Restoring rigor in high schools

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid is taking AP Seminar this year and it's his first AP class. He's always been in H.English. Except he cannot write a cohesive essay. Not only that, but he doesn't even know the questions to ask himself in order to write the essay.

He had a big assignment due this week. He wasn't able to do it. I ended up creating templates for him to complete. We needed to do template A which fed to template B which fed to the actual assignment. Of course, this took much longer than the time allotted.

He worked hard and more importantly, I taught him some new skills that he can use in the future. We both wish that he had one more day so he could do a review of his draft, make edits, and turn in a more finished product. But a deadline is a deadline.

I was surprised that he really couldn't even get started on the assignment without me. Whatever grade he gets is fine. In this case, the grade is irrelevant. He needs to learn these skills. I would have thought that the critical thinking and analytical skills would have been taught in earlier grades. The scaffolding that I created for him seemed more like something I would have done in middle school back in the last century.

My sons experience mirrors what I see in my classes at UMD. My students understand the math concepts I teach but they cannot covey the information they learn in a written document. They cannot create a thesis statement, provide supporting information, do an analysis, and then summarize the information.

Other than doing it myself or getting a tutor for my son, I don't know what to do. This is a skill that requires practice and refinement over years. It's not being taught in his public schools (MS/HS). I understand why---it requires a lot of time and effort for a teacher to grade an essay and provide meaningful feedback. With 25+ kids in a class and multiple classes, that seems overwhelming for a teacher.

Classes has 25+ kids back in the last century as well, so that's not an excuse

DP. If only class size was the only thing that mattered!

Teachers have more classes now and fewer planning periods. If a teacher is lucky, they may get a whole 50 minutes at work to get all of their work done for 175 students. And all the added responsibilities (meetings, data, more data, meetings about data, IEP documentation, 504 documentation, meetings about IEPs and 504s, subbing responsibilities, lesson planning, team meetings, emails, more emails, hallway / parking duty, and everything else) that didn’t exist last century.

- teacher

If they remove the sped and mental problems from the classroom, 90% of a teacher's bandwidth would free up. I've spoken to a few teachers that were so frazzled by year's end that they quit. They got no support from admin, were constantly pestered by sped parents, were ignored by absentee parents of mental cases, and were getting complaints from parents of smart students. They can't even really vent or complain openly because of ridiculous privacy laws and threats of lawsuits by mostly terrible, entitled parents. It's a hopeless situation and I don't know why teacher unions don't make this the number one priority.

Respect for teachers used to be a thing but now everyone blames them for a situation they didn't create nor can control.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid is taking AP Seminar this year and it's his first AP class. He's always been in H.English. Except he cannot write a cohesive essay. Not only that, but he doesn't even know the questions to ask himself in order to write the essay.

He had a big assignment due this week. He wasn't able to do it. I ended up creating templates for him to complete. We needed to do template A which fed to template B which fed to the actual assignment. Of course, this took much longer than the time allotted.

He worked hard and more importantly, I taught him some new skills that he can use in the future. We both wish that he had one more day so he could do a review of his draft, make edits, and turn in a more finished product. But a deadline is a deadline.

I was surprised that he really couldn't even get started on the assignment without me. Whatever grade he gets is fine. In this case, the grade is irrelevant. He needs to learn these skills. I would have thought that the critical thinking and analytical skills would have been taught in earlier grades. The scaffolding that I created for him seemed more like something I would have done in middle school back in the last century.

My sons experience mirrors what I see in my classes at UMD. My students understand the math concepts I teach but they cannot covey the information they learn in a written document. They cannot create a thesis statement, provide supporting information, do an analysis, and then summarize the information.

Other than doing it myself or getting a tutor for my son, I don't know what to do. This is a skill that requires practice and refinement over years. It's not being taught in his public schools (MS/HS). I understand why---it requires a lot of time and effort for a teacher to grade an essay and provide meaningful feedback. With 25+ kids in a class and multiple classes, that seems overwhelming for a teacher.

Classes has 25+ kids back in the last century as well, so that's not an excuse

DP. If only class size was the only thing that mattered!

Teachers have more classes now and fewer planning periods. If a teacher is lucky, they may get a whole 50 minutes at work to get all of their work done for 175 students. And all the added responsibilities (meetings, data, more data, meetings about data, IEP documentation, 504 documentation, meetings about IEPs and 504s, subbing responsibilities, lesson planning, team meetings, emails, more emails, hallway / parking duty, and everything else) that didn’t exist last century.

