Why isn't your kid a better writer? After all, she studies English every day.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:And not everyone has the same abilities in writing. Some people will be great writers despite poor teaching and some people will be not-so-great writers despite good teachers and plenty of practice.

"Not so great writers" should still be beyond adults at a third or fourth grade level, like a pp references.

[Anonymous]

I was impressed by the teaching of writing at my son's DCPS last year. Plenty of focus on the mechanics of writing and how to construct an argument. Class did really well on PARCC.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have always maintained that in my experience, DCPS fails miserably in teaching writing to students. Both of my dc's receive outside tutoring to better develop that very important skill.

One correction - the issue is not limited to DCPS. It's an issue with any public system (and probably private too). Even upper level Eng courses such as AP Lit and AP Lang, they are not "writing" courses.

Lots of schools do a poor job of teaching the mechanics of writing. Very few schools teach the kind of rigorous grammar that I learned as an elementary school student (does anyone diagram sentences anymore?). People think that literature courses are writing courses, but they aren't. Reading a lot does help, but it's not the same. I had a great teacher in HS who made us write tons of five-paragraph essays and was a stickler for grammar and usage, but it wasn't really until college that I consistently received substantial feedback on my writing (I was a history major, and IME, that tends to help people become good writers because it's one of the most writing-intensive majors). I went to law school and found that many of my classmates, who did well enough in their very prestigious colleges to get into a T10 program, were not very good writers, on many levels--organization, formulating a coherent and persuasive argument, grammar and usage, etc.

[Anonymous]

Lol, writing skills have gotten worse across the entire country fir at least a generation (and probably more - I just think it hit a tipping point around the turn of the century). These are the same complaints your parents had about you.

The way to improve writing is by reading better books on the one hand and then writing things in everyday life on the other. It's an art.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Because they are taught from a worthless curriculum by total incompetents.

I bet they all can recite the "gender is fluid" mantra, however.

Sadly, this sounds about right.

[Anonymous]

Because they are taught from a worthless curriculum by total incompetents.

I bet they all can recite the "gender is fluid" mantra, however.


Sadly, this sounds about right.

DD, 13, product of progressive charter school is a great writer. I disagree with everything that has been written on this post.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I can't believe how low standards are around here for monolingual schools. These kids speak and write English no better (and mostly significantly worse) than mine -- who spend half of their schooldays in Chinese classrooms. It's just appalling.

(The point I'm actually making is that it's silly to condemn Yu Ying or other language immersion schools soley because most of their students don't achieve fluency. If those students aren't giving up anything in English, math, or anywhere else, and still are achieving dramatically more proficient foreign language abilities than they would have in monolingual elementary schools, isn't that success? Or at least something better than abject failure?)

\

As native speakers of Chinese, we can't believe how low standards are at YY for spoken Chinese. The dozen kids on our block who've spent half their schooldays in Chinese classrooms for 6 or 7 years speak no better than our own children did as 3 year olds. If you're looking for abject failure, find it at YY for spoken Chinese, the "immersion" program without Chinese-speaking admins where native-speaking DC residents don't bother with their lottery. It's just appalling. It's hard to imagine most of the YY kids running with their Chinese as teens or adults.

You're painting with much too broad a brush. The PTA at our monolingual DCPS pays more than 200K a year to hire teachers aides, partly to beef up writing instruction. My eldest scored a 5 on the ELS PARCC, like most of her friends. YY's ELA scores don't impress us, considering that our DCPS and YY have comparable FARMs rates.

[Anonymous]

I’m frustrated with ELA at Wilson. In 9th grade my son had a terrible ELA teacher. I don’t know how she got hired as she wrote worse than a 9th grader. Sadly this year my son has a brand new teacher who is also worse than mediocre and can’t even control the class. Why can’t they do a better job of hiring new teachers. DCPS feels like a race to the bottom.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Because they are taught from a worthless curriculum by total incompetents.

I bet they all can recite the "gender is fluid" mantra, however.

Sadly, this sounds about right.

my experience in DCPS has been the opposite. Highly structured curriculum. Lots of focus on writing process. Kids are learning writing skills at a very advanced level.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I can't believe how low standards are around here for monolingual schools. These kids speak and write English no better (and mostly significantly worse) than mine -- who spend half of their schooldays in Chinese classrooms. It's just appalling.

(The point I'm actually making is that it's silly to condemn Yu Ying or other language immersion schools soley because most of their students don't achieve fluency. If those students aren't giving up anything in English, math, or anywhere else, and still are achieving dramatically more proficient foreign language abilities than they would have in monolingual elementary schools, isn't that success? Or at least something better than abject failure?)

