MCPS-Big fail!
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Anonymous
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PP here, the one who wrote that enrichment is all well and good, but the problem is that parents are having to fill large gaps in the basic curriculum.
All the posters here who are discussing MOCO high schools are not quite on point with the OP. She has a fourth grader. it's those with the elementary aged kids who are the experimental gunea pigs of Curriculum 2.0. I never had kids in the pre-2.0 era but it appears there are vast differences and kids at the elementary level are not being taught to their full potential. The kids who have made it to high school are lucky - whatever problems had existed previously, there may have been a glimmer of MOCO's former glory in their educations. That's no longer the case and perents are freaked out about the huge gaps they are seeing in their kids educations. If you yourself had a lackluster spelling education, didn't learn math well, etc etc in the 70s and 80s, great. But the best school districts in this nation and around the world are currently teaching to their elementary schoolers' potential in all areas of the curriculum, and parents are noticing that MOCO is not. Sad, but true. |
Anonymous
Hello -- on my short block in Silver Spring are three Ph.Ds, three lawyers (one Biglaw), and out of the remaining 20 or so adults, all have college degrees and 12 that I know of have Masters degrees. One lobbyist pulls in the big bucks but he doesn't have graduate degrees. We llive her for quality of life reasons and because we've chosen professions that aren't as highly paid, but it doesn't make us any less educated. |
Anonymous
A very small percentage of kids graduating from MoCo are accepted to Ivys. There's been years at some of the W's where the acceptance rate has been zero, and that's with upwards of 60-70 applicants. So if you're looking for Ivy League preparation, Moco may not be the best fit for your child. It is very reasonable to look at where moco falls overall by looking up, down, around, etc. The county is highly regarded across the country. It may not be up to your standards, but it's pretty darn good. |
Anonymous
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2.0 is supposed to focus more on critical thinking. The jobs in the future will require more critical thinking. Whether the ES kids today actually are better prepared for such jobs of the future is TBD obviously, but learning how to spell words in ES isn't going to help towards critical thinking skills. That's probably why the curriculum isn't focusing so much on spelling. Although, I do find my kids' papers corrected when there are spelling errors.
I'm not saying people shouldn't know how to spell. But every parent is screaming that our schools aren't preparing our kids for the future job market. Here, MCPS is trying something to address this issue by implementing a curriculum that emphasizes these skills, ie critical thinking. I'm no 2.0 rah rah cheerleader, but people who have this attitude of "the sky is falling" regarding 2.0 and our kids education are a bit paranoid. Of course, as parents we should be concerned with our kids' education, but sometimes I feel like people around here, or especially on this forum, are helicopter parents who think they know better how to educate kids for the future. I would really love to see these parents try to teach 25+ kids in each class with varying abilities and backgrounds and prepare them for the future. Current and future jobs require way more critical thinking, problem solving skills vs. white collar jobs in the 20th century that was all about sitting at a desk and shuffling paper, or blue color jobs working at a manufacturing plant. This is what the 20th century school curriculum was designed for. Today, we need creative, ingenious, bold, outside the box thinkers. I don't think the old curriculum, which focuses more on rote than critical thinking skills in ES level, helps produce these types of people. Whether 2.0 does so remains to be seen, but certainly the old ways won't. HS kids today are actually the limbo generation where the curriculum they went through was designed for the 20th century, but the kids are going into a 21st century, technology driven job market. Those people that started the tech revolution may have been educated the old way, but these innovators are few and far between, and I think such people would excel no matter what kind of curriculum they studied under. To generate more such people, we need a curriculum that will foster more critical, outside the box thinking, and we need to start early, like in ES. 2.0 isn't perfect, but it's a start, which hopefully will lead to something better than we had before. 2.0 needs an overhaul. Teachers need to be given better training and more time to develop lesson plans. BTW - I'm not a teacher or educator. I'm a parent that is just as worried about my kids' futures as every other parent here. What I do know is that the old way of learning in school isn't going to help their future. |
Anonymous
Again, that's pathetic. My kids may or may not be Ivy material. I don't care. What I expect is that this supposedly good school district teach to their ability levels and encourage their learning. Not just quit challenging them at the minimum bar level. |
Anonymous
This is the most reasonable post here. I agree 100%. |
Anonymous
And you will never be convinced that is not happening. I am completely satisfied with the rigor in my child's classes, and I have a pretty smart kid. Are there classes that are not as stimulating as others? Yes. Is every teacher the best of the best? No. And I can also say that for the two highly regarded colleges I attended. Is the county failing our child while swimming in mediocrity? That has not been our experience. |
Anonymous
But there's no evidence that the old curriculum didn't provide necessary critical thinking skills, is there? There's also no evidence the new 2.0 will improve CR skills either. Did I miss something? |
Anonymous
Well, I don't know every college/HS kids who were educated in this country, but from the articles that I have read from industry leaders, and from my own limited experience in high tech, I don't think we are producing enough workers with critical thinking skills. As I stated in my post, it does remain to be seen whether 2.0 produces more critical thinkers, but learning by rote certainly doesn't. We need to do *something* to prepare our kids for a more technology driven world. I don't know that 2.0 is the answer, but it's a start. Let's get the kinks out. Let's figure out what's working and what's not. But let's not go back to the old way of teaching. That's not going to help them prepare for the future. Let's not think that just because they can spell hard words or can memorize multiplication facts by 1st grade is going to develop critical thinking skills. |
Anonymous
Guess what year this was written. Our Nation is at risk. Our once unchallenged preeminence in commerce, industry, science, and technological innovation is being overtaken by competitors throughout the world. This report is concerned with only one of the many causes and dimensions of the problem, but it is the one that undergirds American prosperity, security, and civility. We report to the American people that while we can take justifiable pride in what our schools and colleges have historically accomplished and contributed to the United States and the well-being of its people, the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people. What was unimaginable a generation ago has begun to occur--others are matching and surpassing our educational attainments. If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war. As it stands, we have allowed this to happen to ourselves. We have even squandered the gains in student achievement made in the wake of the Sputnik challenge. Moreover, we have dismantled essential support systems which helped make those gains possible. We have, in effect, been committing an act of unthinking, unilateral educational disarmament. Our society and its educational institutions seem to have lost sight of the basic purposes of schooling, and of the high expectations and disciplined effort needed to attain them. This report, the result of 18 months of study, seeks to generate reform of our educational system in fundamental ways and to renew the Nation's commitment to schools and colleges of high quality throughout the length and breadth of our land. That we have compromised this commitment is, upon reflection, hardly surprising, given the multitude of often conflicting demands we have placed on our Nation's schools and colleges. They are routinely called on to provide solutions to personal, social, and political problems that the home and other institutions either will not or cannot resolve. We must understand that these demands on our schools and colleges often exact an educational cost as well as a financial one. |
Anonymous
Ah and because it hasn't been your experience, that means that if it is happening in someone else's experience at another school, that must mean that person is just elitist. Right. |
Anonymous
Also, I can say that in my experience, my kids are getting MUCH less individual attention than I did in public school in the 80s. And that they are spending far more of their time just doing mindless busywork. I am seeing far less critical thinking being taught than what I had. I am teaching it at home, when possible, after a full day of work and school when the kids are worn out. I think that accepting this as some kind of improvement is a joke. |
Anonymous
Yes, I'd also like to know our future surgeons, judges, etc were stretched academically, not just "college-ready." |
Anonymous
And you, pp, are truly happy with your kids' (non-magnet) education? |
Anonymous
Exactly. And that is the problem - MCPS is not concerned about challenging every kid, they just want to hit their numbers. |