- teacher

If they remove the sped and mental problems from the classroom, 90% of a teacher's bandwidth would free up. I've spoken to a few teachers that were so frazzled by year's end that they quit. They got no support from admin, were constantly pestered by sped parents, were ignored by absentee parents of mental cases, and were getting complaints from parents of smart students. They can't even really vent or complain openly because of ridiculous privacy laws and threats of lawsuits by mostly terrible, entitled parents. It's a hopeless situation and I don't know why teacher unions don't make this the number one priority.

Respect for teachers used to be a thing but now everyone blames them for a situation they didn't create nor can control.

I can tell you’re not well read at all. The majority of special ed kids have ADHD or a learning disability where they have a large gap between their verbal and nonverbal skills. If they could just have a conversation after class of what they’ve learned it would be pretty much ever. But it doesn’t work that way.

I’m not sure what you’re trying to say when you use the term “mental case” so I would think that’s not a problem. Class size makes a big difference.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid is taking AP Seminar this year and it's his first AP class. He's always been in H.English. Except he cannot write a cohesive essay. Not only that, but he doesn't even know the questions to ask himself in order to write the essay.

He had a big assignment due this week. He wasn't able to do it. I ended up creating templates for him to complete. We needed to do template A which fed to template B which fed to the actual assignment. Of course, this took much longer than the time allotted.

He worked hard and more importantly, I taught him some new skills that he can use in the future. We both wish that he had one more day so he could do a review of his draft, make edits, and turn in a more finished product. But a deadline is a deadline.

I was surprised that he really couldn't even get started on the assignment without me. Whatever grade he gets is fine. In this case, the grade is irrelevant. He needs to learn these skills. I would have thought that the critical thinking and analytical skills would have been taught in earlier grades. The scaffolding that I created for him seemed more like something I would have done in middle school back in the last century.

My sons experience mirrors what I see in my classes at UMD. My students understand the math concepts I teach but they cannot covey the information they learn in a written document. They cannot create a thesis statement, provide supporting information, do an analysis, and then summarize the information.

Other than doing it myself or getting a tutor for my son, I don't know what to do. This is a skill that requires practice and refinement over years. It's not being taught in his public schools (MS/HS). I understand why---it requires a lot of time and effort for a teacher to grade an essay and provide meaningful feedback. With 25+ kids in a class and multiple classes, that seems overwhelming for a teacher.

Then by all means pat your own back harder. People are people, at most your students need something different today than twenty years ago, but you’re too busy playing observer to offer it. You tout experience but it sounds more like expiration date.

NP here and an educator in the public schools. The PP is correct; those skills are not being taught but should be.

Why aren't teachers, people whose job it is to teach these things, teaching these things?

I could be wrong, I don’t believe public school teachers have much autonomy over the curriculum they teach. They pretty much have to teach exactly what they are told. Maybe some teachers here can clarify

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid is taking AP Seminar this year and it's his first AP class. He's always been in H.English. Except he cannot write a cohesive essay. Not only that, but he doesn't even know the questions to ask himself in order to write the essay.

He had a big assignment due this week. He wasn't able to do it. I ended up creating templates for him to complete. We needed to do template A which fed to template B which fed to the actual assignment. Of course, this took much longer than the time allotted.

He worked hard and more importantly, I taught him some new skills that he can use in the future. We both wish that he had one more day so he could do a review of his draft, make edits, and turn in a more finished product. But a deadline is a deadline.

I was surprised that he really couldn't even get started on the assignment without me. Whatever grade he gets is fine. In this case, the grade is irrelevant. He needs to learn these skills. I would have thought that the critical thinking and analytical skills would have been taught in earlier grades. The scaffolding that I created for him seemed more like something I would have done in middle school back in the last century.

My sons experience mirrors what I see in my classes at UMD. My students understand the math concepts I teach but they cannot covey the information they learn in a written document. They cannot create a thesis statement, provide supporting information, do an analysis, and then summarize the information.

Other than doing it myself or getting a tutor for my son, I don't know what to do. This is a skill that requires practice and refinement over years. It's not being taught in his public schools (MS/HS). I understand why---it requires a lot of time and effort for a teacher to grade an essay and provide meaningful feedback. With 25+ kids in a class and multiple classes, that seems overwhelming for a teacher.

