School Choice: STEM school or arts school? An analysis of Duval Public School System for elementary school age students
Tags: Elementary School, Steam Education Program, Education, Parenting Advice, Parenting

Our family recently moved to Jacksonville, FL., which is part of the Duval County Public School system. We chose this school district because it is a school district with many choices for students. I want to give my children a good well-rounded education, but also allow them to make a choice to follow their interests.

Duval County Public School system is an interesting district to research because it is a choice school. That means, families can apply to any school they want and get assigned through a lottery system. Schools then have to sell their specialties to the families each year during the open application time. There are so many options for parents and students to choose where they want to learn and how they want to learn.

This school year is atypical, but thanks to Duval County’s policy of providing choices to families, we were able to choose what we believe to be the best learning style for our kids during the pandemic. We started from choosing the local school’s distance learning option (instead of in-person) for our 2nd grader and 4th grader thinking they might make some new friends locally. But, that turned out to be not the case. The 4th grade teachers were not interested in students’ interacting with each other during class time, and students could not really contact any other student through the school’s platform. We then chose to move to Florida Virtual School’s flexible program for my 4th grader and do our own self-paced learning instead of sitting through 6.5 hours daily school/teacher led structured learning with 65 other students online from the local school option. This seems to be the best online learning choice so far. But, I am still optimistic that my girl will go back to school and make new friends in the next school year.

In January, I started studying what schools our kids should attend next year by reading the school ranking sites, google reviews, school presentations and attending virtual School Choice Expo/Open Houses. According to GreatSchool data, most elementary schools in Duval County get about 50%/50% split in 2017 statistics in terms of gender representation. But, an interesting contrast worth paying attention to is between the school specialized in arts (Fishweir) and school specialized in science (River City Science Academy Mandarin). River City Science Academy said that they have achieved gender balance of their student pool since the data reported in 2017 showing a 62% male student in the school. But, Fishweir does not deny that they generally have more girls.

Fishweir Elementary, School for Visual and Performing Arts

River City Science Academy Mandarin

Source: images copied from Great School

Data Source: National Center for Education Statistics, 2017

As a proponent of collaborative project based STEM learning through play, Baby Monster Group conducts research and development in the areas of developing tools and curriculums that are inclusive and spark interest in STEM from a young age. Arts for us is a great hook to engage with kids that are typically shying away from the seemingly dull STEM subjects. Therefore, I believe at the elementary school level, schools focusing on arts need to incorporate STEM in an interdisciplinary method, and so should these STEM schools learning to innovate through the use of arts. No one should assume that a kid knows their potential or their life-long interest starting in Kindergarten. However, biases form quickly for these kids that will dampen their interest and limit their potential when their environment (created by parents or teachers) puts them in a box.

I was drawn apart by having to make a decision to choose art separate from STEM. I thought by now, schools would have known the benefits of STEAM and talk the talk even if they don’t have the budget to fulfill parent’s expectations. No matter which school my girls ended up attending, these conversations should be brought up by parents and educators to ensure the educational technique embraces kids of all different learning preferences.