Reply to Should I send my kids to mathnasium?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The “US is terrible at teaching math” is just an excuse, one of a few I’ve heard, to spend money and make your 6yo sit and do extra math two nights a week.

I’ve lived in other countries. My kids have gone to their schools. It’s all the same. FWIW people in those other countries send their kids to kumon too. [/quote]

I don't think the US is terrible.  I think FCPS is terrible, largely because they don't have a curriculum or textbook.  [b]The classes look to me like the teacher is downloading worksheets from the internet, cobbling together a curriculum the best she can,[/b] and using time fillers as stations otherwise.  I also don't think the centers model is beneficial to anyone after maybe 2nd grade.

The classes I had back in the 1980s in flyover country were much more rigorous and demanding than what I'm seeing in FCPS AAP.  [/quote]

This is true for DC's class. They have a spiral notebook for math and the first few minutes of every class are spent cutting a worksheet down to size to fit on the notebook paper and gluing it in. They get about 10 mins of direct instruction while they're sitting on a carpet, and some of that time is spent getting everyone to find a spot, be quiet, and listen. They then go back to their tables (they don't have desks) to work on their worksheet. I haven't been able to figure out where the centers come in to play in this chain of events but I know they do them because DD complains kids just mess around. This is 4th grade.

She was previously in Catholic school but the social situation was tough for her/us, it was expensive, and I drank the kool-aid that math and science are so much better in public. She was rejected from AAP this year with all of her scores in the high 120s so we do Mathnasium to ensure she's actually getting an education. The irony is that monthly fees for Mathnasium cost about 50% of her entire Catholic school tuition but that's life. [/quote]

Ten minutes of direct instruction and then time doing a worksheet [i]is [/i]math class.  Whether the worksheet came out of a textbook or not isn't an issue.  For all those people lamenting the quality of grade school math, they seem to be forgetting that it is grade school math.  [/quote]

So without a textbook, what resource should I point my DD to when she can't hear what the teacher is saying because kids are talking and punching each other, and when she copies the notes from the whiteboard incorrectly because she can't read the teacher's messy handwriting? Why did I have to learn about Kahn Academy and Prodigy from this site and why do I have to spend time hunting around on the internet for other examples of the exact lesson the teacher is trying to teach them? Just rhetorical questions, no answers needed. Nothing anyone says here is going to justify any of that in my mind or make math class any less chaotic for my DD. [/quote]
How about discussing this issues with the school principal to get to the root. The AAP can do better.[/quote]

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