Classes has 25+ kids back in the last century as well, so that's not an excuse

DP. If only class size was the only thing that mattered!

Teachers have more classes now and fewer planning periods. If a teacher is lucky, they may get a whole 50 minutes at work to get all of their work done for 175 students. And all the added responsibilities (meetings, data, more data, meetings about data, IEP documentation, 504 documentation, meetings about IEPs and 504s, subbing responsibilities, lesson planning, team meetings, emails, more emails, hallway / parking duty, and everything else) that didn’t exist last century.

- teacher

If they remove the sped and mental problems from the classroom, 90% of a teacher's bandwidth would free up. I've spoken to a few teachers that were so frazzled by year's end that they quit. They got no support from admin, were constantly pestered by sped parents, were ignored by absentee parents of mental cases, and were getting complaints from parents of smart students. They can't even really vent or complain openly because of ridiculous privacy laws and threats of lawsuits by mostly terrible, entitled parents. It's a hopeless situation and I don't know why teacher unions don't make this the number one priority.

Respect for teachers used to be a thing but now everyone blames them for a situation they didn't create nor can control.

I can tell you’re not well read at all. The majority of special ed kids have ADHD or a learning disability where they have a large gap between their verbal and nonverbal skills. If they could just have a conversation after class of what they’ve learned it would be pretty much ever. But it doesn’t work that way.

I’m not sure what you’re trying to say when you use the term “mental case” so I would think that’s not a problem. Class size makes a big difference.

This is irrelevant to the massive behavioral problems kids with various diagnoses have that quite literally prevent the teacher from getting through their material. How are teachers supposed to teach 50 min worth of new content if you they have to spend 30 min of class dealing with behavioral issues?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid is taking AP Seminar this year and it's his first AP class. He's always been in H.English. Except he cannot write a cohesive essay. Not only that, but he doesn't even know the questions to ask himself in order to write the essay.

He had a big assignment due this week. He wasn't able to do it. I ended up creating templates for him to complete. We needed to do template A which fed to template B which fed to the actual assignment. Of course, this took much longer than the time allotted.

He worked hard and more importantly, I taught him some new skills that he can use in the future. We both wish that he had one more day so he could do a review of his draft, make edits, and turn in a more finished product. But a deadline is a deadline.

I was surprised that he really couldn't even get started on the assignment without me. Whatever grade he gets is fine. In this case, the grade is irrelevant. He needs to learn these skills. I would have thought that the critical thinking and analytical skills would have been taught in earlier grades. The scaffolding that I created for him seemed more like something I would have done in middle school back in the last century.

My sons experience mirrors what I see in my classes at UMD. My students understand the math concepts I teach but they cannot covey the information they learn in a written document. They cannot create a thesis statement, provide supporting information, do an analysis, and then summarize the information.

Other than doing it myself or getting a tutor for my son, I don't know what to do. This is a skill that requires practice and refinement over years. It's not being taught in his public schools (MS/HS). I understand why---it requires a lot of time and effort for a teacher to grade an essay and provide meaningful feedback. With 25+ kids in a class and multiple classes, that seems overwhelming for a teacher.

Classes has 25+ kids back in the last century as well, so that's not an excuse

In the last century classes only had a couple of major assignments per quarter that the teacher needed to grade. Now it’s supposed to be at least one per week with meaningful feedback, in addition to practice work and other small checkpoints. That’s why the grading has become unmanageable.

[Anonymous]

Forget restoring rigor. We need to restore basics. National test scores that came out this fall are terrible- the lowest they have EVER been. Kids are graduating high school that cannot even read and understand the most basic material. Kids going to college can write a simple paper. Tests scores have been continuously declining since the 90s

https://ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/education/2025/09/10/national-test-scores-lowest-ever-for-high-schoolers-in-reading-and-math

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid is taking AP Seminar this year and it's his first AP class. He's always been in H.English. Except he cannot write a cohesive essay. Not only that, but he doesn't even know the questions to ask himself in order to write the essay.

He had a big assignment due this week. He wasn't able to do it. I ended up creating templates for him to complete. We needed to do template A which fed to template B which fed to the actual assignment. Of course, this took much longer than the time allotted.

He worked hard and more importantly, I taught him some new skills that he can use in the future. We both wish that he had one more day so he could do a review of his draft, make edits, and turn in a more finished product. But a deadline is a deadline.