\

As native speakers of Chinese, we can't believe how low standards are at YY for spoken Chinese. The dozen kids on our block who've spent half their schooldays in Chinese classrooms for 6 or 7 years speak no better than our own children did as 3 year olds. If you're looking for abject failure, find it at YY for spoken Chinese, the "immersion" program without Chinese-speaking admins where native-speaking DC residents don't bother with their lottery. It's just appalling. It's hard to imagine most of the YY kids running with their Chinese as teens or adults.

You're painting with much too broad a brush. The PTA at our monolingual DCPS pays more than 200K a year to hire teachers aides, partly to beef up writing instruction. My eldest scored a 5 on the ELS PARCC, like most of her friends. YY's ELA scores don't impress us, considering that our DCPS and YY have comparable FARMs rates.

Touche, OP.

You deserve this one for making sweeping statements in your ignorance of the quality of writing programs in the better DCPS schools and, for that matter, throwing rocks in a glass house...

[Anonymous]

If you want your kids to be better writers, fight for smaller class sizes. Even a great teacher can't provide the necessary feedback for multiple classes of 30 students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you want your kids to be better writers, fight for smaller class sizes. Even a great teacher can't provide the necessary feedback for multiple classes of 30 students.

This is true. I teach at a private school (and not in DC), and I'm able to devote about 40 minutes to each composition draft because my class sizes are reasonable. This weekend, I have a class batch of 11 compositions. I will spend 7-8 hours as I read and write careful comments on each paper.

And I will repeat the cycle a few times over the course of the week with my other classes. I teach 6 classes. The smallest class has 2 students, and the largest 13; I have a total of 40 students in all. I spend many hours outside of school reading and commenting upon compositions, and I could not do this if I had 30-35 kids in each class: the thing would be impossible. I am shuddering as I imagine having 180 students total....the kid and teachers are doomed to failure.

The class that contains only 2 students (AP Language and Comp) gets even more individual time and attention. I have a friend who is teaching this same course in a public school; she has 22 students in her class. It is not her fault that her class average on the exam is going to be significantly lower than the average of my class of 2. Think about it. I am certainly wondering now about how many parents of her students are blaming her for their child's writing skills.

(On the selfish bright side, this is why my school's IB and AP scores are so much higher than the average).

I'm a teacher and I understand that not everyone is wealthy, but there are other ways to make a private education possible, and they are worth researching. I have multiple students on partial or full scholarship. Large class sizes make it impossible to teach writing, and if you want your kid to have the best, do whatever it takes to get him/her into a private with small class sizes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you want your kids to be better writers, fight for smaller class sizes. Even a great teacher can't provide the necessary feedback for multiple classes of 30 students.

This is true. I teach at a private school (and not in DC), and I'm able to devote about 40 minutes to each composition draft because my class sizes are reasonable. This weekend, I have a class batch of 11 compositions. I will spend 7-8 hours as I read and write careful comments on each paper.

And I will repeat the cycle a few times over the course of the week with my other classes. I teach 6 classes. The smallest class has 2 students, and the largest 13; I have a total of 40 students in all. I spend many hours outside of school reading and commenting upon compositions, and I could not do this if I had 30-35 kids in each class: the thing would be impossible. I am shuddering as I imagine having 180 students total....the kid and teachers are doomed to failure.

The class that contains only 2 students (AP Language and Comp) gets even more individual time and attention. I have a friend who is teaching this same course in a public school; she has 22 students in her class. It is not her fault that her class average on the exam is going to be significantly lower than the average of my class of 2. Think about it. I am certainly wondering now about how many parents of her students are blaming her for their child's writing skills.

(On the selfish bright side, this is why my school's IB and AP scores are so much higher than the average).

I'm a teacher and I understand that not everyone is wealthy, but there are other ways to make a private education possible, and they are worth researching. I have multiple students on partial or full scholarship. Large class sizes make it impossible to teach writing, and if you want your kid to have the best, do whatever it takes to get him/her into a private with small class sizes.

Second this. I left public to teach in private. Writing instruction is time and feedback intensive. It requires a well organized classroom in which children can follow writing routines while the teacher is conferencing or peers are conferencing. It requires access to excellent print material and a curriculum which references the genre and rhetorical styles the children are also reading. A small class size and a responsive curriculum help a LOT, and unfortunately I do believe expressive and well formulated writing falls last in the public school priority list.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you want your kids to be better writers, fight for smaller class sizes. Even a great teacher can't provide the necessary feedback for multiple classes of 30 students.

