Why Math is so weak in private schools?

[Anonymous]

You can't group privates together, nor can you group publics together. Our kids went to a top private, were doing proofs as juniors. Both are in the highest level math classes at top 10. They were very well prepared WITHOUT tutoring.

[Anonymous]

I’d rather pay competitive salaries to excellent teachers rather than paying crazy amount of money to a subpar HOS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Decades of PISA test results from OECD show that the US is poor at teaching math all across the nation.

Do we have a breakdown of PISA test results to compare public vs private?

The data do not support school-by-school analysis. A few countries like China carefully manage who sits the PISA exams. The US data set is nationally representative, not cherry picked.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You can't group privates together, nor can you group publics together. Our kids went to a top private, were doing proofs as juniors. Both are in the highest level math classes at top 10. They were very well prepared WITHOUT tutoring.

DP. Glad it worked well for your kids, but still it is an atypical result overall.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Another reason math in the US appears weak on PISA because the US is one of only three countries that doesn't teach the metric system exclusively.
Also we lose potentially good math teachers because students that excel in math go on to work at Microsoft etc and not teach.

Yes, and to other jobs. Teachers salary are very low these days.

Exactly. Smart science and math students have options way better than teaching. In the past, woman really didn’t so smart women would make excellent teachers

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Decades of PISA test results from OECD show that the US is poor at teaching math all across the nation.

Agree. Just thought that a private school would have resources to overcome this limitation.

The OECD data do not really support deep analysis of *why* the US results are poor. It could be a problem with pedagogy as taught by US teachers colleges/Ed schools. It could be salaries. It could relate to a million other things.

Bottom Line: It is not necessarily caused by "lack of resources", so one would not necessarily expect a private to have a different outcome.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Another reason math in the US appears weak on PISA because the US is one of only three countries that doesn't teach the metric system exclusively.
Also we lose potentially good math teachers because students that excel in math go on to work at Microsoft etc and not teach.

Yes, and to other jobs. Teachers salary are very low these days.

Exactly. Smart science and math students have options way better than teaching. In the past, woman really didn’t so smart women would make excellent teachers

A curiosity at the moment is that a lot of well educated mathematically-skilled scientists and engineers are being forced out of the civil service. Some publics already have started to try to recruit such people to teach. Well run privates also ought to be trying to recruit math and science teachers from that group.

[Anonymous]

I think it just takes a bigger pool of kids to support advanced math classes. Most privates aren’t that academically selective, especially in lower grades. So you end up with a small pool.

[Anonymous]

Sidwell advanced math is very strong..every year has admits to places like Carnegie Mellon, MIT, Harvard, Cambridge, Stanford for math

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You can't group privates together, nor can you group publics together. Our kids went to a top private, were doing proofs as juniors. Both are in the highest level math classes at top 10. They were very well prepared WITHOUT tutoring.

DP. Glad it worked well for your kids, but still it is an atypical result overall.

How do you know this? DC is not at a “big3” but is at a well-respected private with a strong math program. None of DC’s friends need outside tutoring.

[Anonymous]

Because acceleration doesn’t work and it doesn’t help students become engineers it actually hurts.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You can't group privates together, nor can you group publics together. Our kids went to a top private, were doing proofs as juniors. Both are in the highest level math classes at top 10. They were very well prepared WITHOUT tutoring.

DP. Glad it worked well for your kids, but still it is an atypical result overall.

How do you know this? DC is not at a “big3” but is at a well-respected private with a strong math program. None of DC’s friends need outside tutoring.

I’m a DP. My kid is in a strong math program at an area Catholic high school. Plenty of options for students.

I think the main difference is there isn’t an “accelerated math for all” approach. The school emphasizes that to 9th grade parents, too. They don’t want students in advanced maths without the strong foundational skills necessary.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Really rich people don’t need to be advanced in math. Competent, yes, but they don’t need to take calculus as a 10th grader. They don’t become engineers or god forbid computer scientists. If they run a hedge fund, they hire quant nerds to do the hard work while they ski and deal-make with the other lacrosse bros from Dartmouth.

As someone who knows lots of people in finance and various hedge funds, I will say a surprising number of the top people are actually very good at math.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Because acceleration doesn’t work and it doesn’t help students become engineers it actually hurts.

How does it hurt?

[Anonymous]

In DC. It's a myth that privates are weak in math, Andover has THE math program. My kids were both in magnet programs and we tutored the heck out of them. One is in med school now and the other one at MIT. Everyone tutors. I was tutored in private school when I was a kid and I'm old.