I think your comparison to public schools depends upon which public schools you are comparing them to. Here in Maryland we have Howard county, and that would be a really high bar, they are some of the best nationwide. We would not be able to reach their ceiling. Even in the schools my daughters went to, in one of the other counties, my brighter daughter did AP calculus and AP art studio. Those would almost never be found in a church school.PeterG wrote: ↑Tue Feb 27, 2024 11:54 pm I've been a teacher in conservative Mennonite schools for nearly 20 years. (I also attended public schools from grades 1 through 6.) I've mostly taught students in grades 7–12, in four different communities. I'm afraid that in some ways there are fewer differences between our schools and public schools than we would care to admit. I don't mean to be negative, but I think it's important to be honest and realistic about the problems we face, avoiding complacency and pride ("I thank thee, Lord, that I am not as other men are").
Many of the issues mentioned in the first few posts in this thread are all too familiar to me. I've taught 8th graders how to sound out words. I once had to teach a high school senior how to divide properly. Many students fail to follow basic directions. Many simply don't do their homework. I've had students who don't know things like whether the Civil War or World War II came first, or that meat is animal muscle. It's not unusual to receive writing assignments with depressingly erratic grammar, spelling, and punctuation, and no paragraph divisions. Excessive absences have consistently been a headache. Many students will put forth a surprising amount of effort to avoid having to think. I could go on.
Nor are the social ills often associated with public schools and their problems absent from our schools and communities. I'm pretty sure I've always had at least one student being raised by a single parent. I've seen the effects of abuse, family dysfunction, and illegal drug use—just about everything you can think of except for homelessness and similar levels of poverty, which I don't think I've seen any of my students deal with. I'm on the planning committee for a large annual gathering of conservative Anabaptist teachers (Teachers Week at Faith Builders), and helping students who have experienced trauma is consistently one of the most in-demand topics for breakout sessions and workshops. These issues probably exist at lower rates among Mennonite students (as far as I know I've only had a single student that used illegal drugs, for example), but they are definitely present.
Some of these problems exist simply because learning is a complex, challenging undertaking for many students. Some find academic work extraordinarily difficult. Some are just lazy. As others have mentioned, parents' attitudes and involvement have a major impact. Education is a low priority for many Mennonite parents. I've often dealt with parents who have very lackadaisical approaches to their children's homework, or see little point in learning that has no obvious occupational or economic benefit. Mennonites often value their schools as community centers rather than as educational institutions. (I hasten to add that I've worked with many other parents who are deeply concerned that their children reach their academic potential, and work very hard to help their children excel.)
Our schools do have significant strengths. We have the opportunity to educate in the context of our beliefs and values. I think the schools I've taught in have been generally successful in fostering supportive, harmonious atmospheres. I've seen very few instances of bullying, and I don't think I've ever had to break up a physical fight.
A few years ago I heard about an effort to compile standardized test scores from Mennonite schools that could potentially be used to make comparisons with other schools, but I don't know what came of that. From what I recall of my own students' standardized test scores, they tend to fall in the percentile rankings I would expect based on their abilities. Other than that I have no hard data, so take the following for whatever it's worth. I suspect that our conservative Anabaptist schools, academically, provide a higher floor but reach a lower ceiling when compared with public schools. My hypothesis is that they avoid the very worst outcomes due largely to lower rates of poverty and higher rates of two-parent families, and do not reach the highest levels of achievement due largely to the lack of resources given toward helping the most capable students reach their full potential.
On the other hand we have the jurisdiction our school is located in. One would struggle to find a lower floor.