We thought of sharing our experiences so far. Most of you might know a lot of these things but for others with small kids hopefully this is helpful. So let's start? First of all,
#1
like in India here too we have 3 types of schools First is Elementary which is equivalent to Lower primary in India Elementary starts from kindergarten which is UKG or KG2. LKG or KG1 is usually in private pre-school Kindergarten to 5th grade is elementary school Next is Middle School which is equivalent to upper primary or UP school. In most areas middle school is 6th, 7th, and 8th grades. In some counties, for e.g. in our neighboring county elementary is till 6th grade There, Elementary is from KG to 6th grade. In that case middle school will only have 7th and 8th grades. There are some regional difference like that. In all areas, high school is from 9th grade to 12th grade. This is how the American school system is split. Today we are focusing on 5 main differences between US and Indian Education system. First point is Public Schools. Majority of the students in the US study in public schools aka Government schools Our kids also go to Government school. There are private schools but those are very expensive. Some are Christian schools while others are super high end crazy expensive with small class size etc. Do you want to add anything more on public schools? Unlike in India, the public schools are mainly funded by the county and not state. Each county manages their own school system. County is equivalent to the District in India That's correct. Here the state sets the general guidelines or rules and then each county will have their own set of rules on top. In many places in the US one county is one school district. That is not always the case however. In our area that's how it is. In New Jersey each county is split into township. Each township is a separate school district. Yes, separate school districts. We will talk from our case, where the county is 1 school district. There will be slight differences in rules among the school districts. They all have individual school budgets which impacts the rules. The budget comes from the tax we pay. Definitely that is the most important thing about public school. This info might be beneficial to folks looking to buy a home. Most of you might know this. When we are purchasing a home or renting an apartment the first thing to check is the school district. You can search for the rating etc on Google. The kids from families that live in the area will go to that school district So if there are a lot of well educated double income families who give a lot of importance to kids education then naturally the schools in the area will have higher standards Which in turn increases the tax in that area. The tax we pay contributes significantly to the school system's budget. The state does provide budget to schools but the county spends a significant amount on the school system. The better the school district the higher the property prices, property tax, and of course the cost of living too. That's the main thing. So if you are going with a good school district the standard of education in the govt schools in that area will be very high. You can say that in a good school district a world class education is completely free.
#2
equal importance is given to extra curricular activities as studies Yes the focus is mainly sports as you might already know Arts is also important but at a different level We both studied in Kerala and are used to youth festivals we don't have that level of competitive activities here. Competitive spirt is generally less in the schools here. There are a lot of clubs in middle school. There is a club for every interest. If you are interested in that topic you can join that club. If there is no club for something you like you can start a new club. Each club has their individual competition circuit. For e.g. robotics will have its own speech and debate will have their own They have separate circuits. More like individual interest based competitions. Not like the huge youth festivals that we are have back home. The clubs have their separate competition tracks. Not a school or county or state wide mass event.
#3
GPA. Difference is here it is GPA vs the term or final exams back home GPA is grade point average It is the summative grade calculated from all the grades the kids received on their home work assignments, tests etc throughout the school year. The final grade is not based on the term exams or the final exams alone. Instead it is based on all the homework that is submitted by the student. There are 2 types of homework, formative and summative. Formative assessments are taken before the subject is taught in class so that the teacher has a gauge of how much each student knows about the topic. The teacher then tailors his or her lesson to the kids' knowledge level. Formative assessments don't count towards final grade but all summative assessments are counted towards final grade If you miss an assignment your grade will go down accordingly. So the kids have to stay on top of their work the whole year It is like that from elementary school itself. The point we mentioned earlier is very important about the accumulated GPA score. The school year is divided into 4 quarters Each quarter has multiple assignments, unit tests, and a final exam The final exam in each quarter does not have a high weightage unlike the term exams in India It has only a small weight % in the big picture all of this adds up for the quarter grade then all of the 4 quarter grades add up for the final grade at the end of the year The letter grades like A, A+ are calculated like that for each subject. Another thing about these unit tests that count towards the final grade is that these are usually out of 10 So if you get 2 wrong your mark is 80% which is a B. Because of all these small details kids have to pay attention throughout the year Fooling around the whole year and cramming last minute for the exams won't work. The effort the students put in throughout the year is what counts
#4
Gifted or Honors track
