Last Day of Freedom
School started today in Santa Rosa county, and starts tomorrow in Okaloosa county [my county]. Got to get ready for those tests.
On-line Opinion Magazine featuring annoyed rumblings from the leading edge of the Baby Boom firmly tied to a reality-based world.
Established: 21 November 2004
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7 comments
I never could understand why the school year in Florida starts in August and ends in May. Just about every other state starts in September.
This is a problem when my son visits his aunt and grandparents during the summer and everyone wants to know why my parents are homeschooling someone’s kid. 😉
I never could understand why the school teachers in Florida teach to the FCAT from August to May. Just about any decent school in America tries to give their students a well-rounded education. Not in Florida, thanks to the twin Bushes. This is a problem when my out-of-state grandson visits his Florida grandparents during the summer and everybody wants to know why he’s so smart and their kids are such idiots.
(Just joking, Phinky and Bryan.)
Pressure from parents finally convinced North Carolina to loosen up the early-August to early-May schedule. It’s now state law that no school system can begin before Aug 25 unless they can show need to make up snow days, for example.
Phinky, it was started to make up for days lost to hurricanes, then it morphed into providing more time for FCAT preparation after people accepted the change to the schedule. It is a mess. You should see people trying to replace all of the high school kids a month before the “season” ends.
John I went to military schools on Eglin which use a standard curriculum and Okaloosa is still a reasonable system because a large percentage of teachers are military wives and the school population doesn’t remain static, but many of the “enrichment programs” are gone. The damn FCAT is the worse idea ever. Okaloosa has an “A+” school system that makes it average in much of the rest of country. I hate to think what it costs to air condition the schools for the month of August.
As my Mother mentioned tonight, after riding to school on bus without air conditioning the kids are not apt to learn much for the first two hours.
That makes sense to me, Andante. They could cancel the Spring Break; it’s not like many of those kids have to help with planting any more, the original reason for the break.
Seems to me that the true purpose of these stardardized tests is for Republicans to be able to say that schools in poor/minority areas “don’t work” because of their scores. That way, they can just close them, remove their certification, and channel students to private schools were they’d get a proper education (religious). This, of course, as opposed to actually providing the kids with the services they need in order for them to get up to par with rich schools (such as parental support, tutoring, supplies, etc.). I volunteered in a middle school in Detroit a few years back, where the kids could not take their books home to study because the school did not have the money to replace them if they got lost. The student body was also 60% Mexican-American, with a good portion being Spanish speaking (at least mainly). They had one Mexican-American staff (the truance officer, of course), and a Spanish-speaking American teacher. Yes, I think throwing more money at the school would’ve help. They could get more supplies and more Spanish speaking teachers to help teach the children while they also learned English…. One more point before I stop ranting… During the year, a good looking, blonde, Croatian kid ended up going to the school. He did not speak English. The school district got him a personal tutor and he was allowed to play in the school gym anytime he wanted….hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm… I guess Mexican kids are just too common and ugly.
~ Melting in New England
Making matters worse (I wish I had a link; heard it on the local news), the sub-groups that must meet a certain criteria are part of federal programs. The privacy restrictions in those programs prohibit the schools from pinpointing exactly which students need remedial help.
Bryan, the last time I remember farming making a real impact on the schedule was when I lived in the eastern part of N.C. and tobacco was king. The high schools couldn’t start their football season until mid-September because of the harvest.
CD, the problem is when people are a middle minority, there are too many to be an interesting novelty and too few to have political power. It is difficult to explain to people who have never studied another language the help learning a second language is to knowing your own, especially if you are a native English speaker. English has rules and reasons for what seem to be “exceptions”, but you don’t understand them until you study a more structured language.
Given the pay differential by so many companies for being bi-lingual, it doesn’t make sense not to be, if you have the opportunity. Bi-lingual education is not a problem, it is an opportunity for teachers and students. If they don’t believe it they should check the price on foreign language pre-schools in New York and LA. People are spending thousands a year so their 4-year-old can learn Chinese. It isn’t that difficult to have an adult master elementary school Spanish if they have ever mastered a second language.
In my local district we have Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Serb, Polish, Korean, Vietnamese, and Thai speaking kids. While there are “assistants” [military wives] to help them, their parents have to depend on a couple of churches for help with English, because there are no English as a second language programs. It’s stupid.
Andante, how about being required to fill out minority employment surveys for the Feds while being prohibited by the state from asking employees any questions about ethnicity. These people are seriously messed up. If you are in certain positions in a school you get to select which laws you are going to violate, because you can’t do your job without violating the law.
In the old New York education law the Spring Break was called the Planting Period for years. The original timing of the school year was based on agricultural needs in the states.