Reply to 75% of Maryland 8th grade students and 69 percent of 4th grade students are at or below

Forum Index » Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS)

Reply to "75% of Maryland 8th grade students and 69 percent of 4th grade students are at or below "

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]For some reason Asian kids did fine during the pandemic. Their scores, including SAT scores, just keep going up. Why is that? [/quote]

The article says that the downward trend was from 2013.   Asian-Americans have already figured out that there are a lot of weaknesses in American education system and so they have been supplementing and teaching their kids at home.

Mostly the Asian-American parents (and specifically the moms) are very well-educated and can teach Math to their children so the children are coming out ahead in STEM. Culturally, there is a huge emphasis on education within families and the community as a whole.  Finally, most Asian-Americans first gen were highly educated people from their countries who came to the US. They are not the poorest of the poor, uneducated migrants.

The weaknesses in American education system that most Asians notice and try to overcome are -
1) Shortened school year
2) Lack of textbooks
3) Lack of final exams
4) Lack of discipline in classrooms. Disruptive students are tolerated. Parents are not responsible.
5) Lack of a well defined curriculum, syllabus that is shared with students and parents.  Textbooks and units of study that are mapped to the syllabus and curriculum.  
6) Not failing any students in any grade and holding them back
7) Grade inflation. Students earn grades for doing homework. 
8) Graded assignments and tests are not returned back to students and parents. 
9) No comprehensive, standardized curriculum, syallabus, textbooks, testing and school year nationally for all grades and all subjects.  Even SAT is going away.

What the US does extremely well -
1) Free education for everybody
2) Free transportation for coming and going to school
3) Free meals
4) Free school supplies. 
[/quote]

+1[/quote]

I agree with most of this, which is why the academic success of Asian-American students should not be used to argue why what we are doing now is just fine for any family that cares about their kids' education. [b]If you can only succeed through extensive supplementation[/b], there is a problem. The lack of textbooks and defined syllabus are a huge part of why it is hard for parents to help their kids - it takes independent work to provide that support, which may don't have. [/quote]

+1.  I was reading through the [b]exhaustive list [/b]of what needs to be overcome, it's no wonder parents are daunted.  My dad used to read my textbooks to help me with math.  My kids have no textbooks!  Not to mention that the way kids teach math is different from when I was a kid.

I also just don't understand how parents find [b]all this time for extra supplementation[/b] and have kids willing to sit and do it after a full day of school plus homework.  Are no one else's kids exhausted at the end of the day?  [/quote]

There is no exhaustive list to overcome. There is no extensive supplementation.  [b]It is normal daily teaching at home so that the kids are able to review what they learned at school and if there are any lack of comprehension the parents can clarify for the child. [/b]

The parents need to priortize their kid's education above all.  The school system is already giving free schooling, meals, supplies and transportation. Sometimes they are also giving free after and before care. They cannot do much more than this. [b]Maybe they can give textbooks. [/b]

Parents need to step up and make sure that their kids are studying at home every day.  1 hour of daily review at home in the ES and MS years is all that is needed. However, only 40% of White Americans are college educated.  Can you imagine that?  [b]Most parents are incapable of teaching their children because they are also basically uneducated. [/b]Never mind the URM and low SES households.

[b]You do need textbooks and that is one thing that parents can do for their children. Get them textbooks before school opens. Buy the textbooks second hand from Amazon and use that to guide your children.[/b]

Are the kids exhausted from being in school? Sure. My kids are.  But, they are expected to do all homework at school during lunch break and during the bus-ride home.  The daily teaching happens when my husband or I get back from work and it happens for an hour or so every day.  Weekends and holidays also include an hour or so of studying daily. Summer will also include vacation travel, some fun camps  and some academic camps.  Of course, this also means that the lives of parents revolve around the kids and their education.

Ultimately, parents are responsible if their kids are at or below grade.  [/quote]

I feel like you are illustrating part of the problem though- how do you do a daily review at home when they are provided so little materials to bring home?  Oh, you're buying textbooks that used to be provided by the school.  So now parents have to figure out WHICH textbook to buy and then pay for them.  Textbooks aren't cheap, even used ones, and then what if you make a poor selection that doesn't jive with what is being taught in class?

Also, just because someone is college educated doesn't make them a good teacher.  But it's great that you are and I'm sure your kids are high achievers because of it.[/quote]

Ignore the textbook harpy. They're simply misguided and attached to 19th century teaching methods. MCPS has everything online. If they knew how to use a computer, they'd realize  what a waste of time that nonsense is. I'm glad I live in a county that doesn't spend $$$ on making kids lug those vestiges of old times around and helps them learn how things get done today.[/quote]
Listen, I work in high tech. Have done so for 20 years. Reading a text book is a lot better than reading online.   Plus not all the textbooks are online. After I got my DC a textbook from Amazon for a particular class, their grades went up.  Textbooks alone aren't the answer, but it can help as a companion.

Clearly, whatever MCPS is doing, it's not working since the achievement gap continues to grow, and not just for illegal immigrant children.

My kids are now in HS. So, we've gone through 2.0 (guinea pig) all the way through. I was willing to give 2.0 a shot.  But MCPS blew it.  Even with 2.0 being deprecated by the time my youngest was in 7th grade, the bar was set so low that they could sleep through class and get an A.  MS did jacksh1t to prepare kids for the more rigorous AP classes.

It seems to be fairly well known that MCPS has massive grade inflation.  You can get an extra point for Honors Health.  Really? Honors Health? My kids have stated that the "honors" classes are a joke.

MCPS lowers the bar in the name of "equity". The honors classes are labeled as such to boost lower performing kids GPA so they don't feel badly.  It's like the "everyone gets a trophy for just participating" crap. It's not helping these kids.. at all.
[/quote]

Me too! I've worked in high-tech, including multiple fang companies, over the past 30 years but almost never buy textbooks these days because they're better resources available to anyone who bothers looking online. [/quote]

My spouse works for these companies and buys books all the time.  [/quote]

So does mine but they hardly buy any books these days. Most of that material  is obsolete by the time it hits the shelves and better is available online. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics