Article on Maury/Miner merger proposal

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If they really wanted to try something like this, I wonder if it wouldn’t be better to start with two schools that are closer together in terms of at-risk population (DME’s stated concern) or test scores (correlated but obviously not the same).

People who bought within the Maury boundary paid a premium to do so because of the school. That’s not to say they are entitled to go there — boundaries change sometimes, etc — but just to say that these are people for whom going to a school with a certain cohort of on-grade level or advanced learners was important enough to pay a lot more money than they would have if they had bought a couple of blocks over. They are not going to “come quietly” if you are all of a sudden going to organize things in a way that will put their kids in classrooms that are now 50% below grade level.

If you start by evening out two schools closer together on those measures, you are likely to get less vociferous opposition, because the changes will be less dramatic, and in the process of doing it are likely to learn more about how to make this model both more effective academically and more attractive to families (important for retaining the more invested families/higher performing kids you are trying to spread around).

Or if there was more trust that all kids are going to get the level of instruction they need, instead of pretending it is wrong to want your kid to get that. And of course the current fad for disregarding, you know, actual teaching and learning methods, is much worse for poor kids than rich kids. If instruction at Maury hadn’t been so haphazard already it might have been an easier ask.

This for sure. Even now at Maury, several teachers have told me how difficult it is to effectively teach the range of children they are presented with in each class. Broadening the range — or weighting it further in one direction — would only make it that much harder to provide the needed education to each student there. If a school offers tracking, and you can be confident your kid will be taught content at their level with a cohort around the same level, you can fill the school however you want.

But you kind of miss my point. The teaching methods are horrible now, no matter the track. all computers, no homework, no drilling, no tests to study for, no books, no consistently corrected papers. No independent research. It’s bad for our privileged kids and even worse for unprivileged kids.

I don’t think the two are entirely unrelated. I don’t see how a teacher could even come close to properly teaching so many students of varying levels and abilities without an assist from computer programs, for example.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If they really wanted to try something like this, I wonder if it wouldn’t be better to start with two schools that are closer together in terms of at-risk population (DME’s stated concern) or test scores (correlated but obviously not the same).

People who bought within the Maury boundary paid a premium to do so because of the school. That’s not to say they are entitled to go there — boundaries change sometimes, etc — but just to say that these are people for whom going to a school with a certain cohort of on-grade level or advanced learners was important enough to pay a lot more money than they would have if they had bought a couple of blocks over. They are not going to “come quietly” if you are all of a sudden going to organize things in a way that will put their kids in classrooms that are now 50% below grade level.

If you start by evening out two schools closer together on those measures, you are likely to get less vociferous opposition, because the changes will be less dramatic, and in the process of doing it are likely to learn more about how to make this model both more effective academically and more attractive to families (important for retaining the more invested families/higher performing kids you are trying to spread around).

Or if there was more trust that all kids are going to get the level of instruction they need, instead of pretending it is wrong to want your kid to get that. And of course the current fad for disregarding, you know, actual teaching and learning methods, is much worse for poor kids than rich kids. If instruction at Maury hadn’t been so haphazard already it might have been an easier ask.

This for sure. Even now at Maury, several teachers have told me how difficult it is to effectively teach the range of children they are presented with in each class. Broadening the range — or weighting it further in one direction — would only make it that much harder to provide the needed education to each student there. If a school offers tracking, and you can be confident your kid will be taught content at their level with a cohort around the same level, you can fill the school however you want.

But you kind of miss my point. The teaching methods are horrible now, no matter the track. all computers, no homework, no drilling, no tests to study for, no books, no consistently corrected papers. No independent research. It’s bad for our privileged kids and even worse for unprivileged kids.

I don’t think the two are entirely unrelated. I don’t see how a teacher could even come close to properly teaching so many students of varying levels and abilities without an assist from computer programs, for example.

I mean, Montessori schools do it all the time. Even if you don't want true Montessori, some of the principals can be applied to more traditional classrooms -- facilitate independent exploration of subject matter, offer instruction in small groups while other students work independently, encourage mastery through more experienced students explaining and demonstrating concepts for less experienced students.

The problem is not that kids are at varying levels and abilities. The problem is that some kids have serious behavioral issues that make what I just described not possible, and schools offer teachers little support in dealing with these kids. Screens are an easy way to placate kids who don't have baseline levels of behavior. Many of the kids who pose the biggest problems already have parents who rely heavily on screens as a behavioral management tool at home.

But it is ultimately short sighted. Excessive screens and insufficient time outside or engaged in physical activity will ultimately exacerbate behavioral problems for all students, even the ones who came in with some decent social and emotional skills. All screens do is distract and numb kids, so it can work in the short term but it means kids aren't really getting what they need. The screens also get in the way of deep focus and study, so it might help kids do better on assessments at the end of the school year (especially if administered via the same on-screen program as much of the curriculum) but they will retain less of the information than they would if they were getting more direct instruction, reading physical books, working with physical teaching tools, or just working with pencil and paper. And they also don't learn to deal with boredom or frustration, which will make it hard to impossible for them to go deeper into subjects as they get older.

The reliance on screens only makes sense in the moment, as a panic move to deal with a situation that has been set up to fail students and teachers alike. As a purposeful approach to curriculum, it doesn't really make sense.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If they really wanted to try something like this, I wonder if it wouldn’t be better to start with two schools that are closer together in terms of at-risk population (DME’s stated concern) or test scores (correlated but obviously not the same).

People who bought within the Maury boundary paid a premium to do so because of the school. That’s not to say they are entitled to go there — boundaries change sometimes, etc — but just to say that these are people for whom going to a school with a certain cohort of on-grade level or advanced learners was important enough to pay a lot more money than they would have if they had bought a couple of blocks over. They are not going to “come quietly” if you are all of a sudden going to organize things in a way that will put their kids in classrooms that are now 50% below grade level.

If you start by evening out two schools closer together on those measures, you are likely to get less vociferous opposition, because the changes will be less dramatic, and in the process of doing it are likely to learn more about how to make this model both more effective academically and more attractive to families (important for retaining the more invested families/higher performing kids you are trying to spread around).

Or if there was more trust that all kids are going to get the level of instruction they need, instead of pretending it is wrong to want your kid to get that. And of course the current fad for disregarding, you know, actual teaching and learning methods, is much worse for poor kids than rich kids. If instruction at Maury hadn’t been so haphazard already it might have been an easier ask.

This for sure. Even now at Maury, several teachers have told me how difficult it is to effectively teach the range of children they are presented with in each class. Broadening the range — or weighting it further in one direction — would only make it that much harder to provide the needed education to each student there. If a school offers tracking, and you can be confident your kid will be taught content at their level with a cohort around the same level, you can fill the school however you want.

