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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 |
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evaluating private school
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. |
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evaluating private school
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 |
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evaluating private school
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. |
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evaluating private school
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evaluating private school
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evaluating private school
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 |
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evaluating private school
"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) |
#9
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evaluating private school
"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) |
#10
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evaluating private school
"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) |
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