The kids are back in school. And you've probably shelled out for pencil cases, notebooks, a new backpack—and AP French.
"Free public education" clauses are written into state constitutions nationwide. Yet at many public schools around the country it has become anything but. Schools are charging parents for programs and items that have traditionally come standard—including fees for course supplies, school-run extracurricular activities, transportation and even basic registration fees.
...School boards do typically require the caveat that mandatory fees can be waived for students who show financial need. But Janis Sartucci, whose two children attended the Montgomery County, Md., public schools in suburban Washington, says that by forcing parents to reveal their financial status, such waivers miss the point. "Whether I can afford [a fee] or not is not the issue," she says. "It's that I shouldn't have to pay it."
Ms. Sartucci says she typically paid $200 to $300 in annual fees for textbooks, lab fees, calculators and other school supplies for her two children.
Many other fees are for activities that are considered optional. But critics say they are things that are critical to a well-rounded school experience—not to mention a competitive college application.
"Adolescents require a certain amount of feeling like they're part of a cohort," says parent Elise Cohen. Plus, "college entry is often predicated on a series of extracurriculars and students eventually showing leadership in them."
Ms. Cohen says she paid annual fees for technology, art classes and extracurriculars ranging from $35 to $100 for each of her three public-school-educated children, in addition to a one-time $65 graduation fee for the two who have already graduated...
Sunday, September 8, 2013
WSJ: The Rising Costs of a 'Free' Public Education
Wall Street Journal By LINDSAY GELLMAN
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I bought one calculator for my ninth grader and one for my 7th grader. They will use them into college and beyond. This is not a fee for a class.
ReplyDeleteWhile I don't agree with allowing students to use calculators in class, whether it is math or any other class that has a high requirement for math until they are in college, because it diminishes their understanding of how math works, there is nothing that can be done about this on a local level because the textbooks would all need to be thrown away. That may not be a bad idea.
I paid $23 this year is fees for a spanish workbook and nothing else. I have three kids in MCPS, 1 in ES, 1 in MS and 1 in HS.
The HS kid is in 4 honors classes and the MS kid is in 3.
ES doesn't have any honors or advanced or accelerated anymore because of curriculum 2.0 which prohibits this.
That is something that deserves your focus now, not this crap about fees. The fees are so unimportant compared to the dumbing down of the curriculum. Get your priorities in order. Fast. Time is running out.
Time already ran out for Edison HS students who wanted to take vocational classes for credit. The $200-$300 curricular fee per class kept those students from completing the courses they wanted for their high school degree and beyond.
DeleteCalculators? MCPS is required to provide those for your students. It is a fee for a class. You think those calculators will last into college? Good luck with that.
Spanish Workbook? Which MCPS snookered you for this fee? Did you write a check to the school? Workbooks are provided to all MCPS students for free by the taxpayers. If you wrote a check or paid cash to your local school you contributed to the local principals slush fund.
The Parents' Coalition has been covering the Pearson-MCPS curriculum 2.0 since the first day the Pearson deal was made public. We have consistently provided MCPS parents with links and information about national protests of Pearson's intrusion into public school classrooms. We made public the 2 week trip that Superintendent Jerry Weast and his wife took to Australia on the Pearson Foundation just a few weeks after the Pearson "deal" was announced. We exposed the reduction in the payout to MCPS and tracked the I-3 grant funding from the federal government.
Where have you been? When will MCPS parents join parents nationwide in protesting the Pearson curriculum and assessments?