I was surprised that he really couldn't even get started on the assignment without me. Whatever grade he gets is fine. In this case, the grade is irrelevant. He needs to learn these skills. I would have thought that the critical thinking and analytical skills would have been taught in earlier grades. The scaffolding that I created for him seemed more like something I would have done in middle school back in the last century.

My sons experience mirrors what I see in my classes at UMD. My students understand the math concepts I teach but they cannot covey the information they learn in a written document. They cannot create a thesis statement, provide supporting information, do an analysis, and then summarize the information.

Other than doing it myself or getting a tutor for my son, I don't know what to do. This is a skill that requires practice and refinement over years. It's not being taught in his public schools (MS/HS). I understand why---it requires a lot of time and effort for a teacher to grade an essay and provide meaningful feedback. With 25+ kids in a class and multiple classes, that seems overwhelming for a teacher.

Classes has 25+ kids back in the last century as well, so that's not an excuse

DP. If only class size was the only thing that mattered!

Teachers have more classes now and fewer planning periods. If a teacher is lucky, they may get a whole 50 minutes at work to get all of their work done for 175 students. And all the added responsibilities (meetings, data, more data, meetings about data, IEP documentation, 504 documentation, meetings about IEPs and 504s, subbing responsibilities, lesson planning, team meetings, emails, more emails, hallway / parking duty, and everything else) that didn’t exist last century.

- teacher

If they remove the sped and mental problems from the classroom, 90% of a teacher's bandwidth would free up. I've spoken to a few teachers that were so frazzled by year's end that they quit. They got no support from admin, were constantly pestered by sped parents, were ignored by absentee parents of mental cases, and were getting complaints from parents of smart students. They can't even really vent or complain openly because of ridiculous privacy laws and threats of lawsuits by mostly terrible, entitled parents. It's a hopeless situation and I don't know why teacher unions don't make this the number one priority.

Respect for teachers used to be a thing but now everyone blames them for a situation they didn't create nor can control.

I can tell you’re not well read at all. The majority of special ed kids have ADHD or a learning disability where they have a large gap between their verbal and nonverbal skills. If they could just have a conversation after class of what they’ve learned it would be pretty much ever. But it doesn’t work that way.

I’m not sure what you’re trying to say when you use the term “mental case” so I would think that’s not a problem. Class size makes a big difference.

This is irrelevant to the massive behavioral problems kids with various diagnoses have that quite literally prevent the teacher from getting through their material. How are teachers supposed to teach 50 min worth of new content if you they have to spend 30 min of class dealing with behavioral issues?

+1. PP is correct, if not the most diplomatic writer. Behavioral issues and severe learning disabilities without enough support and consequences are making teachers jobs impossible. LRE is a complete joke. It’s harming everyone and I’m convinced if something major doesn’t change that in one generation public schools will only have poor families and sped. Everyone else will have fled.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Forget restoring rigor. We need to restore basics. National test scores that came out this fall are terrible- the lowest they have EVER been. Kids are graduating high school that cannot even read and understand the most basic material. Kids going to college can write a simple paper. Tests scores have been continuously declining since the 90s

https://ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/education/2025/09/10/national-test-scores-lowest-ever-for-high-schoolers-in-reading-and-math

This is the reality. Even in our middle class to upper middle class school district, scores on standardized tests have really fallen, and so I am confused by the parents who think everything is a-ok. But I think we need to restore both basics and rigor! We are really doing a disservice to all kids by continuing to expect so little of them and passing them from year to year without the basics. We are doing a disservice to the college-bound kids by letting them sail through with only the basics as well.

[Anonymous]

Because of obvious declining rigor, I pulled my kid from public school and put her into a private school even though our friends warned me that it would be better to stay in our public high school for the purposes of college admissions. (Easier A's in the public school, plenty of our public kids get into top schools, private school gives colleges an impression of privilege, etc.) At a certain point we just couldn't stand hearing about what was going on in the classroom anymore. All the kids knew how to jailbreak their devices and quickly did their work and were spending the test of the day playing games during classroom activity time. The teachers had no autonomy and were overworked to the point they could not give meaningful feedback.

