This. I went to a middle class pubic school (mostly white). We had Alg I in 8th as the advanced option. Many kids took it, it was common. No one supplemented, that I recall. There definitely weren’t Kumon, RSM, and the like. |
Are you Asian? I had no idea academic summer camps even existed. I can’t think of anyone I knew that went to one. I went to an excellent public school where many classmates went on to great colleges- no one was doing this. |
Dp. Yeah, the rich kids I knew supplemented. |
What’s the goal in regular kids going to math class after they’ve been in a class all day? It’s hard to believe that every poster lives in a district with poorly performing schools. As for supplementing reading, what happened to reading books starting as babies on a daily basis? I could tell when my first grader was progressing when I was reading chapter books to her and she read along with me and speak up whenever I skipped a word, which was often. Schools use phonics and reading vocabulary increases every year. Some quickly, some slower. |
My 7th grader went to an enrichment program for math and English. She’s an average student I just wanted to have her ready for 8th grade math. The majority of kids were Asian. |
I'm the PP whose kid does math club. It's nothing like RSM. It's just puzzles and fun stuff. It's intended to deepen knowledge and give kids a chance to apply classroom concepts in different and more interesting ways. They've also had parents come in who use applied math in their jobs to do projects with the kids -- I did a statistical analysis project with them using survey data they collected themselves, and they played around with different ways of using percentages to represent data. It was fun. There's no homework and the goal is not accelerate. |
Nope, White. My Mom asked the teachers for options and did research at the library. Plenty of people in our area did it. |
Idk where you are, but many Sidwell families are paying $$$$ to Prep Matters for private tutoring. And these aren’t the public school kids who joined in 9th. Everyone’s pretty hush hush about it though. |
If your mom had to go research it at the library, plenty of people weren’t doing it. In the 90s, white MC and UMC were not sending kids off to academic summer camps. That was incredibly uncommon. It sounds like your brother was a special circumstance and far above peers, which is why your mother had to seek out the info |
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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]When did this change and why? We did not supplement in the aughts and certainly not in the 90s. [/quote]There are no textbooks. The teachers teach to the SOL. They follow disconnected strands bc of the SOL. They cram info into Sept-April bc they reserve the end of April and May for SOL review and test. Many of the teachers are young and inexperienced. They teach math off of poorly formatted Google slides. It’s all very poorly taught. [/quote]
Dp. This, and kids got homework. Parents helped kids as needed with their homework. They'd check math sent home and explain things kids weren't understanding. Kids don't get homework anymore, or if they do, it's like 5-10 minutes long and inconsistently given. I was doing 30 minutes a day afterschool by 5-6th grade. It was school assigned homework, mostly daily math. |
| My kid is in DCPS and has been getting homework since K. Amount of math homework can vary by teacher and grade. It was really heavy in 2nd grade (lots of long worksheets for adding/subtracting math facts to drill those until they were second nature for kids) but lighter in 3rd, I think because ELA homework is heavier in 3rd now that kids are reading to learn and not just learning to read. |
How do you know all this? Do you have kids in school? What have you done it wise of school to address? Did you ever bring concerns to admin or teachers or the district? I am surprised at how much people seem to know. |
You must not have kids in school. Some teachers have textbooks and refuse to use them. |
Yes, they were. My parents did it and so did we. We supplement with math camos for a few years. |
What’s a math camo? |