She passed high school math with A’s and B’s. In college, she had to start over.
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Anonymous
+100 |
Anonymous
And it’s why standardized testing (ACT/SAT) and AP exam scores can also help differentiate from real GpAs vs inflated GpAs. |
Anonymous
You’re a parent and don’t think to keep tabs with how your kid is doing, what they’re learning, and supporting them? This is your fault. |
Anonymous
That’s because you live in a democrat state. Fun fact, Texas has these same issues, but they’re also prioritizing putting the Ten Commandments in classroom, trying to force successful magnet programs to close and become charter schools and defunding the school system by trying to give private school vouchers to already wealthy parents. |
Anonymous
Advanced students in MCPS normally take Algebra in 7th grade. They then take BC calc in 11th grade, and the really advanced kids take MVC/diffeq after. This works for some kids (like my very advanced DC who is a senior at college as a dual STEM/math major getting a 4.0). For the rest, I agree... MCPS pushed too many kids into Alg in 7th grade, and I include my other DC in that category. They have always had an A/B in math, but I think they would've been better off taking Algebra in 8th, though hindsight is 20/20. |
Anonymous
The kid is getting As/Bs, and the teacher has not indicated that the kid has any learning issues. Is the parent supposed to give the kid an exam at home to make sure they know the content? |
Anonymous
Gosh, there are some really insecure private school parents on this board. Some private schools and some public schools do not prepare kids well. Top tier privates are great, as are top tier publics. At least with lower level publics, you can figure out the quality of the school. There are a ton of bad private schools, but they don't need to take state assessments, publish data, etc., so there's no transparency. |
Anonymous
Agreed. There’s a host of private schools that now don’t do grades at all and do “skill assessment” with a graph they send colleges. DS knew someone who graduated from a school like this at Northwestern and they nearly flunked out freshman year. Private schools can be great, but their quality is often overstated. |
Anonymous
So much of what’s missing is the basic framework of what it means to learn. My kid scored an 800 math from a public high school where the average math score is 550, and I never supplemented (no RSM, no AoPS, no SAT prep). But I did explain a few things that the school never seemed to let the kids know: > When a teacher asks a question, it’s not because he wants the answer. It’s because he wants the student to learn how to produce the answer out of their own head. > So long as you are working toward the goal of being able to produce the answer out of your own head, you can ask for any amount of help, and the teacher will be happy to provide it. > A student’s job is not just to pass the unit test. It’s to retain the information in their head until the end of the year, and then for next year, and the year after that. With that framework, the math instruction at my kid’s mediocre public school was entirely sufficient. Without it, even good kids just roll forward, not asking questions (because they think a smart kid should understand everything immediately), completing the homework and passing unit tests (because they think that’s the goal), and even getting As and taking accelerated math if they are a quick study, but not really learning or retaining skills. This is exactly what happened to the PP’s kid who was accelerated in MCPS but couldn’t pass the private school placement test, as well as to the student in the article: she said she felt “like a lot of the information never really stuck with me.” It’s like no one ever told her that it was her job, as a student, to grab the information and to make it stick in her own head. Maybe this framework didn’t need to be spelled out in prior generations. But nowadays when more and more of us never even bother to memorize phone numbers or driving directions, we need to make this part explicit. |
Anonymous
I check my child’a work to see if they’re at grade level. It takes 10 minutes out of my day a few times through the year. Negligent parents just let their kid fall behind and blame everyone else. |
Anonymous
My unpopular opinion has always been it is the fault of parents. When people complain about schools not forcing their kid to memorize, I sit in shock that they don’t get that you should be supplementing the education with actual 1-on-1 home time and teaching students the value of education. No one should have to scream at you to memorize the content in class. Unless your kid is disabled, there’s nothing stopping your kid from learning the content. Parents used to help kids with their learning process. Now they’ve offloaded the education to the iPad. |
Anonymous
Who would help them after graduation? Governments? Tax Payers? AI? Why would employers hire them? |
Anonymous
Almost all grads need help after graduation…? You never got any training for your first job? If your entire existence has been sink or swim, you’re worked some shit jobs. |
Anonymous
Why is this an issue for only … checks notes… “disadvantaged” students? It’s like you intend to insinuate that standards are lowered for them. Surely, you don’t mean that, right? Because that would just make you a shit person with a fundamental character defect. |
Anonymous
Similar to our economy. The intelligence is going K shape as well. |