So upset about school report. feeling like a shitty mother

[Harriet220909]

Had my son's school report back yesterday and I'm really upset
He hasn't met any of the targets for he's year. Not one.
I know I should have done more with him at home but I have an extremely demanding toddler, I'm stuck in a one bed flat so there's nowhere for him to go to do he's homework and I feel so shit.
He's such a bright child bit completly lacks confidence due to him being behind. He's writing is unreadable and when he asks me to read he's writing I try so hard to and he's little faces just crushes when I get it wrong

I feel awful and like I am failing him. He's got an awful father who never helps there's just little old me trying to do everything

And now he's behind and he knows it. Today he told me he feels stupid after attempting he's homework. I can't afford a tutor, how can I help him?

I just wish the school had told me he was behind instead of me having to read it on the report at the end of the year. I would have pushed him harder and tried to do more

US schools are funded by local taxes, so richer areas have better resourced schools and poorer areas have less resources. In some areas there's not a huge difference, but in others there are large disparities. As with many places educational achievement is closely linked to parental socio economic status.

State funding of nurseries and pre-schools in the UK was largely because research showed that some children were already falling behind at the age of three, and the provision of high quality support in those settings was shown to make a difference.

Sweden adopted a model based on the ideas of Milton Friedman are you saying he's British?

Nooka nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=55 there were almost 30 000 private schools in the U.S. in 2012

Compared to around 2500 independent schools in the UK

Oh yes, I was just talking about disparities within the state school system. There are of course private schools as well. In fact the proportion of privately educated children is slightly higher than in the UK (10% compared with 7%) although the nature of private schooling is slightly different, with 80% having a religious affiliation. Of course in the UK many private schools may be nominally Christian, but as the state sector is 1/3 faith schools there is much less of a demand for private religious schools.

www.citylab.com/housing/2014/08/where-private-school-enrollment-is-highest-and-lowest-across-the-us/375993/

www.theguardian.com/education/2011/nov/28/us-charter-academies-free-schools

www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/7846599/Swedish-free-schools-fail-to-improve-results.html

"
Lessons from abroad

For-profit education providers have a chequered history of providing services abroad.

What happens to the children when a for-profit school fails?
For-profit schools operate in Sweden and a few of the states in the US. In May 2013, JB Education, whose schools educate over 10,000 pupils in Sweden, announced they were selling 19 of their high schools and closing down the remaining four because they weren’t making enough money from them. If other companies had not stepped in to take over, tens of thousands of children across the country would have been without an education.

USA

Despite consuming billions every year in taxpayer-funded student loans for-profit universities have a terrible record of success. Only one in five students graduate, and students at for-profit colleges are much more likely to default on their loans. This is partly a result of their recruitment practices, with for-profit colleges often targeting people (including the homeless) who simply do not have the financial resources to pay loans back.

The US’ experience of allowing for-profit companies to run schools (often described as the CharterSchool movement) has also been mired in controversy.

Former Under-Secretary of Education, Diane Ravitch, who served under George Bush and Bill Clinton and was an initial supporter of Charter Schools, came up with the following summary:

“Charter schools are leading us to having a dual school system again. We’re going back to the period before Brown v. Board of Education, but the differentiation in the future will be based on class instead of race.

“Corporations aren’t going to put more money into the school, they’re only going to make money. This should make people in America angry. There ought to be a public uprising about this effort to destroy public education.”

Sweden

The Swedish school system is often cited by Michael Gove as a model of best practice. However, like America its experiment with for-profit education has had disastrous consequences.

In May, JB Education, one of the largest for-profit education providers in the country went bust leaving the future of 10,000 pupils in limbo.

Ibrahim Baylan, the education spokesman for Sweden’s opposition Social Democratic party, says closures should come as a warning to the UK not to slavishly adopt the Swedish model, where private companies can set up profit-making free schools, paid for by the state but with little government oversight:

“Before you do something like this you have to really, really think about how you set up the system. The system here is not working as it’s supposed to work. Nobody could foresee that so many private equity companies would be in our school system as we have today.”

at the idea that because Milton Friedman was American, Sweden followed an American model. Friedman was a leading monetarist of the Chicago School. Sweden's reforms are 'Chicago School', not 'American'. Paul Krugman is not in the Friedman camp, nor is Joseph Stiglitz, and both are American. J.M. Keynes was British, but his theories are not 'British economics' and those whom he influenced are not following a 'British model'.

Some thoughts on Sweden's issues.
'...the design of the Swedish voucher system ignores economics 101.'

'The problem is that we’re not discussing a true market system, but a public-private hybrid. The private Swedish schools are not really allowed to innovate where it matters, with their pedagogic methods. The curriculum and rules in the classroom are determined by the state, which also trains teachers in the so called “modern” pedagogic theories. “Swedish schools have comparatively low levels of autonomy over curricula and assessments,” PISA notes.'
-- In other words, similar in a very striking way to Britain.

