We have been taught that public education is what we need to invest in. My youngest graduated from high school yesterday. Comparing her public school education and the years we went to the local charter school, I must admit I don’t agree.
Rating Our Public High School
The way schools are rated are by the test scores of their students. My daughter’s calculus class this year spent weeks preparing for the AP exam. They didn’t learn anything new, they learned how to take a test. This is not unusual.
While I hope the scores our high school aren’t typical, I’m afraid they are. And this is the stuff they’re pushing at the students. Our high school has a rating of 3 out of 10. There are three tests they take during high school — two must be passed or they cannot graduate. Biology I at this time isn’t required, but there is talk it will be in the next few years. The high school’s current ratings are:
- English — 69% (Indiana state average is 79%.)
- Biology I — 24% (Indiana state average is 44%.)
- Algebra I — 54% (Indiana state average is 70%.)
The percentages for the state are bad. Our city schools are worse.
Of course, in our town of approximately 31,000 people, only 16.5% have a Bachelors Degree or higher. That’s about 5,100 people. Of these 5,100 only 17.7% have the required Masters Degrees to teach at the public schools. I’ve met these people. I don’t think a Masters Degree is enough. I think they need to prove they can teach as well and they need to be reevaluated regularly. Some of these people have no place in a classroom where they are influencing our children.
Educational Experiences
Both of my daughters frequently told me how class time at the public high school was spent watching television shows and movies. While I can understand using an episode of Mythbusters to emphasize a point in a science class or an anime movie in Japanese to get familiar with the language, I can’t understand why they watched multiple episodes of House or other drama television that are not “fact-based”.
I’m not saying all of the classes are like this. In fact, my youngest has been extremely challenged and missed being a “student of distinction” by .02 pts. (She had 3.78 of the 3.8 needed.) Her classes this year included Calculus AP, Spanish 4 (dual credit), Japanese 3 and English AP.
I pulled my daughters out of public school when my oldest was getting ready to go into middle school. We had the middle school PTA visit us. We were told our children needed to “travel in packs” to lessen the chance of “getting jumped.” An older sister of one of my Brownie Girl Scouts was jumped and her clothes shredded by another girl. She was in the bathroom when she was pulled by the staff into the principal’s office so she could be suspended for fighting . . . and she was the victim. I talked to teachers at the middle school. They were AFRAID to go into the halls during passing periods. How can anyone learn in that type of environment?
The charter school did wonders for my children, especially my youngest. In eighth grade (the highest grade the charter school offers), she was the second highest rated student in Math in our town. The one who beat her was also at the charter school. She passed the tests required to graduate high school in eighth grade . . . her councelor pointed out he had never seen such a high math score on the test.
I wish I had pulled them out sooner. My oldest REFUSED to do the math assignments in fifth grade. When I asked why her grade was so low, her reply was “I did this math in third grade. I did this math in fourth grade. It is not my fault the others didn’t learn it and they want me to do it again in fifth grade. I’m not doing it again. I already learned it.” Of course, in fourth grade at the same public school, my daughter had to explain to the teacher why the science experiment they were doing worked. The teacher didn’t know.
These are just a few of the things that have happened during my children’s education at public schools. I’ve heard worse stories. I’ve seen deplorable behavior on the parents’ part as well. The charter school taught my kids that they needed to push themselves. No one was going to do the work for them.
However, our choices when the charter school ended were limited. We visited the local parochial school and college preparatory school in addition to the public high school. The college preparatory school had set classes everyone had to take. Girls were required to wear skirts and most of the classes opened to the outdoors. They were only allowed to wear pants when the temperatures went into the negative numbers. At the parochial school, we watched a presentation in one of the classrooms where the teacher couldn’t spell or use proper grammar. My daughter spent the entire time explaining what was wrong with each slide of his PowerPoint presentation. Looking at the high school, it wasn’t ideal, but the other schools weren’t really that much better.
Loss of Confidence
If our schools can’t teach the things they’re SUPPOSED to teach to our kids, how can our kids have any hope to get a good job when they get out of school? If they’ve not been exposed to anything outside the school environment, how will they know the possibilities that exist for them? They are being taught what is necessary to enter an industrial work force. The problem is, we’ve left the industrial age and moved into the communication age. Our education system is still teaching things that can be googled instead of skills they need to use today’s technology to succeed.
So what confidence do I have in my schools and the public education? Very little. There are teachers that excel at what they do, but they can’t make up for a bad environment and general apathy I’ve found with many of the teachers.
Offering an Alternative
I help where I can to give girls a different view of the world. By running programs for girls, by training other adults and by starting the Enrichment Project, I’m trying to show there are alternatives. There are possibilities. Even if I can reach only one person, all my efforts are still worth it.
Reference
www.greatschools.org/indiana/michigan-city/1087-Michigan-City-High-School
www.towncharts.com/Indiana/Education/Michigan-City-city-IN-Education-data.html
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