But you kind of miss my point. The teaching methods are horrible now, no matter the track. all computers, no homework, no drilling, no tests to study for, no books, no consistently corrected papers. No independent research. It’s bad for our privileged kids and even worse for unprivileged kids.

I don’t think the two are entirely unrelated. I don’t see how a teacher could even come close to properly teaching so many students of varying levels and abilities without an assist from computer programs, for example.

I mean, Montessori schools do it all the time. Even if you don't want true Montessori, some of the principals can be applied to more traditional classrooms -- facilitate independent exploration of subject matter, offer instruction in small groups while other students work independently, encourage mastery through more experienced students explaining and demonstrating concepts for less experienced students.

The problem is not that kids are at varying levels and abilities. The problem is that some kids have serious behavioral issues that make what I just described not possible, and schools offer teachers little support in dealing with these kids. Screens are an easy way to placate kids who don't have baseline levels of behavior. Many of the kids who pose the biggest problems already have parents who rely heavily on screens as a behavioral management tool at home.

But it is ultimately short sighted. Excessive screens and insufficient time outside or engaged in physical activity will ultimately exacerbate behavioral problems for all students, even the ones who came in with some decent social and emotional skills. All screens do is distract and numb kids, so it can work in the short term but it means kids aren't really getting what they need. The screens also get in the way of deep focus and study, so it might help kids do better on assessments at the end of the school year (especially if administered via the same on-screen program as much of the curriculum) but they will retain less of the information than they would if they were getting more direct instruction, reading physical books, working with physical teaching tools, or just working with pencil and paper. And they also don't learn to deal with boredom or frustration, which will make it hard to impossible for them to go deeper into subjects as they get older.

The reliance on screens only makes sense in the moment, as a panic move to deal with a situation that has been set up to fail students and teachers alike. As a purposeful approach to curriculum, it doesn't really make sense.

Teacher here, it’s not just the behavior issues - it’s also lack of parent accountability. If your child misses 20+ days of school what am I to do if the child never makes it up? You have kids missing 50,60,70 days of school or arriving at 11:30AM.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If they really wanted to try something like this, I wonder if it wouldn’t be better to start with two schools that are closer together in terms of at-risk population (DME’s stated concern) or test scores (correlated but obviously not the same).

People who bought within the Maury boundary paid a premium to do so because of the school. That’s not to say they are entitled to go there — boundaries change sometimes, etc — but just to say that these are people for whom going to a school with a certain cohort of on-grade level or advanced learners was important enough to pay a lot more money than they would have if they had bought a couple of blocks over. They are not going to “come quietly” if you are all of a sudden going to organize things in a way that will put their kids in classrooms that are now 50% below grade level.

If you start by evening out two schools closer together on those measures, you are likely to get less vociferous opposition, because the changes will be less dramatic, and in the process of doing it are likely to learn more about how to make this model both more effective academically and more attractive to families (important for retaining the more invested families/higher performing kids you are trying to spread around).

Or if there was more trust that all kids are going to get the level of instruction they need, instead of pretending it is wrong to want your kid to get that. And of course the current fad for disregarding, you know, actual teaching and learning methods, is much worse for poor kids than rich kids. If instruction at Maury hadn’t been so haphazard already it might have been an easier ask.

This for sure. Even now at Maury, several teachers have told me how difficult it is to effectively teach the range of children they are presented with in each class. Broadening the range — or weighting it further in one direction — would only make it that much harder to provide the needed education to each student there. If a school offers tracking, and you can be confident your kid will be taught content at their level with a cohort around the same level, you can fill the school however you want.

But you kind of miss my point. The teaching methods are horrible now, no matter the track. all computers, no homework, no drilling, no tests to study for, no books, no consistently corrected papers. No independent research. It’s bad for our privileged kids and even worse for unprivileged kids.

What school are you at? I have to give kids HW and teach PK4…
The upper grades only use the computer for iReady or exams. We also have physical books…
Also the drill and kill method has proven to be subpar at least a decade ago.
Kids also do projects and as far as testing it’s frequent because iReady tests, paper tests are kept to a minimum to avoid going even more overboard, teaching to test is something people try to reserve for CAPE.

You literally just listed at least 5 things in there that reinforce what I am saying about instructions. (and no, there are not text books.)

I surely did not, paper tests aren’t a form of teaching and again drill and kill isn’t learning. And maybe at your school there’s no physical books, my school has them.
Either way education does need a little less tech, this will only happen if we cut class sizes in half or the lower grades Pk-1 get 2 aides and the upper grades get 1.
Both are unlikely to happen unless parents want to advocate too?

Drill and kill is the way kids in fact learn, especially math.

Drill and kill might help kids memorize procedures, but research consistently shows that learning rooted in conceptual understanding, active participation, and varied practice leads to greater understanding, retention, and problem-solving ability—and even better exam outcomes.

Why are parents arguing with me on this? You can easily do a search to show I am correct. The way you learned as a kid is not how it’s taught now by any reputable teacher.

1. Active learning outperforms lectures (and by extension, rote drills).
2. Prioritizing conceptual understanding yields stronger retention than combining it with procedural drills.
3. Three decades of math reform reinforce the value of conceptual connection over rote rule-following.

Because you're conflating fluency practice with "rote drills" whatever that means. Fluency is important in math. It is there to support conceptual understanding, not to replace it. Practice and repetition bring concepts from short-term to long-term memory where they can be processed at a deeper level and retained over time.

You are misrepresenting what I actually said and oversimplifying the research on math instruction.

Let's not Strawman here, I never said fluency practice (repetition to build automaticity) was useless. I criticized rote drills without conceptual grounding. Current evidence shows fluency practice works best when it’s paired with conceptual understanding, not when it’s done in isolation. You are conflating “repetition” with “rote” -Repetition can be meaningful (embedded in problem solving) or rote (mindless pattern-following). You imply all repetition is equally valuable, which is not supported by learning science. Without meaning attached, repetition tends to build brittle, short-term performance rather than flexible long-term understanding.

You're also ignoring the order of learning –and your framing makes it sound like procedural fluency naturally leads to conceptual understanding. But in math education research, the relationship is reciprocal, and when students start with conceptual grounding, fluency gains are stronger and more transferable.

Fluency matters — but research shows rote drills without understanding build brittle skills, while fluency grounded in concepts lasts and transfers.

We are talking about 3rd-5th grade. The kids in fact need drills to learn multiplication. They need the effort of repeated problems sets to learn to divide fractions. They need quizzes and tests to embed it in their long term memory through study and recall.

Instead we have Iready.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If they really wanted to try something like this, I wonder if it wouldn’t be better to start with two schools that are closer together in terms of at-risk population (DME’s stated concern) or test scores (correlated but obviously not the same).

