Purpose of school

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Schools have been chasing fad curricula since textbooks existed. My Aunt has been in education for 60 years and can list each decade's fad.

OP. This is totally believable. I was a victim of the "new math" of my era, which foisted an untested "new" approach that had no sound pedagogical basis on my generation of kids.

OP, how old are you and how old is your child? “New Math” was a trend in the 60s. Someone who experienced New Math is more likely to be a grandparent than a parent to an elementary school child.

There are parents of young children because they are fostering children or they have legal guardianship of a relative’s child. There are also parents who have given up infertility treatment and adopted babies when they were over 45.

Don’t assume if someone didn’t give birth at 25 years old or didn’t give birth at all that they are not the parents.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When you were a kid, college wasn’t an assumption. Now, more kids are going to college, so there is a push to make things more academic.
You see it as not academic, yet in FCPS and MCPS and Arlington there is a push to get all 8th graders to take algebra and have 6th graders take it as well.
More kids are taking AP classes than when you were a kid.

So basically, you perspective is skewed and things are more academic so parents want their kids to get even further ahead and they use tutoring to help.

Parents use tutors because school districts chase the latest fad curriculum and because society does not value education, most teachers today are the bottom of the heap.

Today’s K-12 administrators are almost singularly focused on social justice issues.

This is a cynical take but I agree with it.

Elementary teachers have been forced to teach a bunch of reading and math curriculums that aren't very successful in terms of actual results. You can quibble about whether the theories are sound. Bright, affluent kids do well in a variety of settings so lots of things work well enough for them. Fad curriculums hurt disadvantaged students more.

Teachers these days are much maligned and given a lot more administrative paperwork. The ones that remain are more "people people" than "book nerds/brainiacs" if that makes sense. When I was in school, teaching was one of the best careers available to women. Now it's a lower-paid mommytrack job for certain. I am also mommytracked. But my corporate mommytrack job pays as much as an elementary school principal's job. That's kind of sad to me. Her job is much harder and more impactful on lives than mine.

Regarding social justice, I support some of it (anti-discrimination, inclusion) but I have seen some sloppy educational results grow out of detracking, mainstreaming, and restorative justice. I think kids need to be ability grouped. I don't think it works in reality to have a 5th grade math teacher working with kids that range from 2 grades behind to 2 grades above in ability in the same classroom. I had to send my kids to expensive tutoring to address learning gaps from being the kids who were higher ability and not challenged (pre-Covid).and Covid learning loss. That has become normal because more is expected of kids at the top end and it's better to fix the gaps before they take college courses.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Schools have been chasing fad curricula since textbooks existed. My Aunt has been in education for 60 years and can list each decade's fad.

OP. This is totally believable. I was a victim of the "new math" of my era, which foisted an untested "new" approach that had no sound pedagogical basis on my generation of kids.

OP, how old are you and how old is your child? “New Math” was a trend in the 60s. Someone who experienced New Math is more likely to be a grandparent than a parent to an elementary school child.

Different flavors of "new math" have appeared every decade for many years. There were 1990s flavored "new math", new millenium "new math", and more recently the math workshop flavor of "new math". None of them worked, btw.

As a non-Catholic seriously considering a Carholic ES, I find their use of out-of-style-for-decades traditional math refreshing. They teach one way to solve each kind of problem. They have enough school work and homework that kids actually will memorize that one method.

Agree. My kids had math workshop "new math" and some Singapore math. They spent a lot of time looking at pictures of squares to learn place value. Neither mastered long division with something called the lattice method. I had to teach them my "traditional method".

The only reason my kids are better than me at math is that I sent them to franchise tutoring where over two school years, they refreshed on grades 5-7 math and got homework support for higher level math.

[Anonymous]

ONG I can't even help my kids in math! Not because I don't know how to do the prob, I can't follow what the hell their process to solving the prob is! I learned multiplication and division. Straight forward by doing it. My kids in 4/6th grades... holy moly. Not sure what is going on! lol - Their approach is so much more complicated - I'm like isn't it easier just multiplying the numbers out?!!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:ONG I can't even help my kids in math! Not because I don't know how to do the prob, I can't follow what the hell their process to solving the prob is! I learned multiplication and division. Straight forward by doing it. My kids in 4/6th grades... holy moly. Not sure what is going on! lol - Their approach is so much more complicated - I'm like isn't it easier just multiplying the numbers out?!!

