Has anyone actually seen samples questions from this "horrible" FCAT? IT IS PATHETICALLY EASY!
Not only that you have multiple chances to pass.
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.
Nobody even considered that some of these kids may be in summer custody with dad, or perhaps they did.
This Aug. 8 start date seems to have little to do with learning and much more to do with union politics.
..so take your kid out of public school!!!
On this issue I disagree with Dave Barry.
Since 1986 the Virginia General Assembly has prohibited public schools from opening before Labor Day. Some exceptions are granted, such as to schools that routinely experience many weather closures or have special programs that include a modified year-round calendar. Such schools are reportedly seeing improved test performance. This year, the last day of school in Fairfax was June 24.
In Virginia this so-called "King's Dominion Law" was written to protect the tourist industry, to keep teenage employees working longer and to keep families in the parks longer. Question: why wouldn’t closing schools by Memorial Day and starting and ending the season earlier have the same financial impact?
Starting school after Labor Day and ending the last week of June wastes a significant portion of the school year:
1. Insufficient time to complete all required material before SOL, Advanced Placement (AP), and International Baccalaureate (IB) exams, which are given in early to mid May. Since all required material must be taught before these exams, classes are essentially over by mid May. For example, the AP BC Calculus exam was given on 3 May, over SEVEN WEEKS before the end of school in Fairfax. What is a calculus teacher supposed to teach for the last twenty percent of the school year, after all required material has already been covered?
2. Late end-of-school dates limit both teachers and students from taking advantage of various summer programs, many of which begin before most Virginia public schools close. As a result, schools lose many students prior to the end of the year as they start various summer training, education, or employment programs despite the official school schedule.
3. Since all Fairfax County schools are air conditioned, making kids go to school in a hot August when they have just taken a two-month break makes more sense than making then go to school in an equally hot June when both kids and teachers are burned out and they just want to head for the beach.
4. Many high school students are back at their schools in early August anyway to start athletic and band tryouts. This gives the appearance that Fairfax values preparing for football as more important than preparing for college.
My kids started on Aug 1.
Of course they get a week off in October, a week off for Thanksgiving, two weeks off for "Winter Break" (can't say Christmas I guess), a week off in Feb, another week in April and out before Memorial Day. Works out the same, but gives more breaks in the school year and less time to forget things in the summer. I personally like this system better, the kids seem to do better with breaks in the year.
What stuns about all these whiners on this post is that noone comprehends the REAL reason school USED to start after Labor Day. Harvest. School was let out during the summer so the kids in America could help with the planting and harvesting so the families could eat. They knew the parents wouldn't let them attend anyway, so that is how this system of summer breaks started. Not to mention no AC in the building back then. Now that those two problems are taken care of, there is no need for that long of a break during the summer months and the extended fall, winter and spring breaks are given to better help the education.
You guys amaze me sometimes at the instant desire to jump on a conspiracy. It's posts like these that give libs their fodder for Free Republic.
This is his column as it appeared in today's local paper: (This was a labor of love as I had to type this out).
The real solution: Make them behave
Summer is the season when many schools redraft their curriculum. The process consumes several years. This gives experts the time to devise the next cutting edge fashion for writing these things, following which everybody gets to start all over again.
Sometimes, social and idealogical objectives get woven in. For example, Vermont's current statewide objectives mandate that students "make informed, healthy choices." One of our language objectives requires that "students respect diversity in dialects," another fine idea but not something that springs to mind when you're asking what your kid learned in English class today.
Teaching Tolerance offers articles and curriculum resources to assist schools as they veer further off into personal relations and social harmony. One contributor recommends that classes begin ever day with a 30-minute meeting, complete with handshakes, sharing and group activities. Another prescription for "community building" devotes "much of the first month" of eighth grade to having students "brainstorm" their "quality classroom" since they're the "experts" on education.
