus

“But I want him to take calculus as a senior in high school,” I said.

“He’ll take pre-calc in order to be ready to take calculus as a freshman in college,” she said.

“He can easily handle calculus in high school,” I said. “This just isn’t acceptable. Noone told me that he was being tracked out of taking calculus in high school. Look at this agenda: math 2 and math 3 are just very slow and easy prealgebra classes. Pre-calc is all covered in the previous 3 classes, with the exception of a little trigonometry possibly. He’s coasting with what he’s doing now. It’s moving too slowly.”

“Well, I can’t tell you what to do. You’ll have to talk to the school counselors if you want to do anything special, or accelerate him.”

So that’s what I am doing now. I talked to his very obliging special ed coordinator, who suggested that we might consider moving Ben into algebra 1 next year. There are good reasons to do it that have nothing to do with the fact that I am a grasping, ambitious stage mother; it’s been proven, over and over, that Ben does best in structured, traditional math classes, and the 8th grade Math 3 course is a Connected Math class (whereas algebra 1 is utterly traditional). She has warned me that I might have to ‘prove that Ben is ready’ – so I am about to launch a shot over the bow, indicating to the principal and anyone else who cares that I want Ben to take algebra next year, and if they want to push back, they had better start now.

God knows how early these decisions are made. When did they decide Ben wasn’t a ‘phase 4 kid’, and forget to tell me about it? And when will they tell all these other parents, who didn’t know to ask, that their kids were deliberately left off of the fast track way back when?

-- CarolynJohnston - 11 Nov 2006

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