People who bought within the Maury boundary paid a premium to do so because of the school. That’s not to say they are entitled to go there — boundaries change sometimes, etc — but just to say that these are people for whom going to a school with a certain cohort of on-grade level or advanced learners was important enough to pay a lot more money than they would have if they had bought a couple of blocks over. They are not going to “come quietly” if you are all of a sudden going to organize things in a way that will put their kids in classrooms that are now 50% below grade level.

If you start by evening out two schools closer together on those measures, you are likely to get less vociferous opposition, because the changes will be less dramatic, and in the process of doing it are likely to learn more about how to make this model both more effective academically and more attractive to families (important for retaining the more invested families/higher performing kids you are trying to spread around).

Or if there was more trust that all kids are going to get the level of instruction they need, instead of pretending it is wrong to want your kid to get that. And of course the current fad for disregarding, you know, actual teaching and learning methods, is much worse for poor kids than rich kids. If instruction at Maury hadn’t been so haphazard already it might have been an easier ask.

This for sure. Even now at Maury, several teachers have told me how difficult it is to effectively teach the range of children they are presented with in each class. Broadening the range — or weighting it further in one direction — would only make it that much harder to provide the needed education to each student there. If a school offers tracking, and you can be confident your kid will be taught content at their level with a cohort around the same level, you can fill the school however you want.

But you kind of miss my point. The teaching methods are horrible now, no matter the track. all computers, no homework, no drilling, no tests to study for, no books, no consistently corrected papers. No independent research. It’s bad for our privileged kids and even worse for unprivileged kids.

What school are you at? I have to give kids HW and teach PK4…
The upper grades only use the computer for iReady or exams. We also have physical books…
Also the drill and kill method has proven to be subpar at least a decade ago.
Kids also do projects and as far as testing it’s frequent because iReady tests, paper tests are kept to a minimum to avoid going even more overboard, teaching to test is something people try to reserve for CAPE.

You literally just listed at least 5 things in there that reinforce what I am saying about instructions. (and no, there are not text books.)

I surely did not, paper tests aren’t a form of teaching and again drill and kill isn’t learning. And maybe at your school there’s no physical books, my school has them.
Either way education does need a little less tech, this will only happen if we cut class sizes in half or the lower grades Pk-1 get 2 aides and the upper grades get 1.
Both are unlikely to happen unless parents want to advocate too?

Drill and kill is the way kids in fact learn, especially math.

Drill and kill might help kids memorize procedures, but research consistently shows that learning rooted in conceptual understanding, active participation, and varied practice leads to greater understanding, retention, and problem-solving ability—and even better exam outcomes.

Why are parents arguing with me on this? You can easily do a search to show I am correct. The way you learned as a kid is not how it’s taught now by any reputable teacher.

1. Active learning outperforms lectures (and by extension, rote drills).
2. Prioritizing conceptual understanding yields stronger retention than combining it with procedural drills.
3. Three decades of math reform reinforce the value of conceptual connection over rote rule-following.

Because you're conflating fluency practice with "rote drills" whatever that means. Fluency is important in math. It is there to support conceptual understanding, not to replace it. Practice and repetition bring concepts from short-term to long-term memory where they can be processed at a deeper level and retained over time.

You are misrepresenting what I actually said and oversimplifying the research on math instruction.

Let's not Strawman here, I never said fluency practice (repetition to build automaticity) was useless. I criticized rote drills without conceptual grounding. Current evidence shows fluency practice works best when it’s paired with conceptual understanding, not when it’s done in isolation. You are conflating “repetition” with “rote” -Repetition can be meaningful (embedded in problem solving) or rote (mindless pattern-following). You imply all repetition is equally valuable, which is not supported by learning science. Without meaning attached, repetition tends to build brittle, short-term performance rather than flexible long-term understanding.

You're also ignoring the order of learning –and your framing makes it sound like procedural fluency naturally leads to conceptual understanding. But in math education research, the relationship is reciprocal, and when students start with conceptual grounding, fluency gains are stronger and more transferable.

Fluency matters — but research shows rote drills without understanding build brittle skills, while fluency grounded in concepts lasts and transfers.

We are talking about 3rd-5th grade. The kids in fact need drills to learn multiplication. They need the effort of repeated problems sets to learn to divide fractions. They need quizzes and tests to embed it in their long term memory through study and recall.

Instead we have Iready.

If that’s all you think is needed, then iReady is just fine.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If they really wanted to try something like this, I wonder if it wouldn’t be better to start with two schools that are closer together in terms of at-risk population (DME’s stated concern) or test scores (correlated but obviously not the same).

People who bought within the Maury boundary paid a premium to do so because of the school. That’s not to say they are entitled to go there — boundaries change sometimes, etc — but just to say that these are people for whom going to a school with a certain cohort of on-grade level or advanced learners was important enough to pay a lot more money than they would have if they had bought a couple of blocks over. They are not going to “come quietly” if you are all of a sudden going to organize things in a way that will put their kids in classrooms that are now 50% below grade level.

If you start by evening out two schools closer together on those measures, you are likely to get less vociferous opposition, because the changes will be less dramatic, and in the process of doing it are likely to learn more about how to make this model both more effective academically and more attractive to families (important for retaining the more invested families/higher performing kids you are trying to spread around).

Or if there was more trust that all kids are going to get the level of instruction they need, instead of pretending it is wrong to want your kid to get that. And of course the current fad for disregarding, you know, actual teaching and learning methods, is much worse for poor kids than rich kids. If instruction at Maury hadn’t been so haphazard already it might have been an easier ask.

This for sure. Even now at Maury, several teachers have told me how difficult it is to effectively teach the range of children they are presented with in each class. Broadening the range — or weighting it further in one direction — would only make it that much harder to provide the needed education to each student there. If a school offers tracking, and you can be confident your kid will be taught content at their level with a cohort around the same level, you can fill the school however you want.

But you kind of miss my point. The teaching methods are horrible now, no matter the track. all computers, no homework, no drilling, no tests to study for, no books, no consistently corrected papers. No independent research. It’s bad for our privileged kids and even worse for unprivileged kids.

I don’t think the two are entirely unrelated. I don’t see how a teacher could even come close to properly teaching so many students of varying levels and abilities without an assist from computer programs, for example.

I mean, Montessori schools do it all the time. Even if you don't want true Montessori, some of the principals can be applied to more traditional classrooms -- facilitate independent exploration of subject matter, offer instruction in small groups while other students work independently, encourage mastery through more experienced students explaining and demonstrating concepts for less experienced students.

The problem is not that kids are at varying levels and abilities. The problem is that some kids have serious behavioral issues that make what I just described not possible, and schools offer teachers little support in dealing with these kids. Screens are an easy way to placate kids who don't have baseline levels of behavior. Many of the kids who pose the biggest problems already have parents who rely heavily on screens as a behavioral management tool at home.

