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School on Aug. 8 ? Are they insane? (Dave Barry)
Maimi Herald ^ | Aug. 04, 2005 | DAVE BARRY

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.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Political Humor/Cartoons
KEYWORDS: barry; davebarry; fcat; pspl; school
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To: darkangel82; Truthsearcher
Ok, fine. Let's just cut out summer break all together and make kids hate school even more than they do already. Happy now?

lol...yeah, that'll do fine.

101 posted on 08/07/2005 7:59:33 PM PDT by Future Snake Eater (The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.)
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To: WV Mountain Mama

There is no such thing as "year-round school." It's 180 days regardless of when it starts and ends.


102 posted on 08/07/2005 8:01:35 PM PDT by SALChamps03
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To: Sonny M
This early start date is because the teachers are INCOMPETENT to teach children. It is also done by the only union of significance in FL to try and anger mom and dad.

Bingo, you hit that nail on the head with a jack hammer.

Sounds more like an opinion void of any documented facts to me.

103 posted on 08/07/2005 8:03:41 PM PDT by SALChamps03
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To: nothingnew
Your gubbmint skools keeping their noses out of homeschoolers business.

Oh of course, nobody would ever dare claim to homeschool when all they were actually doing is letting the child watch TV all day. Nope, couldn't happen.

104 posted on 08/07/2005 8:09:13 PM PDT by SALChamps03
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To: garyhope
I'm not convinced that kids need 12 years of school either.

They need 12 years because it takes the unionized government-run school systems that long to teach them to read and write rudimentary sentences and how to multiply with a calculator.

105 posted on 08/07/2005 8:20:14 PM PDT by mvpel (Michael Pelletier)
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To: SALChamps03
Sounds more like an opinion void of any documented facts to me.

I know to many teachers who would laugh and disagree.

106 posted on 08/07/2005 8:54:13 PM PDT by Sonny M ("oderint dum metuant")
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To: calex59
Kids in CA are starting on Aug 10th this year. The answer to the question of why is money. The simple truth is that schools get fed money for every day that a child is in attendance. Start earlier and you have more money at the end of the school year. 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

We've got everybody beat here. WE START SCHOOL IN JULY!!! I've been teaching for two weeks already. But there is a catch. It's a year-round school. I will have 3 weeks off in a week. There are four different schedules with one coming on and one going off every three weeks roughly. The reason for doing so is NOT to get more money, but to save more money on having to build new schools. Curiously, too, we also save and shave 10 days off the school year by going 10 minutes longer every day too.

Makes you wonder if we get less fed money. Actually, that was the first time I had ever heard that statement.

I live in an area with decent winters and we almost never have snowdays. You're darned if you do and darned if you don't sometimes on those. When there is a big snowstorm, they get cussed out if they don't close the schools, but on the very few times they have, they have been cussed out because they did. You can't satisfy all the people all the time.

NOTE that I have seen pushes in some areas of the country to extend the school year from 180 to 225 days. And no, that did not exactly come from some people who wanted more money, but from parents and some of the companies who run schools as chains (this included having a longer day too).

107 posted on 08/08/2005 4:05:07 AM PDT by moog
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To: SoftballMominVA
"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."

In Korea, they start in March or April. They do get about a month off during summer and more than two months off in wenter. The funny thing is that a lot of them keep going to school anyways over the breaks to study or take classes from their teachers.

108 posted on 08/08/2005 4:07:23 AM PDT by moog
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To: nothingnew

Bingo. More time for brainwashing...it takes a long time to wash a brain.

Could you give me some pointers on that? I haven't figured out how to do that to my students. I have tried, but have only been able to teach them things like reading, writing, and math and doing things like working hard, being honest, respecting their parents and family, etc. I just can't seem to get it right so if you could, please let me know how to brainwash the kids. Then I could tell a lot of other teachers around here how to do it, because they aren't doing it either.


109 posted on 08/08/2005 4:10:06 AM PDT by moog
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To: Extremely Extreme Extremist
First, I have always believed the main purpose of public schools is to get people indoctrinated into working. Get up at a certain time, go off to work/school, come home.

Second, I never could understand this 180 days of school, come hell or high water. School should start on a certain day and end on a certain day. Start the day after labor day and end the first week of June. You have to teach this stuff in that amount of time. If you miss school because of bad weather or other circumstances, you have to catch/make it up.

