Controversial Opinions: School & Education edition

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Achievement gaps will only ever be eliminated by changes in homes and society in general. Attempting to correct them in the schools is too little, too late.

+1

Agreed.

[Anonymous]

I was a big fan of public schools until our eldest shifted into private. Now I am a big fan of private.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Most teachers know exactly how to teach kids to read. Teaching reading is a combination of phonics, phonemic awareness, vocabulary, fluency and comprehension. Most teachers do this. Most parents do NOT know how to encourage or require, depending on the kid, reading at home. When kids don't know how to read well by the end of 2nd grade, there are 3 reasons: a) special ed, b) bad parenting or c) kid isn't working hard enough.

Learning is not merely memorization of facts, though memorization of facts is important. Nor is learning simply projects, or project based learning. It is both and, not either or.

I wish this were true. Our state is infested with whole language people at the state universities and they are turning out teachers who don’t know how to systematically cover the phonics and phonemic awareness components. Their spelling lists are from the story of the week with no organizing principle. They really believe that children exposed to a language-rich environment will just figure out those pesky phonics rules themselves with minimal support. Thank you Fountas and Pinnell for this disaster.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Most accelerated kids are garden-variety bright, not gifted.

Is this ever true. I was recently invited in to a fb parents group for "gifted" kids and it is mostly filled with questions from parents with es aged students trying to figure out how to get into the accelerated programs.

In America, most success is from grit, not high IQ. So I'm not sure why you think this is a controversial or an especially keen insight.

American k-12 education is a joke, anyone with SOME motivation can ace all their high school classes. Over 50% of American high school seniors have an A average. All A's and a decent ACT/SAT score gets you into UMD/UVA. Grind a little harder and you're in top 20 private territory.

Statistics are not your strong suit, I see.

"More high school teachers are handing out A's...

Recent findings show that the proportion of high school seniors graduating with an A average — that includes an A-minus or A-plus — has grown sharply over the past generation ... to 47%."

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017/07/17/easy-a-nearly-half-hs-seniors-graduate-average/485787001/

I found this part really interesting:
"Actually, they said, the upward creep is most pronounced in schools with large numbers of white, wealthy students. And its especially noticeable in private schools, where the rate of inflation was about three times higher than in public schools."

Ooooooh yeah. This is the pp who posted about the uncertified/choose-your-own-adventure teachers in private schools. Grade inflation—at least at my school—is DRAMATIC. A huge chunk of the reason (among many others) is parents reaching out (at best) or lashing out (at worst) to teachers about their child’s grades. I teach senior English, and I can’t tell you how many parents try to argue about their child’s grade when, for example, their child didn’t read the summer reading. It’s bananas!

So the path or least resistance for a lot of teachers is to give students/parents what they want: an A (without doing the actual work to earn it).

I can absolutely see that play out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No. It had much more challenging STEM and smarter, more driven kids.

Class size wasn't smaller, I'll give you that.

We don't believe that STEM is the be all and end all or that elementary school children should be "driven" or that there are children (or people) who are not smart.

That is the exact attitude that I am glad to be away from.

If you are aware of the tech. advances happening around you, success in the future is going to be based on your aptitude in the hard sciences and math. Its going to be all STEM and even the management folks need to be good at STEM. WAKE UP.

Um, no

Soft skills are going to be more in demand. In a decade new technology will have made your "stem skills" obsolete.

And what if someone doesn't want a career in STEM? Or is that only the "unintelligent" kids? and why are you focused on careers anyway? Elementary school shouldn't be about career training.

This attitude is why we choose private too.

Absolutely disagree. Its a myth that soft skills are the basis. Its the other way around. A hard science/math girl or guy with soft skills learned either through work or MBA is going to come out on top.

You really didn't learn critical thinking at your public school did you. What you "think" is irrelevant. Soft skills are top on the lists of what employers want from employees. It's a complicated, diverse world full of all kinds of people who think and understand in myriad different ways. The people who get that will come out on top. Not the people who's main skill is mathematics.

But I diegress,

Being the owner of the next big Silicon Valley startup is a completely legitimate career choice. But it's ok to be a college professor, a public interest lawyer or even *gasp* a teacher.

I doubt you and I will ever see eye to eye on this, luckily for me I don't have to

Your spelling and punctuation are woefully bad. Are you sure you should be taking swipes at someone else’s education?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Most accelerated kids are garden-variety bright, not gifted.

Is this ever true. I was recently invited in to a fb parents group for "gifted" kids and it is mostly filled with questions from parents with es aged students trying to figure out how to get into the accelerated programs.

In America, most success is from grit, not high IQ. So I'm not sure why you think this is a controversial or an especially keen insight.

American k-12 education is a joke, anyone with SOME motivation can ace all their high school classes. Over 50% of American high school seniors have an A average. All A's and a decent ACT/SAT score gets you into UMD/UVA. Grind a little harder and you're in top 20 private territory.