'Perhaps the single biggest problem is the decline in learning tempo. Once students are used to a slow pace, it becomes hard to demand more. The accumulated effect of reducing the pace of teaching over many years is substantial. The PISA report: A 15-year-old student in Sweden in a typical study programme receives 741 hours of intended instruction time per year, compared with 942 hours on average across OECD countries.'
-- This is similar to the way early setting kills the aspirations and opportunities of students in Britain.

'Students’ experiences of ability grouping —disaffection, polarisation and the construction of failure'

(For-profit universities, aka colleges, are not the same as for-profit elementary or secondary schools as they are voluntary.)

Except Sweden based their model on the ideas of Friedman and the U.S. charter school system Math ... Something the UK later followed (of course we waited until they were failing both in Sweden and the U.S. before following)

So mathanxiety why exactly did you state repeatedly that Sweden was following the British example? The UK does not have charter schools or vouchers, although the way that Tory policies are going they might well do in the future regardless of the Swedish experience.

Why indeed are you going on and on about Sweden, it doesn't seem to have any relevance to the OP's dilemna at all.

????????????????????????????

In the US, parents opting to send children to private schools pay fees (up to $40,000 per child per year but mostly under $10k) and do not receive any vouchers or other help from the state with payment. This is in order to preserve separation of church and state. Vouchers will probably never be available in the US. They are a very contentious issue.

Most private schools are run by religious denominations and children are sent there for reasons associated with religious instruction, not overall academic performance (though there are Montessori and other academic approaches that have their own schools).

In those communities where parents can afford to send their children to private schools (more often than not this means Catholic schools) communities are well-off enough to have excellent public schools, though often a RC school in a prosperous suburb or city that is adjacent to relatively less-prosperous suburbs or cities will see many children from those less well-off places in attendance, with parents paying for private school in a neighbouring municipality instead of trying to buy or rent a home in the better off one for various reasons including technicalities associated with the ups and downs of the real estate market. Municipalities with excellent public schools tend to have higher priced homes and higher rents too. In some cases the supply of rental homes is limited in places with excellent public schools, and houses are priced out of reach.
(All shown in Nooka's link).

Math are you aware of how Charter schools work in the U.S.?

nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=30

This description of private schools in the US is in partial answer to the idea that Sweden has copied some American model.

Sweden is following a British example of anti-democratic fragmentation of schools and the dumping of the purpose of inculcation of democratic/egalitarian ideas via the education system, in favour of grade chasing and accepting the idea that the weak hold back the strong. It is this latter idea that results in setting in British primary schools, which in turn kills the aspirations of about one third of students in the system. Sweden has turned to the 'every man for himself' culture and ethos of British society and the British education system and away from the formerly egalitarian impulse of Swedish culture, perhaps in response to the presence of large numbers of immigrants. The loss of focus on equality is what the Swedish education minister sees as the major problem of Swedish education in the links I provided.

So you have some evidence that Sweden used the UK as a role model when implementing it's reforms? Or is it just that you have some strong opinions about the UK and it's educational system and see parallels with the Swedish reforms?

Otherwise it seems quite bizarre if Sweden in fact picked up some ideas from American theorists to state that it is somehow the fault of the UK when it all goes wrong. I can recall reading proposals about vouchers and charter schools in the US many many years ago, before they were implemented in Sweden.

Which isn't what Sweden copied Math

The first law allowing the establishment of charter schools was passed in Minnesota in 1991. Sweden's legislation was introduced in 1992. It would have been foolish of Sweden to leap in and follow the example of one state in the US only one year after Minnesota led the way.

Charter schools were generally set up to be union-busting educational entities, usually by Republican local governments that have an ideological opposition to unions or under pressure from anti-union sentiment.

In US education debates, a theme that crops up constantly is how teachers' unions sabotage public education, stifle innovation, prefer turf wars to improvement in student outcome, doggedly defend tenure for terrible teachers and thus blight the future of students, bleed the public coffers dry by means of exorbitant pay and benefits and pension deals, bleat about class sizes only because small classes mean more teachers, complain about the physical condition of schools only because they want their union friends the electricians and plumbers and carpenters to bleed the public coffers dry too..

In short, teachers' unions are blamed for lack of student progress wherever it become obvious that students are failing. The teachers' unions are especially in the doghouse in larger cities, where coincidentally poorer families tend to live, and more and poorer immigrants and non-English speakers, places which also tend to be segregated along racial and ethnic and socio economic lines and where there are high numbers of incarcerated adult males and high unemployment rates.

The charter school movement presents itself as a bold new foray into a world free of such New Dealish socialist baggage, employing fewer administrators and non-union teaching staff who can be made to work longer hours including Saturdays in some cases, with less benefits and small pension provision if they get any at all, and with management free to fire teachers without the processes in place that union teachers are used to in public school districts.