One district's violence prevention coordinator observed that many kids spend recess competing for scarce kickballs and engaged in the "old patterns of boys-chase-girls and vice versa." Rather than simply buying a few more kickballs and accept the hormonal fact of life that boys and girls tend to chase each other, she applied for a grant to institute the "Peaceful Playground."
New activities include a "peace maze" for "feuding" students. As kids follow the path, student "peace ambassadors" call out authentic prompts like "Tell how you feel," and "Hear how others feel." Officials reinforce "the importance of recess" by requiring that students make daily journal entries when they return to class.
The importance of recess?
"A Day Without Obsession" invites students to "rethink food and body obsession." A related action plan has students "brainstorm body image issues." These two diversions alone consume two class periods.
Another article condemns grouping individuals by ability when a school's advanced classes don't reflect the "demographics" of the entire school. Except you need to be advanced to succeed in advanced classes. Ignoring that reality in the name of "diversity" invites two destructive consequences, lower standards and students set up for failure. It sounds politically and socially open-minded, but it makes no instructional sense.
Another critique indicts white educators as "complicit" in the "failure of students of color" because they're unable to "drop the mask of privilege." This piece calls on me to embrace a "transformationist white identity" that acknowledges" my racism and then to devote my classes to "multicultural education."
A student contributor complains about school that don't devote enough class hours, assemblies, or seminars to sexual harassment. Except we don't need to waste more time retelling the ninety percent who already behave what the offending 10 percent aren't listening to. We need adults who are willing to take action.
An article about violence against gay students urges teachers to help make "gay and lesbian students as visible and as accepted" as the "Honor Society, the debate club and the football team." Except someone's sexual preferences, including their beliefs about homosexuality, are neither the proper issue nor my business. My job is keeping someone, regardless of his beliefs, from persecuting someone else because of theirs. For all the talk about peer mediation and peace, that job, actually protecting and defending students, is where schools are falling down.
There's a reason "the traditional method" for dealing with conflicts at school is "having an adult decide who is right and wrong and then determine the consequences." It's because adults are the adults. Being in charge is supposed to be one of the differences between us and kids. Unfortunately, that arrangement is out of fashion.
The commotion and bright ideas aren't just coming from liberal sources. Conservatives, in disputes over prayer, evolution, and foreign policy, claim they're simply trying to combat "liberal indoctrination." They're increasingly asserting their positions and demanding equal time.
The trouble is I don't have time for either side. I'm trying to teach kids to read and write. I'm trying to teach them about the chronology, personalities, and issues that are their nation's history. When we read stories in English class, we talk about cruelty, integrity, and compassion. We parse ethical dilemmas. When we discuss history, we recount our national glories, and we also acknowledge slavery, Wounded Knee and Manzanar.
Science classes can't do their job if they're obliged to give equal time to every interest group's hypersensitivity. If I'm oppressing somebody now in my classroom, show me. If not, let me teach my students the things everybody's saying they're not learning anymore.
And if children aren't treating each other decently in the schools we're running, the solution isn't endless lessons about tolerance. The solution is for adults at school and in our schools' communities, to stop tolerating indecency.
Poor Elijah can be reached at elijah@together.net
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.
Believe it or not, some schools in West Tenn. are starting tomorrow (Aug.8)!
I can't remember when they started this early. For some places in the South, it's been normal to start school Aug. 13th or so and get out in May. This year, starting on Aug.8th is WAY too early! People seem to be rushing the Fall season. Heck, I haven't even had my vacation time yet!
Reason #1337 to home school: avoid idiotic public school schedule problems, build your childrens' educational experiences into the life of their family, rather than fit the family schedule to the institutional imperatives of the local indoctrination centers.
Institutional schools are as obsolete as network television. They are the buggy whip industry of the 21st century, but with a tight grip on the taxing power of the state that will keep them rolling along, zombie-like long after their usefulness has ended.
It only gets worse in high school with fall athletics. Many of the high schools around here started pre-season football, soccer, volleyball and softball LAST week - August 1!