But it is ultimately short sighted. Excessive screens and insufficient time outside or engaged in physical activity will ultimately exacerbate behavioral problems for all students, even the ones who came in with some decent social and emotional skills. All screens do is distract and numb kids, so it can work in the short term but it means kids aren't really getting what they need. The screens also get in the way of deep focus and study, so it might help kids do better on assessments at the end of the school year (especially if administered via the same on-screen program as much of the curriculum) but they will retain less of the information than they would if they were getting more direct instruction, reading physical books, working with physical teaching tools, or just working with pencil and paper. And they also don't learn to deal with boredom or frustration, which will make it hard to impossible for them to go deeper into subjects as they get older.

The reliance on screens only makes sense in the moment, as a panic move to deal with a situation that has been set up to fail students and teachers alike. As a purposeful approach to curriculum, it doesn't really make sense.

Teacher here, it’s not just the behavior issues - it’s also lack of parent accountability. If your child misses 20+ days of school what am I to do if the child never makes it up? You have kids missing 50,60,70 days of school or arriving at 11:30AM.

According to many posters here, it is racist for you to hold black students to account for missing school. Much like it is for giving scores earned on standardized tests.

[Anonymous]

AOPS or bust…everything else is a joke.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If they really wanted to try something like this, I wonder if it wouldn’t be better to start with two schools that are closer together in terms of at-risk population (DME’s stated concern) or test scores (correlated but obviously not the same).

People who bought within the Maury boundary paid a premium to do so because of the school. That’s not to say they are entitled to go there — boundaries change sometimes, etc — but just to say that these are people for whom going to a school with a certain cohort of on-grade level or advanced learners was important enough to pay a lot more money than they would have if they had bought a couple of blocks over. They are not going to “come quietly” if you are all of a sudden going to organize things in a way that will put their kids in classrooms that are now 50% below grade level.

If you start by evening out two schools closer together on those measures, you are likely to get less vociferous opposition, because the changes will be less dramatic, and in the process of doing it are likely to learn more about how to make this model both more effective academically and more attractive to families (important for retaining the more invested families/higher performing kids you are trying to spread around).

Or if there was more trust that all kids are going to get the level of instruction they need, instead of pretending it is wrong to want your kid to get that. And of course the current fad for disregarding, you know, actual teaching and learning methods, is much worse for poor kids than rich kids. If instruction at Maury hadn’t been so haphazard already it might have been an easier ask.

This for sure. Even now at Maury, several teachers have told me how difficult it is to effectively teach the range of children they are presented with in each class. Broadening the range — or weighting it further in one direction — would only make it that much harder to provide the needed education to each student there. If a school offers tracking, and you can be confident your kid will be taught content at their level with a cohort around the same level, you can fill the school however you want.

But you kind of miss my point. The teaching methods are horrible now, no matter the track. all computers, no homework, no drilling, no tests to study for, no books, no consistently corrected papers. No independent research. It’s bad for our privileged kids and even worse for unprivileged kids.

What school are you at? I have to give kids HW and teach PK4…
The upper grades only use the computer for iReady or exams. We also have physical books…
Also the drill and kill method has proven to be subpar at least a decade ago.
Kids also do projects and as far as testing it’s frequent because iReady tests, paper tests are kept to a minimum to avoid going even more overboard, teaching to test is something people try to reserve for CAPE.

You literally just listed at least 5 things in there that reinforce what I am saying about instructions. (and no, there are not text books.)

I surely did not, paper tests aren’t a form of teaching and again drill and kill isn’t learning. And maybe at your school there’s no physical books, my school has them.
Either way education does need a little less tech, this will only happen if we cut class sizes in half or the lower grades Pk-1 get 2 aides and the upper grades get 1.
Both are unlikely to happen unless parents want to advocate too?

Drill and kill is the way kids in fact learn, especially math.

Drill and kill might help kids memorize procedures, but research consistently shows that learning rooted in conceptual understanding, active participation, and varied practice leads to greater understanding, retention, and problem-solving ability—and even better exam outcomes.

Why are parents arguing with me on this? You can easily do a search to show I am correct. The way you learned as a kid is not how it’s taught now by any reputable teacher.

1. Active learning outperforms lectures (and by extension, rote drills).
2. Prioritizing conceptual understanding yields stronger retention than combining it with procedural drills.
3. Three decades of math reform reinforce the value of conceptual connection over rote rule-following.

Because you're conflating fluency practice with "rote drills" whatever that means. Fluency is important in math. It is there to support conceptual understanding, not to replace it. Practice and repetition bring concepts from short-term to long-term memory where they can be processed at a deeper level and retained over time.

You are misrepresenting what I actually said and oversimplifying the research on math instruction.

Let's not Strawman here, I never said fluency practice (repetition to build automaticity) was useless. I criticized rote drills without conceptual grounding. Current evidence shows fluency practice works best when it’s paired with conceptual understanding, not when it’s done in isolation. You are conflating “repetition” with “rote” -Repetition can be meaningful (embedded in problem solving) or rote (mindless pattern-following). You imply all repetition is equally valuable, which is not supported by learning science. Without meaning attached, repetition tends to build brittle, short-term performance rather than flexible long-term understanding.

You're also ignoring the order of learning –and your framing makes it sound like procedural fluency naturally leads to conceptual understanding. But in math education research, the relationship is reciprocal, and when students start with conceptual grounding, fluency gains are stronger and more transferable.

Fluency matters — but research shows rote drills without understanding build brittle skills, while fluency grounded in concepts lasts and transfers.

We are talking about 3rd-5th grade. The kids in fact need drills to learn multiplication. They need the effort of repeated problems sets to learn to divide fractions. They need quizzes and tests to embed it in their long term memory through study and recall.

Instead we have Iready.

If that’s all you think is needed, then iReady is just fine.

That’s not actually what Iready does - let alone all the horrible issues with the interface and the decreased ability to focus on a screen.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If they really wanted to try something like this, I wonder if it wouldn’t be better to start with two schools that are closer together in terms of at-risk population (DME’s stated concern) or test scores (correlated but obviously not the same).

People who bought within the Maury boundary paid a premium to do so because of the school. That’s not to say they are entitled to go there — boundaries change sometimes, etc — but just to say that these are people for whom going to a school with a certain cohort of on-grade level or advanced learners was important enough to pay a lot more money than they would have if they had bought a couple of blocks over. They are not going to “come quietly” if you are all of a sudden going to organize things in a way that will put their kids in classrooms that are now 50% below grade level.

If you start by evening out two schools closer together on those measures, you are likely to get less vociferous opposition, because the changes will be less dramatic, and in the process of doing it are likely to learn more about how to make this model both more effective academically and more attractive to families (important for retaining the more invested families/higher performing kids you are trying to spread around).

Or if there was more trust that all kids are going to get the level of instruction they need, instead of pretending it is wrong to want your kid to get that. And of course the current fad for disregarding, you know, actual teaching and learning methods, is much worse for poor kids than rich kids. If instruction at Maury hadn’t been so haphazard already it might have been an easier ask.

This for sure. Even now at Maury, several teachers have told me how difficult it is to effectively teach the range of children they are presented with in each class. Broadening the range — or weighting it further in one direction — would only make it that much harder to provide the needed education to each student there. If a school offers tracking, and you can be confident your kid will be taught content at their level with a cohort around the same level, you can fill the school however you want.

But you kind of miss my point. The teaching methods are horrible now, no matter the track. all computers, no homework, no drilling, no tests to study for, no books, no consistently corrected papers. No independent research. It’s bad for our privileged kids and even worse for unprivileged kids.

What school are you at? I have to give kids HW and teach PK4…
The upper grades only use the computer for iReady or exams. We also have physical books…
Also the drill and kill method has proven to be subpar at least a decade ago.
Kids also do projects and as far as testing it’s frequent because iReady tests, paper tests are kept to a minimum to avoid going even more overboard, teaching to test is something people try to reserve for CAPE.

You literally just listed at least 5 things in there that reinforce what I am saying about instructions. (and no, there are not text books.)

I surely did not, paper tests aren’t a form of teaching and again drill and kill isn’t learning. And maybe at your school there’s no physical books, my school has them.
Either way education does need a little less tech, this will only happen if we cut class sizes in half or the lower grades Pk-1 get 2 aides and the upper grades get 1.
Both are unlikely to happen unless parents want to advocate too?

Drill and kill is the way kids in fact learn, especially math.

Drill and kill might help kids memorize procedures, but research consistently shows that learning rooted in conceptual understanding, active participation, and varied practice leads to greater understanding, retention, and problem-solving ability—and even better exam outcomes.

Why are parents arguing with me on this? You can easily do a search to show I am correct. The way you learned as a kid is not how it’s taught now by any reputable teacher.

1. Active learning outperforms lectures (and by extension, rote drills).
2. Prioritizing conceptual understanding yields stronger retention than combining it with procedural drills.
3. Three decades of math reform reinforce the value of conceptual connection over rote rule-following.

yeah our plummeting national tests scores sure do show that we are doing a good job with math.

“Conceptual connection” literally cannot happen if you don’t drill and practice the math facts and later practice sufficiently with problem sets. Let’s not even get started on the fact that regardless of the teaching philosophy, we are migrating to teaching via computer programs instead of paper and pencil, in a way that even more degrades the focused practice and recall actually needed to learn.

But again thank you for showing why I don’t trust the current “ed policy” trends for a second. If you all had your way kids would learn even less than they already do. I can afford $500 month to send my kid to Mathnasium to fill in the gaps but most DCPS parents cannot.

This^^^

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If they really wanted to try something like this, I wonder if it wouldn’t be better to start with two schools that are closer together in terms of at-risk population (DME’s stated concern) or test scores (correlated but obviously not the same).

People who bought within the Maury boundary paid a premium to do so because of the school. That’s not to say they are entitled to go there — boundaries change sometimes, etc — but just to say that these are people for whom going to a school with a certain cohort of on-grade level or advanced learners was important enough to pay a lot more money than they would have if they had bought a couple of blocks over. They are not going to “come quietly” if you are all of a sudden going to organize things in a way that will put their kids in classrooms that are now 50% below grade level.

If you start by evening out two schools closer together on those measures, you are likely to get less vociferous opposition, because the changes will be less dramatic, and in the process of doing it are likely to learn more about how to make this model both more effective academically and more attractive to families (important for retaining the more invested families/higher performing kids you are trying to spread around).

Or if there was more trust that all kids are going to get the level of instruction they need, instead of pretending it is wrong to want your kid to get that. And of course the current fad for disregarding, you know, actual teaching and learning methods, is much worse for poor kids than rich kids. If instruction at Maury hadn’t been so haphazard already it might have been an easier ask.

This for sure. Even now at Maury, several teachers have told me how difficult it is to effectively teach the range of children they are presented with in each class. Broadening the range — or weighting it further in one direction — would only make it that much harder to provide the needed education to each student there. If a school offers tracking, and you can be confident your kid will be taught content at their level with a cohort around the same level, you can fill the school however you want.

But you kind of miss my point. The teaching methods are horrible now, no matter the track. all computers, no homework, no drilling, no tests to study for, no books, no consistently corrected papers. No independent research. It’s bad for our privileged kids and even worse for unprivileged kids.

What school are you at? I have to give kids HW and teach PK4…
The upper grades only use the computer for iReady or exams. We also have physical books…
Also the drill and kill method has proven to be subpar at least a decade ago.
Kids also do projects and as far as testing it’s frequent because iReady tests, paper tests are kept to a minimum to avoid going even more overboard, teaching to test is something people try to reserve for CAPE.

You literally just listed at least 5 things in there that reinforce what I am saying about instructions. (and no, there are not text books.)

I surely did not, paper tests aren’t a form of teaching and again drill and kill isn’t learning. And maybe at your school there’s no physical books, my school has them.
Either way education does need a little less tech, this will only happen if we cut class sizes in half or the lower grades Pk-1 get 2 aides and the upper grades get 1.
Both are unlikely to happen unless parents want to advocate too?

Drill and kill is the way kids in fact learn, especially math.

Drill and kill might help kids memorize procedures, but research consistently shows that learning rooted in conceptual understanding, active participation, and varied practice leads to greater understanding, retention, and problem-solving ability—and even better exam outcomes.

Why are parents arguing with me on this? You can easily do a search to show I am correct. The way you learned as a kid is not how it’s taught now by any reputable teacher.

1. Active learning outperforms lectures (and by extension, rote drills).
2. Prioritizing conceptual understanding yields stronger retention than combining it with procedural drills.
3. Three decades of math reform reinforce the value of conceptual connection over rote rule-following.

yeah our plummeting national tests scores sure do show that we are doing a good job with math.

“Conceptual connection” literally cannot happen if you don’t drill and practice the math facts and later practice sufficiently with problem sets. Let’s not even get started on the fact that regardless of the teaching philosophy, we are migrating to teaching via computer programs instead of paper and pencil, in a way that even more degrades the focused practice and recall actually needed to learn.

But again thank you for showing why I don’t trust the current “ed policy” trends for a second. If you all had your way kids would learn even less than they already do. I can afford $500 month to send my kid to Mathnasium to fill in the gaps but most DCPS parents cannot.

