The First Day Of Public School Debate

Posted on Wednesday 2 August 2006 at 10:39 AM in Homeschooling - Post Comment

Most public schools around here will be starting up mid August.  Our local school district will be starting back up August 16th.  It seems to me that when I was in public school (20 years ago) we never started before Labor Day.  It also seems to me that public school are starting earlier and earlier every year.  I heard of one district that was starting near the beginning of August.

I was reading a post from the Education Wonks blog (http://www.educationwonk.blogspot.com/) about parents working to force school districts to go back to more traditional start dates instead of starting earlier and earlier every year.  The quotes that really got me?  These two:

"Lisa Gross, spokeswoman for the Kentucky Department of Education, said early start dates serve several purposes - to build up time in case of winter weather closings later in the year, to allow for as much instructional time as possible before state testing and to accommodate weeklong fall breaks."

And...

"Many California districts want an earlier start date in order to have more instructional days before the students take their exams. Some also believe that such districts enjoy a comparative advantage over those jurisdictions that choose later start dates."

So, what is more important?  Making sure students have the best education possible...or making sure students pass testing?  And what are school disctricts going to do when more and more parents push disctrics for more traditional start dates?  We'll have to wait and see.

What is more important?

Posted by gokings13 on Thursday 3 August 2006 at 7:16 AM - Link

To the "system" is it of highest importance to get the kids in sooner (Kindergarten at 5 AND ALL DAY), get them in the building longer..(start them in Aug, finish them in June) to indocternate them.
The longer they have the children the more succesfully they can manipulate their minds.

John Gatto has a great book about this......

Laura