Do you find it necessary to supplement your child's public school education?

[Anonymous]

I have a son in public middle school and one in private high school; I've supplemented both.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't think we all agree on what supplementing is. I would define it as Kumon, doing math workbooks or assigning them extra homework every day, having a tutor, etc. I would not include going on educational trips and going to the library.

We don't. I supplement by choosing books, poetry, music, etc. to expose my child to. In a structured way. Like comparing Whitman's "I Hear America Singing" to Langston Hughes's answer: "I, Too, Sing America." And talking about it.

I supplement by doing Tinker kits together with him. Science stuff. Coding. Keyboarding. Art history. Music lessons. Good movies, plays, musicals.

And this may be par for the course for most parents here. It wasn't how I grew up. And it isn't how my brother is raising his kids. He thinks school covers everything an American kid needs to know and the only extracurriculars are sports. what I do is supplementing. Kumon, to me, would be more like tutoring to improve deficient skill sets. I have done additional work like IXL to help get my kid up to snuff. But never to push beyond grade level.

find, but that's not supplementing. supplementing means enhancing the schoolwork. going to museums is nice, and important, has is not supplementing.

[Anonymous]

I would say yes. In our case DD was not challenged academically (even though she was given extra math etc...). She did not get into HGC (not a good test taker), BUT did get in to CTY. She has been enjoying CTY camp and is choosing what interests her to delve deeper into.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Each child gets 1 or 2 hours of private tutoring per week. It's to reinforce materials that they may need help with. We could afford private school but chose the public route and pay for a little one on one time. Still way less expensive than private.

This is a great idea! Did you just hire a tutor on your own?

We can't afford private but I could see doing this. And could see that it would be a huge help once DD gets to a grade level where the math is too complex for me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm not exactly sure what you mean by supplement, but here is what we do for a family with 3 elementary aged kids (5, 7, 10)

2. Each of our children takes music lessons, language lessons and a sport/physical activity. All three children take Spanish lessons, 2 take piano lessons, 1 takes violin lessons, they play tennis, basketball, and swimming. Our oldest recently started weekly chess sessions with my FIL.

Do you and your husband each get to do weekly music lessons, language lessons, and sports/physical activities, or equivalents? Do you have any time for your own activities? I can't see how, with 3 kids x 3 activities each week. Or do you have a nanny or car pools that take the kids to some of these?

I'm all for exposing kids to a variety of content and skills - we do lots of library trips, reading, musems, etc. - but think it's important for kids to see that parents have their own activities and interests, too. And kids need ample time to learn to amuse themselves.

[Anonymous]

not sure why the question is restricted to public schools. in most cases private schools also require supplementation. only schools like TJ don't.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes, we have a math tutor for our 4th grader. The math teacher suggested this, said most of the kids in the school had them and that was a major factor in how well the school performed.

A public ES in Bethesda.

Not exactly earth shattering news though, The Economist did an article on this phenomenon about 5 years ago...

Link to article?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Of course. American schools are very behind. We tutor in math mostly.

So at age 17 what level of math have kids in other countries reached? Is differential equations really so far behind the rest of the world?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm not exactly sure what you mean by supplement, but here is what we do for a family with 3 elementary aged kids (5, 7, 10)

2. Each of our children takes music lessons, language lessons and a sport/physical activity. All three children take Spanish lessons, 2 take piano lessons, 1 takes violin lessons, they play tennis, basketball, and swimming. Our oldest recently started weekly chess sessions with my FIL.

Do you and your husband each get to do weekly music lessons, language lessons, and sports/physical activities, or equivalents? Do you have any time for your own activities? I can't see how, with 3 kids x 3 activities each week. Or do you have a nanny or car pools that take the kids to some of these?

I'm all for exposing kids to a variety of content and skills - we do lots of library trips, reading, musems, etc. - but think it's important for kids to see that parents have their own activities and interests, too. And kids need ample time to learn to amuse themselves.

NP - -these things are not mutually exclusive. My kids activities are all after school. Music teacher comes to the house, other activities are at school (kids walk to school). The only thing we have to drive them to is weekend competitions 1x per month. Plenty of time for ourselves and for family time too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Of course. American schools are very behind. We tutor in math mostly.

So at age 17 what level of math have kids in other countries reached? Is differential equations really so far behind the rest of the world?

that's the thing. it's not the level, it's the depth.

americans actually sometimes go faster, certainly in their gifted programs. but there is not enough depth. there are many many hard problems that don't require a lot of knowledge. but in the US, if you are gifted you skip right to trigonometry or some such while never actually doing the really hard problems.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Of course. American schools are very behind. We tutor in math mostly.

So at age 17 what level of math have kids in other countries reached? Is differential equations really so far behind the rest of the world?

Don't know about other part of the world, but definitely far behind Asia. Middle school graduates in China (about age 15) can tackle SAT math problems without much trouble and get high scores. High school graduates consider themselves a big failure if not getting full score in GRE testings on math part. A Chinese friend of mine who left China and attend high school in US said he didn't need to make any efforts to get As in math class, and most scary/unbelievable part, he said he's a C student on math in his class back in China.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Of course. American schools are very behind. We tutor in math mostly.

So at age 17 what level of math have kids in other countries reached? Is differential equations really so far behind the rest of the world?

Don't know about other part of the world, but definitely far behind Asia. Middle school graduates in China (about age 15) can tackle SAT math problems without much trouble and get high scores. High school graduates consider themselves a big failure if not getting full score in GRE testings on math part. A Chinese friend of mine who left China and attend high school in US said he didn't need to make any efforts to get As in math class, and most scary/unbelievable part, he said he's a C student on math in his class back in China.

heh. i am an immigrant and i remember when i took GRE as a college student. i couldn't believe the questions on the quantitative part. everyone i knew was at the 99th percentile. i did mine in half a time and scored 800.

that said SATs and GREs are a separate issue from the math curriculum. these tests simply don't test math knowledge but rather math ability. they are more like IQ tests than math tests. that is unrelated to math knowledge american students learn in school. even american students learn much more advanced concepts than those utilized on these tests. i say this is someone who is highly critical of the way american children learn math and consider these tests to be a big a problem with the admission process at american colleges. however, i do think american children would be better in math if they had to take real math tests for college.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Of course. American schools are very behind. We tutor in math mostly.

So at age 17 what level of math have kids in other countries reached? Is differential equations really so far behind the rest of the world?

I would say that most 17 year olds aren't taking differential equations. It seems to me that most people think Calculus 1 and Stats is a high level of achievement. I know most Blair magnet kids will take differential equations, but I'm not sure if it even offered at non-magnet schools.

The graduation requirements are Algebra I and Geometry and passing a state test on Algebra I. I would suggest that this level is "that far behind the rest of the world", especially considering that my understanding of how MCPS algebra is watered down, is probably less thorough than an Algebra class in most countries.

[Anonymous]

I lived in Ireland until the age of 11 and then immigrated to the US. I was an A student in language arts in Ireland and a C student in math. I immediately became an A student in math once I immigrated here. I couldn't believe how easy the math was. I remember I even got a math award that year. Something I could have never imagined back home!

[Anonymous]

Yes, for AP sciences and AP math in FCPS to keep C's off the transcript. It's hard material and students are taking because they enjoy the subject/challenge but need more individual instruction. The benefit really showed up when subjects were covered again in college.