DailyDirt: Sending Your Kid To School
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
A couple decades ago, the choices for elementary schools were pretty simple and limited — public or private school. It’s a bit more complicated now with public schools, charter schools, magnet schools and various different kinds of private schools that may be religious or based on a particular philosophy or pedagogical technique. (There’s also the choice of opting-out with homeschooling….) In the end, there’s no certainty in any complex decision — some schools might have higher test scores, but quantitative statistics aren’t everything. Here are just a few links for parents looking at a choice between elementary schools.
- If you’re totally new to the experience of picking a pre-school or elementary school, PBS Parents has compiled some questions to think about. Or just more stuff to stress about…. [url]
- Most parents just send their kid to the school closest to their home. But for those parents who are considering different schools, test score data should be interpreted in a trend context, not just as a snapshot grade for the school. [url]
- Some techies are opting to homeschool with the help of online resources and hacker groups to collaborate on DIY projects. There are some startups like AltSchool and programs from the Khan Academy that are contributing to this additional alternative to the public/private school model. [url]
If you’d like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.
Filed Under: altschool, education, homeschooling, khan academy, moocs, parenting, school, test scores
Comments on “DailyDirt: Sending Your Kid To School”
Many charter schools are nothing more than scams designed by greedy opportunists to fleece the taxpayer. Since anyone can start a charter school and get free government money with virtually no oversight, the system is wide open to abuse.
http://interactive.sun-sentinel.com/charter-schools-unsupervised/investigation.html
Re: Re:
The “Church” of Scientology secretly owns and runs charter schools, operating through various front companies, while denying that the Scientology cult is the hidden hand, and teaching children Scientology indoctrination while insisting it’s a completely secular education.
http://www.tampabay.com/opinion/editorials/charter-school-dangers-on-display-in-scientology-case/1218150
everybody knows
everybody knows the prussian origin of schooling right?
RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRIGHT?
otherwise you can always google:
Johann Gotlieb Fichte
John Taylor Gatto
Charlotte Iserbyt
… and If you are disabled (due to government schooling) and cannot read more than 120 characters in a string, then
you can check the 4 part video “The Prussian Connection to American Schooling”
Re: everybody knows
if Silicon Valley is filled with wealthy geniuses, they should all already have realized what is the purpose of government schooling…
and acted accordingly
School ratings are deeply flawed.
I went to state university and later to a world renowned university (‘WRU’), so I was able to directly observe the differences.
The state university was easy to get into. They had standards, but it was basically only to keep out people that had zero chance of succeeding. An average high school student could get in and graduate. There were plenty of students that went by default, it was an easier path than looking for a job. Some even stayed in solely for the student discount on football tickets and parties.
The WRU, on the other hand, was extremely selective. You needed near-perfect grades, at least good athletics, and multiple outside activities. And not just five things like “debate club”, they needed to be things that took effort and you needed to excel in at least one. Even with that high bar, they had many qualified applicants that went through in-person interviews.
Take these two groups and put them through exactly the same curriculum, facilities and faculty. One will produce mostly world-class scientists, engineers, economists, and professors. And the next generation of high school students will compete to get in, thinking it’s so much better.
When it comes to universities, there will eventually be a difference. Endowments, bright students that stay around to be life-long professors, etc. But for a grade school? Sometimes they look good merely because they got lucky years ago with good test scores, and the perception let them be increasingly selective about admitting only better students.
Re: Re:
All of this is true, but I would say that it applies just as much to universities as grade schools. Even at the university level, the differences are usually overstated. With the exception of bottom-of-the-barrel schools, the quality of education that a student gets has more to do with the student than the school.
The real thing that you’re paying for when you go (or send your child to) a top-tier school is a credential from a top tier school.