“Today, even the idiots have college degrees. And the idiots have seniority.” Joe Queenan, Wall Street Journal

America’s youth is digging itself deep into debt funding college educations, but is it worth it? 

In the Wall Street Journal, Joe Queenan paints a gloomy portrait:

Over the next few weeks, hundreds of thousands of Millennials will graduate from institutions of higher learning. They will celebrate for several days, perhaps several weeks. Then they will enter a labor force that neither wants nor needs them. They will enter an economy where roughly 17% of people aged 20 through 24 do not have a job, and where two million college graduates are unemployed. They will enter a world where they will compete tooth and nail for jobs as waitresses, pizza delivery men, file clerks, bouncers, trainee busboys, assistant baristas, interns at bodegas.

As they struggle to dig out of this morass, today’s graduates may never catch up with their parent’s generation. Queenan adds:

There are three formidable obstacles confronting college graduates today. One, the economy, though improving at a glacial pace, is still a wreck. There are no jobs, and the jobs that do exist aren’t the kinds anyone in his right mind would have spent $100,000 to $200,000 to land. Two, nothing in most middle-class kids’ lives has prepared them emotionally for the world they are about to enter. Three, the legacy costs that society has imposed on young people will be a millstone around their necks for decades. Who’s going to pay for the health care bill? Gen Y. Who’s going to pay off the federal deficit? Gen Y. Who’s going to fund all those cops’ and teachers’ and firemen’s pensions? Gen Y. Who’s going to support Baby Boomers as they suck the Social Security System dry while wheezing around Tuscany? Gen Y.

The prescription: save $200,000 and skip college. Jacques Steinberg argues that many students spend a six or more years on college tuition, with nothing to show for that expense.

The idea that four years of higher education will translate into a better job, higher earnings and a happier life — a refrain sure to be repeated this month at graduation ceremonies across the country — has been pounded into the heads of schoolchildren, parents and educators. But there’s an underside to that conventional wisdom. Perhaps no more than half of those who began a four-year bachelor’s degree program in the fall of 2006 will get that degree within six years, according to the latest projections from the Department of Education. (The figures don’t include transfer students, who aren’t tracked.)

For college students who ranked among the bottom quarter of their high school classes, the numbers are even more stark: 80 percent will probably never get a bachelor’s degree or even a two-year associate’s degree.

That can be a lot of tuition to pay, without a degree to show for it.

And, demand is rising for many jobs that don’t even require a 4-year college degree:

But this growth is expected to be dwarfed by the need for registered nurses, home health aides, customer service representatives and store clerks. None of those jobs require a bachelor’s degree.

Given the rise of college courses online, isn’t it time to question the value of a brick and mortar 4-year college education?

I’m exhausted.  Not by the loss of one hour of  morning sleep to DST, although that is never a good thing.  No, I’m bone-deep tired from getting sucked back into the world of public school education.

I had a good thing going these past three years while Teen Daughter attended a private middle school.  No more evenings supervising mind-numbing homework assignments.  No more supplemental work to cover academic areas missed in school.  I was able to relax as I had complete confidence that this school community had the highest expectations of all their students.  I also knew, from experience, that her teachers would immediately shoot me an email if a child wasn’t working to potential.  And somehow, they managed to encourage the very best from my daughter without wasting weeks on assessment tests, busy-work homework, and other stress-inducing assignments.

Unfortunately, the good times are over.

Next year, Teen Daughter will rejoin the public school system when she enters high school.  It’s not a great high school, but it’s not bad either.  It’s not on the local list of top public high schools in the nation, but it has enough Honors and AP classes to challenge and engage most students.  If she is allowed to take those college-track classes, she’ll receive a good enough education.

And that’s where my headaches begin. 

Our school district severely limits who can enter those accelerated classes.  In order to enter 9th Grade Honors English or the accelerated Social Studies class, the 2-year AP World History, public middle school students have to: write a statement of interest; earn a minimum high level 3 on the NYS ELA 8 Exam; maintain an academic average of 90% in Social Studies; obtain a teacher recommendation; complete the mandatory Summer Project; AND earn a satisfactory score on a qualifying test.  Fortunately, my daughter doesn’t have to take qualifiers for Math, Science, and Spanish as these are determined by performance on the Regents tests in June. (I think, still not 100% certain about this.)

As a private school student, she is exempt from the New York State assessment.  Thank goodness!  Not that she wouldn’t do well, it’s  just that we don’t have the time.  As it is, I have to pull her out of school so that she misses two afternoons of classes to take the English and Social Studies qualifiers.  I’d hate for her to miss an additional three days of school for the NYS ELA tests.

I’m glad she doesn’t have to take the ELA test, and I’m confident that she’ll do fine on the Honors English qualifier without any preparation other than the usual writing-intensive Language Arts schoolwork. 

No, the headache starts with figuring out what all the hoops and hurdles are in order to enter the college-track classes.  And then, the headache worsens in trying to prepare my daughter for a test of two-years worth of US History content.  At her current school, she is taught to think, reason, and write.  The students discuss the relevance of Supreme Court cases and political ideas to current events.  They develop research and writing skills on annual thesis reports and other interest-led projects. 

She has been developing the skills and habits of mind necessary to succeed in the 21st Century, but not the content knowledge that is needed to pass the Social Studies qualifier.  Modeled on the AP US History Exam, the qualifier will cover historical content from the onset of the “discovery” of the Americas through the Great Depression.  The test will include multiple choice questions as well as a DBQ, a writing assignment that requires the student to use primary source scaffolding to generate a formulaic 5-paragraph essay. 

