Comments

I'm speechless! So much for "true" teacher-parent communication.

-- CarolynMorgan - 13 Jun 2005

My favorite is the parent-child-teacher conference.

Talk about triangulation.

-- CatherineJohnson - 13 Jun 2005

Mr. and Mrs. Fudd is about the size of it.

-- CatherineJohnson - 13 Jun 2005

I went to an open house at our school and attended a session about the MathLand program that they were using in grades 1-4. We parents sat in little kids chairs (I really hate that) and the first grade teacher told us, using her first grade teacher voice, the wonders of MathLand and not to believe any of the propoganda at sites like www.mathematicallycorrect.com. They just want things to be like when they were growing up. Things are different now. I wanted to ask them why they were using a math program that was so bad that even its own publisher dropped it and doesn't even say a word about it on their web site.

One parent asked why they were having their third grader explain why 5 + 5 = 10. Another wanted to know what the point was for having the kids come up with a "number sentence" that equals 25. For example: 5+5+20-5=25. This is a school that is finally forcing the kids to master their adds and subtracts to 20 by the middle of third grade.

How can a parent change these ideas and low expectations? They can't. They put their kids into private school or make up the difference at home or with a tutor. Who gets hurt? The kids who don't get what they need at home.

-- KtmGuest - 13 Jun 2005

We parents sat in little kids chairs (I really hate that)

A special ed parent told me she once went to a CSE meeting where the head of special ed was going to sit in a big chair, while the parents were supposed to sit in the children's chairs.

She refused.

-- CatherineJohnson - 13 Jun 2005

Private school is probably not the answer, at least according to another commenter here (when I find the thread again, I'll pull the comment up front.)

We ourselves know parents whose children attend one of the most expensive, most elite private schools in the nation, and guess what?

No math facts.

They had to pay to have her tutored for a year (I think it was an entire year of tutoring).

As far as I can tell--and I could be wrong, but this is my impression at the moment--the options are:

• tutoring (and I have some doubts about a lot of the tutoring I've seen)
• homeschooling-on-the-side
• Kumon

The other commercial learning centers may be great, too. I mention Kumon only because I know more about it than I do Huntington and the others.

As to Huntington, I can say that a friend discovered that her 14 year old son was doing math at the 3rd grade level. (This boy has some learning problems; it's not an issue of poor curricula or fuzzy math.)

He has been attending Huntington, and is apparently making up lost ground pretty quickly.

-- CatherineJohnson - 13 Jun 2005

When I say I have 'doubts' about the tutoring I've seen, what I mean is that I've seen quite a lot of what Carolyn calls ReactiveTeaching. The tutor is always trying to fill in the gaps, rather than teaching the child a coherent curriculum in the first place. (See the article on coherent curriculum in mathematics at the bottom of this link.)

-- CatherineJohnson - 13 Jun 2005

I find it particularly egregious that your school should warn you away from mathematicallycorrect.

-- CatherineJohnson - 13 Jun 2005

I am the other commenter. I'm sorry. I probably should register.

Choice is better than no choice (for all, not just the affluent). However, you have to be careful about your choices. We felt that the public schools set such low expectations and used such a poor curriculum, that we had no choice but to look at private schools. The question was whether we could make up the difference at home. We saw the gap by sixth grade as being so great that the answer was no. He would be doing very little learning at school in spite of their claims of "differentiated learning". We felt that only with a great effort (in the evening, taking time away from other areas of interest) could we make up the difference. However, now that our son is in private school, with its own plusses and minuses, we see more details and are reevaluating our decision.

Charter schools - In our state, you have to have a pretty different charter idea to get it past the state education authorities. (More than a little conflict of interest here!) Some of these schools are fuzzier than the public schools and some incorporate "un-schooling" ideas. Not for my son, thank you. If you want to start a charter school that sets high standards and requires mastery of content and skills year-by-year, forget it. Some charter schools are technical schools that try to inspire kids with a more real-world curriculum. This is fine, but you have to be careful that the end result of this path is a job as an engineer rather than a technician.

Tutoring - This is better than nothing, but you have to be careful about not wasting your child's time and making things worse. It's expensive, but then again, look at the cost of private schools.

Private schools - When we looked at private schools (K-8 private schools are booming), we found that it was hard to get details. I asked about the math program at one very elite school, and they said that they used Everyday Math. Maybe I raised my eyebrows a little bit and she quickly added that it was supplemented. I really wanted to ask her why they didn't pick out a math program that didn't need supplementing. (How do you question the curriculum of a school that thinks quite highly of itself?) The school is known for giving out a lot of homework and I imagined that it could end up being a lot of busywork. I didn't want my son to become a homework robot. I just want a good, basic education.

