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Schools and Education General Discussion
Why is school so different now than it used to be?
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Anonymous
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You can thank No Child Left Behind for some of the academic mess that we are in. High School expectations are raised which trickles down to higher expectations in Middle School, and on down the line to Kindergarten where the expectations are not developmentally appropriate for many children. I am all for raising the bar for our kids in middle school and High School but the expectations for Kindergarten and 1st Grade are ridiculous.
And before all you AAP bound crazies jump down my throat about how your child is bored in Kindergarten, let me clarify...SOME kids can handle the current curriculum but many CAN NOT. It makes me sad to see threads like the "My first grader is struggling" when school has been in session for two weeks. And we wonder why so many parents red-shirt their kids. That trend isn't going to end anytime soon. |
Anonymous
NCLB didn't raise the bar for middle-upper middle class schools. When I went to school there was unofficial tracking in elementary - break out groups for reading and math based on academic ability. Many school districts cut such differentiation. That's why GT/AAP stuff became so important. Middle school had official tracking - now there is GT/AAP, honors, regular. Same thing just more work to organize. FCPS has many schools without the 3 levels - anything without a middle school GT center. When I was in middle school there were 4 tracks-now 3 at the most. There were levels of classes and some high performing Asians. Now we have more high performing Asians . I was recently criticized on a thread about sports. Well those high performing Asians strategically choose activities for their EC's. Redshirting is done for college and parents in the know do it early. Then some kids go to public school for grade 9 and transfer to private repeating grade 9. When it comes time for college the kid who is 17 by May[June, july, etc] prior to junior year has a full year of growth over the one who was not held back. |
Anonymous
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"the South Koreans ARE lighting up the world. "
Not in my workplace, no shining beacons here. "You may not know the names of individuals driving the Korean success, but they are at the heals of the Japanese." Heals? |
Anonymous
it especially made me sad to read that considering the child was struggling with writing. Heck, we only learned to read in first grade; writing wasn't even much of an issue until maybe third grade, and I never got good at it until much later like sixth grade. |
Anonymous
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PP, if the best thing you have is my typo, good for you. Really, I am not angry, but I am frustrated with parents who have their heads in the sand. Too many people on this board feel their little corner of the world is the only part of the world that matters. I still believe in public school. Really, I believe in public school that teaches to individual children, not mass curriculum. I believe in judging teachers on an individual basis and classroom performance, not test scores. However, in an effort to get our kids back to world leadership in innovation, our elected officials and their academic minions have implemented NCLB and changed education as we knew it. Is it a good change, I reserve judgment.
As for looking outside your little corner of the world, you need only look to what has happened to our economy to realize you can't get a good job if you don't have good academics. If you ambition is having your child flip burgers in our service economy, go right on thinking that ANY job is better than no job (or a dead child - stupid analogy, by the way). Are you teaching your kids to survive without you? How will they survive when you are dead and buried? Are they equipped to earn a living? If you ignore Asia and India as surpassing US innovation, then you are living a cloistered existence. While we are arguing in the US whether we should be another $700 or $800 billion in debt to China, China is raising millions of multilingual kids with strong math and science. |
Anonymous
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I am fairly new to this parenting a school age child too, so I totally understand OP's question. I have concluded that my child is well able to do what has been asked of him in K, therefore, perhaps it is a good thing to go ahead and provide him the challenge. My problem is when he (or others) find something, such as early writing, more difficult and suddenly the entire education establishment is running around with their hair on fire trying to "solve" this big problem of obvious (in their eyes) "developmental delay"!! It's great to challenge kids as long as they can take a bit longer when needed without being placed on an IEP and/or medication. And homework any longer than about 5 minutes for K is just ridiculous, but that is probably a different rant.
Thanks for listening. 
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Anonymous
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I assume it is so different due to the trickle-down effect of No Child Left Behind.
I cannot understand homework for the youngest set, since my understanding is that research shows that homework is not good for the littlest kids. |
Anonymous
| Our school gave a good talk about homework - and I now see it (for my K student) as a link between school and home whereby DD can show me what she's been doing and I can back up the teacher by discussing the topics with her and showing her that, like her teacher, her parents think what she is doing is important. It doesn't have to take long. But I appreciate having that school-home link and can't imagine not now. |
Anonymous
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Hey, if math and science were so important, why are we paying I-bankers and lawyers 2-3-4 times as much as engineers?
I hear the girls are hotter in business and pre-law classes too. |
Anonymous
because there're millions of them from China or India willing to work for less. |
Anonymous
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"I hear the girls are hotter in business and pre-law classes too."
The ones with graduate degrees are bow-wows, barking all the way to the bank. |
Anonymous
Oh, brother! |
Anonymous
| @9:44 I agree with you. The U.S. doesn't have to be the top, but we do have to be competitive if we want to maintain anything close to our current standard of living. I want my kids to be happy and not stressed out too, but I don't see how not equipping them properly so that they end up being broke and frustrated because they can't get a job and have to live at home with mom and dad til they are 30 is going to lead to that. Maybe we aren't going about it the best way possible, but better to try than to just let our kids coast and pretend that the Koreans are all "killing themselves" and we are so superior because we allow our children to self-actualize even if it means we can't build a safe bridge or whatever. If the Indians and Asians are in fact killing themselves, it is because they've lived so long with poverty and lack of opportunity and are sick to death of it. Having traveled to some of these up and coming countries, I can tell you that we as American parents would not want our children living in the conditions out of which they are trying to rise. |
Anonymous
Sorry I offended you! Actually, I was just trying to make the point that if you change your attitude about the purpose of homework, you might actually appreciate it. But, I work in education so perhaps think about these things more than you. |
Anonymous
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OP,
It's not that different, reading and writing and math start a year earlier, in K. It's also different in lots of good ways, with the recognition of multiple learning styles and learning challenges, an emphasis of identifying them early, also, teaching is more psychological. Lots of preschool programs are play-based, so academics don't start until K for many children. Some schools do not assign lots of homework. You may find the a progressive private school is more to your liking down the road. |