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.
lol...yeah, that'll do fine.
There is no such thing as "year-round school." It's 180 days regardless of when it starts and ends.
Bingo, you hit that nail on the head with a jack hammer.
Sounds more like an opinion void of any documented facts to me.
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.
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.
I know to many teachers who would laugh and disagree.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
That's counterintuitive; don't they want to not work more than they have to? Aren't they salaried, not hourly?
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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