Here, schools assess kids from 2nd grade onwards There are many tests for it. There is a separate track to provide a more focused education for the kids who are well above average. That's the gifted track. The names for it vary with region like gifted, honors etc In our county, for the kids who are in this track, there is a long application process to get into that track, once a week they combine the gifted students in all classes from the same grade and teach them I'm talking strictly about our county here There they teach them critical thinking, quantitative analysis and other skills basically inspire them to think outside the box with projects, scenarios, problems etc Whereas in many other counties there are separate schools called gifted or magnet schools These are separate government schools for the kids in the gifted program They have all grades in those schools There they teach the same subjects as in regular school but at an advanced level for each grade In addition to this gifted system we also have an honors track starting middle school. The good thing about honors subjects is that those will bump up the GPA. The usual GPA of 4.0 will be bumped up if you take more honors classes So kids who take honors subject will have a higher GPA if they do good in their class. What honors really means is that For e.g. in the case of 6th grade math some kids will be learning 6th grade math for kids who have proven that they already have good mastery on 6th grade math (via test) or say for English, the teacher feels that the kid already knows 6th grade level then the teacher recommends the kid to take the advanced honors class so some 6th grade kids will take the honors class. Isn't that 7th grade math? 6th grade math honors is a combination of 7th grade math and advanced 6th grade topics So when a kid who took honors math in 6th grade comes to 7th grade they have already learned 7th grade math Now, that kid can learn what 8th graders learn, which is Algebra 1 So that kid finishes 8th grade level math in 7th itself If your pace of learning is faster then you can cater the subject to match that. If you are taking these advanced classes then you are taking high school level classes in middle school itself exactly Your high school GPA that is counted at the end of 12th grade is cumulative of all high level school classes. I forgot to mention that point earlier. Your high school GPA at the end of 12th grade whether it is 4.0 or 4.5 or 3.8 as we said, that GPA is from all the high school level classes that the student takes. It is cumulative average of 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th GPAs In addition to that for honors students, any high school level classes they took in middle school will also count There are very few chances for kids to become complacent about studies.
#5
which is a huge plus point in my view. Definitely. Even in your career you cannot survive without team work In today's corporate world everyone is on a team. If you can't thrive in that setting then you are at a disadvantage. Focus is not just on teamwork also leadership Yes that's correct. Leadership too. Even projects given to small kids in grade 1 and 2 are team projects. Everything is a project. Have to admit, that is a great concept People who work here will know the importance of communications skills. We Indians are technically strong, maybe rank holders etc back home At work here, a lot of our coworkers might not be as smart as us I'm not saying there are no smart people, I'm sure there are many Yet their presentation and communication skills, how they facilitate a meeting, how they have no stage fear in front of a large audience are remarkable I'm in awe when I see them. We haven't gotten that type of exposure growing up unless you were actively involved in speech or elocution. An average student in a class in India does not have many opportunities to polish such skills. I had great difficulty to speak up in a group when I came here. Once our kids started school we understood why the people who grow up here do not have that issue. They train then young. Even in 2nd grade kids are asked to make power point presentations and present in class. Maybe it is there in India now, not sure. Not even 2nd grade they start in preschool itself. They ask the kids to bring a favorite toy from home and talk about it to the class. That's how they train them from preschool itself. Coming back to teamwork there maybe cases where some kids on the team don't do any work Most of the work are projects So the kids learn how to work around that or pick up the slack Isn't that what happens in real life?
The focus of the education system is overall development Instead of teaching specific skills like in math division or multiplication table or calculus or differentiation the US education system's approach is to look at the overall development of the student A different aspect of the overall development is that even in high school for e.g back home the approach is that the 11th and 12th graders should focus only on studies Situation is completely different here. Here, kids that age of course will focus on studies naturally will be active in sports and extra curricular activities from clubs They work! Exactly, they work alongside They earn money. If they don't work they at least volunteer Because all of that is needed for college applications. We will talk about that in the Blog. You can say that they do all this for college apps but also because the focus is on overall development To give you an example our son used to do crew i.e. rowing. They used to practice is a faraway river after school everyday. Most days he used to reach home only by 10pm. Kids work on their assignments, study for tests after that and the next day the routine repeats. In the weekends a lot of these kids work or they volunteer. For e.g. kids who are interested in medicine volunteer at hospitals. That's how high schools kids in the US are.
A total package definitely Because of that the kids know how to handle intense pressure and multi task. Again we can debate for long on whether that is good or bad, that's a different story. It is a different approach back home. Only if you cram during those 2 years do you have a good chance at acing the entrance exams Here the approach is different That's all. Because for college applications extra curricular activities have equal weightage as studies. Yes, those are definitely important. As I said, we have shared our experiences if you have different experiences please let us know in comments Also please ask any questions you might have.
No comments: