Curricular issues in HS
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Anonymous
| I would also study the work of Jon White in Louisiana who influenced HOW districts select their curriculum. If they chose science based - Tier 1 - then state paid. If they chose a less than stellar curriculum then local boards paid. With just this small change high school students raised ACT scores in statistically significant way during his 7 year tenor. Would not be surprised to see him soon picked as Secretary of Education under Biden. Process of rating is very transparent: https://www.louisianabelieves.com/academics/curriculum |
Anonymous
I just want Biden to make college free so I don’t have to sell a kidney to provide an education for my teens and legalize cannabis so I can enjoy life without fear of being thrown in a cage and become a legal slave to the capitalistic and for-profit prison systems. |
Anonymous
Yuo. I homeschool my 5th grader and we've hammered American history for years now. We had a whole discussion where HE Came to the conclusion that had the French and Indian War not happened than its possible that the American Revolution would not have happened. This is a 10yr old telling me, without any prompting the connection of debt, over expansion and George Washington learning guerrilla warfare and that impact on us even today. His very strong grip and understanding of the facts enabeled him to make connections that I highly doubt his peers in public school are doing. He then wrote a short critical response about what could have happened minus the French and Indian War. Fact are very important, and fact are not a current skill Americans are capable of understanding, and when taught the right way they are engaging and interesting. |
Anonymous
This. |
Anonymous
| The lack of a science-based reading curriculum. We are not teaching our kids phonics, so many of them can’t read or spell/write. At least 20 percent of students are dyslexic and the current language arts curriculum is inaccessible to those students. Moreover, there are students who aren’t dyslexic but still need explicit phonics instruction. We are failing those students as well. So many of the problems that others post about stem from this basic issue — we need string phonics instruction in K - 3. We need to teach kids how to read, spell, and write. |
Anonymous
| +1. Couldn’t have said it better myself. |
Anonymous
Does someone have a school system and class they are referring to? Are these remedial classes or something? As a product of FCPS schools, any non honors course was as basic as could possibly be 30 years ago, so I wouldn't be surprised if it continued that way but honestly haven't seen it all the way from K-12. At the upper levels of school at least, there is nothing but critical thinking to the detriment of actual skills. Kids who still don't know basic grammar and so forth. We are in FCPS and knowledge is not a criteria they measure students by. |
Anonymous
The wall street journal just ran an article on how the government is out hundreds of billions right now for it's current policies on colleges. Making college more affordable is still going to cost. https://www.wsj.com/articles/student-loan-losses-seen-costing-u-s-more-than-400-billion-11605963600 |
Anonymous
I'm the "rote memorization in ES" poster from above. I learned for a few years as a kid via a curriculum model where it was memorization in ES, learn formal logic in MS, then hone that and do rhetoric in HS. The formal logic I learned in 7th grade was formative for my entire adult life, to include making college computer science classes MUCH easier. Middle schoolers really should be required to take a course in formal logic. |
Anonymous
+1. All those people complaining about teaching to the test and rote memorization don't know enough things to think critically about anything. |
Anonymous
| I do wish logic was taught again in schools. Would be a nice elective at least. |
Anonymous
+1. As an anecdote, my kids attended several elementary schools overseas. In the school that used an American curriculum, "rote learning" was discouraged and it severely delayed my kids' ability to read and do basic math. When we moved to a school with a British curriculum, math facts and phonetic spelling were emphasized, after which my kids zoomed to the top in all subjects because they finally had the basics. |
Anonymous
How would a lack of rote learning delay your kids ability to read? Are you confusing it with phonics? And how would it also delay their ability to do basic math? Again, are you confusing rote learning with something else? Are you saying that kids need to learn math facts like 5+4 by rote (i.e memorize) to be able to do basic math? Hopefully you're aware that kids don't memorize things like 5+4, they understand how to get it by counting. |
Anonymous
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Grammar stage, logic stage, rhetoric stage is called the Trivium. This is the basis of the Classical Curriculum. The U.S. abandoned it just before WWI because they didn’t think immigrants could handle it! Lol. Interestingly enough the latest cognitive science backs this up. Susan Wise Bauer from a Well Trained Mind gives a cogent argument for its rebirth.
What’s good enough for the Romans, and every American leader prior to 1950s is not good enough for MCPS I guess...yikes. |