This^^^

I agree that repeated application of procedures and algorithms is critical for building automaticity. Kids need that practice—both in school and at home—so that the basic operations become second nature, almost like muscle memory. Over time, some students will even discover for themselves why the algorithms work, building conceptual understanding on the back end.

A more sound approach—though far harder to implement at scale—would start with conceptual foundations first, letting students understand why the math works, and only then introducing the algorithms as a practical application of those concepts. That’s a far more durable way to learn, and programs like Beast Academy or AoPS do this very well.

The sad reality, though, is that most schools can’t execute on that model effectively. What happens in practice is that kids never really get the conceptual grounding, and at the same time, the procedural and algorithmic practice gets short-changed. They end up in the worst possible world—not conceptually grounded and not algorithmically fluent. Given that choice, algorithmic fluency is certainly preferable; it at least opens the door for conceptual insights to develop later. So while drill-and-kill isn’t the most sound pedagogically, in a large-scale school system it’s often the most realistic approach to insist on up front.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If they really wanted to try something like this, I wonder if it wouldn’t be better to start with two schools that are closer together in terms of at-risk population (DME’s stated concern) or test scores (correlated but obviously not the same).

People who bought within the Maury boundary paid a premium to do so because of the school. That’s not to say they are entitled to go there — boundaries change sometimes, etc — but just to say that these are people for whom going to a school with a certain cohort of on-grade level or advanced learners was important enough to pay a lot more money than they would have if they had bought a couple of blocks over. They are not going to “come quietly” if you are all of a sudden going to organize things in a way that will put their kids in classrooms that are now 50% below grade level.

If you start by evening out two schools closer together on those measures, you are likely to get less vociferous opposition, because the changes will be less dramatic, and in the process of doing it are likely to learn more about how to make this model both more effective academically and more attractive to families (important for retaining the more invested families/higher performing kids you are trying to spread around).

Or if there was more trust that all kids are going to get the level of instruction they need, instead of pretending it is wrong to want your kid to get that. And of course the current fad for disregarding, you know, actual teaching and learning methods, is much worse for poor kids than rich kids. If instruction at Maury hadn’t been so haphazard already it might have been an easier ask.

This for sure. Even now at Maury, several teachers have told me how difficult it is to effectively teach the range of children they are presented with in each class. Broadening the range — or weighting it further in one direction — would only make it that much harder to provide the needed education to each student there. If a school offers tracking, and you can be confident your kid will be taught content at their level with a cohort around the same level, you can fill the school however you want.

But you kind of miss my point. The teaching methods are horrible now, no matter the track. all computers, no homework, no drilling, no tests to study for, no books, no consistently corrected papers. No independent research. It’s bad for our privileged kids and even worse for unprivileged kids.

What school are you at? I have to give kids HW and teach PK4…
The upper grades only use the computer for iReady or exams. We also have physical books…
Also the drill and kill method has proven to be subpar at least a decade ago.
Kids also do projects and as far as testing it’s frequent because iReady tests, paper tests are kept to a minimum to avoid going even more overboard, teaching to test is something people try to reserve for CAPE.

You literally just listed at least 5 things in there that reinforce what I am saying about instructions. (and no, there are not text books.)

I surely did not, paper tests aren’t a form of teaching and again drill and kill isn’t learning. And maybe at your school there’s no physical books, my school has them.
Either way education does need a little less tech, this will only happen if we cut class sizes in half or the lower grades Pk-1 get 2 aides and the upper grades get 1.
Both are unlikely to happen unless parents want to advocate too?

Drill and kill is the way kids in fact learn, especially math.

Drill and kill might help kids memorize procedures, but research consistently shows that learning rooted in conceptual understanding, active participation, and varied practice leads to greater understanding, retention, and problem-solving ability—and even better exam outcomes.

Why are parents arguing with me on this? You can easily do a search to show I am correct. The way you learned as a kid is not how it’s taught now by any reputable teacher.

1. Active learning outperforms lectures (and by extension, rote drills).
2. Prioritizing conceptual understanding yields stronger retention than combining it with procedural drills.
3. Three decades of math reform reinforce the value of conceptual connection over rote rule-following.

yeah our plummeting national tests scores sure do show that we are doing a good job with math.

“Conceptual connection” literally cannot happen if you don’t drill and practice the math facts and later practice sufficiently with problem sets. Let’s not even get started on the fact that regardless of the teaching philosophy, we are migrating to teaching via computer programs instead of paper and pencil, in a way that even more degrades the focused practice and recall actually needed to learn.

But again thank you for showing why I don’t trust the current “ed policy” trends for a second. If you all had your way kids would learn even less than they already do. I can afford $500 month to send my kid to Mathnasium to fill in the gaps but most DCPS parents cannot.

This^^^

I agree that repeated application of procedures and algorithms is critical for building automaticity. Kids need that practice—both in school and at home—so that the basic operations become second nature, almost like muscle memory. Over time, some students will even discover for themselves why the algorithms work, building conceptual understanding on the back end.

A more sound approach—though far harder to implement at scale—would start with conceptual foundations first, letting students understand why the math works, and only then introducing the algorithms as a practical application of those concepts. That’s a far more durable way to learn, and programs like Beast Academy or AoPS do this very well.

The sad reality, though, is that most schools can’t execute on that model effectively. What happens in practice is that kids never really get the conceptual grounding, and at the same time, the procedural and algorithmic practice gets short-changed. They end up in the worst possible world—not conceptually grounded and not algorithmically fluent. Given that choice, algorithmic fluency is certainly preferable; it at least opens the door for conceptual insights to develop later. So while drill-and-kill isn’t the most sound pedagogically, in a large-scale school system it’s often the most realistic approach to insist on up front.

You are funny. This is why kids will forget as soon as they get to stop (after HS). This is why so many kids hate math and do not have a deeper understanding.

I tried, people who are not teachers think they know what goes on at schools. It is drill and kill, at the majority. This is why many scores suck or are average.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If they really wanted to try something like this, I wonder if it wouldn’t be better to start with two schools that are closer together in terms of at-risk population (DME’s stated concern) or test scores (correlated but obviously not the same).

People who bought within the Maury boundary paid a premium to do so because of the school. That’s not to say they are entitled to go there — boundaries change sometimes, etc — but just to say that these are people for whom going to a school with a certain cohort of on-grade level or advanced learners was important enough to pay a lot more money than they would have if they had bought a couple of blocks over. They are not going to “come quietly” if you are all of a sudden going to organize things in a way that will put their kids in classrooms that are now 50% below grade level.

If you start by evening out two schools closer together on those measures, you are likely to get less vociferous opposition, because the changes will be less dramatic, and in the process of doing it are likely to learn more about how to make this model both more effective academically and more attractive to families (important for retaining the more invested families/higher performing kids you are trying to spread around).

