are there fewer smarter students in Northern Virginia now?

[Anonymous]

Due to Covid and its effects, do we just have fewer kids who can do advanced work? Or is it something else?

[Anonymous]

Our entire educational system has been dumbing things down over the past few decades. Lucy Calkins, an overreaction against homework (sure, extra work for it's own sake is not the same as rigor, but you can't have rigor without practice), and other pedagogical errors are showing their impacts at older grades.

In addition there are simply more kids with IEPs, 504s, behavioral issues, who are ESOL, and the like. This isn't a bad thing in and of itself, but all of it takes time from teachers that could otherwise be used on educating.

But overall - think back 70 years. No one, and I do mean no one, was taking Calculus in your average public high school. In FCPS it's quite normal for many kids to take college level calculus. For decades our bar for what advanced looks like has gone up. Maybe it was always just due for a little regression?

[Anonymous]

What's prompting the premise of the question?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What's prompting the premise of the question?

Covid hurt a lot of students academically so may be we are seeing fewer students capable of high level work. The real estate has skyrocketed too so may be more families are moving elsewhere.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our entire educational system has been dumbing things down over the past few decades. Lucy Calkins, an overreaction against homework (sure, extra work for it's own sake is not the same as rigor, but you can't have rigor without practice), and other pedagogical errors are showing their impacts at older grades.

In addition there are simply more kids with IEPs, 504s, behavioral issues, who are ESOL, and the like. This isn't a bad thing in and of itself, but all of it takes time from teachers that could otherwise be used on educating.

But overall - think back 70 years. No one, and I do mean no one, was taking Calculus in your average public high school. In FCPS it's quite normal for many kids to take college level calculus. For decades our bar for what advanced looks like has gone up. Maybe it was always just due for a little regression?

Generally agree, though we are headed for far more than a "little regression."

Also, NYC and Seattle public schools' decisions to entirely eliminate their gifted and talented (accelerated) programs are not a coincidence. California previously imposed a ban on any public school student taking Algebra prior to 9th grade in a similar vein. All of these initiatives (along with those here in FCPS) were done in the name of racial equity.

The desperation to close the racial achievement gap is so great that educators are willing to "close the gap from the top down" by taking away advancement and acceleration opportunities from the brightest learners. It works: if you intentionally make the top-scoring students dumber, by slowing / diminishing their learning opportunities, the gap between lowest scoring students and the top students, decreases.

But its a horrible thing to do to our most capable students (most of whom are racial minorities themselves).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our entire educational system has been dumbing things down over the past few decades. Lucy Calkins, an overreaction against homework (sure, extra work for it's own sake is not the same as rigor, but you can't have rigor without practice), and other pedagogical errors are showing their impacts at older grades.

In addition there are simply more kids with IEPs, 504s, behavioral issues, who are ESOL, and the like. This isn't a bad thing in and of itself, but all of it takes time from teachers that could otherwise be used on educating.

But overall - think back 70 years. No one, and I do mean no one, was taking Calculus in your average public high school. In FCPS it's quite normal for many kids to take college level calculus. For decades our bar for what advanced looks like has gone up. Maybe it was always just due for a little regression?

Generally agree, though we are headed for far more than a "little regression."

Also, NYC and Seattle public schools' decisions to entirely eliminate their gifted and talented (accelerated) programs are not a coincidence. California previously imposed a ban on any public school student taking Algebra prior to 9th grade in a similar vein. All of these initiatives (along with those here in FCPS) were done in the name of racial equity.

The desperation to close the racial achievement gap is so great that educators are willing to "close the gap from the top down" by taking away advancement and acceleration opportunities from the brightest learners. It works: if you intentionally make the top-scoring students dumber, by slowing / diminishing their learning opportunities, the gap between lowest scoring students and the top students, decreases.

But its a horrible thing to do to our most capable students (most of whom are racial minorities themselves).

Nobody cares about that particular racial minority.
You've heard the comments saying "they'll be fine"
They don't deserve the fruits of their efforts, they just deserve "enough" so that no one should feel bad for them.

[Anonymous]

They all went private.

[Anonymous]

Well.. send like fewer smart parents. Let me explain...

Covid impact every single student. Not just the smart ones. By your argument, covid made kids dumber. So...it every student is bumped down a smart peg or two due to covid, there should be the same amount of smart kids as before. It's all relative.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What's prompting the premise of the question?

Covid hurt a lot of students academically so may be we are seeing fewer students capable of high level work. The real estate has skyrocketed too so may be more families are moving elsewhere.

That’s not what pp meant. She meant what is the basis for OPs assertion that there are fewer smart kids in nova capable of doing advanced work. OP made an assertion without any facts, data or even anecdotes.

[Anonymous]

Factually, NOVA has lower intelligence than neighboring states and that’s been a downward trend for years. So, yes OP, Virginia is getting dumber.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What's prompting the premise of the question?

Covid hurt a lot of students academically so may be we are seeing fewer students capable of high level work. The real estate has skyrocketed too so may be more families are moving elsewhere.

Do you have any data that suggests we're "seeing fewer students capable of high level work" or is it just speculation?

Basically every family moving out is being replaced by another family. There's actually a net increase of families in many areas (such as my neighborhood) because the empty-nesters are moving out to lower-cost-of-living areas and then families and/or developers are moving in (and upgrading the property, so these are generally higher-SES families, and higher-SES generally correlates with higher-performing students in the system). The reason the costs went up was supply and demand. If families weren't moving in to replace the ones leaving, the prices would drop. That's just not what's happening.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What's prompting the premise of the question?

Stir the pot. Election is in less than 2 weeks.
Some thread already locked, needs to create another title, with basically the same topic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Factually, NOVA has lower intelligence than neighboring states and that’s been a downward trend for years. So, yes OP, Virginia is getting dumber.

Interesting fact.

[Anonymous]

The 1st percentile “truly gifted” kids should accelerate and specialize if they choose to. But IMO the 2-10th percentile “really smart” kids are better served by having a lot of unstructured time to explore different subject matters, read, and play outdoors rather than being pushed to do RSM/AoPS/Kumon.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The 1st percentile “truly gifted” kids should accelerate and specialize if they choose to. But IMO the 2-10th percentile “really smart” kids are better served by having a lot of unstructured time to explore different subject matters, read, and play outdoors rather than being pushed to do RSM/AoPS/Kumon.

I would agree, if they weren't spending 8 hours at school spinning their wheels on iPads.