I've had a rough week. We just came from a doctor's appointment where both kids were stuck with needles, then the oldest was dropped off at school and the youngest was taken to his speech therapy. I came home to a message from the school district about Ian's IEP meeting. We haven't seen his evaluations yet. They were supposed to give us ten days to review them before the meeting, but we're going to let it go. Ugh. It's all boring and time consuming, and you don't need to hear about it. I'm just glad the semester is over, because this transition to Kindergarten stuff has meant meeting after meeting, test after test all month. We're all jangly and stressed and worried. It's seriously difficult to transition back to thinking about my research, after hearing what's in store for our poor kid next year.
To better make a decision about what's best for Ian for next year, I set up a meeting with the local elementary school principal and one of the teachers earlier this week. The talk turned to Jonah, and they mentioned how impressed they were with his exposure to different ideas and experiences, which set him apart from other kids in the school. They said that this had major benefits for Ian as well.
We've been talking about the relationship between class and education in this blog lately. Our aggressive approach to the special education bureaucracy and Steve's long talks with Jonah about history are certainly a factor of our background. It's also coming into play in a town just five minutes from here.
The schools in Ridgewood, New Jersey have been the center of a battle over math curriculum. Parents are rebelling against "new math," which emphasizes the comprehension of math concepts over rote memorization of math facts. We have the same program in our town. Jonah's math work is boring and silly. He hasn't been taught to just memorize 6+7 and 8+9. But curriculum issues don't stress me out as a parent. When Jonah was taking too long to compute, we did flash cards over breakfast for a couple of weeks and he was cool.
The curriculum issues are super important to my mom, who has been clipping out articles for me on this topic, and to commenter, Amy P, who has been forwarding me articles on this issue. I am fascinated by the politics of this battle.
Ridgewood is a seriously rich town. We spent 9 months looking for a home in that town, put bids on five houses, and were outbid by $100,000 each time. The parents in Ridgewood are educated and active. To combat the school system, they set up blogs, and attended school board meetings. Their superintendent resigned as a result of their efforts.
While I am still absolutely convinced that money makes a difference in schools, so does human capital. Active, annoying, assertive parents make a difference, and those parents are concentrated in high socio-economic towns and neighborhoods. For those of us who are concerned about equity in schools, this is a harder problem to overcome.