At her current school, my daughter has had no experience writing DBQs.  In my opinion, that’s a good thing because allocating time to these would have wasted time that was better spent actually doing research, learning how to locate primary sources, and then crafting a well-reasoned thesis which often requires more than 5 paragraphs.

Still, the DBQ portion of the test won’t be a problem.  Now that my daughter knows what a DBQ is, and how to follow the formula, she’ll be fine.  It’s getting through the content that’s painful.

At first, we were advised by the Social Studies Department Chair to have her study from Barron’s Regents Exam Preparation for US History, but my daughter was struggling using this.  Struggling to stay awake, that is.  Later, a young friend who is currently in the AP World History class suggested using a prep book for AP US History, which makes sense as those are the kinds of questions that will be on the test.  Using the AP prep book also had the added benefit of not being as sleep-inducing as the Regents book.  It may be material that is harder to comprehend, but at least it’s interesting.

It’s the difference between stating that President Monroe issued the Monroe Doctrine, or making that statement and then explaining the Monroe Doctrine within the foreign policy context.  The first is meaningless, but the second leads to all kinds of passionate debates.

And there is the reason that I’m encouraging my daughter to jump through all these hoops and hurdles.  I want her to be allowed to take the classes that are interesting, even if she has to work hard to get in.

It’s worth the headache.   Now, if this was the only public school related headache, I wouldn’t be exhausted.  I’m too tired to share the rest of this story right now, but I promise it’s a doozy.  Enough to bring the local news vans into my neighborhood, and to put my face on the 6 o’clock news.

I must be doing something wrong, again.  While my friends’ offspring don’t ever want to leave home, my child -barely a teen at thirteen – can’t wait to move on.

She is already campaigning for a foreign exchange year, preferably next year.  Forget high school, she’s ready to jump straight from middle school to college.

MIT’s Splash Program

Recently, she got a little taste of the college life at MIT’s Splash weekend, two days jam-packed with back to back classes.  And it’s just whetted her appetite for more.

One weekend in November, thousands of students of all types flood to MIT just for ESP’s Splash program. From fractal fun to Hungarian history to aircraft analysis, Splash participants are introduced to a huge variety of topics by over 400 classes taught by teachers from the MIT community. Want to take a class on Egyptian mythology? And origami? And chemical sensors? All are possible. Students have 20 hours to take as many classes as they want!
 

It’s an intense weekend.  On Saturday morning, I accompanied Teen Daughter to registration and then walked her over to her first class at 9:00AM.  I didn’t see her again until 6:00 PM. (Note- High School students return after dinner for more classes!)  The next day, I dropped her off at the same time, but her classes didn’t finish until 7:00PM.  She was on her own, among strangers, the entire time.

It turns out that that was part of the appeal.  When asked what she liked about Splash, she answered, “The classes were really fun, and I liked being able to roam the campus on my own.”

MIT’s Splash Classes

With over 700 classes to choose from, it’s hard NOT to find fun classes.  My daughter didn’t even try to register on the first day (when an overload of students crashed the system), but she still found a plethora of interesting classes.  She didn’t get into the quickly filled Pen Spinning or Cheesecakeology classes, but she did get into:

• To Cube (Solving the the Rubik’s Cube)
• A Brief Conversation About the Baha’i Faith
• Why Do We Love?
• Teach anything! – How to fake a presentation
• The Mathematics of Juggling
• The Wonders of Recorded Audio
• How Scientists Solve the Mysteries Behind the Biology of Love
• 49 Reasons Why California Is Better Than Your State
• How to Open a Paper Fan
• The Sacred Art of Ski & Snowboard Tuning
• Advantage Gambling: the casino business model, the poker boom, and gambling teams
• How to be “One of the Guys” … Even if you Hate Football

Most of her instructors were young and entertaining, many of them students themselves.  One of the teachers was former child star Brittany Ashton Holmes, who played “Darla” in the 1994 film “Little Rascals.”  She taught “How to be “One of the Guys” … Even if you Hate Football.”  Another teacher flew in from Stanford, where college students also put on an annual Splash program.  (She didn’t teach “49 Reasons Why California Is Better Than Your State.”)

Splash alumni love the program so much that they’re starting  similar programs at universities around the country. This year, a new Splash program is being launched at Duke University in North Carolina. 

Splash is an exciting program that reflects the enthusiasm and passion of all involved.  Teen Daughter enjoyed it so much that, not only will she return next year; but she’s going to try to register for Spark, MIT’s one day program in the Spring.  We’re also going to look into signing up for the Splash program in New York City.

Planning Your Splash at MIT in Cambridge, MA Trip:

Hotel – We stayed at Le Meridien, located just two blocks from the MIT campus.  It’s luxurious, but with reasonably priced rooms (we found excellent room rates on Expedia.) And, it’s right next to a large, inexpensive parking lot and a grocery store.  Very convenient.

Breakfast – The Student Union offers a variety of dining options, from the full-serve convenience store to a Dunkin Donuts.  Perhaps the best deal are the yummy breakfast burritos at Anna’s Taqueria.  We ate there multiple times over the one weekend, and met Boston natives who frequent the establishment for their regular dinner take out.

Dinner – Royal East – We followed our friends, some of whom were celebrating with a CTY summer camp crowd, to this restaurant.  Smart kids.  The meals were reasonable, delicious, and just a short walk from Splash classes.

