evaluating private school

As our first child starts preschool, I also see school looming ahead. I
don't really have the desire to homeschool although I see it as a
positive alternative. I am looking into my arear public schools, but
have concerns about the teach techniques and the learning environment.
I have private school options--Lutheran, non-demonational Christian,
Catholic, and secular.

How did you make this decision and how has it affected your family for
good or bad? How do I make a decision on this issue? I plan to go for
a visit in October after school has gotten underway and visit the
kindergarten classes and the 3rd grade classes.

Karen

In article , Karen G wrote:
As our first child starts preschool, I also see school looming ahead. I
don't really have the desire to homeschool although I see it as a
positive alternative. I am looking into my arear public schools, but
have concerns about the teach techniques and the learning environment.
I have private school options--Lutheran, non-demonational Christian,
Catholic, and secular.

How did you make this decision and how has it affected your family for
good or bad? How do I make a decision on this issue? I plan to go for
a visit in October after school has gotten underway and visit the
kindergarten classes and the 3rd grade classes.

We go through the private/public decision frequently (before K,
halfway through K--when I went on sabbatical to Seattle, before 1,
before 2). So far, we have ended up with public school each time, but
it has gotten real close---I almost put a $1000 down payment on the
nearby private school when it looked like they might close the public
school my son goes to---if the down payment hadn't committed me to a
full year's tuition, I probably would have paid it, just to keep the
option open until the vote on the parcel tax was over (it passed by
125 votes, so the public schools are going to stay open in Santa
Cruz).

What are some of the key factors in the decision? Our son is several
years ahead of his peers in reading and one or two in math, but
average or slightly lower in physical activities. We wanted a school
that would keep him challenged and engaged, but not be too stressful.

Public school pluses:
1) wide range of kids from different social classes
2) classes in Spanish as a second language
3) big library with professional librarian
4) easy walking/biking distance
5) cheap
6) strong parental and community involvement
7) fairly good playground
8) speech therapy available

Private school pluses:
1) kids grouped by ability, not age, for reading and math
2) smaller class sizes
3) more advanced curriculum, particularly in science
4) easy walking/biking distance
5) strong parental involvement

The big library, while nice, was not a deciding factor, as there is
alos an excellent children's section at the public library, only about
a mile away (and our son will soon be reading stuff beyond what the
elementary school library stocks). The free speech therapy has also
bee useful, but we could have paid for private therapy, as the
half-hour a week would not be that expensive.

What turned out to be the deciding factor for us was the bilingual
program at the public school. By having our son take Spanish literacy
with the Spanish-speaking children (rather than English literacy), he
got about 2 hours a day of instruction in Spanish, in an environment
with about 20 native speakers of Spanish---something we could NOT
provide at home, especially as neither my wife nor I have much
Spanish.

We will undoubtedly revisit our decision each year, particularly as
the public-school bilingual program transitions from Spanish literacy
instruction to English literacy instruction.


--
Kevin Karplus http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/~karplus
life member (LAB, Adventure Cycling, American Youth Hostels)
Effective Cycling Instructor #218-ck (lapsed)
Professor of Computer Engineering, University of California, Santa Cruz
Undergraduate and Graduate Director, Bioinformatics
Affiliations for identification only.

In article ,
Karen G wrote:

As our first child starts preschool, I also see school looming ahead. I
don't really have the desire to homeschool although I see it as a
positive alternative. I am looking into my arear public schools, but
have concerns about the teach techniques and the learning environment.
I have private school options--Lutheran, non-demonational Christian,
Catholic, and secular.

How did you make this decision and how has it affected your family for
good or bad? How do I make a decision on this issue? I plan to go for
a visit in October after school has gotten underway and visit the
kindergarten classes and the 3rd grade classes.

Karen


If i had it to do over again, the one thing I would do is look for a
school -- public or private, it wouldn't matter -- that assigned NO
homework before at least 4th grade. I know now that they do exist.

meh
--
Children won't care how much you know until they know how much you care

In article
,
dragonlady wrote:
If i had it to do over again, the one thing I would do is look for a
school -- public or private, it wouldn't matter -- that assigned NO
homework before at least 4th grade. I know now that they do exist.

Why do you object to homework?

My son had weekly homework in first grade (assigned Monday, due
Friday) and it was overall a good thing. He enjoyed doing some of it
(generally the math, which took 1-2 minutes, and the drawing, which
took about 5 minutes) and disliked some of it (generally the writing,
which took about 5 minutes when he was in a good mood), but it helped
establish links between what he did at home and what he did at school.
It also helped us, as parents, see what the school was expecting of
the kids and what tasks were easy for him and what tasks were hard.

The amount of work (less than half an hour a week) was not a big
burden on him or us supervising him. I imagine that some of the kids
took longer to do the work, but I don't think any spent more than an
hour a week on it.

I expect the amount of homework to increase over the next few years,
and for him to have daily homework by 4th grade.


--
Kevin Karplus http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/~karplus
life member (LAB, Adventure Cycling, American Youth Hostels)
Effective Cycling Instructor #218-ck (lapsed)
Professor of Computer Engineering, University of California, Santa Cruz
Undergraduate and Graduate Director, Bioinformatics
Affiliations for identification only.

wrote:

If i had it to do over again, the one thing I would do is look for a
school -- public or private, it wouldn't matter -- that assigned NO
homework before at least 4th grade. I know now that they do exist.

