One Year of US Schooling

My experience as a parent.

Aanya attended 3rd grade at LP Collins Elementary School in Cupertino. It is one of the top-rated public schools in the Cupertino School District, which is among the sought-after school districts in the Bay Area.

Some background on public schools in the US: they are free, paid for indirectly through taxes or house rent. It's a known fact that housing prices and school ratings are highly correlated. Housing/property taxes play a major role in school funding, with more funding generally leading to better schools. For example, over 60% of property taxes in Saratoga, CA go towards K12 education, with a smaller percentage allocated to adult community colleges.

How can schools demonstrate their quality? By achieving high ratings. Each state has standardised tests focusing on reading, writing, and math. State governments and other independent bodies use these test results to determine school ratings. Schools with a higher percentage of Asian students tend to receive higher ratings, perpetuating a cycle.

The average teacher salary in Collins is $113K. While this might seem high, it's not enough for a family of three to live well in the same neighborhood. So the teachers, although pretty high quality individuals by global standards, are stressed due to longer commutes, in some cases, and over-worked in most cases. So we can't blame the teachers if they are teaching to the tests, and trying to get more of their students to get better at the tests. It's systemic.

Anyway, coming to our personal experience, Aanya went to a Montessori school at primary/ kindergarten level and also at elementary level. She was used to being very hands-on, getting personal attention, and receiving presentations individually or in small groups based on her pace of learning. However, she found the 3rd grade classroom of Ms M better in some ways. She thought the teacher worked very hard and planned the day very well etc. (a lot of it is planned together with other teachers and continued in the same way year or year - but we should give credit where it is due!). And she really likes Ms M as a person, and wanted to be in her good books. And of course the diversity of students from many nationalities was a bonus. And settling in to a new place, the change of scene in itself was great exposure for her. She never had any tests before, but testing wasn't a problem, she picked up the skill quite quickly. I thought the quality of the lesson plans in reading, writing were quite good compared to what she was exposed to in India. And grade level Math was quite easy compared to India. By the end of the year though Aanya started getting bored with the learning in school. The other aspects like the recess, the field trips, occasional class parties (with lots of junk food) etc. were fun. She is looking forward to next year, mainly to find out who among her friends from the community and her class will be with her next year. 

As a parent, I am not particularly looking forward to next year. While it is nice to send the kid away to school which is close by (she walks by herself most days), it is monotonous and overall, expecting very little of the kids. When you make grade school so predictable year after year, you are essentially setting up the kids to do a dull and boring job in their adult life, where the work in itself is not exciting, but you can make up for that with the parties, occasional travel etc. As a student personally, I excelled in school and testing in particular, and I know the pitfalls. When there is a formula to doing well in school, it does not push the kids to think beyond and worse, it sets in a dullness, which is the real epidemic plaguing many middle and high school students here. Actually that's not right, the competitive nature of college admissions and the society in general, does push the parents and kids to think beyond, but in ways that makes the whole thing worse - by running around for too many extracurricular activities. 

The very mechanical nature of it all becomes apparent here, because everything is so much more structured and formulaic. Maybe it gets clouded in the chaos of India, or maybe there is still some bit of soul left there, or we know how to find the places that work well for us, there. 

I do not want to say that education in the whole of the US is meaningless. This is a free country, people are more free than anywhere else in the world, and there are many amazing families living by their own rules, and educating their children exactly how they want to. (Saurabh recommends Captain Fantastic as a must-watch to most families we meet). Through our work at Power Club, we encountered some really good online schools, micro schools etc. The US also has the most takers for homeschooling (almost 4 million) and micro-schooling movements. And of course there are private schools which have different incentives from those of the public schools. Can't generalize, but the few around the Bay area that we have looked into in a bit more detail were either not a fit at all for us (challenger etc.) and/or didn't seem to be worth the price tag and the hassle of driving many miles. 

And coming to something that is prevalent in most places of the world, the smart phone usage - 3 girls among the group of 5 friends in Aanya's class have their own smartphones already in 3rd grade. (Good part of the school year, she had a different group of studious Chinese and Japanese girls, and then she moved to this more advanced group #facepalm). While this is a bit extreme even by the usual standards here, it is common for many 5-6th graders to have their own phone. Psychologists/experts online suggest parents in the community get together and discuss delaying giving the phones at least until 8-9th grade collectively, so that there is no peer pressure or the feeling of being left out. But I do not see that being feasible. I do not agree with many other things like the amount of junk the kids have, but that seems like a smaller issue compared to smartphone usage. 

For now, we as a family discuss our points of view, we try staying away from processed food, too much screen time etc. We try to have different experiences (and not Disney world-ish vacations). The quality of sports/ extra-curricular coaching is great and the libraries are amazing, so focusing on doing a few meaningful activities instead of filling up the calendar. Reflecting on this school year and combined with my experiences of coaching high schoolers, Montessori education, and last few years of work in Ed-tech, I feel I have seen the whole cycle and understood a student’s learning journey from first principles. 

I will have to write a much longer post to discuss my thoughts on the purpose of education or life itself. But I will end here by sharing some relevant quotes from Krishnamurti.

“It begins at school and you go through life repeating what others have said. You are therefore second-hand human beings.”

“To understand life is to understand ourselves, and that is both the beginning and the end of education.”

― J. Krishnamurti