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By the time my daughter reached 4th Grade, I was spending a lot of energy researching Gifted Education, and Education in general.  I’d done everything I could to advocate for her special needs in school, and I’d realized that our school district didn’t have the resources (or desire) to fulfill her needs in school.

Our school district provided a pull-out Enrichment Program, very loosely modeled on Renzulli’s Schoolwide Enrichment Model, that gave Kayla a break from class for three hours, once a week.  During this time, she competed in Math Olympiad, and prepared to compete in Odyssey of the Mind.  Additionally, her classroom teacher was charged with differentiating the curriculum.  In practice, she wasn’t challenged or engaged most of the time, and she was far from working to her potential.

Bottom line, I had to enrich and supplement her education at home.

Enrichment At Home

Now, enriching her education wasn’t much of a stretch.  Our family loves to learn and travel, so enriching family activities and trips are just par for the course.  Outside of school, Kayla signed up for all kinds of classes and camps: dance, theater, science camp, zoo camp, cooking lessons, harp lessons, swim team, softball team, computer club, running club, etc., etc.  I’ve lost track of all the enrichment activities that Kayla has tried over the years!

Kayla also benefited from Girl Scout activities and trips that were thematically linked to the curriculum.  For example, when the girls were learning about New York in school, we organized field trips to local historical museums and to the State Capitol, and we encouraged them to work on relevant patch programs.  It just made sense to link academics and extracurricular activities.

Afterschool Home School

Supplementing her education was more of a challenge as I had to investigate what was available, and believe me, there is a staggering amount of educational material and resources available, even without looking at homeschool curriculum.

Soon, I was pawing through the Education bookshelves at Barnes & Noble and the Columbia University Bookstore, and following every lead in books like Karen B. Rogers’ Re-Forming Gifted Education: How Parents and Teachers Can Match the Program to the Child. (See Rogers on Gifted domains.)

I might have gone a little bonkers trying out new material.  That year, we supplemented with the following (but not all at the same time!)

Afterschool History

• I discovered The Well Trained Mind and our lives have never been the same.  My daughter LOVED the affiliated Story of the World series, even though I asked her to write about the readings.
• We also looked into the Student Research Awards sponsored by the New York State Archives.  Kayla wanted to do a project, but we couldn’t find the time outside of school, and there was no support for this in school.
• She did enter, and win, an essay contest about the American flag sponsored by Fort Crailo.
• Kayla visited the 4th Grade class taught by a family friend in southern California.  To prepare for the visit, she created a project on the Iroquois to share with the students who were displaying projects about Native Americans.

Afterschool Math

• Kumon Math – It seemed like a good idea at the time.  Just 10 minutes a day, and your child will be a math wiz!  Confessions of a Kuman Mom
• In school, Kayla was bored to tears with the spiraling Houghton Mifflin Math.  As far as she could tell, it seemed that they kept going over the same math taught in previous years.  At that time, I had no idea what spiraling was, but I had the bright idea to compare math textbooks by testing out the math textbook being used by friends in both a local elite private school, and the very highly regarded public schools in Montgomery County, MD. You guessed it, they were using the quintessential spiraling math curriculum of Everyday Math.  That was a short-lived venture as I couldn’t make heads or tails of the materials, and if it didn’t make sense to me, I certainly couldn’t expect it to inspire a love of math in my daughter!
• Highline Advanced Math Program – Kayla seemed to enjoy Math Olympiad, so I tried to help her prepare for the competition tests by reviewing this math enrichment program.  It was alright, but it certainly didn’t light a fire in her belly.
• Hey Math! – I paid for the online subscription because the program promised to “ignite young minds” with the interactive math program favored by Singapore Math students.  No, it did not ignite my daughter’s mind, but that was early in its development.

Afterschool Language Arts

• Inspired by Lucy Calkins’ The Art of Teaching Writing,  I tried to implement elements of the Writer’s Workshop. Since my daughter spent most of her waking hours outside the house, this wasn’t as successful as I would’ve liked.
• One of Kayla’s favorite teachers, who taught her in 2nd grade, “volunteered” to give her private writing lessons.  Actually, this teacher was not immune to Kayla’s big blue eyes, and the sweetness of her request, as my daughter visited her classroom and begged to be given writing lessons.  There wasn’t time for too many lessons, but they were much appreciated.
• Great Source Education Group publishes great textbooks.  Write Source: A Book For Writing, Thinking, and Learning is a great reference for scholarly writing at the elementary level.  Also, the series, Daybook of Critical Reading and Writing is a great way to introduce students to the mechanics of reading.
• Mother Daughter Book Club – This has been a source of joy, camaraderie, and even some learning since we started the group in third grade.
• Junior Great Books Program – I tried, and failed, to start this reading program which promotes critical thinking through an emphasis on Shared Inquiry at our school.  Our school library had all the materials, and the librarian has been trained to implement them.  However, it is apparent that she doesn’t really care for the reading materials.  In fact, she had several complaints. Of course, I went ahead and purchased the materials to use the program at home, and found that it’s better for a group setting where you can have book discussion.  One on one, it’s just not as much fun.
• That summer, I enrolled Kayla in an online writing program given by Stanford’s Education Program for Gifted Youth (EPGY.) The writing class was excellent, and Kayla was excited to share it with students from around the world, but she wasn’t too thrilled to have to do class work in the summer, especially when we went to visit friends.