Statistics are not your strong suit, I see.

"More high school teachers are handing out A's...

Recent findings show that the proportion of high school seniors graduating with an A average — that includes an A-minus or A-plus — has grown sharply over the past generation ... to 47%."

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017/07/17/easy-a-nearly-half-hs-seniors-graduate-average/485787001/

I found this part really interesting:
"Actually, they said, the upward creep is most pronounced in schools with large numbers of white, wealthy students. And its especially noticeable in private schools, where the rate of inflation was about three times higher than in public schools."

Ooooooh yeah. This is the pp who posted about the uncertified/choose-your-own-adventure teachers in private schools. Grade inflation—at least at my school—is DRAMATIC. A huge chunk of the reason (among many others) is parents reaching out (at best) or lashing out (at worst) to teachers about their child’s grades. I teach senior English, and I can’t tell you how many parents try to argue about their child’s grade when, for example, their child didn’t read the summer reading. It’s bananas!

So the path or least resistance for a lot of teachers is to give students/parents what they want: an A (without doing the actual work to earn it).

I can absolutely see that play out.

+1, from someone who taught at a private school that’s frequently mentioned on this board. I saw this exact scenario happen routinely. On at least five occasions I witnessed, there were kids who were struggling academically or having serious behavioral issues and just not a great fit for the school. Admin wanted to counsel them out, despite “reminding” the teachers that the parents were heavily invested in their kids’ education . Their parents showed up, armed with stellar report cards, and threatened legal action. You can all probably guess how the story ended, every single time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No. It had much more challenging STEM and smarter, more driven kids.

Class size wasn't smaller, I'll give you that.

We don't believe that STEM is the be all and end all or that elementary school children should be "driven" or that there are children (or people) who are not smart.

That is the exact attitude that I am glad to be away from.

If you are aware of the tech. advances happening around you, success in the future is going to be based on your aptitude in the hard sciences and math. Its going to be all STEM and even the management folks need to be good at STEM. WAKE UP.

Um, no

Soft skills are going to be more in demand. In a decade new technology will have made your "stem skills" obsolete.

And what if someone doesn't want a career in STEM? Or is that only the "unintelligent" kids? and why are you focused on careers anyway? Elementary school shouldn't be about career training.

This attitude is why we choose private too.

Absolutely disagree. Its a myth that soft skills are the basis. Its the other way around. A hard science/math girl or guy with soft skills learned either through work or MBA is going to come out on top.

You really didn't learn critical thinking at your public school did you. What you "think" is irrelevant. Soft skills are top on the lists of what employers want from employees. It's a complicated, diverse world full of all kinds of people who think and understand in myriad different ways. The people who get that will come out on top. Not the people who's main skill is mathematics.

But I diegress,

Being the owner of the next big Silicon Valley startup is a completely legitimate career choice. But it's ok to be a college professor, a public interest lawyer or even *gasp* a teacher.

I doubt you and I will ever see eye to eye on this, luckily for me I don't have to

Your spelling and punctuation are woefully bad. Are you sure you should be taking swipes at someone else’s education?

Should I send some memes instead? that's how they communicate in sv these days

(And I completely disagree with your premise that STEM is better in a neighborhood public school, and even if it was private schools could easily catch up/surpass them since it doesn't take 10 years to requisition a glue stick)

[Anonymous]

The private schools do tend to have weak STEM, though. They just don't have the same teacher quality. Lack of advanced degrees is fine for the humanities but doesn't work for STEM.

[Anonymous]

Schools will never solve the achievement gap. Only parents can do that, and schools are way too reluctant to call parents out.

It's impossible to run a classroom with kids with so many varying academic abilities, coupled with special needs inclusion, and add in that there are almost no discipline techniques at the teacher's disposal that actually work... too many classrooms are madhouses.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I was a big fan of public schools until our eldest shifted into private. Now I am a big fan of private.

I am the opposite.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Schools will never solve the achievement gap. Only parents can do that, and schools are way too reluctant to call parents out.

It's impossible to run a classroom with kids with so many varying academic abilities, coupled with special needs inclusion, and add in that there are almost no discipline techniques at the teacher's disposal that actually work... too many classrooms are madhouses.

+1

I could have written the above, particularly the part about the lack of students’ self-control.

[Anonymous]

Mainstreaming isn’t good for the mainstream kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Mainstreaming isn’t good for the mainstream kids.

+1. I used to think it was a good idea, but now I see major disruptions to my kid's education.

[Anonymous]

I think old school "tracking" is beneficial for both the higher achieving and lower achieving student. I don't think it should start too early, but by upper elementary I think it helps both groups of kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think old school "tracking" is beneficial for both the higher achieving and lower achieving student. I don't think it should start too early, but by upper elementary I think it helps both groups of kids.

Agree for the higher achieving but it hurts the lower achieving

Multiple studies show this it makes sense if you have all the challenging kids in one class the teacher is going to burn out during that class