Moving to private school was 100% the right decision from a learning standpoint. In the first year, she had so many holes to fill, especially in essay writing skills and foreign language grammar. It has not always been fun, but she says she has learned an impressive amount and is glad to be prepared for a rigorous college. Because of higher standards and tougher grading, her writing and presentation skills have taken off. Her math and science exams are all harder problem sets with no multiple choice component. The school only lets kids into honors or advanced placement classes if they have demonstrated that they are advanced, whereas the public school used to encourage AP enrollment regardless of preparedness simply so they could boast about their AP enrollment numbers. This means the private school teacher can actually cover advanced concepts.

It cost us a lot of money to do this and we know not everyone can afford private school. It is a real shame because I know a rigorous public education is possible. My husband and I both had a great public school education. What the heck happened?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid is taking AP Seminar this year and it's his first AP class. He's always been in H.English. Except he cannot write a cohesive essay. Not only that, but he doesn't even know the questions to ask himself in order to write the essay.

He had a big assignment due this week. He wasn't able to do it. I ended up creating templates for him to complete. We needed to do template A which fed to template B which fed to the actual assignment. Of course, this took much longer than the time allotted.

He worked hard and more importantly, I taught him some new skills that he can use in the future. We both wish that he had one more day so he could do a review of his draft, make edits, and turn in a more finished product. But a deadline is a deadline.

I was surprised that he really couldn't even get started on the assignment without me. Whatever grade he gets is fine. In this case, the grade is irrelevant. He needs to learn these skills. I would have thought that the critical thinking and analytical skills would have been taught in earlier grades. The scaffolding that I created for him seemed more like something I would have done in middle school back in the last century.

My sons experience mirrors what I see in my classes at UMD. My students understand the math concepts I teach but they cannot covey the information they learn in a written document. They cannot create a thesis statement, provide supporting information, do an analysis, and then summarize the information.

Other than doing it myself or getting a tutor for my son, I don't know what to do. This is a skill that requires practice and refinement over years. It's not being taught in his public schools (MS/HS). I understand why---it requires a lot of time and effort for a teacher to grade an essay and provide meaningful feedback. With 25+ kids in a class and multiple classes, that seems overwhelming for a teacher.

Classes has 25+ kids back in the last century as well, so that's not an excuse

DP. If only class size was the only thing that mattered!

Teachers have more classes now and fewer planning periods. If a teacher is lucky, they may get a whole 50 minutes at work to get all of their work done for 175 students. And all the added responsibilities (meetings, data, more data, meetings about data, IEP documentation, 504 documentation, meetings about IEPs and 504s, subbing responsibilities, lesson planning, team meetings, emails, more emails, hallway / parking duty, and everything else) that didn’t exist last century.

- teacher

If they remove the sped and mental problems from the classroom, 90% of a teacher's bandwidth would free up. I've spoken to a few teachers that were so frazzled by year's end that they quit. They got no support from admin, were constantly pestered by sped parents, were ignored by absentee parents of mental cases, and were getting complaints from parents of smart students. They can't even really vent or complain openly because of ridiculous privacy laws and threats of lawsuits by mostly terrible, entitled parents. It's a hopeless situation and I don't know why teacher unions don't make this the number one priority.

Respect for teachers used to be a thing but now everyone blames them for a situation they didn't create nor can control.

I can tell you’re not well read at all. The majority of special ed kids have ADHD or a learning disability where they have a large gap between their verbal and nonverbal skills. If they could just have a conversation after class of what they’ve learned it would be pretty much ever. But it doesn’t work that way.

I’m not sure what you’re trying to say when you use the term “mental case” so I would think that’s not a problem. Class size makes a big difference.

#1 tighten up that grammar because half of what you wrote is incomprehensible
#2 mental case = head case = crazy = definitely disruptive = possibly dangerous
#3 so many adhd or otherwise learning disabled kids are either disruptive or require handholding in gen ed classes

It's called general ed and not special ed for a reason. Sped needs to be removed from the classroom if it requires the teacher to spend extra time during lessons and it makes the average kid have to sit and wait every class. Average kids already need to work hard to keep up with the smarter kids in the class, so they need the teacher to actually get through material. You must be one of those selfish, entitled, litigious parents. The teacher isn't a personal tutor that needs to spend extra time they don't have after every lesson to reteach the material to kids that consistently don't get it. After a certain number of times, these should be considered private lessons and you should be paying them. Our kids have very often been turned away from "office hours" of many teachers (in primary and secondary) because they had questions about things that were deemed unimportant because they weren't one of the kids that needed extra handholding.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I don’t know where your kids go to school but my kids work much harder than I ever did. And they know much more than I ever did. There needs to be more chill and less stress

100% this. I was salutatorian and had all As when I graduated in the early 1990s. What my children are learning in school and the level of effort they have to put in runs circles around my education. And they are more stressed than I ever was.