Or if there was more trust that all kids are going to get the level of instruction they need, instead of pretending it is wrong to want your kid to get that. And of course the current fad for disregarding, you know, actual teaching and learning methods, is much worse for poor kids than rich kids. If instruction at Maury hadn’t been so haphazard already it might have been an easier ask.

This for sure. Even now at Maury, several teachers have told me how difficult it is to effectively teach the range of children they are presented with in each class. Broadening the range — or weighting it further in one direction — would only make it that much harder to provide the needed education to each student there. If a school offers tracking, and you can be confident your kid will be taught content at their level with a cohort around the same level, you can fill the school however you want.

But you kind of miss my point. The teaching methods are horrible now, no matter the track. all computers, no homework, no drilling, no tests to study for, no books, no consistently corrected papers. No independent research. It’s bad for our privileged kids and even worse for unprivileged kids.

I don’t think the two are entirely unrelated. I don’t see how a teacher could even come close to properly teaching so many students of varying levels and abilities without an assist from computer programs, for example.

I mean, Montessori schools do it all the time. Even if you don't want true Montessori, some of the principals can be applied to more traditional classrooms -- facilitate independent exploration of subject matter, offer instruction in small groups while other students work independently, encourage mastery through more experienced students explaining and demonstrating concepts for less experienced students.

The problem is not that kids are at varying levels and abilities. The problem is that some kids have serious behavioral issues that make what I just described not possible, and schools offer teachers little support in dealing with these kids. Screens are an easy way to placate kids who don't have baseline levels of behavior. Many of the kids who pose the biggest problems already have parents who rely heavily on screens as a behavioral management tool at home.

But it is ultimately short sighted. Excessive screens and insufficient time outside or engaged in physical activity will ultimately exacerbate behavioral problems for all students, even the ones who came in with some decent social and emotional skills. All screens do is distract and numb kids, so it can work in the short term but it means kids aren't really getting what they need. The screens also get in the way of deep focus and study, so it might help kids do better on assessments at the end of the school year (especially if administered via the same on-screen program as much of the curriculum) but they will retain less of the information than they would if they were getting more direct instruction, reading physical books, working with physical teaching tools, or just working with pencil and paper. And they also don't learn to deal with boredom or frustration, which will make it hard to impossible for them to go deeper into subjects as they get older.

The reliance on screens only makes sense in the moment, as a panic move to deal with a situation that has been set up to fail students and teachers alike. As a purposeful approach to curriculum, it doesn't really make sense.

Teacher here, it’s not just the behavior issues - it’s also lack of parent accountability. If your child misses 20+ days of school what am I to do if the child never makes it up? You have kids missing 50,60,70 days of school or arriving at 11:30AM.

According to many posters here, it is racist for you to hold black students to account for missing school. Much like it is for giving scores earned on standardized tests.

Many posters here are not teachers, I can see though listening to professionals is a problem here. Parent voice should always be included but not at the expense of letting professional voices drown out.

And to be frank, it is more racist to assume that it is due to blackness or that equates to poverty. White children who are in poverty and not held accountable also do poorly.

Standardized testing should also be kept to a minimum. The funny thing is people think this is ‘key’ and while it’s important the US over does standardized state testing. Countries that are outperforming us do NOT do these yearly. They will do them at pivotal grades and some just twice.

The US has adopted a half baked teach to test model that does not work for most children, unless…ding ding ding -you have parents who can provide supplemental support.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If they really wanted to try something like this, I wonder if it wouldn’t be better to start with two schools that are closer together in terms of at-risk population (DME’s stated concern) or test scores (correlated but obviously not the same).

People who bought within the Maury boundary paid a premium to do so because of the school. That’s not to say they are entitled to go there — boundaries change sometimes, etc — but just to say that these are people for whom going to a school with a certain cohort of on-grade level or advanced learners was important enough to pay a lot more money than they would have if they had bought a couple of blocks over. They are not going to “come quietly” if you are all of a sudden going to organize things in a way that will put their kids in classrooms that are now 50% below grade level.

If you start by evening out two schools closer together on those measures, you are likely to get less vociferous opposition, because the changes will be less dramatic, and in the process of doing it are likely to learn more about how to make this model both more effective academically and more attractive to families (important for retaining the more invested families/higher performing kids you are trying to spread around).

Or if there was more trust that all kids are going to get the level of instruction they need, instead of pretending it is wrong to want your kid to get that. And of course the current fad for disregarding, you know, actual teaching and learning methods, is much worse for poor kids than rich kids. If instruction at Maury hadn’t been so haphazard already it might have been an easier ask.

This for sure. Even now at Maury, several teachers have told me how difficult it is to effectively teach the range of children they are presented with in each class. Broadening the range — or weighting it further in one direction — would only make it that much harder to provide the needed education to each student there. If a school offers tracking, and you can be confident your kid will be taught content at their level with a cohort around the same level, you can fill the school however you want.

But you kind of miss my point. The teaching methods are horrible now, no matter the track. all computers, no homework, no drilling, no tests to study for, no books, no consistently corrected papers. No independent research. It’s bad for our privileged kids and even worse for unprivileged kids.

What school are you at? I have to give kids HW and teach PK4…
The upper grades only use the computer for iReady or exams. We also have physical books…
Also the drill and kill method has proven to be subpar at least a decade ago.
Kids also do projects and as far as testing it’s frequent because iReady tests, paper tests are kept to a minimum to avoid going even more overboard, teaching to test is something people try to reserve for CAPE.

You literally just listed at least 5 things in there that reinforce what I am saying about instructions. (and no, there are not text books.)

I surely did not, paper tests aren’t a form of teaching and again drill and kill isn’t learning. And maybe at your school there’s no physical books, my school has them.
Either way education does need a little less tech, this will only happen if we cut class sizes in half or the lower grades Pk-1 get 2 aides and the upper grades get 1.
Both are unlikely to happen unless parents want to advocate too?

Drill and kill is the way kids in fact learn, especially math.

Drill and kill might help kids memorize procedures, but research consistently shows that learning rooted in conceptual understanding, active participation, and varied practice leads to greater understanding, retention, and problem-solving ability—and even better exam outcomes.

Why are parents arguing with me on this? You can easily do a search to show I am correct. The way you learned as a kid is not how it’s taught now by any reputable teacher.

1. Active learning outperforms lectures (and by extension, rote drills).
2. Prioritizing conceptual understanding yields stronger retention than combining it with procedural drills.
3. Three decades of math reform reinforce the value of conceptual connection over rote rule-following.

yeah our plummeting national tests scores sure do show that we are doing a good job with math.

“Conceptual connection” literally cannot happen if you don’t drill and practice the math facts and later practice sufficiently with problem sets. Let’s not even get started on the fact that regardless of the teaching philosophy, we are migrating to teaching via computer programs instead of paper and pencil, in a way that even more degrades the focused practice and recall actually needed to learn.

