[island_dude]

My daughter is in a fancy private school. When she moving into the first grade she got a very inexperienced teacher. They had noted that when they compared performance on the standardized tests the kids generally did very well (as in above expectations for grade level) except in one area -- Spelling. The school principle, admin and the elementery teacher decided that they would had some additional focus on spelling. Mhy daughter's teach decided that the only homework she would assign would be spelling lists followed every friday by a goold old style dark ages spelling quiz. most of the time my daughter does pretty well on the tests. When she doesn't, she gets very depressed.

We met with the teacher before she went on leave and she didn't have much to say about our daughters progress. I was unimpressed since her previous teachers were a lot more proactive. We would not have waited for a meeting to hear about an issues. One of the teacher's comments rasied a concern that she might have a learning disability. Since the school I am pay tons of money to has no privisions for providing "help", we went to the public school. We met with 7 people to review our concerns and to determine which actions to consider next. The principal of the school was there and took a very active interest in the situation. she made some excellent sugestions (mostly related to certain kinds of vision issues we should screen for). I was very impressed. The group was horrified to hear that they were giving quizes to first graders on spelling. They thought was a very lame way of addressing spelling to first graders, who are just having issues reading.

My wife decided to meet with the principal of the private school about the spelling test emphasis. It was hard to actually get this meeting set up. Of all the time we have been associated with the school, I had met her only once. This is a school of less than 100 kids. There only 26 kids in the age span of all of the elementary grades. The principal was basically useless. Her inital reaction was to say that since the other parents were expressing complaints than it must be an issue with our daughter. Note there are 5 first grader, so that is a 20% failure rate. That would be a concern to anyone else. she spouted some nonsense but essentialy wanted us to go away.

We are pulling my daughter and sending her to the public school. We will save a ton of cash and have a lot more influence in the process. In a private school, if you don't like what they are doing you can complain but nothing compels them to respond. As it turns out, our county has excellent public schools, so this is not necessarily how this would play out elsewhere. I can say this, our daughter's teacher is pretty much a zero. While she was gone, her sub was much better. He has a lot more enthusiasm and experience.

So before you jump on the bandwagon of bashing public schools, keep this in mind. As far as the trend for home schooling goes: I really doubt that a high percentage of parents really have the skills to teach well. Teaching is not just having the answer key in the back of the book. There are actual skills involved. Yes, we have seen a number of kids do very well with home schooling, but I have seen the other side. It isn't pretty. FI that is what people choose to do, I admire their commitment to their kids education.