What is up with kids in this county?

[Anonymous]

On the CMIT forum and other as well as from what I've seen in my middle schooler's school, there are just so many children in PG County schools who are 1. behind grade level and 2. really disruptive in class. What is up with that? There are so many organizational and logistical problems with PG County Schools, but there are MANY good, even great, teachers in the system. Why is it so hard to get and keep the kids up to grade level. What is going on at home/in the community that is causing these deficits? Is this just an artifact poverty? [PS I know there are plenty of smart, high achieving children in the county too. Obviously, I'm not addressing those. Seems like the cream really rises to the top and everyone else just kind of struggles at the bottom).

[Anonymous]

Yes. Even amazing teachers can't change in 40 hrs a week what is not being reinforced and taught at home. If education is not a family priority it's much harder to get good students. Kids without books and newspapers at home and without the tradition to read them (there are libraries for those who want to but can't afford it) kids don't see it as a worthwhile pastime and won't care.
Average Grades and student success tracks with ses for so much. Poor kids aren't stupid at all, and are capable, but they start so far behind and are often not reinforced and helped at home during to busy parents.

[Anonymous]

Their parents, and they way the kids were raised is the problem.

[Anonymous]

It is absolutely an artifact of poverty. Even for those in poverty attempting to better their child's education (i.e. sending them to a charter school, etc.) it cannot undo the home and/or neighborhood situation.

[Anonymous]

How could you ask a question that implies that all of the kids in Prince George’s are the same? I don’t get it.

[Anonymous]

How does the q imply that all are the same? Seems to say out right that there are differences.

[Anonymous]

When people talk about lousy schools, OP, this is what they mean.

[Anonymous]

I'd love if educators could weigh in on what's going on here.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'd love if educators could weigh in on what's going on here.

Educator here. Socioeconomic status is the biggest predictor of student performance. The impacts of poverty start well before school age. By the time Kindergarten starts, a child of professionals has heard 30 million more words than a child on welfare. This word gap leads to the achievement gap on standardized test scores, reading below grade level, etc. Things like early childhood education, and an excellent string of elementary teachers can close these gaps. If the student does not have those, and the gap just widens as they get older, then it becomes socially easier to be a "bad kid" than a "dumb kid." Conflict resolution strategies can be taught at school, but the battle is uphill if they are not modeled or reinforced at home.

[Anonymous]

SES is a huge impact.

Also, the PGCPS curriculum hasn't been that great, to be honest. The best teachers realized that and managed to scrap it and do their own (better) thing, depending on how heavily micromanaged they were by their administrators. Some insist teachers stick to the script word for word.

The Language Arts curriculum was heavily sight word based and I saw many students who were struggling readers get by to 2nd or 3rd grade without knowing how to decode because they were able to squeak by with just sight words and guessing, but that strategy stops working at a 3rd grade level which is when students test scores on the old MSA started being visible. Kids couldn't "get the main idea" and "make inferences based on the text" because they couldn't read the text! But they'd be placed in Response to Intervention groups to help them "make inferences" and teachers would read everything aloud to the kids so they could get the main idea and make inferences -- back then we were allowed to read the MSA aloud to kids which hid the fact that the couldn't read somewhat.

Anyhow, we still have a group of kids in middle and high school who basically never learned to read. There is a new curriculum based on Common Core standards, and at the earliest grade level, being able to decode IS being emphasized more. On the PARCC now the read aloud accommodation has been heavily curtailed, so kids who can't read on grade level are showing up earlier on these tests. So I am hopeful things are improving.

[Anonymous]

Compare PG horrible test score to 90 percent of other counties in the country I'm sure more times tben not PG will come out on top. I'm more curious as to why the complaints are always about "everyone else child". What are ur children doing ? Everybody complains about test scores well that's because " everybody " ain't doing their job.

[Anonymous]

Parents. I see it in my own household. I am the model parent that is on top of the schoolwork, supplementing their education year round, active In the school, encouraging reading etc. My spouse is completely checked out and spends more time watching TV than anything else when home and generally is completely uninvolved in our kids education excluding a few times after I complain about it. I imagine there are unfortunately many kids with one or two parents at home following my spouse's ways. We have educated parents in this county and the kids still do poorly so it is not all about uneducated parents either. Educated parents can do a piss poor job of being involved in their kids education as well.

[Anonymous]

I'm not really talking about test scores. I'm talking about kids who aren't learning, who drop out of high school and who are behavior problems. It's a lot of them. I can't figure out what's going on. Is it really ses?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'd love if educators could weigh in on what's going on here.

Education in this country is a big big business.

In public elementary schools, teachers have to do frequent testing and record the measurements which takes a lot of time. Then there are many schools which impose reading and writing workshops, where in a 90 minute timeframe, teachers do less than 10 minutes of direct teaching. The majority of the time is spent by students doing work on their own or in small groups. This method has proven to work for less than 50% of the students.

So parents opt to send their kids to charters, which is an even bigger money making business and can have very deceptive results.

In 90% of the world, students are able to read anything fluently in 4th or 5th grade, if they attend school regularly.
As for writing, not every country puts that much emphasis on it at the elementary or lower middle school level.

I never understood when Americans told me that they learned a language for several years in middle and high school but have totally forgotten it. Now that I see how foreign language is being taught, I understand it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'd love if educators could weigh in on what's going on here.

Education in this country is a big big business.

In public elementary schools, teachers have to do frequent testing and record the measurements which takes a lot of time. Then there are many schools which impose reading and writing workshops, where in a 90 minute timeframe, teachers do less than 10 minutes of direct teaching. The majority of the time is spent by students doing work on their own or in small groups. This method has proven to work for less than 50% of the students.

So parents opt to send their kids to charters, which is an even bigger money making business and can have very deceptive results.

In 90% of the world, students are able to read anything fluently in 4th or 5th grade, if they attend school regularly.
As for writing, not every country puts that much emphasis on it at the elementary or lower middle school level.

I never understood when Americans told me that they learned a language for several years in middle and high school but have totally forgotten it. Now that I see how foreign language is being taught, I understand it.

What does any of this have to do with PG County in particular?

Also, reading workshops and an emphasis in writing in elementary school doesn't have anything to do with learning a foreign language in high school then forgetting it. The reason people forget their high school language isn't because it isn't taught properly but because it isn't used. Anybody would forget a foreign language they never use.