My friend is in such a position now as her first child heads to Kindgergarten next year. The child's base school is Olive Chapel Elementary. She has asked families who attend there, "is it a good school?"
How does one determine if it is a good school? Do they look at test scores, does that determine if a school is good? What about the administration, how does one assess that? Of course, one can fairly easily look at the "look" of the school. Olive Chapel is bright and cheery, it is about 10 or so years old now but has nice playground equipment. What else makes a good school? How about the teachers? Is it okay to say that as a whole the teachers are good? But, what about that parent that gets one of the "not so good" teachers at the school? Say that were to happen, would the adminstration listen to you and move your child to a different classroom if the fit between teacher and student was bad? Another consideration is class-size and number of mobile units (can you believe they try to call them "cottages" to take some of the sting out of that fact that they are mobile units? It didn't make it all rosy for me, I hate mobile units!) - what should the ratio be to support good learning?
So let's review - what makes a good school? Here are some questions to consider.
1. How good are the teachers?
2. How good is MY child's teacher?
3. If the student-teacher fit is causing serious problems for the parent, student, or affects the teacher-student relationship, will the prinicipal move my child to a different teacher or am I stuck?
4. Is the school overcrowded?
5. What are the class-size and student-teacher ratio?
6. How many mobile classrooms are there?
7. Do some kids have to each lunch at 10 or 10:30 in the morning?
8. How helpful is the administration? Do they really try to help and work with parents who have educational concerns about their children?
9. Is the curriculum any good?
10. How does the school work with the child who struggles or is behind? How do they help the advanced student?
11. Is the school look nice and have up to date equipment?
12. What are the school's test scores like?
So - with two children attending Olive Chapel this year, let's see if we could say the school is a good school?
1. It seems that most teachers at school are okay - not fantastic though, when I ask other parents about their childrens' teachers I rarely hear, " So and So is a GREAT teacher." I usually get the more "She or he is okay," response with parents having some issues with their child's teacher but overall not enough that they would do anything about it.
2. Hmmm.... this is one of the BIGGEST things that make it or break it ... it is your child's teacher that they spend the time with and learn from. Even if it is the best school in the world if your child has a lousy teacher, it makes for a very lousy and wasted year. Let's talk about my two children and their teachers. My daughter's teacher is wonderful! She is sweet, she gives thoughtful responses, responds quickly, and is a good teacher. If I only had her to go by I would be singing the praises of Olive Chapel too. My son, however, had a teacher that did not fit. I am not going to make this a personal blog of our issues but suffice it to say that he was not learning and I was not happy. This teacher is very young and inexperienced and my child was already struggling and this did not help.
3. So, with a bad fit that was brought up at the beginning of the school year (we asked for a move to a different teacher then) and then asked again for our son to be moved after 6 months of a less than stellar experience, the principal would not move my child to a different teacher. I am not the only one, I have heard of many similar issues and this principal will not move a child. I had to pull my son out of Olive Chapel and homeschool him as I had no other choice if I did not want him to stay in that classroom. So - another strike against good ole Olive Chapel.
4. Overcrowding has always been a problem in most Wake County schools. Although it isn't way over capacity, it is still over capacity.
5. About 25-32 kids per class. Earlier grades get a teacher and a TA but by third grade, all you get is that one and only teacher for that many kids. It is not ideal!
6. Too many! I don't know how many there are maybe 12 or so? This was our first experience in one and I don't like the way it separates the children from the rest of the school.
7. Yes, it is hard to believe that kids can get assigned lunch at 10 or 10:30 in the morning!
8. As mentioned previously, the adminstration will not work with parents, will not move children to new teachers ... and without giving away private information, let's say that I have heard stories of reactions from the principal that blows my mind! Just hope you don't need to be involved with the adminstration. Most parents don't... so they don't know how unhelpful the administration can be until they have an issue!
9. Curriculum will be a whole different post. I already discussed some math curriculum issues in previous posts and will continue to express my feelings on our NC curriculum. Let's just say that my daughter who can read like a second grader (she is in Kindergarten), can spell like a second grader, write like a first grader, and do math like a first grader spends her time cutting out pictures of things like "bat" and "ham" and putting them under the appropriate letter. This is not really a good use of her time. My son was never taught HOW to spell, he is expected to just know. His cursive curriculum consisted of a worksheet at home each night, no direct instruction on how to write in cursive, just figure it out on your own... and oh, how the list could go on...
10. When my oldest (now a high school student) went to Olive Chapel back in it's second year of existance, he was very advanced in math. I went to the principal (a different one back then) and told her how advanced he was and asked how he could be challenged as he went into the first grade (we were deciding between staying at OCE and switching to a charter school). She told me that I (I, who has a Ph.D. in Mathematics Education) probably just "think" he is advanced and he probably really is not. Basically, the answer was, "we will not do anything different." Well, that made my decision and off he went to the charter school the next year - and now as a freshman in high school, he is doing PreCalculus instead of Algebra 1 or Geometry! My daughter is also very advanced. The school is offering a AG program for advanced Kindergarten readers (they haven't started yet, so I can't say much about it yet) but I doubt it will challenge someone who is reading on a second grade level but we shall see. My son due to poor teaching and curriculum got behind. Here we were on the other side of the coin - what type of help did we get? Well, it was like they made an effort so they could document "all that they were doing to help him," yet the stuff wasn't helpful. They took the challenge words off his spelling list but he still had all the other words which were not appropriate for him and too difficult and he still can't spell the easier ones. His Kindergarten sister tells her 8 year old brother how to spell words, just today, he asked how to spell friends - his sister told him! They offered Y-learning, an afterschool tutoring program. We did it for 2 weeks until I pulled him out of OCE. He would work on his homework and according to him get some help once in a while on a problem and then work on this computer program - it wasn't what he needed to get better but the school could write down, "provided tutoring at Y-learning" so their ass is covered.
11. Yes, the school is pretty, nice to look at and has up to date equipment (mostly)...
12. The test scores are typical of a Wake County school.
So... what is your criteria for a good school? What do you really know about your child's school? What if you ran into issues, what if you get a bad teacher??
Take a look at the experiences above about OCE, do you think it is a good school... or will you, like I, be looking for other options?
