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We did a huge amount of home instruction while my kids were in school (still do to a degree).
Public school right now is teaching to the test and also teaching to the bottom learner in class due to No Child Left Behind.
Over the years I have become convinced that a lot of this comes from a) a huge increase in behavioral issues in the classroom (disrupting learning) and b) fully integrating/immersing special education/behavioral special ed/ESL in the traditional classroom. It is only logical to presume that children who need more help will receive more of the teacher's time therefore leaving less to teach the rest of the class. There is an explosion of IEP, in Baby's 4th grade class, 19 of 24 kids had IEP.
Many years ago I decided that was the price we were paying for having our kids in public school and that we would supplement at home. Thankfully none of mine are the "I'm bored with this class material so now I will misbehave in class" type. I'm not sure how I would have handled that, it just didn't come up as an issue.
They were always far ahead (mostly, except 16yo with reading, but he was ahead in everything else) through junior high, and high school proved to be the big equalizer. Finally the teachers are able to teach and at HS I do not see so much of teaching to the test and of disproportionate expenditure of teacher time on special needs/behaviorals/ESL. Some of that may just have been a natural progression of the classes my kids have taken in HS, but in HS it has not nearly been so much of a problem.
Public school right now is teaching to the test and also teaching to the bottom learner in class due to No Child Left Behind.
Over the years I have become convinced that a lot of this comes from a) a huge increase in behavioral issues in the classroom (disrupting learning) and b) fully integrating/immersing special education/behavioral special ed/ESL in the traditional classroom. It is only logical to presume that children who need more help will receive more of the teacher's time therefore leaving less to teach the rest of the class. There is an explosion of IEP, in Baby's 4th grade class, 19 of 24 kids had IEP.
Many years ago I decided that was the price we were paying for having our kids in public school and that we would supplement at home. Thankfully none of mine are the "I'm bored with this class material so now I will misbehave in class" type. I'm not sure how I would have handled that, it just didn't come up as an issue.
They were always far ahead (mostly, except 16yo with reading, but he was ahead in everything else) through junior high, and high school proved to be the big equalizer. Finally the teachers are able to teach and at HS I do not see so much of teaching to the test and of disproportionate expenditure of teacher time on special needs/behaviorals/ESL. Some of that may just have been a natural progression of the classes my kids have taken in HS, but in HS it has not nearly been so much of a problem.