I'll bet that a lot of us here are in the same boat. I grew up surrounded by my parents' books with more boxes of books in the basement. We were what I suppose might be called 'lower middle class', but books were considered treasure. One of my earliest memories (I must have been 2 or 3 years old) is of my mother taking me to the Gladstone Public Library and letting me pick out a book for myself (a Babar book as it turned out - I was a fan). I remember I couldn't believe they were going to let me just take it home. When I was about 7 or so, I snuck my mother's copy of The Gadfly off one of her bookcases and read it clandestinely, being careful to put it back as was every day. I figured it was a 'grown-up' book and I probably wasn't supposed to read it. When I fessed up later, my mother cracked up laughing that there should be such a thing as a book anywhere in the house that wasn't allowed to read.

>Completely agree. I live in a suburb with one of the highest rated school systems in the state. But if you gave those kids the parents and living conditions of the inner city kids, you'd get the same results the inner city schools get. But if you took these kids - with the same home life - and put them in those inner city schools (as the only student population ) and cut the budget you'd probably get a similar outcome to what we're getting in Brecksville now.
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>My mother started teaching me to read when I was three and at 5 my big treat was to go to the library every couple of days to check out books. I was reading at a high school level in 2nd grade. That's a big edge. Kid's would ask me "How do you *know * that stuff?" - it was just stuff I read in books. Has nothing to do with IQ or anything they were teaching me in school. Teach a kid to read, stimulate their curiosity and give them a safe, stable home to grow up in and whatever happens in school is just frosting on the cake.
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>>I think parental involvement is one of the biggest factors in educating a kid. My youngest daughter and her daughter live here with us and my granddaughter is constantly being taught. She is 18 months and knows all the letters of the alphabet and number 0 -9.
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>>>>I agree with you on the changing standards. when my daughter was in the 4th grade she attended a private school and at the end of the year she tested out at the 9th grade reading level. The next year she attended public school and after her first week, she came home and asked me why her classmates couldn't read very well....and sadly, some of those kids still cannot.
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>>>One of the main reasons we stay out here in the middle of nowhere is due to the public school system here. In general I'm impressed by the quality of the teachers and by the fact that they actually try to get kids to do their best. Having small class sizes helps a lot.
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>>>My youngest boy (Michael) is in 6th grade and reads as well as most adults. His spelling and grammar equal his reading skill (his writing is atrocious - must have inherited that from his mother!).
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>>>Most of his classmates are very capable readers as well.
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>>>The school system picked up on Michaels skills in kindergarten - he's been in the gifted program all along and he skipped 3rd grade entirely. They've wanted to bump him up another grade but we have resisted that - not good socially (being the socialite I am, I really know how this works).
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>>>His teachers all go out of their way to keep him challenged and working rather than treat him as just another number. They try to do that for any student with special needs (whatever they are).
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>>>It's too bad this is not the standard in other areas of the country.
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>>>Our oldest boy (my stepson - now in college) was in Florida public schools until 7th grade when we moved out here. Just another number in Florida - their solution to his non-conformity was to push ritalin for him. Luckily his mother told them where to shove that.
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>>>Once we moved out here, it took him about a year to settle in to the school system where he turned out to be a model student.
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>>>With effort from the parents and the schools, these kids do not have to grow into the zombies that are coming out of the school systems today.