General Frustration and Disappointment

[Anonymous]

If it helps, this is happening everywhere. We were in FCPS and we moved to a "can't go wrong!" "amazing schools!" district in suburban Chicago. Educational gaps that need to be filled at home are way too large and numerous to even keep abreast of. It's social media, tech in school, and... I think society in general is getting less intelligent and more distracted. I disagree with you that the teachers are not part of the problem. They are. Many of our elementary teachers cannot spell. They can't teach anything without tech, because they have been trained to use learning apps and the iPad / Google Ed Apps. I don't think there are a fix for this without a huge coming to terms. This is not happening quick enough for our kids and we ended up finding a cheap, no-frills private school to teach the basics through the elementary school years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:My students who come back to visit me their freshman year of college largely report that college is much easier than their high school experience, so I think they're well prepared.

I also think the experience (especially in elementary) is very non-standardized. My own child has been writing 5 paragraph essays since 3rd grade, so the anecdote about being overwhelmed by an essay is odd to me.

My now 9th and 11th graders, who were in AAP, barely wrote anything through middle school and I have been surprised at how little they write in HS.

Send them to an IB high school, they will be writing constantly.

The writing instruction is the best part of IB. My DD drafted essays regularly when she was in IB English. She went off to college very confident about her writing abilities.

And, my AP kid who majored in English Lit in college also did great. Lots of writing in her AP English classes. \She also wrote in AP History and AP foreign language. Not so much in BC Calculus or AP Physics. Lots of writing in AP Comparative Government, too.

IB proponents seem to think that AP students don't write.
I don't question that IB has a lot of writing, but AP Composition and AP Lit also requires a lot.

OK? I didn’t say anything about the AP courses. It’s not a competition. I’m glad your kid did well and that AP was a good choice for her.

And none of that changes the fact that IB teaches writing well. Both can be true.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No standards in elementary. Passing kids that should be held back. No more classroom novels with discussions. No spelling tests. Kids can’t read and write on grade-level and are pushed through the system.

Escape if you can.

Yeah, most of the kids can't read. The ones who are are reading crap. Mac Barnett came out and said much of our current crop of kid lit is crap, and I agree. Librarians are pushing this crap because they are just trying to get kids to reading ANYTHING. We don't ask our children's librarians for recs anymore because 1) Most of them actually aren't trained children's librarians and 2) The recs we have gotten have been age inappropriate or just poorly written schlock.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My students who come back to visit me their freshman year of college largely report that college is much easier than their high school experience, so I think they're well prepared.

I also think the experience (especially in elementary) is very non-standardized. My own child has been writing 5 paragraph essays since 3rd grade, so the anecdote about being overwhelmed by an essay is odd to me.

Writing a 5 paragraph essay in 3rd grade is not developmentally appropriate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I remember thinking FCPS was faltering in 2012-13. Our kids are young adults now. Parents in NOVA have a lot of heavy mental investment in the phrase "but the schools are good, we live here for the schools". The cost of living is insane, but at least the schools make the financial pain worth it. So it's very tough to get people in Fairfax to admit the hard truth to themselves that the schools have declined substantially, because if you admit that, then it means the cost of living is insane AND the schools aren't as great anymore and you're staying for both why, exactly?? Answering the question requires getting real. It would force hard decisions about one's life decisions.

I guess you pay more money to live in a desirable area and to be around other desirable people? I live in a similar area and I will say most of the families and parents around us are similarly driven and have certain expectations for their kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I was just reading Freddie DeBoer on test scores and it turns out (I had no idea until I read this) that around 2008-2012 was the peak of test scores for developed nations globally (in general, obviously there are specific outliers/trend-buckers) and developed countries have been going down since then.

So whatever's happening can't be all that political or even Covid, because it predates Covid and it crosses national borders.

But it could still be tech .

Scores started declining around 2015, which is right around when tech was widely rolled out. It's tech.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No standards in elementary. Passing kids that should be held back. No more classroom novels with discussions. No spelling tests. Kids can’t read and write on grade-level and are pushed through the system.

Escape if you can.

And the middle and high schools aren't much better.

Academically FCPS high schools are still good for high achieving students IF they can ignore all the extraneous behavior nonsense and have a decent work ethic. The students who are on the AP/Honors track aren't taking high school classes with the kids who can't read or do basic math facts. They'll get a solid education and be well prepared for college or the workforce or whatever they decide to do after they graduate. They'll walk the stage with peers who are in no way prepared for the real world but that doesn't mean they've interacted much with those peers for the past four years.

Elementary and middle schools increasingly teach to the lowest denominator at all class levels and that's a problem.

