In Which I Have a Complicated Relationship with the Public School System

When I was young, idealistic, and childless, I was certain that I would never consider having my children educated anywhere other than the public schools. In principle, I believe very strongly in the American public school system.  Historically speaking, it's a provocative and amazing thing that a nation would provide, free of charge, an education for all the children (both boys and girls) residing within its borders. This even applies to non-citizen children and those without legal residency. It is a revolutionary idea, looking at history, and even many parts of the world today, that, by law, even children with special needs are guaranteed a free and appropriate public education.

Sure, I knew that the system was not problem free. I knew there was a focus on testing that I didn't like. I knew that not all schools were high achieving like the affluent suburban school system from which I graduated.  However, I figured that any minor problems we might encounter could be overcome by good parents who were committed to being involved in their childrens' education. I figured, if my hypothetical children had any problems at all, they would be social, not academic, because I figured my children would be like me - bright but not particularly socially adept.

My rosy view of the public school system was not tested at all by Squirrelboy's first encounter with our local public school. He was behind in speech and qualified first for state provided early intervention and then (starting on his third birthday) public preschool at our local elementary school. He loved every minute of it. His teacher and his speech therapist were both amazing, and I was confident that he would continue to thrive there in kindergarten and beyond.

Then Squirrelboy started kindergarten and it all went downhill. Despite the fact that we had done everything we were supposed to do to build "prereading" skills, he wasn't learning letters at the rate he was expected to, let alone associating them with sounds. I looked up the signs of dyslexia, and he had every single one. I shared my suspicions wit his teacher, but she assured me that he was too young to be diagnosed with dyslexia. She said that for some kids, especially boys, iti just takes a little while for reading to click. She assured me that, after Christmas, a key would turn in his brain and he'd suddenly take off in reading. Even when it didn't happen right after Christmas, his teacher continued to dismiss our concerns. This happened consistently right up until the spring conference, at which she told us that reading just wasn't clicking for Squirrelboy and she thought he would benefit from "an extra year of primary" (eduspeak for repeating kindergarten). It was at that point that we sought and outside evaluation for dyslexia and then started tutoring after school two days a week. We insisted that Squirrelboy be moved on to first grade, not believing that another year of the methods that failed to teach him to read the first time around would miraculously have a different effect the second time.

About a third of the way into first grade I first started looking into homeschooling. Squirrelboy was miserable. Every Sunday at bedtime he would cry because he had to endure another week of school. In addition to not reading at the level he was expected to (despite making steady progress with the tutor), he had a very difficult time living up to the behavior expectations. He was constantly being told to "move his bee down to yellow" for various minor infractions, and it broke his heart that he never got to participate in the special experiences given to students who were easily able to meet the behavior expectations. We brought up with his teacher that we thought he might have ADHD, but, just like with his kindergarten teacher, our concerns were dismissed out of hand. He wasn't excessively disruptive, so surely he couldn't have ADHD. Some kids, especially boys, we were told, just take a little longer to mature. Just give him time, he'll learn to manage his behavior.

Had it been up to me, I would have pulled Squirrelboy out of school to homeschool during, or, at the latest, after first grade, but Mr. Engineer was not on board at the time. He made a reasonable point that it would be difficult to concentrate on homeschool with a toddler underfoot (Kittygirl was one at the time). He is the son of two public school teachers, and his commitment to the public school system was even stronger than mine. So we continued. After first grade, things in improved a bit. Squirrelboy was reading on grade level by third grade and finished the tutoring program by the end of fourth grade. He still had problems focusing and struggled with any subject that involved lots of details, especially math, but his teachers consistently dismissed us when we brought up ADHD as a possibility.

During his 5th grade year we had to make a decision about middle school. We knew we didn't want to send him to our local middle school. It consistently has one of the lowest sets of test scores in the district. While I am among the first  to say that tests don't mean everything, it does mean something if the large majority of the students at a school can't achieve even basic competence on them. The school also has a lot of behavior problems and some of the students are even involved in gangs. Though it would have horrified the young, idealistic version of me who wanted to teach in an inner city school, I knew I could not put my child in that environment. He got a spot at a magnet school. It was better and he might have done okay there, but the strict dress code and strict discipline would have been stifling to him. Mr. Engineer, to my surprise, agreed with my point of view and told me to move forward with plans to homeschool him for middle school.

