Why is everything so mediocre around me?(Warning: long rambling post)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We are in a well off suburb with a top state school district. Blue ribbon school.

But the district relies on Fountas Pinnell. My kindergartener couldn’t read. Her spelling is terrible. Now in 1st grade they are still working on 5+2 and 9-7. So I have to teach literacy and math at home. I’m sure I’ll have to start spelling and science soon.

I put her in a music school because she wanted an instrument. As the newest kid by far she objectively did the best at the recital (memorized the music, played with good tempo, actually performed) whereas kids who have been learning for much longer could barely read off their music stands, showed up wearing old sweats, and often had to restart the piece.

This will sound snobby. I know not everyone is the top at everything. But my kid is by no means a musical prodigy. She should not be at the top of the performance list, she is a good. She is in the top math group, but only because the classroom expectation is that she master 1-10 math facts, she is not an exceptional math talent. I love my kid and am proud, but realistically she is not a superstar.

Isn’t the 1st grade class standard behind? Is this music school bad? Should we move? Or is this just how things are even in coveted districts? I feel like during the preschool years everyone talked about enrichment and doing the best for kids. Everyone looked into specialized classes and were weirdly competitive about their babies. How can the elementary classroom and extracurricular experience be so mediocre in a wealthy, educated area? Is this why people are down on public schools and seek private? Or is this because I don’t live in the cutthroat areas of McLean and N Arlington? Is it different where you are?

OP doesn't have to break privacy, but what are the wealthy educated areas outside McLean and N Arlington?

[Anonymous]

What kind of trash parent has a kid in music school if the kid can't play music?

[Anonymous]

Move to Lake Wobegon, where everyone is above average.

[Anonymous]

My kid goes to a Title 1 inner city elementary school with 65% at risk kids.

She is in 1st grade and reads chapter books like Mia Mayhem and Princess in Black fluently. She's in the top reading group at school but is not the top student -- there is at least one other kid who reads as well as she does but is a better speller. Both kids write well. I know there are kids in class still working on more basic phonics but the teacher has not had trouble differentiating to challenge the more advanced readers.

In math they are working double and triple digit addition and subtraction as well as a host of math facts and techniques that will translate well to multiplication and division (skip counting, take from 10 methods, etc.). DD is middle of the pack in math, not in the top group but not in the bottom group. She thinks math is fun though which I view as a good reflection the teacher because it means she's learning all this without getting burned out.

I think your school sucks, OP. Sorry. I would demand more.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Find where high achieving immigrants hang out. Seriously - RSM classes, private music teachers, etc. Your kid will at least know another peer group with higher expectations.

+1. Move to McLean, OP. Wherever you live sounds like a dump.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kid goes to a Title 1 inner city elementary school with 65% at risk kids.

She is in 1st grade and reads chapter books like Mia Mayhem and Princess in Black fluently. She's in the top reading group at school but is not the top student -- there is at least one other kid who reads as well as she does but is a better speller. Both kids write well. I know there are kids in class still working on more basic phonics but the teacher has not had trouble differentiating to challenge the more advanced readers.

In math they are working double and triple digit addition and subtraction as well as a host of math facts and techniques that will translate well to multiplication and division (skip counting, take from 10 methods, etc.). DD is middle of the pack in math, not in the top group but not in the bottom group. She thinks math is fun though which I view as a good reflection the teacher because it means she's learning all this without getting burned out.

I think your school sucks, OP. Sorry. I would demand more.

+1. My kids are in a similar school and they are similarly ahead in academics, as well as music, theater, and sports. You need to move OP.

[Anonymous]

This sounds like my DD's school except that she is in 2nd grade. They do multiplication in 3rd grade but I think they address the beginning concepts of it at the end of 2nd.

Anonymous wrote:My kid goes to a Title 1 inner city elementary school with 65% at risk kids.

She is in 1st grade and reads chapter books like Mia Mayhem and Princess in Black fluently. She's in the top reading group at school but is not the top student -- there is at least one other kid who reads as well as she does but is a better speller. Both kids write well. I know there are kids in class still working on more basic phonics but the teacher has not had trouble differentiating to challenge the more advanced readers.

In math they are working double and triple digit addition and subtraction as well as a host of math facts and techniques that will translate well to multiplication and division (skip counting, take from 10 methods, etc.). DD is middle of the pack in math, not in the top group but not in the bottom group. She thinks math is fun though which I view as a good reflection the teacher because it means she's learning all this without getting burned out.