Charter schools are exempted from many local rules and regs and from having to deal with unions. Licensing can be revoked and periodical state oversight, though variable, tends to be assiduous, partly because politicians are under pressure from teachers' unions not to let proponents of charter schools get away with the union bashing.

Funding is directly to the school on a per capita basis and via Title funding i.e. for SN and other Titles under federal law. They can have sponsors who donate the Walton family, founders of Walmart, are big donors to charter schools. Walmart is a notoriously anti-union corporation. Conservative and neo-liberal foundations tend to donate too. Parents do not receive vouchers or funding.

(And here is an interesting detail wrt uniform at one charter primary school:
LEARN 6 North Chicago School Uniform Policy...
School Uniforms: To help create an environment conducive to learning, students at LEARN Charter Schools are required to wear uniforms. This policy is designed to permit students to focus their attention on academics. Additionally, school uniforms are a way to instill pride in students, their families, their school and the community they represent.)

Well since the first "free" schools weren't established in the UK until 2011 it would have been even sillier (impossible) for Sweden to copy.

What Sweden sought was a way for more able students to get ahead and to avoid being kept back or dragged down by less able students.

This change to an emphasis on academic results, and putting academic results ahead of other values is a change to what the British system does with its practice of visible primary school setting, and it is what the British loose catchment/lottery system and hybrid state and private system offers too. Sweden got a system that looked far more like the British system in its ethos than the one that put democratic ideals front and centre that it sought to leave behind.

Swedish education does not have the political problem with unions that the US has. British unions and government have been at war for decades.

Having seen some of the battles between North American unions and their employers I'm not sure it's really comparable to the modern UK setting. Changes in the Thatcher era took an awful lot of the power away from unions, with an end to closed shops, wildcat strikes, sympathy strikes etc.

Where I live (not the UK or US anymore) we had a recent teacher's strike. That meant all schools were out as every teacher is required to be in the same union. Plus all the support staff as their union was legally allowed to walk out in sympathy. They were able to go to arbitration and got a good deal despite the government kicking and screaming. Oh, and the same thing has been happening on and off for the last ten years. Sometimes the government wins, sometimes the union. That to me is an example of 'war'

The inability of teachers unions in the UK to stop changes that the absolutely hated over the last ten odd years surely shows how comparatively powerless they are?

The US is at the moment at the same stage of very determined union bashing that Thatcher's Britain went through. There was some of it during the Reagan era too.

Mrz, I don't think you understand that I am focusing on ethos and culture and not merely on institutional details.
Gustav Fridolin, Swedish education minister:
“Instead of breaking up social differences and class differences in the education system, we have a system today that’s creating a wider gap between the ones that have and the ones that have not.”'

You keep on denying that Sweden did not seek a system where the ultimate end was that parents could via school choice prioritise educational attainment over democratic values, just like Britain's.

Are you trying to imply by your denial that Sweden has ended up with a system that bears the same fruits as the British one that Britain's education system does not reinforce the class differences in British society? Do you believe that British schools contribute to social mobility in Britain? Do you think British parents are ever concerned about their pfbs being dragged down or held back by certain types of children in schools?

You should set this man straight:
NUT wrings hands over exam stress
'Kevin Courtney, deputy general-secretary of the NUT, said: "Teachers at the sharp end are saying this loud and clear, 'If it isn't relevant to a test then it is not seen as a priority.'

"The whole culture of a school has become geared towards meeting government targets and Ofsted expectations. As this report shows, schools are on the verge of becoming 'exam factories'."

He argued the accountability agenda was "damaging children's experience of education", which should be joyful and leave them with "a thirst for knowledge for the rest of their lives".'

He is implying that schools are joyless places where targets have become extremely important.

Isn't the gap between have and have nots a typical US thing?

Haven't read all 13 pages, but has anyone explained about the new curriculum?
The gov't have moved the goal posts and most of the achievements which were, up to now, expected of a year 2 child, are now expected of a year 1 child. So that, although he may have been doing fine all through the year, meeting the expected targets, they have suddenly changed the targets, so that he, and the majority of other children, are suddenly failing.
Most children, in most classes, are, we now discover, 'failing'. But many teachers and many schools have decided not to share this with parents/put it on reports this year, because it is totally unfair on the children who are trying to meet a moving target.
Next year, classes should be aiming at the new targets, and things should settle down.
Of course, children haven't changed, and the nation hasn't suddenly become more able, so the stress on children and teachers will be greater than it has been. Many children will feel even more like failures, as will their teachers.
In order to drill more facts for the new expectations, less time will be available for the arts, sport, play, etc, so the class will be more pressurised and children, especially young boys, who should still be moving and discovering, not sitting at tables practicing spellings and times tables, will find school more difficult.
But you get what you vote for.