Weekend reading from the Chron

Here are three excellent articles from the Chron. Highly recommended:

On the State of Schools and Schooling / A fond farewell to San Francisco public schools

JUNE 7 is graduation day for our high-school senior, Max, and for us. After 17 years in the thick of the San Francisco public school system, with two sons, five schools, one year of running a Parent-Teacher-Student Association and uncountable field trips, we're getting out.

Maybe that's not the best way to put it. Getting out implies you want to make a break for it, like from prison -- or a bad marriage. We, instead, are bidding a very fond farewell, with many thanks. San Francisco public schools don't work for everyone, but they worked for us. They might work for others, if they would only give them a try.

Let children be children / Is your 5-year-old stressed out because so much is expected?

For 30 years as a teacher of primary kids, I have operated on the Any Fool Can See principle. And any fool can see that the spread between what is developmentally appropriate for 7- and 8-year-old children and what is demanded of them on these tests is widening. A lot of what used to be in the first-grade curriculum is now taught in kindergarten. Is your 5-year-old stressed out? Perhaps this is why.

Home prices' hard lesson / As families leave S.F., schools struggle to attract those left

Public education is in danger of sinking along with the fortunes of its departing middle class.

By now, most San Franciscans are familiar with the dismal litany: the soaring cost of housing, the resulting loss of some 800 kids from the public school system each year, the constant battles over school closures.

As they compete for a dwindling number of children, San Francisco's public schools are making heroic efforts to survive. Thanks to special arts-in-schools funding voters approved three years ago, the city's public schools are awash with artists-in-residence, dancers-in-residence, poets-in-residence. Language immersion classes are the hot thing in public education. San Francisco parents have seen the future, and it is multilingual. You can watch kindergartners rattling off Mandarin and first-graders speaking Spanish as if it were their native tongue.