Homeschool as not all butterflies and roses all the time. After an initial honeymoon period in which Squirrelboy was ready to do anything I said because he was so happy not to be in public middle school we started to butt heads fairly often and there were moments when I seriously wondered if putting him in that school I had so wanted to avoid would really be any worse than the daily torture we were enduring. Things started to improve when we finally decided to have him formally evaluated for ADHD. When he was constantly distracted while sitting in a quiet house at the kitchen table with just me in the room I realized that it had been silly of me to let his teachers push off my suspicions for so many years. To the surprise of no one who knew him well, he was diagnosed with moderate ADHD, combined type. It was quite a journey finding the right medication and the right dosage for him, but, once we did, it was a revelation. I could actually read a page to him without him interrupting me every other sentence. He could read and answer questions in his history book without forgetting the question halfway through his answer. It was amazing.

Homeschool continued to get better in 7th grade when Mr. Engineer took over as math teacher. It turns out that I'm a really pathetic math teacher. The one thing that bothered me about homeschool, in fact, was other homeschoolers. I endured so many conversations about how horrible our local public schools (or just public schools in general) were. Some were from parents who had pulled their children out of school after bad experiences, but other parents had never sent their children to public school. They were just certain that no child could every possibly be decently educated in a public school. Or, at the very least, they MIGHT get an acceptable education, but they would certainly be subject to evil influences and grow up to be horrible people. This was from people from all over the religious spectrum - conservative Christians all the way to avowed Atheists.

I normally kept my mouth shut about the fact that, all the time I was happily homeschooling Squirrelboy, I was also having a great experience as a public school parent. Kittygirl started kindergarten the year Squirrelboy started middle school. Even though she's a very different child and might actually have had a good experience there, I was adamantly opposed to sending her to the elementary school that Squirrelboy attended. After all of his struggles there, the idea of sending another child left a bad taste in my mouth. Happily,  Mr. Engineer was sensitive to my feelings and didn't insist that we send her there. We gave serious consideration to a fairly new private school that was affordable and followed the same education philosophy as her preschool, which we adored. But then we got notice that she had won ah highly coveted lottery spot at the Spanish immersion elementary school.  We didn't immediately  decide to accept it, but, after reflection and (a little bit of) prayer, we decided it couldn't hurt to try kindergarten at the free school that so many people wanted their kids to get into. After all, the private school wasn't going to turn away our money if the Spanish immersion school was a bad fit for Kittygirl and we sought to enroll her there for first grade.

Kittygirl thrived, and continues to thrive, at that school. I was terrified of sending her back after she was diagnosed with T1D during presidents' day weekend of her kindergarten year, but the school stepped up and has provided great care. It's not always the same care I would provide, but she's safe and healthy and doesn't miss out on anything due to her diabetes.

If Squirrelboy had been my only child I might have eventually become one of those homeschooling parents who denigrate the public school system, but the fact is that public school has been nothing but a good experience for my second child.

That catches us up to today, when I've recently laid my homeschooling parent identity aside and Squirrelboy has started high school at another magnet school. He did not want to go back to public school. He grudgingly agreed that the small magnet school would be better than our gigantic local high school if he HAD to go back to school, but he really didn't want to go back. The monday before school started (for some odd reason our school year always starts on a Wednesday) he asked me if we could go shopping - for homeschool curriculum. I was expecting he would have a bumpy transition and his grades might be less than ideal for awhile as he got used to working for someone other than mom and dad. I expected that he would say the first day was tolerable, at best. To my great surprise, he declared the first day "great," and his school experience has remained almost entirely positive. He complains about some assignments and he says Civics class is boring, but overall he's amazingly positive about school. The school was also amazingly receptive to setting up a 504 plan for his ADHD and gave him every single accommodation I asked for.

For the moment, I have a mostly positive feeling about public school. Both kids are in schools that are good places for them, with teachers and staff who love their jobs and do their best to help the kids succeed. However, I'm no longer that idealist 20-something who thought public school was the only acceptable choice for socially conscious parents. Even the best school isn't a good fit for every kid, and, for some kids and families, homeschool or private school is simply a better choice. The American public school system is flawed, yes, but, in the right circumstances, it has a lot of things going for it.