My Poor Child, The Guinea Pig

Over the course of that 4th Grade year, my daughter did a lot of extracurricular class work.  Too much.  Mostly, I’ve learned my lesson, and don’t ask her to do much at all.

Nowadays, she’s s-l-o-w-l-y working through Danica McKellar’s Math Doesn’t Suck: How to Survive Middle School Math Without Losing Your Mind or Breaking a Nail.  She’s also barreling through Painless Vocabulary at the breakneck speed of a glacier. No, she isn’t breaking any academic productivity records.

However, she is an avid reader, and she is challenged and engaged at school.  That’s more than good enough.

Making The Cut Into Our Homeschool Curriculum

Eventually, through all my research into Gifted Education, I came across a list, based on a survey of gifted students, that described their learning requirements, and I was struck by two items in particular:

• Gifted students want to study things that interest them and go beyond basics
• Work with abstract concepts that require more than simple thinking – such as creative, reflective, and analytical ideas

I’ve kept that in mind as I decided what would make the cut into my son’s Fourth Grade Homeschool Curriculum.

Homeschool History

• Story of the World worked out well with both of my children, and provides the framework for our homeschool curriculum.
• Now that he’s old enough, I will encourage my son to try to create a project for the Student Research Awards.

Homeschool Math

• None of the math programs that Kayla used in 4th Grade made the cut, but we may revisit the new and improved Hey Math! as a supplement to Singapore Math, which has worked out well for my son.

Homeschool Language Arts

• I continue to be inspired by Lucy Calkins’ The Art of Teaching Writing and the Writer’s Workshop, and we’re still reading through Ralph Fletcher’s books for young writers that is also in this same vein.
• This year we’ll finally use the Great Source material as more than a reference guide.  Alex will be working through the Write Source writing projects, and the reflections in the Daybook of Critical Reading and Writing.
• Book Club – It’s not the Mother Daughter Book Club, but Alex will continue to participate in a couple of book clubs.  One is a Homeschool Kids Book Club that seems to prefer Fantasy books.  The other is a very small group that is working through the material in Deconstructing Penguins: Parents, Kids, and the Bond of Reading

Is That All?

No, there’s more.  A lot more.  I’ve been collecting books and resources for years.  And, there are a lot of opportunities, such as the local Math Counts Homeschool Group, that open up to older students.  It won’t be easy to cull through all the materials to formulate our Fourth Grade IHIP, but the real issue will be to see what resonates with Alex, ’cause “It Don’t Mean a Thing, (If It Ain’t Got That Swing!)”

What am I missing?  Can you think of any programs or resources that I should include in our plans for next year?  Please comment!

My 21st Century Education Plan Series:

• How Should We Educate 21st Century Students?
• Who’s Minding The Gap In Your Child’s Education?
• Moving Beyond Learning Standards

Related Articles:

• Does your school value the Gifted and Talented? – Lists learning needs of gifted students.
• One Step Ahead of the Train Wreck – One dad’s experience supplementing spiraling Everyday Math with Singapore at home.

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I’ve tried to build my 21st Century Education Plan on a firm foundation that covers a core knowledge in Literature, Art, Math, History, and Science.  Sounds ambitious, right?

Well, I have to admit that although there are advantages to adhering to such learning standards, it’s not without it’s own set of problems.

My Education About Education

Back in 2001, when my daughter entered Kindergarten, I’d never heard of NCLB.  In those days, consumed by nonstop running after two high-energy kids, I barely paid attention to the news.  As far as I knew, all well-regarded public schools offered the same basic education, preparing students to do well in college and beyond.

I thought that all I had to do to ensure a good education for my children was to move to an award-winning, top rated school district.  A highly regarded school community with excellent teachers and involved parents would be a certain recipe for success.

This belief held strong for several years.

Although I’d heard of E.D. Hirsch and his concerns about cultural literacy, I didn’t think they applied at the good schools.  When I picked up a copy of What Your Kindergartner Needs To Know, it was in the same manner that I’d once used What to Expect When You’re Expecting to understand that stage of our lives.

Reading this book didn’t change my beliefs.

Hirsch’s introduction informs the reader that students, even in the same school, can expect vastly different experiences when taught by different teachers.  He goes on to describe the Core Knowledge Foundation that was created to address this problem.

The “Core Knowledge” movement is an educational reform based on the premise that a grade-by-grade core of common learning is necessary to ensure a sound and fair elementary education.

Intellectually, I understood his arguments but I didn’t think it was relevant to our case.  My daughter’s Kindergarten class didn’t cover everything in the Core Knowledge curriculum, but it covered much of the material.  They didn’t explore World History, but they went on a field trip to a local orchard and learned about growing apples.  Overall, I was satisfied with the education that my child was receiving.

It wasn’t until years later that I started questioning these gaps in our top-rated local school’s curriculum, and comparing it to that of other schools around the country.  I started seeing for myself how the lack of uniform learning standards could affect my children’s education.

My son entered Kindergarten in 2004, repeating it in 2005, giving me plenty of opportunity to compare first-hand how different teachers cover the same grade material.  I also saw the not-so-subtle maneuvers savvy parents used to get their children into the classes with the preferred teachers.

Perhaps the rudest awakening occurred when my daughter entered 3rd Grade.  That year was a mess!  At the beginning of the year, the class was a combined 3rd & 4th Grade, but that didn’t work out so they moved the fourth graders out midyear.  This created untold chaos, even as the class dealt with their first standardized test, a slow-moving math curriculum that never covered all the material, and Science and Social Studies curriculum that was hit or miss.

