Our Education System: When Are Kids Allowed to Just Be Kids?

With the passage of No Child Left Behind, everyone thought there would be accountability for our children's education, instead it seems to have made everything a complete mess. I'm not saying that schools and teachers shouldn't be held accountable, far from it, but it seems like more has been put upon our children more than anything.

In the state of Oklahoma, our legislation introduced PASS (Priority Academic Student Skills), which lays out what our children should be learning and comprehending at each grade level. They also introduced EOI (End of Year Instruction) testing, which is tested from middle school on up in each of the subjects. Between No Child Left Behind and our states adopted curriculum, our kids aren't allowed to be kids anymore, especially at the elementary level.

My youngest son, who is in third grade, has daily homework to do, this was the case in first and second grade too. A typical day for him would be to get up, eat his breakfast, get dressed and be at the bus stop by 7:25 AM. Once at school, they have their typical school day, which consists of morning work, lunch, reading, recess and then afternoon work. Unfortunately, in my sons case, it doesn't always work that way. After lunch they normally do their mandatory reading, which I have no problem with, then comes the math. The math seems to be the problem area in his class, if everyone doesn't get all their math done by the time they are suppose to go out for recess, none of them go, they have to sit there and read or just do some other busy work. Most of the time my son will come home complaining that they didn't get recess again because everyone didn't finish their math in time. I'm sorry, but I do not think that it fair to the students who did their work and finished it, they shouldn't be held back because of other students.

At the same time they say they want to promote activity, to keep kids active. I think it's kind of hard when your child doesn't get recess and only gets PE (Physical Education) once a week for an hour. PE is considered one of their "specials" - PE, Library, Art, Math-games and Music, these are usually an hour and only once a week, Math-games is in addition to their daily math classwork, it's more of a friendly and sometimes fun competition between classes. My son also takes the Gifted Student program on Friday's, which he loves because it challenges him and he doesn't have to wait for everyone else to "get it", as he says.

My son comes home from school about 3:10 PM and has to do his homework. His daily homework usually includes a couple of worksheets, spelling words and reading for at least 20 minutes a day, this is typical and it seems like the higher the grade, the more homework your child will have. Now I have no problem with wanting children to read and keep on top of what they've been learning, but when our kids, especially elementary age kids, allowed to be kids? When do they have time to go out, play and just have fun? I know between school, homework and dinner, that doesn't give my son much time to have any outside fun, even in the nice weather. And on holiday breaks they get homework packets sent home for them to do, this last packet was 8 pages, front and back, they don't even get a break from homework on long breaks, I just don't think that's fair to the kids.

My sons other biggest complaint about school is boredom. Yes, he's learning, he picks up things and learns quickly, unfortunately this leads to his boredom. The way classes are taught now, everyone in the class has to understand everything before they can move on. This means if there are two students who just don't get it, the teacher will be going over it to the whole class until these two students catch on. While it's good that they want to ensure the children understand before moving on, it also holds the other children back if there are only a few who don't get it. Instead of spending more one on one time with these students, whether it be before or after school, or even in class, the teacher won't let the other students move on until everyone gets it. I have heard many complaints from my son about this, I also use to hear the same complaints from my older son when he was at the same school.

Then we come to the testing, that's how the Government (Federal and State) judges how well the schools are doing. Teachers here generally spend about a month preparing students for this testing, or should I say cramming? This takes time out of their daily schedule, when this shouldn't be the case. The testing is supposedly based on what the children should be learning in those grades, so why do the teachers need to take time out of the daily schedule to "prepare" the students for these tests? These tests are over things the students should have already learned or are learning, so there really shouldn't be any extra preparation for them. They do the same for middle and high school too. It's pretty sad when you have a son in advanced classes and the teachers have to take time out of their regular class schedule to go over the basics that will be on these tests to make sure the students do well and the school get a passing grade.

The worse part of all this cramming at the elementary level is that if your child attends a Title I school, they are exempt from losing federal money because of having a high percentage of minorities or low-income at the school. This, I think, is a complete joke. You can't tell me that a child can't learn as well as another child because of the color of their skin or because their parents don't make a lot of money. If your child attends a Title I school, the only accountability they really have is to the parents since they don't lose money if they don't perform and your child can't transfer to a different school if the school doesn't perform. That's bad for the children, especially if the school that has teachers that really don't care.

The education system needs to be fixed and kids need to be allowed to be kids, they grow up fast enough already. I don't have a problem with testing to make sure schools are teaching the kids, but if they are teaching the kids, they shouldn't have to have extra time to help the kids prepare for the tests. If the teachers follow a reasonable curriculum, the kids should learn, any kids that have problems should be able to get help from their teachers or from some tutoring system at the school.

Kids should be allowed to kids while their young, they'll grow up fast enough. Elementary school should be about learning, but they should also be able to have fun once in a while too.