Underachieving kids

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You forgot the age appropriate part. Business proposal at 5th grade is not going to be more sophisticated than a lemon stand. I call that waste of time.

Neither is a fifth-grade research paper. Or a fifth-grade creative writing piece, or opinion piece. Fifth grade math is very unsophisticated as well. And history and science at the fifth-grade level, good grief. All, all a waste of time.

This is absurd. I happen to think all the things you listed here are valuable exercises for a 5th grader. All would be excellent foundations for a business proposal later should the kids decide to go into business when they grow up.

Our private does research papers in elementary school, especially in weekly library class. Throughout 4th and 5th grade my child had to pick a state (he picked Montana), a country (he picked Iceland, then another time Madagascar), an animal (don't remember....), type of pollution ("space pollution"), etc. Then put 5 pages together in an order that made sense, solid grammar and correct spelling. Didn't seem like a waste of time to me.
They also have weekly creative writing on Fridays in 3rd grade. They have 45 minutes to write - they are given a sheet with a starter sentence, a cartoon and a list of 10 words to use in the short story. I intend to save these forever! Some are really funny, like the robot that worked and then died the day after the warranty expired (wonder what appliance I was complaining about at home!).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

2.0 is a disaster. Its a bunch of poorly hobbled together and disorganized mediocre interpretations of what MCPS thinks will be on PARCC. Its 100% about gaming the new test and they've done a pretty piss poor job in the process. Common Core is just a standard. How and what is taught is all on the idiots in MCPS. The poor teachers can barely get a lesson plan together from this junk much less figure out to work around and above it to provide appropriate level work to many of the kids in the system. They are just trying to survive.

2.0 is creating a generation of kids that are learning how not to achieve. These aren't traditional underachievers but normal and above average kids who if given even a little motivation in school or presented with an expectation to do more would be learning at a much deeper level. Its actually smart behavior to only expend the necessary energy to complete a mundane task. You're not going to use calligraphy to fill out your DMV form. Academic work in MCPS is the equivalent of filling out a DMV form nothing more.

Is that what you tell your child? "Eh, just do enough to get by. That's the economically rational thing to do." It's not what I tell mine.

What you tell your child during the 10 to 20 minutes you hopefully talk about their school day, is not nearly as important as the 5 hours they are in school every day. They are in school for 5 hours, that is where the mediocrity get implanted like the previous posters have superbly described. I don't know if you are blessed with little robot kids who do exactly as told, but yes my kids (and one is in a HGC) will do as much as it takes to get a P because there are some nebulous expectations for an ES which they will never achieve.

I love it when people blame the parents. When my kids were little and not supposed to keep score in soccer, they all kept track of the score. Even when told not to, that it was all for fun, they all kept score. No parent was out there telling them that they were behind in goals, or what the score was. It's intrinsic in the human psyche to seek positive reinforcement for behavior.

Think back to when you were a child, think if you consistently put in more effort, rewrote and fine-tuned your writing assignments and you received the same grade as a kid that just submitted his first pass. I know I would have felt like a pogue to put forth extra effort if I was going to get the same P grade. There is no motivation to excel, and so kids will not excel, which is what this school system wants.

They will close the acheivement gap by bringing the higher performing kids down, our kids are a big social experiment.

Kids compare grades they always have and always will. You can spout that PC crap about do your best, but that message means less and less as they get older and develop their own independence and motivations.

[Anonymous]

My kids ignore the P. They are happy to get them all right or to create a story they think is funny or have a new fact at the end of the day. I am sorry it is not like that for your kids PP..can't generalize that to everyone though.

[Anonymous]

PP at 10:40, I think it's a mistake to assume that everybody is like you and your children. Some people are; some people aren't.

[Anonymous]

Mediocrity rules. Those who are protesting are the ones whose kids actually have potential to do better. Those with the kids without potential are happy with this curriculum.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Mediocrity rules. Those who are protesting are the ones whose kids actually have potential to do better. Those with the kids without potential are happy with this curriculum.

You sure know a lot about the children of anonymous posters on an Internet message board.

[Anonymous]

I'm working on my laptop while sitting here with three 5th graders who are doing their homework. I just asked them what they thought of the P grading system. They said they hated it, it's impossible to get an ES. I asked them if they would work/try harder if they were able to get A,B,C instead, they yelled "Yes" in unison.

Now one is talking about how he hates math. Another kid asked if he needed help, he said he's just pumping through it because it's not graded anyway so why bother. They all agreed if it's not checked to not even bother with the work.

My 2nd grader just finished her reading assignment for the week. She counted the vowels in each of these super easy words. Then she did a shape puzzle, so for example the word big would be a tall box for b, a short box for i, and a box that extends below the line for g. Pathetic.

I'm getting comments to not generalize, and you are right I don't know other people's children but I know what I see right in front of me.

[Anonymous]

OK. I just talked to a sixth-grader, a second-grader, and the parent of a fifth-grader, and we all think that P/I/N in elementary school is fine.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Mediocrity rules. Those who are protesting are the ones whose kids actually have potential to do better. Those with the kids without potential are happy with this curriculum.

Then as the parent, you should push those kids with potential to do better.

I check all my DCs' CW and HW papers when they bring them home (which is every Friday). If I see something wrong or incomplete, I ask them what happened. Then I go over that problem with them and make them do it correctly at home. We don't have extra tutoring or prepping, but I do expect them to do their best regardless of an I, P or ES.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Mediocrity rules. Those who are protesting are the ones whose kids actually have potential to do better. Those with the kids without potential are happy with this curriculum.

You sound (style, odd logic) a lot like the Blair hater. Do you troll about ES as well as HS?

[Anonymous]

Now one is talking about how he hates math. Another kid asked if he needed help, he said he's just pumping through it because it's not graded anyway so why bother. They all agreed if it's not checked to not even bother with the work.

This is when I (the parent) jump in to remind them that a test that will be graded is coming up and they are responsible for the concepts.

[Anonymous]

You guys that are jumping in and hovering over your kids are going to pay a huge price later. This is why MCPS is so screwed up, there should be motivation built into the educational system for a child to want to succeed and be rewarded. My friend that just had two children who were at the top of their classes at a W school leave for to colleges, her advice is to make the child responsible for their own education as soon as possible, because you can't check over everything and they will grow to resent you. I know for a fact other than reminding her kids when large projects were due she never did any checking over of homework. They are going to be able to go to college and succeed because their motivation does not come from a helicopter parent.

If you hop into every conversation with lectures when your kid has friends over they are going to stop talking to you or just not talk freely in front of you. The conversation then went into how he's never received any graded homework back, the teacher leafs through the papers and if enough kids get the same problems wrong then the teacher goes over the problem again. This is not teaching, it's laziness. There is no feedback for the kid.

[Anonymous]

I don't understand your point. You aren't saying that trying to get kids to have intrinsic motivation is helicopter parenting, and in the long run it's better for parents to just let kids to have the extrinsic motivation of grades -- are you?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Mediocrity rules. Those who are protesting are the ones whose kids actually have potential to do better. Those with the kids without potential are happy with this curriculum.

You sound (style, odd logic) a lot like the Blair hater. Do you troll about ES as well as HS?

Are you saying someone equates Blair with mediocrity? Isn't Blair a HS?

Anyways, how do you know who is who on an anonymous thread?

[Anonymous]

Education is too important to be left to the educators alone - Private or Public, push your kids so that they can achieve their true potential.