NCLB Impacts Teaching

As an experienced parent, I could also see how the curriculum changed over the years.

My daughter was in the last class to experience the pre-NCLB world, before State Assessments became mandatory in Grades 3-8.  She had to take the TerraNova in 3rd Grade, but not the dreaded State Tests which suck up one week each for Verbal and Math tests, not to mention all the prep beforehand.

Her class did not “benefit” from pacing guidelines that asked teachers to introduce tested subjects in earlier grades.  I noticed the difference when my son was asked to begin memorizing math facts in 1st Grade as this was something that had previously not been done until 2nd Grade.

Not a big, huge change in itself, but it was part of an overall trend where fun projects were cut back to make room for getting kids ready for the State Assessments.  Ensuring that schools were accountable, meeting the minimum learning standards in Math and Language Arts, meant that there was less time to differentiate curriculum to meet the needs of students with different abilities.

As one 2nd Grade teacher, who is renowned for her creativity, told me outside of school, “NCLB is sucking the joy out of learning, and I’m thinking seriously about moving down to teaching a lower grade to avoid it all.”

Think about this, this is a 2nd Grade teacher being affected by a test that isn’t given until 3rd Grade.

It leaves me wondering what kind of impact we will see if current efforts to enforce national learning standards succeed.

So far, I haven’t been impressed by any of the learning standards.  I’ve already mentioned what I think about New York’s learning standards.  Comparing these to learning standards around the nation, I still see similar gaps in coverage of the Humanities.

However, even if public schools adopted the Core Knowledge curriculum, and succeeded in filling educational gaps, I’d still be concerned that the concurrent emphasis on accountability would detract from what I think should be the goal of engaging enthusiastic life-long learners.

My 21st Century Education Plan

Bottom line, although the Core Knowledge series may outline a solid framework for a school curriculum, I’d be concerned about any rigid learning standard.

No matter how comprehensive it is, learning isn’t static.  Everyday there are new developments that shape what could, or should be learned.  There are current events that transform dry history into a meaningful, engaging lesson.  Scientific discoveries can add a new element to a lesson, or transform it altogether.

More importantly, a strict adherence to a Core Knowledge schedule, or any learning standard schedule, necessitates more lecturing, less discussion, and very little child-led learning.

So, I’ve picked up a copy of What Your Fourth Grader Needs To Know, and I’ll flip through it when I’m formulating the next IHIP, but it’s just a checklist, not a full curriculum.  There is no weaving in of related topics, or deep exploration of any one topic. It’s a guide, but not an itinerary.

My 21st Century Education Plan Series:

• How Should We Educate 21st Century Students?
• Who’s Minding The Gap In Your Child’s Education?

Related Articles:

• Creativity Is Not On The Test
• NCLB, seven years and still bullying strong

What Your Kindergartner Needs to Know: Preparing Your Child for a Lifetime of Learning (Core Knowledge Series): E.D. Hirsch Jr.: Books ISBN: 0385318413 ISBN-13: 9780385318419

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To answer the question posed in a previous article, How Should We Educate 21st Century Students?, I have to share some personal history.

Our Local Public School

Visiting my son’s old school, the local public school that he attended K-1 and that his sister attended all the way through graduation at the end of 5th Grade, is always an interesting experience.

Inevitably, we run into a teacher in the Main Office who scrutinizes my homeschooled son, asking him seemingly innocuous questions that basically boil down to, “Do you have any friends?”  Since we’re usually there to pick up a friend for a play date, I just laugh this off.

Last week, we were there to attend an Author Visit with David Schwartz.  This time, we ran into Alex’s 1st Grade teacher, one of the loveliest, smartest, caring teachers I have ever known.  She knows Alex well, and has seen him many times in the two years that we’ve been homeschooling, so I doubt that she’s worried about the socialization issue.

Still, I cringed, and my face turned pale, as she stopped what she was doing to observe Alex writing his name on a name tag.  On this day, of all days, my son forgot to capitalize his last name, and he wrote with the sloppy handwriting that he’d had drilled out of him in Kindergarten!  Oh, the embarrassment!

I turned to the teacher and assured her that we were working on his handwriting, that it still lagged behind other skills, but that he often wrote better than THAT!  I also reassured her that Alex does know how to capitalize, even if he doesn’t always remember to do so.

She smiled warmly, and didn’t say another word.  I don’t know if she bought what I was saying, but she had Alex in her class for a full year and his big sister as well.  This was the teacher who first recommended Kayla for Gifted Testing, and who identified her problems with organization.  I’m fairly confident that this teacher is well aware of the issues posed by asynchronous development in gifted students.

Homeschool On Trial

At this point, I’ve gotten used to the idea that our homeschooling experiment is always on trial.  Questions and helpful suggestions are par for the course.  It doesn’t bother me, and sometimes I even learn something useful.

Last month, a close friend who is a 2nd generation teacher in her first year as a Junior Kindergarten teacher, wrote to express her concern after seeing my son’s first solo blogging attempt (later edited by the Mommy Review Board):

However, after looking at California’s third grade writing standards, he is falling way short. I do not know what the purpose of the blog is, and maybe its not educational, (which would somewhat explain the mistakes.) Regardless, he still should know how to write basic high frequency words and write more supporting details for being in the third grade.

