Posted on 08/07/2005 9:04:46 AM PDT by nuconvert
Posted on Thu, Aug. 04, 2005
School on Aug. 8? Are they insane?
BY DAVE BARRY
Here's a multiple-choice test:
When should the school year start?
A. Sometime around Sept. 1, when most of the United States of America has started school for many decades.
B. On Aug. 8 -- also known as ''smack dab in the middle of summer'' -- when the average Florida classroom is roughly the same temperature as a pizza oven.
If you answered ''A,'' you are correct. If you answered ''B,'' you are an official of Miami-Dade or Broward public schools. These officials have decided that our children need to start school on Monday, when children from normal places are vacationing with their families, or attending summer camp, or lying on the sofa picking their noses and playing video games, which is what God clearly intended early August to be used for.
Among the children who will be trudging into Miami-Dade schools on Monday is my 5-year-old daughter, who enters kindergarten this year. When my wife told me the date our daughter would start school, my fifth question was: ``Why?''
(My first four questions, in order, were: ''Aug. 8?'' ''Did you say Aug. 8?'' ''You mean, like, the eighth day of AUGUST?'' ``Are they INSANE??'')
I found out that the reason for the extremely early start of the school year is -- as you veteran parents already know -- the FCATs. FCAT is an acronym standing for ``(Very bad word) Comprehensive Assessment Test.''
These are standardized tests that are administered to all public-school students in Florida to confirm the sneaking suspicion among us older people that these kids today are just not as sharp as we were, dadgummit.
The FCATs have come to dominate public education in Florida. At one time, the purpose of the public schools, at least theoretically, was to educate children; now it is to produce higher FCAT scores, by whatever means necessary. If school officials believed that ingesting lizard meat improved FCAT performance, the cafeterias would be serving gecko nuggets.
So what they've been doing is starting school earlier and earlier, to give teachers more time to drill the kids for the FCATs, which are given in February and March.
Last year, school started in the third week in August; this year it's the second week. If this keeps up it's only a matter of time before we're starting the school year around Memorial Day, which means parents will have to go on their family vacations without taking their actual families, keeping in touch with their children by postcard. (''Dear Dylan -- Disney World is great! Wish you were here! How do you like second grade?'') Yes, it would pretty much destroy childhood. But think of the FCAT scores!
Some other ways we might improve our FCAT performance are:
1. Expel students who are expected to do poorly on the FCATs. The school could send the parents of these students a letter that said: ``We're sorry, but we do not believe your child is capable of producing the kind of FCAT scores that we need to maintain our average here at Coral Snail Elementary.''
2. Import students to Florida from places that tend to produce high standardized-test scores, such as Japan.
3. Cheat. Hey, this is Miami-Dade County! If we can't cheat, what's the point of living here?
4. Instead of starting the school year insanely early, give the tests later.
Ha ha! I'm just kidding with that last one, of course. What a crazy idea! But I sure wish we could find a way to avoid the gradual elimination of our children's summers. I suspect many of you parents out there feel the same way.
In fact, that gives me an idea: Why don't we all write letters to our school board members telling them how we feel? We could collect all these letters and put them in a big box, and then, on the day of the next school board meeting, we could throw the box into a Dumpster. Because I seriously doubt that the school board cares what we parents think about this; if it did, it would never have decided to send our kids back to school on Aug. 8.
No, probably all we can do is shut up, pay our taxes and take our kids to school on whatever day works best for FCAT purposes. On Aug. 8, I'll be dropping my daughter off, with her little lunchbox in her little hand. We prefer to pack her lunch; she's allergic to gecko.
new from Dave Barry, Pong
Schools in the Atlanta metro area are also starting this early. When you get behind the rhetoric, the reason seems to be the teachers' unions. To get raises, the teachers have to attend summer classes in the state college system, and the new public-school schedule is designed around the college schedule. It has nothing at all to do with the needs of children.
Hey Dave,
You could try home schooling! I'm starting my new school year Aug 15, but that is only so we can take the entire month of December off.
Florida
Same thing in South Carolina, I think one of the suburban counties around Columbia started around 6 August last year. Although, down there, I don't know if it's for the standardized testing or if they've just always done it that way.
}:-)4
In this area of CA, the northeastern part, in the mountains, the reason given for the early starts are snow days. While there are at least two days worth of closures of schools here every year for snow days, I have yet to see a year when we were shut down for two weeks for snow, so that reason falls flat. MONEY is the real reason, with control thrown in as a close second. Homeschool and push for vouchers.
I don't know why schools don't start the Tuesday after Labor Day and end the Thursday before Memorial Day.
Our school starts up the day after Labor Day, we have a week off for Christmas and for what they call Spring Break, (I call it Easter Break) we have Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Monday off.
While I never understood not starting school on any day other than the Tuesday after Labor Day, I have to disagree with Barry on one point. Why in the world would any parent drag their kids off on vacation in the middle of a hot scorching August?
Excellent!
My nephews, in the Dallas school system, always stared in the middle of August. That will never happen in my family. Summer is for OFF from school. Some private school could probably make a lot of money by advertising that summer is for vacation.
The kids in our county start earlier but still go just 180 days and end up finishing much earlier than surrounding counties. There is currently a push to start Aug 1 and end at Memorial Day. It's a thought.
School starts in Sept. right after Labor Day and ends in June. Period.
We used to start that early, this year we won't start until the 18th due to us being sick and tired of not having summer vacation time and our kids sweltering in the classrooms. The teachers didn't like losing some of those work days one bit.
My son starts tomorrow.
I don't want to hear how the school districts need money when they condone a schedule that almost guarantees that all the classrooms will need extra air conditioning. PG and E should just love the new school year schedules. Also for those schools that still have PE I'm sure that will be a waste of time until the temps go down.
Well, I saw kids in school here last week!
It is nuts!
That's the way it still is here in the Northeast, for the most part. I live on Long Island and grew up here. School has always ended around the 3rd week of June and started right after Labor Day. That's the way it still is. I couldn't imagine it being any other way.
3 cheers for school year schedule sanity in the Northeast!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.