Yes, this is a problem that started in the mid-80s and continues to this day. Graduated in the late 70s, had my kids late in life. Even with APs they didn’t do the level of work I had at a small school system. Calculus (MV) was the capstone math class for kids targeted for college and we did much more in our science classes. School offered robust vo-tech opportunities for students that wanted to pursue work in the trades.

Need to get back to instructional basics, demand and reward rigor and have multiple paths forward. Opportunity for all not equal outcomes for all.

You completely bulldozed their comment. Most kids today are working harder than when we were growing up.

DP. But working harder doesn’t mean they are learning more.

I teach AP classes. Yes, the students are always working hard; however, it takes much longer to for students to complete tasks than it used to.

Students today often lack resilience. When an assignment gets burdensome or challenging, they tend to shut down. I coax far more than I did 20 years ago.

I also receive 3-4 times the extension requests than I used to because there’s often an excuse why work can’t get done: I’m too busy, I have sports, I wasn’t in a good mood.

That honestly makes a lot of sense. If we are overburdening our students and they're constantly working, they will eventually perform worse and will not be able to turn things in. Have you considered that there is no proof that homework is actually beneficial to one's education? It makes sense In lower ages where we treat school as a way to form discipline, but there is no reason we have to work a high schooler to death to provide them a good education.

It isn’t just that we are overburdening our kids, they are also being preyed upon by digital content providers. It’s encouraging that they are beginning to stand up for themselves.

Agree, the PP is exhibiting bias. Seems far too many teachers stay in the profession out of a sadistic drive to mock kids. AP teacher just means you’ve churned through freshman level content on repeat for twenty years. The students have a mental hurdle to engage, your life is menial, so you lash out. Unfortunately, you are exactly like teachers of the past.

Never disappoint, DCUM.

Can you point out where I mocked children? What did I say comes across as sadistic?

We can have an honest discussion about what’s best for the students and how to sincerely, purposefully increase rigor OR we can lash out in unsubstantiated personal attacks. We can see which option you selected.

These damn entitled parents. Your kids can't read or write because of you, not the teacher. Stop shooting the messenger. How many books have your kids read by the time they got to high school? Starting from picture books in preschool, the answer should be thousands. No, this is not an exaggeration. By the time they are 14 years old, they will have lived over 5000 days. Get them off the iPads and smartphones--oh wait, it's too late...

Stop trashing a teacher who has been teaching for decades (meaning pre-grade inflation and watered down curriculum) and can literally testify, with proof from past lessons, how bad it's gotten. She probably still has her old grade books as well. Contrary to popular belief among entitled parents, high school teachers are there to teach critical reasoning and analysis not how to string words together to form complete sentences. You expecting college professors to do this?

DP, but teachers, or maybe admin are absolutely culpable for the downfall of public education. I have a child in public middle school “honors” English. It is an absolute disgrace. The (few) books they are assigned to read are elementary level, typically to do with some social justice BS and the teacher plays them on audio in class- they don’t even have to actually read them! Most kids just sit there on their chromebooks playing games while they “listen”

But to your point, parents have a strong influence and can overcome the terrible state that is now public school education with a ton of supplementing at home and strict screen time rules. However, it shouldn’t have to be like that. Kids are at school 7 hrs per day and bad silly accomplishing nothing meaningful

Send the reading list.

Crossover, The New Kid, maybe one more from what I remember. One is written in short poem style, the other is a graphic novel. I remember reading Treasure Island in 6th grade, and Call of the Wild in either 7 or 8th, and books of those levels. It’s like night and day to what kids are given now to read (or played on audio)

Oh so just updated curriculum. The new kid does sound inappropriate- you should talk to your PTA about that. Graphic novels have been in curriculum for decades, because it is a valid form of writing. It is concerning you don’t know what your child is reading but then rush to scream about the “downfall of public education.”

If by updated, you mean inferior, ok

Call of the wild isn’t exactly the height of prose you think it is

Definitely middle school level appropriate and far superior to graphic novels and basketball books

DP. My kids read Maus in 7th grade. Maus has much better literary and social content, and I'd pick it any day of the week over Call of the Wild. I would hope you don't dismiss Pulitzer prize winning graphic novels as worthless.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In order to reform education system, standardized test may be reinstated, but it barely touch the root issue.