I took her advice to heart and stepped up Alex’s Spelling instruction, switching to a different textbook that seemed better suited to his needs.  I also reviewed our Language Arts program, checking that Alex was at least on grade level in Writing.

Then, I responded and reassured her that we were covering the appropriate Language Arts material, and that Alex has learned the material sufficiently well enough to pass a grade level assessment test.  He just doesn’t always choose to use what he knows.

Curriculum Standards in New York State

I’ve paid close attention to the New York State guidelines in our homeschool planning, and I can say in all honesty that our curriculum can be interpreted as being right on target with the NYS Core Curriculum.  Of course, the NYS Core Curriculum is open to all kinds of interpretation.  (See Education World’s National Standards for various standards, including a state by state access list.)

The NYS Education Department maintains a website outlining the core curriculum that is supposed to enable students to achieve the learning standards so that:

Schools and parents are encouraged to collaborate to ensure that all students graduate from high school ready for work, higher education, and citizenship.

It is then left to the local school districts to:

… develop curricula based on the NYS Learning Standards, select textbooks and instructional materials, develop pacing charts for learning (scope and sequence), and provide professional development to ensure that all students have access to instruction leading to attainment of these learning standards.

Within a school district, there is a certain amount of uniformity, but there is still room for interpretation and differentiation between individual schools and teachers.

Gaps In A Public School Education

As a result, a student may be challenged and stretched one year, and bored to death another.  When my daughter was in 2nd Grade, her teacher gave her the option of doing an independent research project, in addition to daily writing exercises.  Then, in 3rd Grade, her teacher assigned many creative projects, but few writing assignments.

That created a gap in writing development that was not fully addressed until she moved to a private school that puts communication skills at the center of its collaborative learning curriculum.

While my daughter’s learning gap in writing could be attributed to individual teachers, I’d argue that the gap in other areas – specifically History and Science – is directly attributable to the NY State learning standards.

I won’t embarrass myself by explaining what kinds of gaps exist in Science instruction since I have no clue.  When my daughter was in PS, my veteran California teacher friend was horrified at the lousy textbook being used for Science at our school.  Personally, I don’t know if it was good or bad, but it seemed a bit dumbed down relative to what she was learning outside of school.

Those Who Forget History Are Doomed To Repeat It

It was the coverage of Social Studies that bothered me.  Although the Overview of the Social Studies Core Curriculum is impressive, with its emphasis on an array of dimensions spanning intellectual skills to multiculturalism and multiple perspectives; the reality is that, even overlooking the impact of NCLB, Social Studies is given only the most cursory attention in the Elementary Grades.

By the time 6th Graders in our local public schools finally encounter Ancient History, it’s too little, too late.  They miss the chance to just enjoy learning about ancient civilizations, without the stress of Middle School grades.  Most regrettably, all of history -from Prehistoric beginnings through the Middle Ages – is covered in Chevy Chase Vacation fashion in 6th Grade, with a quick nod and a shove out the door. 

Coverage of American History in our public schools is better as it is touched upon in several grades, but it’s far from comprehensive. 

In 5th Grade, usually early in the school year, NY students are required to take the Social Studies Assessment.  They begin to prepare for this test in 4th Grade when students are introduced to American History within the context of New York State (the subject of NYS’s 4th Grade Social Studies Curriculum.)  Note, that this means that they are not introduced to facets of American History that didn’t take place in NY State.  The Spanish Mission History (or Gold Rush or Pioneer History) that is covered in depth in California barely gets mentioned, if it’s mentioned at all, in our local schools.

Testing History

Students enter 5th Grade in NY supposedly knowing enough about American History to do well on the assessment.  Then, they are introduced to the DBQs, in which they are asked to write an essay that incorporates their own knowledge of history as well as a collection of provided documents.  This tests their knowledge, analytical skills, and their ability to follow instructions.

Being the kind of mother that I am, I had my daughter take a practice test at home.  I wanted to see how she would do, and to help her with any test-taking skill work that she might need.  Over the years, I’ve found that it’s helpful to coach my daughter to have a game plan for attacking these assessment essays that includes: remembering to restate the question, following a time schedule, and making time for outlining.

We started out with the 2003 practice test, the first available online, but were a little shocked when we saw the DBQ essay question.  It asked students to “Describe how New Yorkers and others worked for women’s rights.”

I couldn’t recall Kayla ever learning anything about the suffragette movement, and she didn’t either.  When I went back and questioned the 4th Grade teachers, they said this had been covered with a skit that the students had done based on the life of Sojourner Truth.

Being hazy on historical details myself, I didn’t think much of this, until I went back and investigated.  As you probably already know, Sojourner Truth was an abolitionist and a women’s rights advocate who was born into slavery in New York in 1797.  I have to wonder how learning about a woman who died in 1883 would prepare students to know much about the equal rights movement in the US during the 1800s and early 1900’s.

How could anyone expect a child to know much about the suffragette movement from a Language Arts assignment that asked the student to read a short story about an abolitionist, and then respond with a group project skit?  The entire project was done in one week, mostly during the 45 minute daily Language Arts class, much of the time spent slowly reading the story aloud and then creating an original skit.

This is the kind of sketchy coverage of History that drove me nuts when my daughter was in public school!

My 21st Century Education Plan

Getting back to My 21st Century Education Plan, I tried to fill these gaps with a Classical Education Curriculum.  However, this posed its own set of benefits and drawbacks, one of which was that it doesn’t adequately address our changing world, and the needs of our future adults in this environment. 