I think your school sucks, OP. Sorry. I would demand more.

[Anonymous]

OP I have a kid who underachieves and I am far from a tiger mom. But yes - what you are learning is that public school education is BAD no matter how fancy the school district. Based on conversations with relatives in coveted public districts, I do think you start to see more value in middle school. For example I visited Westland Ms and the orchestra sounded amazing.

You may also want to move to an area with more Asian families.

[Anonymous]

You have to find the hard-charging, highly educated parents (usually immigrants) with standards. They all find each other and have their kids do piano and language school and math school together on Friday nights and Saturdays. They teach their kids how to read and make them do math every day and have high standards. No video games. Read for 3 hrs a day. Etc.

[Anonymous]

Find private music instruction if you want rigor. Our piano teacher is very serious but still kind. Expects pieces given as assignments to be learned perfectly. Which requires daily practice. Separate music performance and theory books. My kid is 8 and started this fall and we do 20 min of practice a day. We also do separate math (on our own and not through RSM yet) because my kid likes math and shes probably at the top 10% of her class for math.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You have to find the hard-charging, highly educated parents (usually immigrants) with standards. They all find each other and have their kids do piano and language school and math school together on Friday nights and Saturdays. They teach their kids how to read and make them do math every day and have high standards. No video games. Read for 3 hrs a day. Etc.

Pp here. This is us. Except we also do sports and don't have time for 3rs of reading and do some screens. I don't recall exactly what i was doing in math in 2nd in my home country, but i was certainly expected to spell correctly and write in cursive in paragraphs and read fluently.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Find where high achieving immigrants hang out. Seriously - RSM classes, private music teachers, etc. Your kid will at least know another peer group with higher expectations.

Yeah this. I find the standards of high income wasp types are sort of mediocre regarding academics and music.

-
Raised by immigrants

I was raised by immigrants and I see things really differently. I think immigrants pound the creativity out of their children with rote memorization. I think Wasps recognize that not everyone is a genius and no amount of pressure or forced math practice is going to turn their mediocre child into one. I think Wasps realize the point of learning piano is to have a fun hobby and sometimes play a song for your friends at get togethers throughout the course of your life, not to impress your mom’s friends or foster her delusion that you have a chance to play professionally at Carnegie Hall.

I think Wasps actually have a much better handle on how to promote creativity and invention than recent immigrants do. That’s why we wanted to be here and not wherever we came from. And didn’t Anglos invent penicillin, the plane, the computer, the telephone, air conditioning, etc.? I’d say they know what they’re doing, no?

[Anonymous]

Academically your kid sounds behind.

[Anonymous]

Not my experience. My very average DD had a great experience at Montessori schools through fifth grade and at Levine Music throughout. Also a good non-competitive (but not tippy top) dance school. She is talented, confident, and killing it at college admissions. Her peers try hard and she understands what it means to work hard. The worst I’ve seen so far is her public HS magnet program. It’s meh. Low expectations, poor content, infrequent and limited feedback on assignments. But overall, I think you need to move your kid to higher performing places of learning.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kid goes to a Title 1 inner city elementary school with 65% at risk kids.

She is in 1st grade and reads chapter books like Mia Mayhem and Princess in Black fluently. She's in the top reading group at school but is not the top student -- there is at least one other kid who reads as well as she does but is a better speller. Both kids write well. I know there are kids in class still working on more basic phonics but the teacher has not had trouble differentiating to challenge the more advanced readers.

In math they are working double and triple digit addition and subtraction as well as a host of math facts and techniques that will translate well to multiplication and division (skip counting, take from 10 methods, etc.). DD is middle of the pack in math, not in the top group but not in the bottom group. She thinks math is fun though which I view as a good reflection the teacher because it means she's learning all this without getting burned out.

I think your school sucks, OP. Sorry. I would demand more.

I've lived OPs experience in elementary and found that it was the parents that just filled in the rest of academics and also heard about these magical title 1 schools with all this enrichment at the school especially in DC and wondered why then the kids in those schools were so far behind by high school. They were behind socially, academically, and physically overall so not sure what all that academic focus got them at the title one school in first. OP all I can find from experience is that a lot of people in 1st grade at school are focusing on friendships finding the right sort of kids and parents to hang out with rather than academics and they ramp up academics on their own in later elementary. As for the music, the better kids are in a different program. Same with sports. Certain families will seek out the most advanced after-school program for whatever special interest they and their child has.