This is true. I teach at a private school (and not in DC), and I'm able to devote about 40 minutes to each composition draft because my class sizes are reasonable. This weekend, I have a class batch of 11 compositions. I will spend 7-8 hours as I read and write careful comments on each paper.

And I will repeat the cycle a few times over the course of the week with my other classes. I teach 6 classes. The smallest class has 2 students, and the largest 13; I have a total of 40 students in all. I spend many hours outside of school reading and commenting upon compositions, and I could not do this if I had 30-35 kids in each class: the thing would be impossible. I am shuddering as I imagine having 180 students total....the kid and teachers are doomed to failure.

The class that contains only 2 students (AP Language and Comp) gets even more individual time and attention. I have a friend who is teaching this same course in a public school; she has 22 students in her class. It is not her fault that her class average on the exam is going to be significantly lower than the average of my class of 2. Think about it. I am certainly wondering now about how many parents of her students are blaming her for their child's writing skills.

(On the selfish bright side, this is why my school's IB and AP scores are so much higher than the average).

I'm a teacher and I understand that not everyone is wealthy, but there are other ways to make a private education possible, and they are worth researching. I have multiple students on partial or full scholarship. Large class sizes make it impossible to teach writing, and if you want your kid to have the best, do whatever it takes to get him/her into a private with small class sizes.

Get him into a private with small class sizes? Oh right, fork over tens of thousands of tuition dollars (even with financial aid) each year per child through middle school and high school, just like that. Ridiculous.

If you want your kid to have the "best" you certainly don't need a pricey private school with a raft of pampered classmates on hand to erode your kid's work ethic. But you do need to make and implement a writing skills development plan. Hire a writing tutor. If you're a good writer, routinely make comments on his or her work require re-writes. Send him or her to summer writing camps. Buy him or her a Chicago Manual of Style. Enroll him or her in community college writing classes. Expect him or her to fight to become a good writer and reward the effort.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you want your kids to be better writers, fight for smaller class sizes. Even a great teacher can't provide the necessary feedback for multiple classes of 30 students.

This is true. I teach at a private school (and not in DC), and I'm able to devote about 40 minutes to each composition draft because my class sizes are reasonable. This weekend, I have a class batch of 11 compositions. I will spend 7-8 hours as I read and write careful comments on each paper.

And I will repeat the cycle a few times over the course of the week with my other classes. I teach 6 classes. The smallest class has 2 students, and the largest 13; I have a total of 40 students in all. I spend many hours outside of school reading and commenting upon compositions, and I could not do this if I had 30-35 kids in each class: the thing would be impossible. I am shuddering as I imagine having 180 students total....the kid and teachers are doomed to failure.

The class that contains only 2 students (AP Language and Comp) gets even more individual time and attention. I have a friend who is teaching this same course in a public school; she has 22 students in her class. It is not her fault that her class average on the exam is going to be significantly lower than the average of my class of 2. Think about it. I am certainly wondering now about how many parents of her students are blaming her for their child's writing skills.

(On the selfish bright side, this is why my school's IB and AP scores are so much higher than the average).

I'm a teacher and I understand that not everyone is wealthy, but there are other ways to make a private education possible, and they are worth researching. I have multiple students on partial or full scholarship. Large class sizes make it impossible to teach writing, and if you want your kid to have the best, do whatever it takes to get him/her into a private with small class sizes.

Get him into a private with small class sizes? Oh right, fork over tens of thousands of tuition dollars (even with financial aid) each year per child through middle school and high school, just like that. Ridiculous.

If you want your kid to have the "best" you certainly don't need a pricey private school with a raft of pampered classmates on hand to erode your kid's work ethic. But you do need to make and implement a writing skills development plan. Hire a writing tutor. If you're a good writer, routinely make comments on his or her work require re-writes. Send him or her to summer writing camps. Buy him or her a Chicago Manual of Style. Enroll him or her in community college writing classes. Expect him or her to fight to become a good writer and reward the effort.

YOU are ridiculous. I am the PP teaching at a private school at which we have multiple students on scholarship, some of which are full (100% of tuition covered). Yes, I know exactly which students are on scholarship because I am part of a committee that helps assess application materials/spend time with prospective parents. You have not researched options fully, which to me indicates you just don't care that much this (or about your kids' education).

A parent who wishes their child to attend an excellent private with small class sizes really should make a list of schools, then carefully and systematically contact each for details about financial aid. You would be surprised at what is available if you cast a wide net and devote time to researching options.