Reply to Can achievement gap be closed with extra tutoring?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Many parents think the parenting is providing the basics. [b]School will take care of the education. [/b]So it's really a gap in expectations. If you expect 100% of your child's education to be taken care of by their school, there is most likely going to be a gap forever. When we meet with parents in kindergarten at my Title 1 school, many of them are surprised and even shocked that their child is below grade level. "How can they be below grade level when they just started school?" They think that school will teach them all that they need to know.[/quote]

That is what my parents thought in the 1970s, and so did almost everyone else's parents, in a public school system in a university town in the Midwest. Most of us went on to advanced degrees and professional careers.[/quote]
We live in different times due to global competition.  I wish folks would stop comparing the US now to the "good old days".  I grew up in the 70's./80's. A lot of the students that went on to top colleges back then probably wouldn't get in today.

[b]Back then, rote learning was the thing[/b]. Terrible way to teach. Back then, we had more factory jobs, and people could live a comfortable middle class life with such jobs. Not so much anymore in many places in this country.

STEM wasn't as a big a deal back then as it is today.

Please step out of the 70's time warp.[/quote]

I'm guessing that you don't remember a lot of the educational fads in the 70s like: open classrooms, "new math" and whole language.  Umm, no, not all of us were doing rote memorization.  But memorizing information as a small child never hurt anyone.  How do you think our country led the tech revolution if all of us were idiots?[/quote]

Exactly, I received a superb math education from public schools in that period, wouldn't trade it for anything.  When it worked, it worked very well, and it produced more advanced math/science students in the US than ever before.  But for regular students it probably was a failure, or at least an experiment that needed more time than there was patience for.  My grandmother was a nurse, and her day-to-day math skills learned during the depression were probably much more reliable than those of the weaker students in my graduating class.  I also have no problem with rote--there are things you understand because they've been explained to you, but there are just as many that you glean through experience or even the boredom of repetition.

Also growing up in SoCal, I had classmates whose parents were migrant workers.  The idea that everyone will be educated and that schools don't cooperate with immigration authorities is long established in my upbringing.  I benefited from these experiences and the openness of that time period.  I don't want my kids in the segregated schools of my parents' generation.[/quote]

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