High schools should stop GPA inflation, should provide rigorous grading and rigorous courses. Stop giving 20% of the class 4.0 GPAs. It's just insane. Straight As should be reserved for the truely gifted.

ECs should be done out of true passion. No gaming the system. Colleges should not consider high school research in admissions so that only kids with true passion will pursue it, not fake it.

High school counselors should verify a student's ECs before they send out the app.

High schools should encourage kids taking courses of highest rigor available to their schools, be it stem or humanities. Colleges should put a lot more weight on course rigor in admissions.

Be honest.

Have integrity.

Wake up. You’re on planet Earth.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t know where your kids go to school but my kids work much harder than I ever did. And they know much more than I ever did. There needs to be more chill and less stress

100% this. I was salutatorian and had all As when I graduated in the early 1990s. What my children are learning in school and the level of effort they have to put in runs circles around my education. And they are more stressed than I ever was.

Yes, this is a problem that started in the mid-80s and continues to this day. Graduated in the late 70s, had my kids late in life. Even with APs they didn’t do the level of work I had at a small school system. Calculus (MV) was the capstone math class for kids targeted for college and we did much more in our science classes. School offered robust vo-tech opportunities for students that wanted to pursue work in the trades.

Need to get back to instructional basics, demand and reward rigor and have multiple paths forward. Opportunity for all not equal outcomes for all.

You completely bulldozed their comment. Most kids today are working harder than when we were growing up.

DP. But working harder doesn’t mean they are learning more.

I teach AP classes. Yes, the students are always working hard; however, it takes much longer to for students to complete tasks than it used to.

Students today often lack resilience. When an assignment gets burdensome or challenging, they tend to shut down. I coax far more than I did 20 years ago.

I also receive 3-4 times the extension requests than I used to because there’s often an excuse why work can’t get done: I’m too busy, I have sports, I wasn’t in a good mood.

That honestly makes a lot of sense. If we are overburdening our students and they're constantly working, they will eventually perform worse and will not be able to turn things in. Have you considered that there is no proof that homework is actually beneficial to one's education? It makes sense In lower ages where we treat school as a way to form discipline, but there is no reason we have to work a high schooler to death to provide them a good education.

It isn’t just that we are overburdening our kids, they are also being preyed upon by digital content providers. It’s encouraging that they are beginning to stand up for themselves.

Agree, the PP is exhibiting bias. Seems far too many teachers stay in the profession out of a sadistic drive to mock kids. AP teacher just means you’ve churned through freshman level content on repeat for twenty years. The students have a mental hurdle to engage, your life is menial, so you lash out. Unfortunately, you are exactly like teachers of the past.

Never disappoint, DCUM.

Can you point out where I mocked children? What did I say comes across as sadistic?

We can have an honest discussion about what’s best for the students and how to sincerely, purposefully increase rigor OR we can lash out in unsubstantiated personal attacks. We can see which option you selected.

These damn entitled parents. Your kids can't read or write because of you, not the teacher. Stop shooting the messenger. How many books have your kids read by the time they got to high school? Starting from picture books in preschool, the answer should be thousands. No, this is not an exaggeration. By the time they are 14 years old, they will have lived over 5000 days. Get them off the iPads and smartphones--oh wait, it's too late...

Stop trashing a teacher who has been teaching for decades (meaning pre-grade inflation and watered down curriculum) and can literally testify, with proof from past lessons, how bad it's gotten. She probably still has her old grade books as well. Contrary to popular belief among entitled parents, high school teachers are there to teach critical reasoning and analysis not how to string words together to form complete sentences. You expecting college professors to do this?

DP, but teachers, or maybe admin are absolutely culpable for the downfall of public education. I have a child in public middle school “honors” English. It is an absolute disgrace. The (few) books they are assigned to read are elementary level, typically to do with some social justice BS and the teacher plays them on audio in class- they don’t even have to actually read them! Most kids just sit there on their chromebooks playing games while they “listen”

But to your point, parents have a strong influence and can overcome the terrible state that is now public school education with a ton of supplementing at home and strict screen time rules. However, it shouldn’t have to be like that. Kids are at school 7 hrs per day and bad silly accomplishing nothing meaningful

Send the reading list.

