Simple Choices*

Some of you may remember the regularity with which I would discuss my dissatisfaction with the HIGH PERFORMING MAGNET SCHOOL here in rural South Dakota.  And I’ve spoken very little of the new Neighborhood School.  Why?   Because it is too cute for the blogosphere.  Really.  Adorable.

Cuteness is not my thing.  I enjoy cuteness, but cuteness needs no description, no examination, no poking at.  It just is.  So, if you’ll indulge me in one very cute post, I will tell you a bit about the place.

The teachers of each grade level work collaboratively to accommodate the reading level for each child.  There are 5 reading levels (5!).  Each level is assigned a teacher and they go to separate classrooms.  You know, innovation.  Differentiated learning.  Meeting student needs.  Teaching.  BRILLIANT.

At Another School My Kids Attended there were two reading groups:  Future NASA and You Better Take Care Of This, Mom.  Their school’s secret method for having only one reading  level?  Mom.  Yes, mom.  And flashcards.

And what if you thought that pushing a child’s reading development until they cried every time you pulled out a book was a problem?  What if your child was reading at the shameful pace we call “grade level”?  Not acceptable.  Four five-year-olds in the class are reading Tolstoy, and TOTALLY UNDERSTANDING IT, therefore kindergarten has to be taught at a community college level.

And for first grade math?  At the Neighborhood School, fingers are acknowledged as a reasonable means of calculating a math problem.  At the HIGH PERFORMING MAGNET SCHOOL?  Six-year-old math will involve NO COUNTING ON FINGERS.  One plus five is a fact that should be memorized not calculated.  My kid counted on her fingers once, and the teacher sounded the alarm.  Literally, the fire drill was pulled, the whole school was evacuated.  The principal, gorgeous, portly and wrapped in a very serious shade of Ann Taylor blue, got on a bullhorn and announced the dangers of finger-counting to a group of confused children standing on the wet muddy field, their Gymboree ensembles drinking in the rain.  And lots of thunder and lighting, too.  “Stop, drop and roll in flashcards,” the principal commanded like an unpainted Mel Gibson in Braveheart.  After an hour-and-a-half of lecturing, the children were dismissed back to class.

It’s true, HPMS advocates (stockbrokers, lawyers, and commercial realtors mostly) will tell you that finger-counting is for reckless losers who just “aren’t college material.”  Fingers were made only for flipping flashcards and the Pottery Barn Catalog.

In fact, for years the HIGH PERFORMING MAGNET SCHOOL fought the school board to have first grade fingers removed so that children would not be tempted to use them.  One parent, a surgeon-turned-realtor even offered to remove the fingers at no cost, provided that the students wear an palatialestates4u.com sticker.  But the school board fought the HIGH PERFORMING MAGNET SCHOOL saying it was pedagogically unsound to amputate just for the sake of test scores.

“Stupid school district!” they’d say.  “This is math we’re talking about.  What does math have to do with counting?  Counting is for people without resources.”  (Stomp Coach boot.)

I would share my concerns about this education “style” with my fellow HPMS parents.  Most of them would crinkle their noses, fondle their Kate Spade purse strings and say,  “The school is obviously not a good fit for your child.”

I think it’s more that my child was not a good fit for the school.  Really.  Every school has needs.  And an average performing child is a chunk of tanbark in the Puma that jogs at a high performing, strained Olympic pace.

And about all this talk of good fit.  GOOD FIT?   Here’s a good fit in public education.  “Hello, school system, meet humanity.  Humanity, meet school system.  Teachers, work it out.”

But, folks, that ONLY happens at neighborhood schools.  Not at public-funded HIGH PERFORMING MAGNET SCHOOLS or charter schools, where student bodies consist solely of kids with parents who  run circles around them and have equal levels of ambition for their kids and equal need to avoid kids who can’t read good.  And the kids who can’t read good and can’t sit still LEAVE.  They LEAVE.  In education circles they call this “counseled out.”

Then, they go to cute little Neighborhood schools where teachers say things like, “She needs to work on this, but let me spend a bit more time with her, and we’ll see where we are.  Of course, work at home is always helpful, but there’s no need to worry about anything at this point.”  For the record, the HPMS did have a combined total of one-and-seven-eighth teachers like this, and if it weren’t for the evil teacher’s union, they would have been fired and officially denounced by the unofficial Public School Advisory Board of Professional Parents, whose official motto is “Desperately trying to save inflated home prices, one student test score at a HIGH PERFORMING MAGNET SCHOOL at a time.”

And whenever you leave the campus of a Neighborhood School, there are no other parents falling out through your sphincter.  Okay, Greta.  Come ON.  Now how did all these HIGH PERFORMING MAGNET PARENTS get caught in your sphincter?  Simple.  They crawled up there in order to tell you which DVD to buy to help your kid with phonics because that parent noticed your kid was having trouble because that parent spends too much time in the classroom with too much influence on and observation of and discussion about your child and, oh, by the way, “Would you be willing to donate a kidney to the school auction?”

And if you think written images of parents stuck in sphincters is disgusting, wait until it HAPPENS to you.  It’s gross.  Never judge a man until you’ve walked a mile in his shoes with the same number of HIGH PERFORMING MAGNET SCHOOL parents lodged up his butt.  Butts are not meant to house entire country club populations.  In most cases, they are created to temporarily store excrement, the kind of excrement that LEAVES.  Not the kind that enters via Lexus and sets up base camp in your asshole from September until June.

And, my goodness, this post got very un-cute very fast which proves my point that I’m not very cute at all.  But, oh, ladies and gentlemen, the Neighborhood School is.

Cute as in it serves our society.  Cute as in teaches our children, all our children, even those who might struggle academically for a variety of reasons.  And, yes, all this happens alongside those students who are truly advanced who will actually blow past most of the High Performing Magnet School children, leaving them behind in their flurries of flashcards and HPMS parent expectation of world dominance.

And I, personally, was not up for the hyper-flashcarding and then attending all of the seminars and in-services to undo the insanity:  Helicopter Parent No More and The Price of Having Privileged Parents.  I also didn’t want to have to commit the rest of my life to citing the incompetence of the school counselors who failed to get my kids into Harvard.  I just don’t have the ambition to keep an HPMS schedule like that.

*Photo by Linda Tanner.  The views expressed on this blog are not necessarily those of the photographer.   See Linda Tanner’s photo stream at:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/goingslo/with/5403087283/