Is the Public School System Broken or Are My Expectations Misaligned?
As a father, one of the things I want most for my children, is for them to have a better life than I have. How do I help them accomplish this goal? What skills and traits are important for them to have in order for them to be successful and productive citizens that contribute to the good of society? These are a few of the questions that I constantly ask myself and I keep arriving at education.
How do I position my kids to get the BEST education possible? In pursuit of the answer to this question, I found myself experiencing a wide variety of emotions. In Chicago, if you are the type of parent who values education, you quickly find out that the neighborhood schools do not meet your needs and as a result you are faced with the decision of do you send your child to a private school, or do you have them test into a selective enrollment school? I am extremely frustrated that this is the current climate in the education system. For my family, private school wasn’t within the budget so we opted to go the selective enrollment route.
Once you work to get your child into a selective enrollment school, Chicago Public Schools (CPS) informs you that it’s a National School Bus Shortage and as a result they are not able to provide children with a school bus to pick up and drop off the students. How crazy is this? Neighborhoods are deprived of resources causing schools to be in a position that they cannot adequately provide a high quality education to the students, who would have thought?
However the story gets worse. Candace and I work with our children to ensure that they can not only get into a selective enrollment school, but so they can thrive as well, however we were soon disappointed. We made the mistake of thinking that once in a selective enrollment school our jobs were done and we could now turnover the educational reins to the school. Daily we would ask our kids how was school and what they learned? We found out that most of the instructional time was allocated to the teacher correcting and redirecting students because they were either talking or not listening. I found myself frustrated and venting to other parents and that is when I had a shift in mindset.
““The grades that your children get on their Report Cards are not their grades, they are yours.””
By talking to other like minded parents I was able to adopt the mindset of other parents who had similar goals for their children. One shift in mindset I had was “a child only educated at school, is uneducated at all.” It was imperative for Candace and I to be active participants in teaching our children. Another shift I had was when a parent told me “the grades that your children get on their report cards are not their grades, they are yours.” He went on to explain that parents are expected to help and check their kids homework. If you are doing your job as a parent, how is it possible for your child to ever have anything less than an “A”? This level of accountability was difficult to swallow because I knew there were nights that I was supposed to check homework but I was too tired and I didn’t check it. One day turned to two and two days turned to me wondering what the report card would look like on report card pickup day.
After adopting a few different views on education, I now understand that I am in the drivers seat when it comes to the quality of education my children obtain. We are currently researching High Schools while at the same time we are starting college conversations with our children as well. What are some of your philosophies on education? What things do you look for in a school? Do you have your children work with any Academic Coaches?