RAVITCH: Public School Principal Decides to Homeschool His Youngest Child
My wife is a public school teacher and I teach at public community colleges, and we are facing a similar dilemma: we know that the corporate reform agenda has creating new and worse problems rather than solving any that actually existed before they took over, so we are trying to figure out what kind of private school we can afford for our child and how we can afford to have more than one if public schools continue to put the avarice of the wealthy ahead of the education of our children.
It's ironic: the people who can afford to send their kids to private schools are fucking up public schools so badly that parents who can't afford private school have to figure out how to pay for it anyway.
Why don't Gates, the Waltons, Eli Broad and the like set up a chain of private schools to try out their pet ideas, or better yet, "reform" the elite prep schools they send their children to and see how many of their wealthy friends keep sending their kids there? And leave our public schools alone.
That they don't tells you they don't know or particularly care if their reforms work--they just see a half trillion dollar pool of money spent on public education each year and want to divert as much of it as possible into their own pockets.
Some people here don't like litmus tests for candidates, but any democrat who treats public education like a luau pig for the wealthy should not get our money or campaigning efforts, and should be primaried by anyone who will try to stop this.
Tim Farley writes:
My wife and I have finally hit the breaking point. We can no longer sit by and watch the educational system that has been co opted by Bill Gates and his corporate cronies in the name of "education reform", harm our youngest child. Jessica and I are the parents of four wonderful children (7th, 5th, 3rd grade, and kindergarten). Although we would like to homeschool all of our children, due to several factors, we will only be homeschooling our youngest, John Paul.
John Paul is a bright and energetic boy. He was born with a heart defect, and at two years old had open heart surgery. As traumatic as that experience was for my wife and me, it didn't seem to have any long lasting impact on him. He is a little spitfire. At least he was. He no longer likes going to school. In fact he hates going to school. It is not his teacher, as one of our older children had the same teacher and had a fantastic experience. It is the developmentally inappropriate standards and the "rigorous" demands placed on 5 year old children that has changed. Kindergarten is supposed to be a time of exploratory learning and developing social skills. Unfortunately, it has become an assembly line environment of "drill and kill". The inane assignments that lack any sort of creativity have crushed his love of school.
Recently I stumbled upon this video which illustrates what many thousands of children and parents are experiencing on a daily basis due to the Common Core. My child could easily be one of those in the video.
At first, I felt that by choosing to homeschool, we were giving in to the "reformers". It was our hope that the state legislators would have taken real steps to slow down the rushed implementation that has been widely described as an "unmitigated disaster", a "train wreck", and as "institutionalized educational abuse". The legislators have failed. The Commissioner has failed. The Board of Regents has failed. The Governor has failed. We will not allow our children to be "collateral damage" while the politicians figure out how to fix the mess that they created.
My son will be provided individualized instruction by a loving mom and a former educator. He won't be reduced to a number. We are truly blessed that this is even an option for us, as many parents lack the resources to make this choice. We only get one chance to get this right. There are no do-overs.
I will keep you posted as we embark on this new journey.
Sincerely,
Tim Farley
(Elementary and Middle School Principal of a school in the Hudson Valley)
http://wp.me/p2odLa-7rH
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