Home schooling in CA

[MouseWife]

Originally Posted by Strangler Lewis

In our clean, middle class school, there was a fair amount of bullying that went unchecked. My sense was that our popular principal was not lazy or a fan of bullying; rather, he made his choice to foster a happy, happy school to maximize fundraising. Now that he has retired, the new principal is strong in her aspirations that the school and the home be safe and settled places to learn.

I disagree with this, at least on the subject of parties. At our school, there is no holiday too small to justify hitting the parents up for cash to pour sugar into our kids for an hour in the afternoon. Plus, we have post-Halloween pajama/candy/pervert day, other pajama/pervert days and extra parties that the kids can "earn" to bring dolls and stuffed animals to school.

As far as tests go, our school, though posting decent raw numbers, has been consistently in the bottom ten percent of our demographic in the region. This suggests to me that no one on either side is stepping up. Now, I always did well on standardized tests, so I have a "how hard can it be" attitude. We should be able to scratch all our itches: "teach to the test" to whatever extent necessary, teach beyond the test and have endless parties to foster unhealthy habits.

Here I agree. It was generally accepted that our American history teacher in high school drank in class (spiked soda can). We had to go off campus to do that.

Comparing our school years to now, well, that is hard. I try to forget most of mine....

Ah, it sounds like your school is going the opposite direction. Too many parties. I don't know where our school was at. I should look that up. {I know before the Immersion Program, we ranked pretty well....} I know the middle schools in this area are very low on the charts for test scores. The lower scoring schools try to recruit the high test score kids to bring up their rating.

But yeah, with all of the time they spend in school, even with parties, why oh why can't they pass the damn tests???

And, today, my son learned what grading on a curve means.

How many high schools in your area have metal detectors?

LOL I say 'Unfair!' if the teacher could drink in class, why not you guys? At my daughters school, it was evident they did their drinking in the parking lot {empty vodka/beer bottles all over}.