Is my school a good school?

As parents think about the choices they have in front of them for their child's education, they find themselves asking others, "Is __________ Elementary School a good school.?"  

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?

What should our math curriculum include?

I have started writing curriculum. I am always creating new curriculum every time I tutor. I do two things, gear the content towards the students individual needs but also break down the content into an easy to understand manner. Right now I am writing an Advanced Algebra Curriculum. I chose to write this curriculum because although I have found a really good "Basic" Pre-Algebra Curriculum, I have not found anything that is good for advanced students. The point of this post, however is not to discuss a particular curriculum but the OVERALL mathematics curriculum in our state (and probably other states as well).

When I look at how mathematics is taught from K-12, I am not impressed. Kindergarten math is fairly good although I think we can challenge students more. Still, students need to focus on reading and reading comprehension in Kindergarten so that they are ready to tackle context problems in first grade. I do like the fact that children are taught how to count by 1's, 2's, 5's and 10's in Kindergarten. This ability will serve them well later. I also think that when we are learning these skills, we need to extend it and teach students how to count tallies and how to switch between our skip counting: For example: children should practice: 5, 10, 15, 20 (now skip to ones) 21, 22, 23. This can be illustrated by both tallies and counting numbers on a clock. Why not extend it to other useful things while we are practicing the concept.

First grade - third grade is designed fairly well for the traditional student. We should teach multiplication and division in a better fashion and be more creative in our teaching approaches to the concepts taught.

By fourth grade - students should be ready to start working on adding fractions and decimals and working with percents. At this point, we really need to let the kids that are naturals in math continue forward rather than holding them back to the same curriculum as the traditional student. My son was getting all of his arithmetic skills solidified during the fourth grade and by fifth grade was ready for an advance pre-algebra curriculum.

Many students will need fifth and even sixth grade to continue to focus on the basics but I think we spend too much time on doing the "hodgepodge" approach. We teach a little of this and a little of that including many skills that we have taught before and will teach again. I feel at this level we need to get children to truly master the basics that will be so useful later in Algebra and above. Students need to get solid on working with fractions. So many Algebra students are still so uncomfortable with fractions. Students need to become strong on overall "number sense" - when we say the number 12 - immediately different number should pop into one's head: 1,12,2,6,3, and 4. It should be automatic. We should also immediately think: 12,24,36,48. Experience and playing with numbers (in fun activities rather than boring rote memorization) will accomplish this successfully. This will provide students with far more help in later math than learning perimeter and area year after year after year. Perimeter and area are not hard concepts. They can be taught quickly including comparing and contrasting the two so they are not thought of independently. Students should also constantly revisit older material throughout the year so they retain the information.

Now, we get to the years of middle school math. This is where I feel we waste precious time and also tend to "lose our kids." So much of the same is repeated or they teach 1/2 of algebra in 8th grade that the students know the first half of Algebra when they get to their first Algebra class and think they can breeze right through it only to start to fail (after they have gotten used to their lax ways) once the material changes.

I propose this idea for an overall curriculum: These guidelines focus on arithmetic and algebra prepartion. Each year there should be simple units (that are not too time consuming) that teach: Geometry, Probability, and Measurement.

Kindergarten - Stress skip counting, start working on number families, and spend more time on reading

First grade - Build a strong basis for conceptual problem solving, become solid on addition facts and introduce subtraction facts. Stress the 10's family and "building to 10's" in subtraction. Students should be able to tell time to the minute and count coins. These two concepts are direct links to their skip counting they have been working on in Kindergarten and early first grade.

Second grade - Students should be focusing on regrouping in addition and subtraction through hands on models

Third grade - confirm students have mastered addition and subtraction with regrouping, teach multiplication and division while stress factors! This should all be done with fun hands on learning, not through worksheets!

Fourth grade - Students should now be able to do multi-digit multiplication and division as well as master decimals, students should be introduced to adding fractions conceptulally.

Fifth grade - Students should master working with fractions and percents. As part of this, students should learn LCM's and GCF's as well as factor trees. Students should master basic powers and square roots building their idea of number sense. Students can even start to explore related but "higher level" mathematics. When teaching squareroots - the advanced student can see how to simplify something like the square root of 12 into 2 squareroot 3 or the squareroot of x to the sixth power to x to the third power. These connections we use in algebra should be introduced when appropriate. This is more important than teaching them how to solve x -4 -10 algebraically at this point!

Sixth grade - By this year, advanced students should be ready for Advanced Pre-Algebra, traditional students should be ready for Simple Pre-Algebra, and Slower learners should review previous concepts but also do some simple Pre-Algebra.

Seventh grade - Your advanced student should be taking Algebra 1 (which follows the Advanced Pre-Algebra class taken previously that has completely prepared them for the course). Your traditional student is ready to do Advanced Pre-Algebra this year and your slower learner should have a full curriculum in Basic Pre-Algebra with Algebra Enhancements (teaching some of the easier Algebra concepts at a higher level).

Eighth grade - Your advanced learner is ready to take a high school level geometry class. Strong students can take an Honors Geometry class. Your traditional student will be well-prepared for Algebra 1 after having taken Advanced Pre-Algebra the year before. The slower learner will be ready to dive into the Advanced Pre-Algebra this year.

Ninth grade - All 9th graders taking Algebra 2, should be required to do an Algebra 1 Review (very fast paced, main concepts) before taking their Algebra 2 class. Instead of spending so much time re-doing Algebra 1 in Algebra 2 (like we do now), the advanced student should be able to get through all Algebra 2 concepts including trigonometry.

Tenth grade - Here I feel students would benefit from a class that teaches "Pre-calculus" skills within the Calculus AB curriclum. By the end of the year (and this should be a year long course), students will have gained appropriate knowledge for Pre-Calculus and Calculus AB.

Eleventh grade - The advanced student would proceed into Calculus BC

Twelth grade - The advanced student would take either Probablity and Statisics or College Mathematics. A college Mathmetics course would include basics in probability and statistics as well as introduction to financial mathematics, set theory, and formation of proofs for basic Abstract Algebra. This survey course would hopefully spark the interest for those going on into college to major in Mathematics.

The traditional student and the slower learner would follow the same path (9th grade Geometry, 10th grade Algebra 2) with the tradtional student taking a complete Precalcus class in their junior year. Their senior year could consist of Calculus or Probablity and Statisitcs. The slower learn would spend their freshman year in Algebra 1, their sophomore year in Geometry, their junior and senior years taking Algebra 2 if needed to be spread over 2 years. They might also benefit from a lower level survey class designed to meet their needs.

Overall, I feel we have too many poor math teachers who teach math. I applaud the great ones but when my clients come in and tell me that Ms. So&So says we are not allowed to ask questions in class, I just don't understand it. Math is not always easy but it is not as hard as we make it out to be. We also push too many complicated equations on our students instead of making sure they understand the underlying basic concepts. The main question of the year is, "WHEN am I going to need to use this?" Well, the answer is: Some of this stuff, NEVER (if it really gets that complicated, we will have the computer do it for us!) other stuff - well, yes - if you understand the basic concepts and uses of what you are learning you will apply it to what you do but you won't apply something you don't completely understand.