Regards,
TS
A couple public schools around here started last Aug 1st, while the rest of the schools started Aug 3rd. Crazy!
Why? Maybe one reason might be is that the schools get more money per pupil per day the school is in session? I'm just guessing on that.
I heard that when a child misses school, the school is docked the money the child is absent? Is this so?
Is this the reason the schools have snow make-up days, so the school can recoup the lost money?
Do you think the SAT scores of a larger district have an impact on whether a small district should merge with a larger one or not if it came to the issue of consolidation?
Honestly, I separate the issues of efficient use of public resources and achievement. Yes, many disagree, but my attitude is we need both, especially in a poor state like Arkansas. Can't afford either/or if we're to build a better future.Myself:
So can I accurately say that test scores at this point are irrelevant?Senator:
Would you please elaborate on one of your previous statements:
"School-to-school comparisons are pretty worthless if you don't take the makeup of student populations into account."
OK. On most recent 4th grade NAEP tests, 13% of AR 4th graders were proficient compared to nat'l. avg. of 20%. But if you break our scores down by race, 18% of AR whites were proficient, and only 2% of AR blacks were proficient.Myself:
No state does a poorer job of educating black children than we do. (It's on the web - Education Week - Quality Counts 2003 study). And if we're going to achieve my dream of closing the achievement gap, that's where we must do far better. We must set far higher expectations for those children, provide adequate, equitable resources, and get far better results.
SO..... to compare one school that's all white, affluent students, most of whom come from highly educated families, against another with all economically disadvantaged students just doesn't make sense. We can do far better for our black students - other states do.
I have a very hard time accepting the statement that black students can't learn because they did not come from an affluent family. It does not take a nice pair of shoes and pretty clothes to engage the brain.
MONEY does not educate, and that seems to be where there is a great division among most Arkansans and those in the arena of politics. There are economically disadvantaged white students in poor areas of the state as well, and if they do not take the bull by the horns and put their minds in gear and make good use of school time, it is first the teachers fault for not guiding them in the beginning of their education and explaining how best to utilize that time, it is secondly the parents fault for not following up on how their child is performing in school, and thirdly, as that child grows and hopefully matures, if s/he still doesn't care to do homework and pay attention in class, it is his/her ultimate failure the child will have to deal with in life, and probably the state as well. But to take race and say that someone can't learn because of it is ludicrous.
You said that "We must set far higher expectations for those children...".
Isn't the expectation level the same for blacks as it is for everybody else???? Yes we should expect more, but how do you plan to get it?
Is it the state education system that is not performing, or is it the under acheiving students of Arkansas?
LOOK AT THE DATA, THEY HAVE ACCESS TO THE SAME SCHOOL BOOKS AS WHITE STUDENTS. Take Pulaski county schools as an example, what excuse do you give for them? Can't be because of low funding or underpaid teachers..................
An answer to that question would be appreciated. I would really like to know.
To take poverty and say someone is incapable of obtaining an education because of it is laughable, why don't you try that line on my Grandpa....
Thanks for your time.
Here in Tulsa they start next Thursay. Groan
Any way you slice it, school is in session for 180 days. If you start early, then you get breaks in the middle of the year, such as three weeks off for Christmas, a Fall break that otherwise wouldn't exist, etc.
Dave Barry is funny. I think I will just copy this letter and send it to my school board. Here we start school Aug. 10 and I hate it. The days are still long and it isn't dark until 8:30 at night. Hard to get a child in bed when it's not dark outside. To function best in school they need adequate sleep and that's hard to do when it's still summer.
Schools in Arizona are starting at this time. I am still debating about when to start our school year. (we homeschool) I wanted to start early so I could get through a course ith my daughter by Christmas Break. We started last week, then I decided for my own sanity (since some things weren't done yet) that we will put it off until the public school goes into session. After reading this, I almost want to wait until Labor Day like we usually do.
bump
Florida ping.