Crossover, The New Kid, maybe one more from what I remember. One is written in short poem style, the other is a graphic novel. I remember reading Treasure Island in 6th grade, and Call of the Wild in either 7 or 8th, and books of those levels. It’s like night and day to what kids are given now to read (or played on audio)

Oh so just updated curriculum. The new kid does sound inappropriate- you should talk to your PTA about that. Graphic novels have been in curriculum for decades, because it is a valid form of writing. It is concerning you don’t know what your child is reading but then rush to scream about the “downfall of public education.”

If by updated, you mean inferior, ok

Call of the wild isn’t exactly the height of prose you think it is

Definitely middle school level appropriate and far superior to graphic novels and basketball books

DP. My kids read Maus in 7th grade. Maus has much better literary and social content, and I'd pick it any day of the week over Call of the Wild. I would hope you don't dismiss Pulitzer prize winning graphic novels as worthless.

I’d be ok with Maus, but those aren’t the type of graphic novels my middle schooler was assigned. Graphic novels shouldn’t be completely dismissed, but rather used sparingly and only high quality ones. But that is not what I’m seeing

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Because of obvious declining rigor, I pulled my kid from public school and put her into a private school even though our friends warned me that it would be better to stay in our public high school for the purposes of college admissions. (Easier A's in the public school, plenty of our public kids get into top schools, private school gives colleges an impression of privilege, etc.) At a certain point we just couldn't stand hearing about what was going on in the classroom anymore. All the kids knew how to jailbreak their devices and quickly did their work and were spending the test of the day playing games during classroom activity time. The teachers had no autonomy and were overworked to the point they could not give meaningful feedback.

Moving to private school was 100% the right decision from a learning standpoint. In the first year, she had so many holes to fill, especially in essay writing skills and foreign language grammar. It has not always been fun, but she says she has learned an impressive amount and is glad to be prepared for a rigorous college. Because of higher standards and tougher grading, her writing and presentation skills have taken off. Her math and science exams are all harder problem sets with no multiple choice component. The school only lets kids into honors or advanced placement classes if they have demonstrated that they are advanced, whereas the public school used to encourage AP enrollment regardless of preparedness simply so they could boast about their AP enrollment numbers. This means the private school teacher can actually cover advanced concepts.

It cost us a lot of money to do this and we know not everyone can afford private school. It is a real shame because I know a rigorous public education is possible. My husband and I both had a great public school education. What the heck happened?

Woke liberal politicians only care about getting reelected so they only care about pandering to a "special" group" that literally cannot fail thus rigorous standards and strict grading will never happen in public school system.

Look what happened to TJ.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Because of obvious declining rigor, I pulled my kid from public school and put her into a private school even though our friends warned me that it would be better to stay in our public high school for the purposes of college admissions. (Easier A's in the public school, plenty of our public kids get into top schools, private school gives colleges an impression of privilege, etc.) At a certain point we just couldn't stand hearing about what was going on in the classroom anymore. All the kids knew how to jailbreak their devices and quickly did their work and were spending the test of the day playing games during classroom activity time. The teachers had no autonomy and were overworked to the point they could not give meaningful feedback.

Moving to private school was 100% the right decision from a learning standpoint. In the first year, she had so many holes to fill, especially in essay writing skills and foreign language grammar. It has not always been fun, but she says she has learned an impressive amount and is glad to be prepared for a rigorous college. Because of higher standards and tougher grading, her writing and presentation skills have taken off. Her math and science exams are all harder problem sets with no multiple choice component. The school only lets kids into honors or advanced placement classes if they have demonstrated that they are advanced, whereas the public school used to encourage AP enrollment regardless of preparedness simply so they could boast about their AP enrollment numbers. This means the private school teacher can actually cover advanced concepts.

It cost us a lot of money to do this and we know not everyone can afford private school. It is a real shame because I know a rigorous public education is possible. My husband and I both had a great public school education. What the heck happened?

Woke liberal politicians only care about getting reelected so they only care about pandering to a "special" group" that literally cannot fail thus rigorous standards and strict grading will never happen in public school system.

Look what happened to TJ.

You're talking to a woke liberal, so this line of argument really isn't going to work with me. Yes, policymakers, including liberal ones, clearly need to do things differently and both left and right leaning parents need to come together push for higher standards and a return to rigor. But we're not going to get to higher standards without plenty of taxes and investment of money on teachers and schools. We also don't need to embrace religion (keep it out of the schools please) or intolerance for minorities in the schools.