Or at least takes the sensible attitude that homework is for mastery and if the
child has mastered the material to the parent's satisfaction, the parent can
sign off on the arithmetic drill or whatever. That's what our school does, and
we have not found the homework level at all burdensome.

I'd also look for one where the early grades were taught in a developmentally
appropriate way, with lots of open-ended, hands-on activities, and not having
the kids do lots of worksheets. I observed one kindergarten class where every
child was supposed to listen to the teacher and color a bit of the worksheet
when the teacher said so, and the teacher said they were to color Abe Lincoln's
cabin brown because this was "before paint was invented." This offended me on
so many levels I don't even want to count them.

--Helen

In article ,
(Kevin Karplus) wrote:

In article
,
dragonlady wrote:
If i had it to do over again, the one thing I would do is look for a
school -- public or private, it wouldn't matter -- that assigned NO
homework before at least 4th grade. I know now that they do exist.

Why do you object to homework?

My son had weekly homework in first grade (assigned Monday, due
Friday) and it was overall a good thing. He enjoyed doing some of it
(generally the math, which took 1-2 minutes, and the drawing, which
took about 5 minutes) and disliked some of it (generally the writing,
which took about 5 minutes when he was in a good mood), but it helped
establish links between what he did at home and what he did at school.
It also helped us, as parents, see what the school was expecting of
the kids and what tasks were easy for him and what tasks were hard.

The amount of work (less than half an hour a week) was not a big
burden on him or us supervising him. I imagine that some of the kids
took longer to do the work, but I don't think any spent more than an
hour a week on it.

I expect the amount of homework to increase over the next few years,
and for him to have daily homework by 4th grade.

Our school's policy was 10 minutes per night per grade, and if a child
had a hard time with it it could take considerably longer.

My daughter didn't object until 2nd grade, and then it sometimes took
hours -- a long time to do it, but even longer because she fought doing
it so hard. It turned our evenings into a constant battle ground.
There is no evidence that homework does any real good until at least 4th
or 5th grade (no, I'm not going to produce the citations -- but there
have been studies) and for at least some percentage of kids, it is just
a horrid experience.

Plus, I think kids should be free to learn in some of the other ways
kids learn -- like by free play and running around -- and if very much
time is spent on homework, they lose time for that.

There are other ways to establish the school/home link, and you can look
at what they do in school to learn about that.

The only thing early homework seemed to do for my kids was set homework
up as a thing to be avoided and fought.

meh
--
Children won't care how much you know until they know how much you care

Kevin Karplus wrote:

In article
,
dragonlady wrote:
If i had it to do over again, the one thing I would do is look for a
school -- public or private, it wouldn't matter -- that assigned NO
homework before at least 4th grade. I know now that they do exist.

Why do you object to homework?


I object to homework in the early grades because in both my children's
cases, it cut into family time and was often boring, repetetive and had
no point. The final straw for me was an assignment where my daughter had
to solve 52 arthmetic problems, look up a code assigned to each answer,
and graph the alpha code onto a grid which eventually made apicture of
Abraham Lincoln. She was give one night to do this and had other
homework as well. Aftre that, I informed her teacher that she would be
doing one hour of homework a night- period.

Marion Baumgarten

"Kevin Karplus" wrote in message
...

What turned out to be the deciding factor for us was the bilingual
program at the public school. By having our son take Spanish literacy
with the Spanish-speaking children (rather than English literacy), he
got about 2 hours a day of instruction in Spanish, in an environment
with about 20 native speakers of Spanish---something we could NOT
provide at home, especially as neither my wife nor I have much
Spanish.

This is the only plus the private school my daughters attended for second
grade had.

--
sharon, momma to savannah and willow (11/11/94)

"Scott Lindstrom" wrote in message
...

We also have the choice of a private school that is
not affiliated with anything religious. But from what
I've heard, the kids there are tested to within an inch
of their sanity. IOW, it's very very high pressure.

This is a good description of the private school my daughters attended.

They mistake lots of homework for academic prep.

--
sharon, momma to savannah and willow (11/11/94)

"Kevin Karplus" wrote in message
...
In article
,
dragonlady wrote:
If i had it to do over again, the one thing I would do is look for a
school -- public or private, it wouldn't matter -- that assigned NO
homework before at least 4th grade. I know now that they do exist.

Why do you object to homework?

I object becaue there is no demonstrable benefit before about fourth grade
and because some schools falsely equate lots of hoomework with
academic/college prep.

My son had weekly homework in first grade (assigned Monday, due
Friday) and it was overall a good thing. He enjoyed doing some of it
(generally the math, which took 1-2 minutes, and the drawing, which
took about 5 minutes) and disliked some of it (generally the writing,
which took about 5 minutes when he was in a good mood), but it helped
establish links between what he did at home and what he did at school.
It also helped us, as parents, see what the school was expecting of
the kids and what tasks were easy for him and what tasks were hard.

The amount of work (less than half an hour a week) was not a big
burden on him or us supervising him. I imagine that some of the kids
took longer to do the work, but I don't think any spent more than an
hour a week on it.

I expect the amount of homework to increase over the next few years,
and for him to have daily homework by 4th grade.

During the first week of third grade, my daughters got between 2-3 hours of
homework every night. They had just changed schools are were also the
youngest in the class. So I red-shirted them and they repeated second grade
despite having successfully completed it at their old school. In second,
they usually got ~ 1 hour of homework every damn night.

--
sharon, momma to savannah and willow (11/11/94)