My response can basically be described as throwing a bunch of stuff at a wall, and seeing what sticks.  Lots of trial, lots of error.  I’m reading or re-reading E.D. Hirsch on The Knowledge Deficit, but also Tony Wagner on The Global Achievement Gap.

At this point, I’ve synthesized a Go With the Flow approach to teaching my children, but it’s built on a foundation crafted out of the bricks provided by a lot of smart educators.

Stay tuned for more.

On Living By Learning 21st Century Education Plan

This article is the second in a series.  Please refer to the first, How Should We Educate 21st Century Students?, to see how this fits into my Big Plan.

Possibly Related On Living By Learning Articles:

Emerging Trends In Education – Transforming Education to reflect needs of 21st Century Student.

Is It Too Early To Start Thinking About College? – On forging an alternative path.

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How Should We Educate 21st Century Students?

As much as I’d like to predict the future, I’m a mom, not a fortune teller.  Still, it’s part of my job description to make education choices for my children.  I have to keep asking, and investigating,

How should I educate my 21st Century children?

Shift Happens

No, this isn’t a misspelled expletive.  It’s the main idea behind a video, updated as Did You Know 2.0, that’s been making the rounds for a few years, engaging educators in a debate about 21st Century Education.

shift happens – We are currently preparing students for jobs and technologies that don’t yet exist…in order to solve problems that we don’t know are problems yet…

How are you helping my child become literate in the 21st Century?”

The debate centers on a question that I’ve been pondering for years, one that I will probably be mulling until the moment my children take flight from the nest, possible after as well. I’m taking another stab at it so that I can expand on a comment that I posted on one of the most interesting homeschool blogs, Christinemm’s The Thinking Mother.

Responding to the Shift Happens video, Christine asked,  “How then to educate our children?” and then proceeded to answer this with a nod to Sir Ken Robinson, the TED Talks thinker behind,  Do schools kill creativity?

A few days later, The Thinking Mother elaborated further in another post, The Best Plan I’ve Been Able To Come Up With.  Christine’s Big Picture Plan encompasses many, if not all, the elements necessary to nurture strong, healthy individuals who can lead successful, independent lives. It’s an excellent plan, and as Christine says,

I have no clue if this is good enough but it feels right.

When it comes right down to it, most moms will agree, you just have to go with your gut.

My 21st Century Education Plan

I’ve come up with my own 21st Century Education Plan that “feels right” to me, as it furthers the same mission that drives all of my pursuits -

Inspiring creative life-long learners who want to make the world a better place – Learn, Grow, Explore, and Change the World!

With the help of the village that surrounds my children, I’m trying to ensure that we cover the following:

1. Classical Education -  A core knowledge in Literature, Art, Math, History, and Science can be a springboard to creativity as it enables students to build on a firm foundation when producing something completely new.

2. Technology -  Technology skills are basic tools that are needed to turn creative visions into reality.

3. Leadership – The ability to get along well with others, and exert influence, is the glue that holds collaborative creative projects together.

4. Passion – Passion for a project is what fuels creativity, and moves a collaborative project forward.

Is That All?

This isn’t all there is to my 21st Century Education Plan.  Actually, as I tried to explain how we’re covering each of these elements, I found myself writing a personal manifesto that rivaled War and Peace. There is so much that I want to say, and it’s all so important to me, that I’ve broken it down into more manageable blog-sized chunks.

Stay tuned for more!

Your Turn

I would dearly love to hear your opinion.  How do you think we should educate the 21st Century Student?  Is your child learning what they need to thrive in our rapidly changing world?  What’s right on target?  What’s not?

Possibly Related Articles From On Living By Learning -

Living By Learning In The Wired World – On the Flat World, Digital Natives vs. Digital Immigrants, and why bother with technology?

Home School educators are ahead of the curve as We’re Not Waiting For 21st Century Learning.

Is Your Child Computer Literate? – Many kids are not learning technology skills at school, but they can learn at home.

Introducing Digital Learning Home School – Incorporating National Technology Education Standards in our Home School.

Teach Me To Think With Digital Learning – Kids are asking to create something new with technology in their schools.

Have You Mastered The New Media Literacies? – Social skills and cultural competencies that reflect literacy in a globally interconnected, multicultural world.

Obama on Twitter, Facebook, and Beyond – Thomas Friedman was right, now how do we collaborate to solve global issues?

Home Schooling The Networked Student Series:

• Home Schooling The Networked Student
• How To Set Up Your Child’s New Computer
• Selecting A Browser For Your Child’s Computer

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In 1996, when we chose a name for our baby girl we wanted it to be unique.  Bypassing the baby names books, we turned to friends for novel suggestions.  We thought we had a winner when we chose to name our daughter after a friend’s dog who had been named after a Tibetan mountain.

It wasn’t until we brought baby Kayla home that we found out that her name had climbed into the top ten baby names in the US that year, due to the popularity of a soap opera star.

After that experience, I’m no longer surprised when our parenting choices turn out to be, if not common, certainly not especially unusual.

Although home schooling is an unusual choice in our town, it turns out that my son is one of 1.5 million home schooled kids in the US in 2007.  That’s a 74% increase since 1999, when the Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics started keeping track. (Home schooling Grows, USA Today)

Home Schooling is not for everyone, but we are a growing and diverse group.   For just a sample of our many voices, visit some of the Home School Blogs that I subscribe to in my Google Reader:

Just Enough and Nothing More – Tammy Takahashi, author of Deschooling Gently, put a relaxing spin on home school topics.