110 posted on 08/08/2005 4:11:18 AM PDT by 7thson (I've got a seat at the big conference table! I'm gonna paint my logo on it!)
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To: Future Snake Eater
How many three month vacations have you taken from work? Don't you think, say, four weeks would be enough for a child to relax, have some fun, and get ready for the next school year? I'm not advocating school as a prison, but, like it or not, it is the job of the kids to learn, and no job will ever give them that kind of break, so there's no sense in setting them up for such unrealistic expectations in the real world.

Interesting points, though I still advocate the time off. But here, it has more to do with having time for family vacations more than anything else.

111 posted on 08/08/2005 4:11:37 AM PDT by moog
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To: longtermmemmory
This Aug. 8 start date seems to have little to do with learning and much more to do with union politics.

That's counterintuitive; don't they want to not work more than they have to? Aren't they salaried, not hourly?

112 posted on 08/08/2005 4:12:37 AM PDT by The Red Zone (Florida, the sun-shame state, and Illinois the chicken injun.)
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To: nuconvert
My boy, who lives in Navarre, Fla., started his first day of high school August 1. When I was his age, we didn't start until the first week of September.
113 posted on 08/08/2005 4:13:09 AM PDT by Junior (Just because the voices in your head tell you to do things doesn't mean you have to listen to them)
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To: World'sGoneInsane

While I am not a home schooler, I always felt the two months off from school was very valuable to my children to learn about life.

Definitely when it is applied. I hear from many parents too how bored their kids are and how ready they are to go back to school. I think it depends on how one spends their time. For us, it meant doing house jobs or working in the garden.


114 posted on 08/08/2005 4:13:54 AM PDT by moog
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To: darkangel82

School is not prison and should not be like prison.

If I would have said that about school, my dad would have kicked my b---. We were expected to be at school and to learn something, even if our teacher wasn't the best. And homework came before TV or playing with friends.


115 posted on 08/08/2005 4:15:57 AM PDT by moog
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To: sandbar

"Can I borrow your tin foil hat?"

Hehe, I guess that would be one way to brainwash the kids. When I was little, we would see the Moonies walking along the road and my mom would say something about brainwashing. I would be scared stiff because I had nightmares about them coming and taking my brain out of my head.


116 posted on 08/08/2005 4:18:07 AM PDT by moog
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To: TN4Liberty

My kids have done scout camp, church camp, tennis camp, band camp and a couple of trips. They also got to just relax some. All of these were learning experiences they couldn't have if they were in school. Structure is important, but too much is, well, too much.

Good points.


117 posted on 08/08/2005 4:18:46 AM PDT by moog
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To: sandbar
(him to another poster)--Alright Neal Boortz wannabe, if you want to make sure all the little children in the country are not educated in 'gubbmint skools', then take the task on yourself. What the hell WERE you thinking? Whining about and extra 2-3 weeks in the summer that they AREN'T getting with their parents while not comprehending in your head that they get those 2-3 weeks in the school year is just plain stupid. If you are against 'gubbmint skools', be against them. But at least pick an intellegent cause to fight and not that they don't get those weeks in the summer. And don't be a smart a** with my typo. Be careful, he's going to pounce on that spelling of intelligent. The education liberals like him do that you know.
118 posted on 08/08/2005 4:22:37 AM PDT by moog
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To: madprof98
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

So you are saying that teachers continuing their education does nothing to make them better teachers and therefore benefit students? You are seriously lacking on the logic in your statement above pal. I will assume you are more mad than prof.

119 posted on 08/08/2005 4:28:16 AM PDT by Einigkeit_Recht_Freiheit (You are free to do as you are told.)
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To: Naomi4
There are just not all that many stay-at-home moms any more. That is unfortunate. We need more of them. Teachers sure appreciate stay-at-home moms. They are always there (well, not always, but most of the time) if some situation arises. It's always harder when the parent has to come rushing in from work to take care of a change of clothes or another of those situations that sometimes arise.

My mom was a stay-at-home mom and I am sure glad she was. I realize that many moms do have to work, but I sure respect those who choose to stay at home too. Actually, I jsut respect good moms period.

120 posted on 08/08/2005 4:29:16 AM PDT by moog
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