School rant

[agnes!]

Hey, agnes, I feel your pain.........I had to fight for my son to get into the G/T program at his new school when we moved.............long story, but getting him in only gave him a minimum of something to do there. He still did most of his real learning at home. I taught at school, tutored in after-school programs and then home-schooled in the evenings this year!

BUT, not to make light or anything, but I just can NOT believe that the standards are SOLs and the study programs are POS. Is it just a Texas thing or a Southern thing..........do you understand what WE might use those acronyms for?

Oh yes indeed, I certainly do!

agnes!

 

[golfgal]

This really burns me, we have these bright and talented kids that will some day hold very important positions in our society yet we can't get them a challenging education to maximize their potential. Then we have kids that can't even feed themselves and we spend MILLIONS of dollars educating them. Sorry for those that have special needs kids but it has gotten ridiculus. We spend more money each year educating kids that will never be able to read and write then we do on the brightest kids in the schools. I am not saying that programing should not be available for special needs kids but there needs to be some balancing. Our district spends 3x's as much money/pupil for special needs kids (profoundly mentally/physically handicapped kids) then it does for the general student population.

One district I taught in ended up having to build an entire NEW school because of a battle over the special needs classroom. At the old high school they had a converted wood shop for a room. They wanted to move those kids over to the BRAND NEW middle school into a room that was specifically designed for special needs, had their own bathrooms, handicapped accessible, etc. but they couldn't because the room was 10 square feet smaller then their old room. Federal law mandates that you can't give the special needs programs "LESS" then what they had before so even though the room and the set up was MUCH better, the room was too small?

 

[shortbun]

What happens to the other kids indeed! Your child is lucky to have you as a parent, so lucky. I found myself asking the principal of my son's school, "what about the children who do not have this kind of support?" She gave me a weak smile and put her head down, said "I know." and that was the end of that conversation. At least she agrees and it's obvious her hands are tied. Are you getting ANY of that kind of honesty?

 

[jgmklmhem]

Maybe I am missing something here. Could it be that in all actuality they do not consider one of the older languages appropriate. I assume you mean latin. At my high-school you could take latin as a secondary language but you still had to take one of the modern languages (Spanish, French, or German) to fulfill your foreign language requirements. I some what understood this point becuase other than in limited situations latin or any other old language is not spoken often whereas there was more room for use of the other three in the spoken sense.

 

[AC7179]

Yuck, I hope it works out for you.
So many times the kids suffer because the district is self-serving.

 

[CJMickeyMouse]

We spend more money each year educating kids that will never be able to read and write then we do on the brightest kids in the schools.

I couldn't agree more. Our schools teach to the average kid. But we must meet the needs of the below average. The above average can just fall to average and everything will be fine.

Works great until we end up with nobody who is a leader, nobody who is a manager, nobody who can handle the pressure and nobody who is willing to step up.

Be an advocate for your child... wherever they fall in the spectrum.... because they need you!