You can tell yourself what you'd like but the high schools in FCPS have gone down hill and yes I have kids in AP and honors.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I remember thinking FCPS was faltering in 2012-13. Our kids are young adults now. Parents in NOVA have a lot of heavy mental investment in the phrase "but the schools are good, we live here for the schools". The cost of living is insane, but at least the schools make the financial pain worth it. So it's very tough to get people in Fairfax to admit the hard truth to themselves that the schools have declined substantially, because if you admit that, then it means the cost of living is insane AND the schools aren't as great anymore and you're staying for both why, exactly?? Answering the question requires getting real. It would force hard decisions about one's life decisions.

I guess you pay more money to live in a desirable area and to be around other desirable people? I live in a similar area and I will say most of the families and parents around us are similarly driven and have certain expectations for their kids.

It doesn't matter if the schools are failing

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I remember thinking FCPS was faltering in 2012-13. Our kids are young adults now. Parents in NOVA have a lot of heavy mental investment in the phrase "but the schools are good, we live here for the schools". The cost of living is insane, but at least the schools make the financial pain worth it. So it's very tough to get people in Fairfax to admit the hard truth to themselves that the schools have declined substantially, because if you admit that, then it means the cost of living is insane AND the schools aren't as great anymore and you're staying for both why, exactly?? Answering the question requires getting real. It would force hard decisions about one's life decisions.

I guess you pay more money to live in a desirable area and to be around other desirable people? I live in a similar area and I will say most of the families and parents around us are similarly driven and have certain expectations for their kids.

It doesn't matter if the schools are failing

But where are the public schools NOT failing? There aren't that many places we can up and move to.

[Anonymous]

The only way to excel and get a good education with FCPS is to hire tutors.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's a you problem, OP.

Back in the day when you yourself was in school you didn't think of these things. Now that you're a parent, you do.

As someone who is now on the other side, I can assure you that 10 or 20 years from now--when you're on the other side--you're gonna realize that 99 percent of the things you worry about now will have been meaningless. Your kids will be fine.

Lordy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I grew up in FCPS in the 90's. When we decided to start a family, we moved back to the area specifically because we knew the FCPS was a very good public school system and we would never be able to afford private school. My kids were still little when COVID shut downs happened, so we weren't deep into school yet. So, I can't compare immediate pre-COVID to post-COVID. But now that my kids have gotten a little older, I have felt like the whole system is floundering around my kids and I'm having to fill gaps educationally that my parents never had to fill for me. I couldn't tell you if it is because of computers in school, social media comparison or distraction, COVID lags, or just every parent/kid getting on a race track to no where. I do feel, however, that the news about public education is scary and feels slightly hopeless and I don't feel like FCPS is responding in the right ways. I don't think it's the teachers. I think that the teachers, and even most school administrators, feel the same way. I think FCPS is being mismanaged and losing its focus on what matters most. I think COVID broke a lot of it, and maybe we're finally starting to climb out of it. I don't know what the answer is and I know I haven't defined the problem very well, if at all. I'm just venting and wondering if anyone else feels the same way.

This is all public school systems in the country.

There must be a few small systems that resist the trend, but I believe this is broadly true.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's a you problem, OP.

Back in the day when you yourself was in school you didn't think of these things. Now that you're a parent, you do.

As someone who is now on the other side, I can assure you that 10 or 20 years from now--when you're on the other side--you're gonna realize that 99 percent of the things you worry about now will have been meaningless. Your kids will be fine.

np and honestly I’m starting to believe this. The standards are low but it doesn’t matter. I have one who is out and one still in HS. Your kids are going to be who they are going to be. You really want to teach them to be hard workers and be responsible in life. We learned that and need our kids to learn that. Those are skills that are not only taught in school.

For me, personally, I don’t remember any of the classic novels and most of what I did in my traditional HS. They won’t either.

Spelling tests are irrelevant. I had them weekly and still rely on spellcheck.

Not everyone has a sieve for a brain.

[Anonymous]

We need vouchers

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Same issues in LCPS. We're at a title 1 school and most of the parents just don't care. They don't care about behavior, they don't care about scores and they don't care about what their kids are learning. The other 1/3 of the school is middle class and cares deeply about all of that and is constantly upset at the school, admin, and teachers about what's not being taught. I think most schools don't have differences as stark as our school, but it's still there. Year after year, teachers can't make it through the curriculum or teach to the grade level. Which just isn't fair to students who could be doing grade level appropriate work. Obviously the answer is differentiated classrooms (because the current system is failing everyone), but that's not politically feasible.

You're a terrible person. You are equating poverty and lack of resources in the home with not "caring." Shame on you.

Some groups with low income care about school and some don't.

Here's a random NYC chinatown school with a low income rate of 67%.

https://www.greatschools.org/new-york/queens/6488-Ps-242-Leonard-P-Stavisky-Early-Childhood-School/