Did you go to Public Schools and What did you think of your education?

I'm not seeing it...

 

When I interviewed with Teach for America 8 years ago, we had to read and discuss a case study on HISD and why it was more effective than other school systems.

**After doing some research, it seems HISD's amazing results were proven inaccurate around 2003-2004.**

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/01/06/60II/main591676.shtml

That being said, I think the public school system in NYC was far worse than in Houston.

 

I attended public schools in Boston suburb. We had our share of bad, average, and great teachers. Overall, our school was pretty good though. My senior year schedule was filled with AP classes and I had plenty more to chose from. There are schools out there that dont even offer one AP class. Most of the folks in my classes and myself were accepted into top-tier universities.

Based on my experience, I would say it really depends on what public school you go to. Mine was great but I have heard horror stores about others in our vicinity, which is why school system plays a big factor in house hunting.

 

I attended crap public schools in HISD. I had maybe 3 good teachers in middle and high school. It was a complete waste of time. Some teachers and administrators actually didn't like you if you were "too smart" or active, etc..

I turned out fine because I had highly educated parents that were abnormal for the majority of the lower-income school. Even still, it gave me a lot of bad habits because I could afford to be extra lazy because everything was so easy. I also developed a bad attitude and would play games with the teachers like not taking tests just to make it more of a challenge to still get an A.

Currently, my children are lined up for three good public schools but things change and if they go south I am not subjecting my kids to that. I do want them to get some reality in their formative years, but I also want them to be way better than I was/am.

 

There is definitely a pattern with Education, regardless of the school. A child whose parents are supportive of the school and their child will usually succeed regardless of where they go to school. A child whose parents don't discuss school, education, etc, or don't place a high value on education usually doesn't do as well.
My wife is a teacher, and the difference between the kids with involved parents and non-involved parents is usually very evident. Even if the Teacher rarely talks to the parents, the parents are making sure their child does their homework, helps their child with homework when needed, and talks to their kids about their school lessons.
And as far as people who will say that most lower income kids don't have that parental involvement because their parents work a lot more/2 jobs etc....BULL. I grew up in a low-income single parent home and my mother still kept in contact with my teacher and made darn-sure I did my homework and made good grades. Of course she went to school at night, so she knew the importance of an education.

 

Wow, rimmy... we share an eerily similar background, at least in public schools. I found a huge percentage of the experience incredibly boring, had the same problem with some of the teachers, who felt a bit intimidated, perhaps, by a student who asked questions they weren't prepared to answer. It didn't help that I was a member of a tiny group representing the early "counter culture" in the mid-'60's. The few really outstanding teachers I had kept me going. That, and my parents.

My two children have had a much different public school gig. My youngest is going to a magnet middle school here in Austin that is outstanding, and my son, a freshman at UW/Madison, had 21 hours of college credit accepted there, earned at his magnet high school, plus another 20 hours he tested out of, or earned at ACC during the summers (his idea, not ours). If he didn't look like me, I'd swear my wife had an affair, or that the "skip a generation" stuff is true and he got it his intelligence from his grandparents. Go figure.


Excellent idea for a thread, Sishir. Far better than the usual fare here.

 

I went to public elementary school (Sammons in Aldine ISD), public intermediary school (that is, 5th grade, at Anderson), and then private school at Awty for junior high (in French) and high school (in English). I was zoned for Eisenhower.

I was in a gifted and talented program in elementary school. My mother tells me that I got a bad attitude when I entered the program and stopped doing any of the work (I don't remember this at all). I do remember that we had a few people with serious learning disabilities in our class so they would have a better peer group to encourage them. Anderson I only remember for being ghetto. I was shocked going there -- it felt like Harlem to me at the time. Mapquesting it now, I see it's not so bad; but I didn't know anything back then.

My sister catalyzed the move to private school. She was at Shotwell and came home to tell my mother how her English teacher had them watching a soap opera (Days of Our Lives, I think) in class and that was the straw that broke the camel's back. My mother really believed in public education, but couldn't tolerate the incompetence. It didn't hurt that the French government would help foot the bill.

Awty was good, definitely college prep, but probably behind St Johns, etc for eliteness. And they had a few bad teachers. And, the civic life of the school -- clubs, sports, extracurriculars, etc -- was not well developed back then. They somehow got my lazy butt into an elite private college though.

Even if private is better, it's not something easily replicable. If you took everyone out of public school and put them into private schools, the quality at private schools would degrade enormously. Private schools benefit from being able to choose the students and the parents that will create a positive learning environment. If they have to educate thugs, kids with parents who don't care, kids with significant disabilities, kids with tumultuous private lives, like public schools do, they would not be able to create the environment for learning that they do now.

But, I think splitting schools into public and private is too simplistic. Exemplary education isn't the ultimate aim of all private schools either. I had a brother-in-law come stay with me many years ago to finish high school in Houston. We searched for a good school for him to attend, looking first at private schools. I went to a lot of open houses. I remember with the Christian schools in particular, they were much more focused with providing a safe, wholesome environment than they were with getting their kids into Harvard. I can understand that and that's fine; just not what I want. Certainly, public schools can compete with Generic Christian High. Competing with something like Exeter is another matter.

I'd suggest that the younger posters don't yet have the perspective to evaluate the schools they attended without bias.

 

Yes, I went to GCISD, and thought they were far too easy.

DD

 

Went through Klein ISD, mostly in Honors and AP classes. I agree with the one of the previous posters about regulars classes. Those few regular classes I took here and there were almost laughable, A+ just for showing up, but the honors and AP classes tended to be excellent.

