Public School: Here We Come!

Well, this is not a post about our move west, as it turns out.  I am troubled, vexed, and feeling that I have failed as a parent.  I would say that that takes priority over the recalling of the gorgeous vastness of the American West as we completed a 4-day drive to our new home in Cody, Wyoming.  So without further ado, onward to how I may or may not suck as a mom.

You may recall that my son has been attending a non-Catholic, Catholic Montessori School for the past two and a half years, and that I have always had conflicting opinions about his education there.  Now that he is embarking on a new adventure in a small-town, award-winning, public school, I am curious anxious to see how he will do. Prior to leaving Cleveland, my son took the Ohio Standards Reading test. I had no worries about this test, because last year, when we were concerned that our son might have dyslexia, the school psychologist tested him. He scored at a 5th grade level in the reading portion as a second grader. (We’ll discuss math later in this post.) Montessori education at work!  Hurray for us, for choosing this school!

Fast forward to the Ohio Standards Reading test, which showed that our son is not even remotely close to comprehension and/or inference for a third grader. Sure, his vocabulary is great, but he doesn’t remember what he reads nor does he understand it, or so the test would imply.  Are the test results only low because this was his first ever standardized test? Is it because Montessori educators do not teach to the test?  If so, then who cares, right?

Yes, I  could believe that, blaming others for my son’s poor test scores, but I know the answer. My son does not comprehend what he has read most of the time, and recalling details from books is difficult for him even if I read them aloud to him. I just never realized how difficult these things were to him until I recently started paying attention.  Boo to Montessori education, letting my son have a half hour of silent reading every day, but never asking him what he read or what happened in the story. Boo to me, for choosing to ignore it when I would ask my son about what he read, and the details would be missing.

Then there is math. Oh math, why do you have to be so boring and difficult? Since the Montessori philosophy is one in which the child chooses their work, and where it is assumed that when the child is ready, they will learn what they need to learn, my son successfully avoided math altogether for two years.  The aforementioned test in second grade, gave inconclusive results because rather than try the problems on the assessment, my son simply chose not to do any of the work, thereby testing him below first grade in math proficiency.  These results I did not ignore. I have been working with my son on math and flash cards and word problems and counting money and measuring ingredients ever since that day. Further, when I knew that we would be moving to Wyoming, and therefore to a public school, I asked his Montessori teachers to please help him get up to speed in his classroom, by giving him actual math lessons.

To be fair, he has improved IMMENSELY. However, it still takes him more than a half an hour to do 30 problems. The good news is that the most recent “home work” that I created for him did garner an 83%.  But really?  A half an hour to do 12 addition, 10 subtraction and 8 multiplication problems?  I sat here watching him struggle for that half hour worried for him.  How hard will it be for him to catch up to the other students at his school? Should I just have kept him in public school after Kindergarten, even though I was not happy with several aspects of the school?  Should I have been more of a hard ass when it came to flash-cards and reading comprehension?

I know every parent questions their parenting at one time or another and secretly worries that the damage has been done early on.  My husband and I really believe that moving to this particular location, in part because of the quality of their schools, will end up working out for our son. I hope so, because I would rather make different parenting mistakes, ones that do not affect my son’s chances of getting into a good college, preferably Allegheny (go Gators), and having a happy and successful life.