Here's today's quiz question: why don't all schools do this?
Originally published February 5, 2011 at 8:21 PM Page modified February
5, 2011 at 8:54 PM
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Danny Westneat
The 'Tiger Mom' within Federal Way schools
Of all the notes I got about Tiger Mom since writing about that Chinese parenting controversy a few weeks back, the most intriguing said this: "Check out what's happening in the Federal Way schools."
Danny Westneat
Seattle Times staff columnist
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Of all the notes I got about Tiger Mom since writing about that Chinese parenting controversy a few weeks back, the most intriguing said this: "Check out what's happening in the Federal Way schools."
Included was part of a speech recently by the superintendent, Rob Neu. In it he described a new policy there, with language more tigerish than you usually get from educational bureaucrats.
"We demand you take rigorous classes here," he said. "We have turned the model upside down. I don't know of a single other school district that has done this."
It turns out the number of Federal Way juniors and seniors taking advanced-track classes — such as Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate — has gone up an eye-popping 71 percent in the space of a single semester.
Last year 1,214 students in those grades took advanced classes. This year, it's 2,078. So nearly 900 kids who were back in general ed six months ago are now taking college-prep-level math, reading, history or science.
That is an unheard-of leap in such a short time. How could it happen?
The answer is the equivalent of that tyrannical Chinese mother, Amy Chua, returning the birthday cards her daughters made for her, saying: "I deserve better than this."
More:
Schools like this require a meritocracy. That means the teachers have to believe in meritocracy (many don't), AND you have to send the boneheads and screw-offs someplace else to alleviate social pressures.
ReplyDeleteMy personal experience is that smart kids are smart kids, and as long as you can get them into college, they'll do okay. Public schools are and should be more about social development. Rammed-down-your-throat AP classes would have done me (rebel) and my kids (2 rebels, 1 prissy) more harm than good.
@Martin - Have you every tried to push your kids up into the upper reaches and have a minimum of level that even they can't fall below? You might be surprised what your kids are capable of doing.
ReplyDeleteGeneral comment here:
I am a product (along with many other local politicians) of the local public school districts that never did push me into that upper realm.
I regret every day of my being of three decades for NOT insisting and NOT pushing myself into those upper brackets of education, to accept mediocrity and to screw off and not my educational opportunities seriously.
I believe in my truest potential now and have over the past five years continued to push my personal educational and other goals to the highest achievable ideals and it may soon mean that I might go back to school and get myself a serious degree.
But I still see a good number of kids in certain schools in Clark County that are not being nurtured, (some times a little push is needed) and not expect that they can't do this level of work because for so long the norm has been that mediocrity in public schools was ok?
And with budget cuts being aimed directly at local school districts, I don't believe or accept that this is an excuse to not keep our expectations higher than ever at any grade level?
I will accept in some special cases that a kid just can't make the cut and its proven through some form of special reasoning (and a parental - school district signoff as in the article) that a child can taken out of that type of education situation because for one reason or another they simply just cannot hack it.
And to Kelly, Thank you for posting this! It shows to me at least one other person in the community cares about our kids (and though you and some of us have political differences, deep down you do care.) and that you won't accept the from up on high the same b$ train that has been force-fed to us for so too long.
My pleasure. We must do better, or an under-educated class of students will become the increasingly weaker backbone of our nation.
ReplyDeleteCompetition and innovation are part of what made our country great, and for too long we've settled for "good enough."
We simply cannot settle for that any longer.
Emotional topics like this evoke preconceptions that I'm not going to be able to change with simple debate, but I'll give you one more little bit to chew on.
ReplyDeleteI'd say half of adults hate their time in High School, a third don't care, and maybe for 10% it was the greatest time of their life. High School is formative - you are still a child. Most people don't become adults until college. Putting adult expectations on kids, especially during a rebellious and confused stage of their lives, is counter-productive.
Just give them some slack before they grow up.
Unfortunately, the end product of our system are students who graduate... and then who have to take remedial courses to qualify for classes in community college... a problem that has not been getting better and one which costs us millions of dollars every year as these kids are brought up to a level to be qualified for 100 level community college classes.
ReplyDeleteThat situation has been going on a long, long time. And while it's just a guess, the number of, or percentage of students in Federal Way schools requiring this remedial training in order to start taking 100 level classes will be, I'll wager, greatly reduced.
Our school system is failing if our graduates are not academically competent enough to make a seamless transition into the academic community college world.
We cannot keep doing the same thing while expecting a different result. FW's outside the box thinking may be just what we need to increase our academic competence and decrease the number of years we'll be dead last in head to head competitions with the students of the rest of the industrialized world, all of whom seem to do a great deal more with their students for a great deal less money.
If we want our students to outperform Asian students, for example, then we have to work harder, at least as long, and at a level of academics requiring hours of work and a level of discipline unknown in American academia today.
As I pointed out, the ultimate decision is made by the parents. The issue is to get you to opt out if your parents view this policy as counter-productive.
Social training in the high school jungle has it's place. But first and foremost must be academics. Or we're paying an awful lot of money to the wrong people for the wrong reasons.
Once you start your Junior year in college, everything that happened before that is just so much noise.
ReplyDeleteI loved hiring Aspergers but I wouldn't invite them to my house for the Superbowl.
Since I am probably junior to both of you & Lew, I have some experience with the schools over the past twenty years being a student & mentor to kids as a college student.
ReplyDeleteThere are som bright shiny stars in our school system here in Clark County that are getting the recognition that they deserve.
What my problem is with the bottom 50 percent (or better?) that seem to not be able to handle good communication skills, math & sciences and the historical nature of how social studies. Look at how other nations are kicking our asses and taking good slots in our colleges & universities?
Does that mean that our kids cannot meritorially handle the workloads? Handle the important tasks that will be handed to them from the grandparent level of the Vietnam and parents as Two Gulf War generation is now going to have to hand over this country over to them in suceeding generations?
We are now losing the final breaths of the World War 1 and 2 generations and the mighty fifties but what is the lower generations doing to take up the rear from us?
Right now, I am in the middle of the Gulf War generation and war vets helping to mentor and teach my extended family and younger generations. Though I probably will not have any kids of my own, its seriously scares me what theya are going to have to endure because my generation is not stepping up hard enough and giving the politicians a piece of our mind. (And NO, Jon Russell, Jaime and David Hedrick do not well represent ME or my generation.)