Easily scored well enough on SATs, ACTs, etc and was in a good part of my class to go to college.

I would say I could count on one hand the number of teachers I had through the years that were NOT good (either didn't know what they were doing or didn't care), from elementary through high school. I also think a couple of the teachers from some of the regulars classes were excellent, really enjoyed their subjects, and wanted to have students exceed, but were stuck with kids/parents that just didn't care for the most part and had to dumb down their curriculum to compensate.

I feel like I was very well prepared for college by Klein.

 

I went to Northshore all thru my school years in the Galena Park ISD. I had some great teachers, most seemed to be there for the students and not just as a job. Sure, there were a couple like that, but it was overwhelmingly positive for me.

I think HISD's problems stem from several areas, and one of them is why I didnt choose to go into teaching(my parents and grandmothers were teachers):

Teachers/principals can't discipline the students or hold them responsible for their actions.

 

I imagine the potential for great public schools is pretty high in Massachuesetts. I wonder if having elite universities and prep schools automatically raises the bar for public administrators and parents. And 400+ years of experience (aka Boston Latin) doesn't hurt, either.

 

so after going to river oaks and lanier, i went to public high school in NJ. the education system in NJ is very different than HISD and is based on townships, which are equivalent to a neighborhood like West U, Alief or Bellaire. Every township has its own education board and budget, based on their local tax dollars.

you cannot test into another townships schools like you can in houston (i.e. you can test into bellaire hs without living in bellaire). hence, the wealthier townships have excellent schools because they have bigger budgets due to more tax money. my high school still had basic kids but they were only like 10% of the student body. there were almost never any fights, gangs were non-existent and it was cool to get good grades and be nerdy.

the downside is that this promotes segregation to some extent. 85% of my class was white, 40% were jewish, and 95% were upper-middle class or richer. i preferred the diverse mix of socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds that i experienced growing up in houston because that is more representative of the real world, and a large reason for who i am today.

 

I went to HISD public school. The elementary school teachers were fine, and the material was easy enough to teach for them. 1/4 of the middle school and high school teachers were bad.

There were handful teachers of teachers that should be fired for giving curves almost every test to bump up their student's score. One teacher fudged the numbers. Another teacher was more interested in having sex with the students and going to college frat parties than teaching chemistry. He would get drunk with HS students at college parties. A parent filed a civil suit for sexing their daughter. I don't know what happened to the suit. 10 years later, I heard he was still working at that school.

 

I find it's more about those around you. When I was not taking honors class, I can literally show up to the test and expect to get 100. The Honors/AP classes attract a certain group of people (and if you get into the Gifted and Talented Program, a very small sample of people). People get pushed in Honors classes (especially the math and science ones where there are curves because people do fail because the material is really hard, prepared the heck out of for college Electrical Engineering). I didn't feel like Freshman year at college, even in a tough major like EE at UT wasn't that much harder than H.S.. I didn't have a 4.0, but still managed a 3.x without too much effort (it was the later classes that crushed me). However, my high school was in the burbs and people were mostly middle to upper middle class.

 

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All I know is that Bellaire's foreign language department is literally amazing. One of, if not the best in Texas as far as public schools go.

 

I agree Bellaire is probably one of the best. But I'm guessing a lot of that has to do with is IB program and its locale covering the Bellaire/Meyerland/other-can't-remember-areas. I was still really underwhelmed by the basic education it provides if you're not among the top students.

Indeed. Good times!

 

Yeah, you damn Bellaire brats. I had interesting memories going against Bellaire kids again and again in various extracurricular activities like Debate. Good old days.
Public School,Attended CCISD and went to Clear Lake High School and took AP classes.
It was an odd experience. Education for those whom didn't attend the AP/Pre-AP classes, sucked, with teachers whom didn't seem to care from what I saw, and pathetic knowledge. The AP classes were highly different. Teachers whom cared, families who cared a lot, and ultimately the result was an incredibly cutthroat and intense competition in grades and everything among the best students that I haven't seen even in college. Most of those students were from middle-class families, engineers and the like, so there was a definite class structure, one from which I admit I felt somewhat left out of.

Public schools really just vary, and I think the atmosphere in most of families is more important really than the school. Most kids I saw were pushed and had stress placed upon the importance of their education and thus succeeded, though I'll admit I had a different case from them.

High School really completely convinced me that forcing a diverse mix of ethnic backgrounds is an utter waste of time. Lake's fairly diverse, with good amounts of whites, Asians, Blacks, and Hispanics. The ethnic groups hate each other, and generally have very little to do with each other aside from oddballs here and there.

 

I mentioned how I grew up in the Alief system.

My sister attends Seven Lakes HS in Katy ISD. Accordind to wiki, the hs is the second largest and most expensive public school built in the US. The school ranks very high bc the students pass their AP exams (413/27000).

Too bad she doesn't really like school bc I sure would have liked a better education before I hit college!

 

I went to good schools in Fort Bend ISD, and I can definitely say that I was perfectly prepared for college at UT. A large part of this has to do with the AP classes I took, all of which I scored highly on thanks to good teaching.

My girlfriend went to a private Baptist school up until middle school, however, and it is astonishing how many of her friends from there are totally screwing up their lives now. Heavy drug use, dropping out of school, and alcoholism, among other things, are extremely common among the kids from this well to do school. (I'm sure many will say this is normal behavior, but I can promise you the percentage of the kids at that private school who do these things is much higher than the kids who did at my high school.) While this may not be surprising to many, I do find it interesting that these kids seem to suffer in the social parts of life.