My kids never know what to study, information in too many differnt places

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. We have been reaching out. To me the whole thing is inefficient. They could spent less time on busy “research “ and more time on fun things.

I was with you, OP, until you said that. What entitled nonsense.

Calm down, it was kind of a joke. My point is that at the very least, the system in inefficient and wastes time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Scientific researcher again.

Teachers are not adequately trained in this country. Despite their love of children and enthusiasm, they are unfortunately often the bottom of the barrel academically. That's why we rank so low in international rankings of reading and math, while spending so much on education. We should invest in hiring smarter teachers (select only the best, design more rigorous education programs, pay much better), who will be able to understand and adapt to the multiple changes in curriculae they will experience over their teaching career, and implement them intelligently, always putting the students' development first.

I think that's only part of the problem. What has caused this trend away from textbooks? It seems clear that it does not improve the learning environment and in fact harms it. I would think a moderately skilled teacher would do better with a text to teach from, instead of having to start from scratch gathering materials.

I am a teacher and I completely agree with the second poster, not the first.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's all because of the death of the textbook.

When I was in middle and high school, we had a couple of textbooks to study from for each subject, and we knew what chapters to work on.

Now because schools can't afford textbooks and want to look cool with online tech, teachers assign various sources under the guise of "it's good for the kids to do their own research". When multiple teachers start multiplying sources, it gets messy at the middle school level because some children are not developmentally ready for that level of multitasking.

I'm a scientific researcher. Research is my life. This is not how you teach organizational and research skills to students. They need the basics down before they can do it.

Schools can afford textbooks, but they choose to spend the money on other things.

I’m a teacher, and this seems to be a common myth. I can’t speak for all districts of course, but at the schools I’ve taught at, there have always been current, quality textbooks available. The problem is that the information in the textbook is generally not taught in the same order as the tests that most schools are required to give. For example, here in VA, the SOLs get all the attention from the public, but it’s really the school required unit tests that makes life miserable for teachers. We are required to give computerized unit tests to make sure the kids are on track, which are of course used by administration too see which teachers are the most “effective”. I don’t necessarily have an issue with this, but the problem is that the tests are extremely specific and don’t line up neatly with the way the information in a particular school’s textbook. In the past teachers just used the unit test that came with the textbook, but this is no longer the case. I think it’s absolutely ridiculous that teachers are expected to teach very specific standards but no usable resources for teaching them. This is why teachers have to spend hours trying to put together crap that aligns with the tests. This situation could be easily remedied if States would simply hire a textbook publisher to create books that correlate with the tests, but this has not happened and I think in large part this is due to the current philosophy that teachers really shouldn’t be relying on a textbook anyways.

[Anonymous]

Sorry for the typos above. I was rushed and typing on an iPhone.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's all because of the death of the textbook.

When I was in middle and high school, we had a couple of textbooks to study from for each subject, and we knew what chapters to work on.

Now because schools can't afford textbooks and want to look cool with online tech, teachers assign various sources under the guise of "it's good for the kids to do their own research". When multiple teachers start multiplying sources, it gets messy at the middle school level because some children are not developmentally ready for that level of multitasking.

I'm a scientific researcher. Research is my life. This is not how you teach organizational and research skills to students. They need the basics down before they can do it.

Schools can afford textbooks, but they choose to spend the money on other things.

I’m a teacher, and this seems to be a common myth. I can’t speak for all districts of course, but at the schools I’ve taught at, there have always been current, quality textbooks available. The problem is that the information in the textbook is generally not taught in the same order as the tests that most schools are required to give. For example, here in VA, the SOLs get all the attention from the public, but it’s really the school required unit tests that makes life miserable for teachers. We are required to give computerized unit tests to make sure the kids are on track, which are of course used by administration too see which teachers are the most “effective”. I don’t necessarily have an issue with this, but the problem is that the tests are extremely specific and don’t line up neatly with the way the information in a particular school’s textbook. In the past teachers just used the unit test that came with the textbook, but this is no longer the case. I think it’s absolutely ridiculous that teachers are expected to teach very specific standards but no usable resources for teaching them. This is why teachers have to spend hours trying to put together crap that aligns with the tests. This situation could be easily remedied if States would simply hire a textbook publisher to create books that correlate with the tests, but this has not happened and I think in large part this is due to the current philosophy that teachers really shouldn’t be relying on a textbook anyways.

This is scary

[Anonymous]

Is there any proof of this? Something that's being done internally? From looking at a teacher's typical evaluation, it doesn't appear that tests are being used much if at all in the evaluation at least on paper. I'm not sure that I'm completely against tests being used for a teacher's effectiveness, especially when growth is being factored into the testing piece these days. I just think it should be a small part of the whole evaluation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is there any proof of this? Something that's being done internally? From looking at a teacher's typical evaluation, it doesn't appear that tests are being used much if at all in the evaluation at least on paper. I'm not sure that I'm completely against tests being used for a teacher's effectiveness, especially when growth is being factored into the testing piece these days. I just think it should be a small part of the whole evaluation.

It's not part of any sort of official evaluation, it just looks bad if a certain teacher tends to have scores lower than her peers. In the past when unit tests weren't computerized, and the school divisions weren't concerned with tracking to make sure the students are learning the standards, if a class bombed a test, the teacher's co-workers and principal would most likely never know. Now they do, and of course it's going to add to a teacher's angst.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is there any proof of this? Something that's being done internally? From looking at a teacher's typical evaluation, it doesn't appear that tests are being used much if at all in the evaluation at least on paper. I'm not sure that I'm completely against tests being used for a teacher's effectiveness, especially when growth is being factored into the testing piece these days. I just think it should be a small part of the whole evaluation.

It's not part of any sort of official evaluation, it just looks bad if a certain teacher tends to have scores lower than her peers. In the past when unit tests weren't computerized, and the school divisions weren't concerned with tracking to make sure the students are learning the standards, if a class bombed a test, the teacher's co-workers and principal would most likely never know. Now they do, and of course it's going to add to a teacher's angst.

I should also add that I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with it, but it does help explain why textbooks aren't being used. If I relied on the textbooks, as good as they are, my kids would still bomb the district tracking tests, because the tests aren't aligned with the textbooks. I have to look at the tests and try to create notes that are specific to the tests they will be given.

[Anonymous]

I'm another MCPS parent that is Team OP - makes me crazy to have to click through multiple powerpoints to figure out what is being taught just to give DC a bit of guidance. Worse, the powerpoints don't even include everything being taught! DC had a math question, and the powerpoints didn't set out the formulas, just examples of how one particular problem was solved. It's terrible!