The public school experiment for 2022-23 ran its course by January 26, 2023, when we gave the fifth grader a mental health day at home.
During the last three weeks, we became aware of problems we didn’t know existed at the school, learned that some problems persisted, and encountered new challenges.
I understand some of the difficulties Leigh must have experienced. She’s autistic with ADHD, PTSD, anxiety, and other neurodiverse traits. She values routines, concrete expectations, and honesty. She doesn’t like chaos, unclear assignment criteria, and, at least from her perspective, misleading reassurances.
She knows she’s intelligent, capable, and dedicated. If you ask her if she’s a good student, she will bluntly answer, “I was one of the best in every subject. And I was bored.”
Before getting to the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back, consider the following that highlights problems with the English Language Arts experience:
- Leigh hadn’t checked out a library book since early November, unable to locate anything of interest to her and at her reading level.
- Leigh spent the daily 20 to 30 minutes of “Drop Everything and Read” (DEAR) time doodling and daydreaming.
- Leigh was advised to read “grade appropriate” books; at home, she reads the same books Susan and I read.
- Leigh received no “book report” assignments, in any form, despite oral, written, and creative reports being required by the state standards.
- Her previous English teacher removed books from the classroom and “hid” others that might offend parents, other educators, or administrators.
The above list reflects her English classes. The science, social studies, and math classes were similarly disappointing.
What is “grade appropriate” for the fifth grade? According to a few of the local teachers we know, schools have been removing materials that might offend some community activists. We live in Texas, where one person can file a complaint, and materials must be pulled for review.
The fifth-grade classroom libraries feature books Leigh read in second and third grades. She’s way beyond the books that have survived the preemptive sorting. “Cupcake Diaries” and “Dog Man” books remain. Low-level “high-interest” readers survived the culling, books well beneath Leigh’s reading level.
Given her choices, Leigh opted to sit and doodle for DEAR time. Leigh’s reading Patricia Briggs’ “Mercy Thompson” books (https://www.patriciabriggs.com). She loves reading anything and everything with dragons, faeries, and magic. “Dog Man” was a brief moment in first grade.
We do some assessments at home, using both workbooks and online instruments. According to our assessments and those of the doctor managing her ADHD, Leigh is at the ninth-grade level in mathematics and tenth-grade level in language arts. Unfortunately, many of her peers are not at grade level… which is fifth grade. No wonder Leigh complained that she was bored during many classes.
Despite her dissatisfaction with school, we kept hoping things would be “good enough” for her to earn “A” grades and develop socially.
Since returning from winter break, the elementary school experience has been a disaster. The school rearranged the schedule, separating our daughter from her best friend. That would have been fine if the school had warned parents ahead of time. Instead, students arrived at school and were reassigned teachers with no warning, and no time to help them transition. Many parents were upset.
After changing our daughter’s schedule, the Skyward online system lost her grades. Not merely the current quarter, but all her previous grades for the year, too. Without the online system, we have no way of knowing what’s happening in the classes. The teachers don’t assign homework, and much of the classwork is on computers.
The lack of communication from administrators and teachers to us has been a problem all year. I’ve written about this previously: communication with parents is essential for student success in the early grades. I constantly communicated with my college students, too.
How do you help a child review concepts and skills without knowing what’s happening in the classroom? We asked our daughter what she was learning, but a ten-year-old fifth grader recalls only so much of the materials from each school day.
Leigh made “A” honor roll the first quarter and “A/B” honor roll for the first semester. She cried and was upset because the single “B” should not have happened. Had the teacher been giving us updates, and had the online system offered detailed information on the materials being covered in class, we would have worked with Leigh to master the concepts and skills.
When grades finally appeared for two classes, only the current quarter-to-date grades appeared. Data for other classes, and the past quarters, remained missing from the online system.
The data posted revealed a curious pattern. When work was on paper or graded by one teacher, the scores were “A” marks. When a specific teacher assigned work via “Google Forms” the grades were not 100. These random low grades stood out among the 100-point scores. I know from experience that Google Forms are poorly suited to grading open-ended or user-entered answers. Such forms work well with multiple choice and true/false input.
If a teacher decides to use online assessments, the work students do on paper should also be collected and reviewed. How do you determine which steps a student performed erroneously in a multi-step math problem? You cannot see the work to spot the mistakes when work is submitted only online.
Reflecting on the grades from the last term, I recalled that same grading pattern. One teacher, one assignment format, kept Leigh from making “A” honor roll last term. That couldn’t be a coincidence. Unfortunately, at least for now, all the previous grades are blanks and there’s no way for us to argue that there’s an issue with the instructor.
We wouldn’t trust going to the school and asking to see a grade book. With everything on computer, we doubt many teachers maintain a paper grade book. I did keep paper records as an instructor. I had the Blackboard system lose grades when I taught a university course and my paper records enabled me to reenter the data.
Relying exclusively on technology to store grades and assignments is foolish. I’m a geek and would never rely on data in the cloud. We print out important things and still have metal filing cabinets. An elementary school losing assignments and grades? This situation is inexcusable.
Leigh is home now, where she wants to be. She can read what she wants to read, work beyond the basics, and continue to grow at her own pace. We are supplementing what we can teach with art and music lessons.
Our experiences with public education leave us unimpressed. We aren’t alone in finding public education lacking.
Nearly half of the Girl Scouts in our daughters’ troops are homeschooled. Many of these girls and their siblings are above grade level. Some parents were told their children were too far ahead, so the school was going to try to “get them back down to grade level.” What sort of nonsense theory of education does that represent? How dare your child enjoy learning and work ahead!
The homeschooling adventure continues.