That Sounds like the "math workshop" new math. Either supplement or pray, because it does not work for most kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When you were a kid, college wasn’t an assumption. Now, more kids are going to college, so there is a push to make things more academic.
You see it as not academic, yet in FCPS and MCPS and Arlington there is a push to get all 8th graders to take algebra and have 6th graders take it as well.
More kids are taking AP classes than when you were a kid.

So basically, you perspective is skewed and things are more academic so parents want their kids to get even further ahead and they use tutoring to help.

No... the actual foundations were stronger in the past. Yes, there are more AP classes, but they are now much easier to pass and the requirements have been watered down. You are deluding yourself if you think that kids are more "academic" now. It is a veneer.

Agreed. For example, AP precalc is easier and covers less material than a traditional precalc class. Both AP English classes at our kids' school are so "difficult" that they barely have time to read and discuss one whole novel from cover to cover--yes, no exaggeration and pathetic.

AP tests in the past were meant for serious students so the rigor was much higher. Now it's meant for volume to sell more tests. At our kids' public hs, the "normal" course for a few subjects is the AP version (including the English classes mentioned above), which is why some of the classes are taught at a sped level for the kids who can't keep up; yet the vast majority of the kids still passed the AP test because it's so easy.

I think many of the parents who think the schools around the DMV didn't go to very good high schools themselves. We've known (through sports and other activities) kids that have attended many of the top schools in the area, and after talking with parents, I can 100% say that many parents have no clue what a good hs should be like.

Plus precalc used to be a regular class. Now it’s an AP. Give me a break

[Anonymous]

I see it, OP. I have had kids in private and public school and am currently homeschooling with one. I went to public K-12 in a middle class district, graduated 2000. It is very different. My parents weren’t involved at all- no reading, no math facts, etc. No one supplemented outside of school that I know of. There was no Kumon or RMS. Yet we all went to college well-prepared. I remember being drilled on math facts at school, I remember doing book reports, essays starting in upper el, reading lots of books, writing definitions, having real science labs starting in 5th grade, having knowledgeable teachers in social studies/history that would lecture the whole class time- yet it was wildly engaging- it was as if they were telling a story. We had homework most nights pretty much from 4th grade on, and a significant amount from middle school on. There were no distractions or disruptions in class. There really weren’t. My teenagers literally don’t believe me when I tell them no one flipped desks, swore at teachers, talked back/refused to do what teacher said, etc.

In contrast, schools do seem to be about providing social services now. Free food, health care, mental health, childcare. I volunteer and many, many middle schoolers do not even know math facts. How is this possible? Many can’t read above a very basic level (3-4th grade). Even with zero parent involvement- being at school daily for 7 hrs a day, how is this the outcome?

From being in the schools, my guesses are it’s a combo of student apathy (they just don’t care, neither do parents), EdTech, low expectations, little direct instruction from teacher, no homework to reinforce learning (and for teacher to asses learning regularly), no handwriting, too much focus outside of core subjects, and behavior gone wild

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Back in the day, school seemed focused on academics. Now it seems like school is focused on anything except academics. Parents across the country supplement with their kids outside school - in many or all subjects - not just for math.

I am realizing the main current benefit of elementary school for our DC is just socialization.

What happened?

Schools these days appear to be mostly about social sorting and real estate values. Not really socialization as such, social sorting which high school did you go to which college etc. The curricula are all pretty much the same, though in many cases they boil it down or kludge it up so that they can justify their sorting. Look these kids have better test scores and are more college ready but wait you didn't teach them the same things and give them the same opportunities.

Why did the home buyer overpay for their house? So they can be next to all the other math challenged kids that also overpaid for their house and get the extra benefit of crooked test scores, that they need to make the math work out about their home values.

[Anonymous]

Times change us all J can say. Nothings gonna stay the same. I think some people think otherwise. Not saying it's better or worse (worse) but the 1930s will be difft from 1960 be different from 1990 to 2025. You all think it would just remain simple academics of like 5 core classes? Really?