Alasandra’s Homeschool Blog – A myriad of post topics and a fascinating collection of links to a wide variety of home school blog from a long-term homeschooler.

Why Homeschool – Answering the many reasons families choose to home school.

The Thinking Mother – Always interesting, fabulous book reviews – this mom puts a lot of thought into this home school blog.

Red Sea School – Home schooling the gifted, and other domestic adventures.

Soaring Mountains Academy – Eclectic, naturalist homeschooler.

Sprittibee – Christian homeschooler implementing Charlotte Mason curriculum.

Home School families can be found in all corners of the globe, adapting parenting and education to suit individual interests, needs, and values.  Each home school family is unique, even if homeschooling isn’t.

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After two weeks of late nights, and even later mornings, no one is thrilled to tuck in early in anticipation of Back to School Monday morning.  Even Alex, who is home schooled and could conceivably sleep in tomorrow, has to support his sister with the whole ‘early to bed, early to rise’ routine.

Tomorrow is a big day: getting back into the school routine, tackling projects that we didn’t finish in the Fall, and perhaps a few new ones as well.

Tonight, Alex asked if he could start researching ghosts.  Apparently, he’s looking for a competitive advantage when he faces these monsters.

Well, it’s not on our learning plan, but heck, why not?  It’s a perfectly good way to encourage Alex to develop his “learning network” while I perfect my role as a 21st Century Educator (from The Networked Student):

• Learning Architect
• Modeler
• Learning Concierge
• Connect Learning Incubator
• Network Sherpa
• Synthesizer
• Change Agent

2009 promises to be an exciting new school year.  Perhaps I better join the kids with the early to bed plan!

P.S. Alex just walked in, he couldn’t wait for tomorrow.  He’s so excited because “research is so much fun!”  He just Googled ghosts, and ended up – through a complex train from “ghosts” to “magic” to “paranormal” – discovering newly discovered animal species.  Well, to sleep, perhaps to dream…

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Some of you might think it’s too early to start thinking about college.  After all, my oldest is just in 7th Grade.  Some of you; however, may be of the opinion that college planning should start at birth.

In our family, college planning started long before we even had any children.  This is THE big issue that my husband and I have been discussing since our Pre-Cana counseling days.

My husband, a product of a prestigious prep school and the full Ivy League package, has been touting the traditional path from the get go. 

I, on the other hand, the product of an education rich in scenic routes, well, let’s just say that I’ve been open to alternatives.

Together, we’re forging a middle path.  We encourage our children to explore interests and learning for its own sake, as opposed to doing so to produce a college-worthy curriculum vitae.  At the same time, I’m not above keeping an eye out for programs that might help my children develop skills needed for college admissions.

Traditional Path To College

You may be wondering what I mean when I mention the traditional path to college.  By traditional, I’m merely referring to my husband’s educational path where you attend the best school your parents can afford, get the highest grades possible, choose extracurricular activities that look good on college applications, and take as many college prep classes as you can.

Hyper Path To College

Nowadays, many parents worry that even the traditional path isn’t good enough to get their kids into choice colleges.  As a result, you’ll find kids signed up for extracurricular academic programs as soon as they’re out of diapers.

We’re guilty of that as well, although it wasn’t because we were worried about college. 

For example, in Confessions of a Kumon Mom, I talk about how I signed up my kids for this math program because I feared that they might be left behind by other students who are getting rigorous math instruction. 

Eventually, I realized that by signing them up for this program, I was squelching any chance that they might actually like math enough to want to pursue the subject at all.

There is a fine line between enabling learners, or overwhelming them with parental enthusiasm.

Our Middle Ground

Just this week, I found out about a new test, the RediStep, that the College Board will offer Eight Graders to discover if they are on track for college. 

Also, this week, we saw the launch of yet another online college prep program, Brightstorm.  This startup, with it’s very appealing multimedia classes, has received a $6 million investment from Korea’s KTB Ventures, and looks to be a worthy contender to Megastudy, the biggest of Korea’s many “cram schools.”

Looking at this information, I might be tempted to sign up my child right away for Brightstorm classes.  And, if I were pushing my child on the Hyper Path to college, I would not hesitate.

However, I hope I’ve learned my lesson with the whole Kumon Math experience.  Now, I’ll show my kids the program, and if they want to take a class they can, but if they don’t want to, they don’t have to.

As long as they are learning, and enjoying learning, then I know that they are “on track” to accomplish whatever they can dream up.

Alternative Path

How do I know that my kids are “on track?”  Well, I don’t know exactly, but I do know that none of us really know what the future holds.

When we attended college, twenty years ago,  global health wasn’t one of the most popular subjects as it is now.  And, this interest is likely to be further fueled by Google.org’s announcment that it would put $14 million toward the goal of preventing the next global pandemic. 

College paths and career markets have changed dramatically in the short time since we were in school, and it will continue to do so.

Additionally, who’s to know where an interest will lead?  Even a love of video games can lead to a rewarding career.  An “E-Gaming” major is now offered at some college, and while some advocates are pushing to get more girls into the video game industry, one super star, Jade Raymond, has already blazed a trail.

Our best bet is to raise kids who love to learn, and who enjoy life.  We want them to be “confident thinkers” who are able to make to make their own decisions about what is important to them.

What do you think?

Have you started thinking about college for your young child?  Or, are you a veteran of the college admissions process?  What do you think?  What college prep choices are you making?

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