Your daily reminder that expecting parents to teach their kids at home is super inequitable

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t understand why people keep twisting OP’s point. She is not telling parents they can’t supplement. She is saying it is bad that schools expect this to happen and/or that the go to solution for all school gaps is for parents to do it themselves. There are things schools SHOULD be doing and expecting them to is not asking too much.

As a matter of public policy, we can't expect much from many parents because they are unable or unwilling to do much. But we should have no problem telling parents that they cannot expect their kids to reach their full potential without supporting their education at home. So long as parents are ok with that, we should be ok with parents doing the bare minimum.

Well, how do you define “supporting their education”? I would define it as ensuring the child’s physical and mental and social-emotional health, reading with them, helping with homework if they’re having trouble, or with a subject they’re not testing well in.

I would NOT define it as having to heavily supplement my average or above-average child in order to fill in the gaps of a poorly done school curriculum. But that is what UMC are expected to do these days, and the only reason UMC-heavy schools are doing well.

The majority of UMC really don't do this. They may do enriching supplements that their kids are interested in but not things to fill gaps in the curriculum.

My kid attends mathnasium with a lot of classmates from their well regarded very UMC public and and kids from some very expensive privates. I think, at least on the math side, supplementing is more common than you thing

At mathnasium you see all the kids who do of course, but think about how many students there are say in just FCPS who would qualify as UMC by actual demographic standards. I think the vast majority of UMC families do not. I think it's just in some bands of UMC, in some neighborhoods it becomes a thing and then everyone else does it to keep up with the others in their particular band of UMC. It has less to do with the school curriculum and more to do with keeping their kids apace with the people they see as their immediate peers. Just my observation though. It's the "Race to Nowhere" phenomenon. For instance, I think our home is culturally rich, we're highly educated parents with both STEM and humanities backgrounds and we have never thought a good use of our kids' time out of school is to do more school-like stuff (that is beyond doing their homework and unless reading for pleasure counts as 'school like stuff').