But again thank you for showing why I don’t trust the current “ed policy” trends for a second. If you all had your way kids would learn even less than they already do. I can afford $500 month to send my kid to Mathnasium to fill in the gaps but most DCPS parents cannot.

This^^^

I agree that repeated application of procedures and algorithms is critical for building automaticity. Kids need that practice—both in school and at home—so that the basic operations become second nature, almost like muscle memory. Over time, some students will even discover for themselves why the algorithms work, building conceptual understanding on the back end.

A more sound approach—though far harder to implement at scale—would start with conceptual foundations first, letting students understand why the math works, and only then introducing the algorithms as a practical application of those concepts. That’s a far more durable way to learn, and programs like Beast Academy or AoPS do this very well.

The sad reality, though, is that most schools can’t execute on that model effectively. What happens in practice is that kids never really get the conceptual grounding, and at the same time, the procedural and algorithmic practice gets short-changed. They end up in the worst possible world—not conceptually grounded and not algorithmically fluent. Given that choice, algorithmic fluency is certainly preferable; it at least opens the door for conceptual insights to develop later. So while drill-and-kill isn’t the most sound pedagogically, in a large-scale school system it’s often the most realistic approach to insist on up front.

You are funny. This is why kids will forget as soon as they get to stop (after HS). This is why so many kids hate math and do not have a deeper understanding.

I tried, people who are not teachers think they know what goes on at schools. It is drill and kill, at the majority. This is why many scores suck or are average.

I think PP agrees with you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If they really wanted to try something like this, I wonder if it wouldn’t be better to start with two schools that are closer together in terms of at-risk population (DME’s stated concern) or test scores (correlated but obviously not the same).

People who bought within the Maury boundary paid a premium to do so because of the school. That’s not to say they are entitled to go there — boundaries change sometimes, etc — but just to say that these are people for whom going to a school with a certain cohort of on-grade level or advanced learners was important enough to pay a lot more money than they would have if they had bought a couple of blocks over. They are not going to “come quietly” if you are all of a sudden going to organize things in a way that will put their kids in classrooms that are now 50% below grade level.

If you start by evening out two schools closer together on those measures, you are likely to get less vociferous opposition, because the changes will be less dramatic, and in the process of doing it are likely to learn more about how to make this model both more effective academically and more attractive to families (important for retaining the more invested families/higher performing kids you are trying to spread around).

Or if there was more trust that all kids are going to get the level of instruction they need, instead of pretending it is wrong to want your kid to get that. And of course the current fad for disregarding, you know, actual teaching and learning methods, is much worse for poor kids than rich kids. If instruction at Maury hadn’t been so haphazard already it might have been an easier ask.

This for sure. Even now at Maury, several teachers have told me how difficult it is to effectively teach the range of children they are presented with in each class. Broadening the range — or weighting it further in one direction — would only make it that much harder to provide the needed education to each student there. If a school offers tracking, and you can be confident your kid will be taught content at their level with a cohort around the same level, you can fill the school however you want.

But you kind of miss my point. The teaching methods are horrible now, no matter the track. all computers, no homework, no drilling, no tests to study for, no books, no consistently corrected papers. No independent research. It’s bad for our privileged kids and even worse for unprivileged kids.

What school are you at? I have to give kids HW and teach PK4…
The upper grades only use the computer for iReady or exams. We also have physical books…
Also the drill and kill method has proven to be subpar at least a decade ago.
Kids also do projects and as far as testing it’s frequent because iReady tests, paper tests are kept to a minimum to avoid going even more overboard, teaching to test is something people try to reserve for CAPE.

You literally just listed at least 5 things in there that reinforce what I am saying about instructions. (and no, there are not text books.)

I surely did not, paper tests aren’t a form of teaching and again drill and kill isn’t learning. And maybe at your school there’s no physical books, my school has them.
Either way education does need a little less tech, this will only happen if we cut class sizes in half or the lower grades Pk-1 get 2 aides and the upper grades get 1.
Both are unlikely to happen unless parents want to advocate too?

Drill and kill is the way kids in fact learn, especially math.

Drill and kill might help kids memorize procedures, but research consistently shows that learning rooted in conceptual understanding, active participation, and varied practice leads to greater understanding, retention, and problem-solving ability—and even better exam outcomes.

Why are parents arguing with me on this? You can easily do a search to show I am correct. The way you learned as a kid is not how it’s taught now by any reputable teacher.

1. Active learning outperforms lectures (and by extension, rote drills).
2. Prioritizing conceptual understanding yields stronger retention than combining it with procedural drills.
3. Three decades of math reform reinforce the value of conceptual connection over rote rule-following.

yeah our plummeting national tests scores sure do show that we are doing a good job with math.

“Conceptual connection” literally cannot happen if you don’t drill and practice the math facts and later practice sufficiently with problem sets. Let’s not even get started on the fact that regardless of the teaching philosophy, we are migrating to teaching via computer programs instead of paper and pencil, in a way that even more degrades the focused practice and recall actually needed to learn.

But again thank you for showing why I don’t trust the current “ed policy” trends for a second. If you all had your way kids would learn even less than they already do. I can afford $500 month to send my kid to Mathnasium to fill in the gaps but most DCPS parents cannot.

This^^^

I agree that repeated application of procedures and algorithms is critical for building automaticity. Kids need that practice—both in school and at home—so that the basic operations become second nature, almost like muscle memory. Over time, some students will even discover for themselves why the algorithms work, building conceptual understanding on the back end.

A more sound approach—though far harder to implement at scale—would start with conceptual foundations first, letting students understand why the math works, and only then introducing the algorithms as a practical application of those concepts. That’s a far more durable way to learn, and programs like Beast Academy or AoPS do this very well.

The sad reality, though, is that most schools can’t execute on that model effectively. What happens in practice is that kids never really get the conceptual grounding, and at the same time, the procedural and algorithmic practice gets short-changed. They end up in the worst possible world—not conceptually grounded and not algorithmically fluent. Given that choice, algorithmic fluency is certainly preferable; it at least opens the door for conceptual insights to develop later. So while drill-and-kill isn’t the most sound pedagogically, in a large-scale school system it’s often the most realistic approach to insist on up front.

You are funny. This is why kids will forget as soon as they get to stop (after HS). This is why so many kids hate math and do not have a deeper understanding.

I tried, people who are not teachers think they know what goes on at schools. It is drill and kill, at the majority. This is why many scores suck or are average.

Huh? PP gave a great explanation of what is actually happening: we’re not doing conceptual concepts OR fluency effectively. Pure drill and kill would at least result in some fluency. But that is absolutely not what is happening in elementary (or middle) schools.