I have also noticed that no school, public or private, goes out of their way to tell you exactly what they are teaching - books, workbooks, methods, homework, and tests. Having taught college math and computer science (long ago), I would like to see a yearly syllabus for each course. They usually just provide some vague description of philosophy and courses that sound so wonderful, but then you see the stuff that the kids bring home. For younger kids, it's very difficult to get a straight answer. "You did what(!) today?" Another movie? Boy, I would love to be a fly on the wall.

The biggest downsides to private school are the huge cost and the fact that I don't think some of them are much better than the public school I went to long ago. (Speaking of math, what is the future value of 8 years of private school payments at a presumed 10 percent in an S&P 500 fund when the child turns 60. I figured this out and you really don't want to know.) The biggest downsides to public school are the low expectations and the parental help or tutoring that must be added.

Another downside of private school was mentioned to me by my son's private (sorry, independent) school teacher. She said: "Once an independent school kid, always an independent school kid." This private school ends at eighth grade and at graduation (which I just went to - all kids go to the eighth grade graduation) they make a big deal about which school each child will be attending for high school. Only one was going back to a public high school. If your high school has a good honors or AP track, then I can make a pretty good argument that the difference between public and private high school is very minimal. If you are using private school to properly prepare your child to get to this track, then the implication is that it's extremely difficult to go back. Perhaps, until you look at the $20,000 - $30,000 price tag.

I can see why home schooling is now so popular. Does anyone know about small group home schooling where several parents and their kids combine their efforts and talents? One parent might handle math, one might handle music, and so forth. There would also be a larger social group than just the family.

-- KtmGuest - 13 Jun 2005

Fantastic comment--I'm going to pull it up front.

But for now, I have a couple of questions:

I didn't quite get why it's hard to go back to the public schools in high school--

Also, I would like to know the figure you arrived at when you figured the financial opportunity costs for private school.

We felt that only with a great effort (in the evening, taking time away from other areas of interest) could we make up the difference.

This is a huge issue.

If Christopher hadn't fallen so far behind in math, I would have had him working seriously on a foreign language (we had chosen Chinese--dream on.)

Instead, we're working on math & spelling.

-- CatherineJohnson - 13 Jun 2005

btw, I think you can register with a nickname -- yes?

Carolyn is the webmaster, so I have no idea (sorry--)

-- CatherineJohnson - 13 Jun 2005

Yes, I think I'll put up a post about this.

-- CarolynJohnston - 13 Jun 2005

You might just want to edit the post you already have -- you know, say something like 'register anonymously as KtmGuest^? or as GiveExample^?.'

-- CatherineJohnson - 13 Jun 2005

"I didn't quite get why it's hard to go back to the public schools in high school-- "

Psychological, I guess. I didn't believe the effect then, but I can see it now. If the parents say "Sorry, we just don't have the money and you have to go to public school." then there is no argument. But if all of the other kids are going off to the fancy prep schools, the child will not be happy. Generally speaking, however, most parents who make the change to private school do so with the realization that they will pay for private high school. The kids expect this.

"Also, I would like to know the figure you arrived at when you figured the financial opportunity costs for private school."

Some might be able to whip out their TI business calculators and figure this out quickly, but I never do it often enough. I will have to dig out my formulas for time value of money. The key variable is time. If you look at tucking away this money for when the kids retire at 60, then the amount is in the millions.

I once wrote a program that allowed parents to figure out how much to save monthly or yearly to save for little Johnnie and Suzie to go to college. There were assumptions about the investment rate and the inflation rate of school costs. It used an iterative approach to solve the problem so that the money in the investment account went to zero at the end of college. Afterwards, I realized that it was a useless program because the answer was simple. You can't save enough money.

-- SteveH - 13 Jun 2005

Some might be able to whip out their TI business calculators and figure this out quickly, but I never do it often enough. I will have to dig out my formulas for time value of money. The key variable is time. If you look at tucking away this money for when the kids retire at 60, then the amount is in the millions.

There are online calculators that do this; I've done it for all kinds of things.

In fact, I'm going to go do it right now.

-- CatherineJohnson - 13 Jun 2005

Afterwards, I realized that it was a useless program because the answer was simple. You can't save enough money.

LOL

no kidding

-- CatherineJohnson - 13 Jun 2005

OK, I just used an online calculator the SEC links to.

$26,000 per year (current cost of local private school) 12 years 5% annual yield 3% inflation

comes to an inflation-adjusted balance of:

$370,199.76

-- CatherineJohnson - 13 Jun 2005

Let me put it this way.

For $26,000 a year they're gonna have to tell me more than, 'Your son is in the 5th grade, not you.'

-- CatherineJohnson - 13 Jun 2005

I got soured on private schools early. When my son started to show evidence that he was, er, different, his private school gave up on him and let him wither until I pulled him out.

Public schools can't give up on your kid. It's illegal.

-- CarolynJohnston - 13 Jun 2005

LOL!

-- CatherineJohnson - 13 Jun 2005