Reply to My average/somewhat slacker 6th grader got straight As...WTH???

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Reply to "My average/somewhat slacker 6th grader got straight As...WTH???"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Sad that they have dumbed down the education in MCPS. It used to be a great school district. [/quote]

I'm a teacher in MCPS. The dumbing down has occurred in response to rampant parent pressure to crank out those As at all costs. My older child was able to get an excellent education in this system, but we felt we had to put the younger one in private school.[/quote]

Thanks for the insight. Again, it's sad that parents think an A is all that matters. These kids are going to struggle when they get to college. [/quote]
They'll struggle when they get to HS, too, my experience is expectations pick up significantly.
I witnessed exactly this when a teacher went out on long term leave.  The sub started actually grading the kids on the material they should have been learning and a cabal of parents and students had her replaced in no time and the admin arbitrarily added a 10% bump to everyone's grade.  [/quote]

Ugh.  That's horrible PP.

My DS never struggled in school but was never really a completely straight A student either (usually all As and a B...).  In 6th grade, he pulled down straight As with barely a nod to homework.  I didn't understand it.  Now, in 7th, he's getting his butt kicked.  It's as though they pushed the kids through 6th to make the transition to MS easier and, now, the ones in higher level classes (advanced or honors) are really getting nailed.  I hear parents yelling about grades constantly now where last year they were bragging about their childrens' intelligence.

Frankly, I'm glad DS is facing some rigor prior to high school.  We were seriously considering going to private but if the rigor keeps up, we'll reassess.[/quote]

Interesting that you mention honors and advanced courses. In our MCPS middle school, there are no honors classes and all classes are taught at the "advanced" level. I wonder if the "advanced" part of the class is being dumbed down since now all kids have to take the advanced class. [/quote]
At our MS there is Honors geometry and GT Advanced English in all grades (maybe languages are honors, I forget).  Beyond that all world studies and english classes are labelled "Advanced" and it means they use the MCPS advanced curriculum--no idea when that was created or where the non-advanced one is/was taught.  But now "Advanced" is the standard on grade curriculum.  Beyond being silly to label everyone advanced, it does cause problems.  For example, many do not realize there are a couple sections of GT Advanced English and it's not indicated on the schedule so it's hard to confirm they are in the right section.  Given scheduling errors do happen, this would be nice to catch before school actually starts.  At our school there is only one level in Science/World Studies classes and the expectation levels seem very low.  Mostly work sheets and writing prompts that don't expect students to be able to form a sentence much less a paragraph without guidance.[/quote]

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