Reply to The decade-long "learning recession"

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[quote=Anonymous]We moved here from Europe when the kids were in 5th and 6th grades respectively, and they started at Wood Acres and Pyle.

I was struck by the lack of agency given to teachers here.

For example, I was surprised that assignments were evaluated and graded based on rubriks, instead of the teacher having the leeway to give feedback based on each student's needs and weaknesses. Let's take writing: if the assignment was to write a thesis and back it up with evidence, the teacher didn't flag any other issues, like grammar or spelling or substance or flow. The kids could get an A on an essay that read like crap but that checked the box of "backed up the thesis with evidence."

Generally, you can tell by talking to teachers that they're just following orders from above and that they are so restrained by demands from parents ("I need to talk to you about my kid three times a week"), risk of scandal ("My kid says you wouldn't let them snack in class and I'm going to sue because they have diabetes"), budgetary constraints, time constraints. They seem to be just like factory workers moving wares along a conveyor belt.

And OMG the amount of bureaucracy in US schools. All the emails, parent evenings, standardized tests, questionnaires, busy work aka useless worksheets given to kids - it's a huge waste and drain on resources and morale.

There are many other issues of course but these are some of the issues that really stood out to me when we moved here.

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