Reply to Article on Maury/Miner merger proposal

Forum Index » DC Public and Public Charter Schools

Reply to "Article on Maury/Miner merger proposal "

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]If they really wanted to try something like this, I wonder if it wouldn’t be better to start with two schools that are closer together in terms of at-risk population (DME’s stated concern) or test scores (correlated but obviously not the same).

People who bought within the Maury boundary paid a premium to do so because of the school. That’s not to say they are entitled to go there — boundaries change sometimes, etc — but just to say that these are people for whom going to a school with a certain cohort of on-grade level or advanced learners was important enough to pay a lot more money than they would have if they had bought a couple of blocks over. They are not going to “come quietly” if you are all of a sudden going to organize things in a way that will put their kids in classrooms that are now 50% below grade level.

If you start by evening out two schools closer together on those measures, you are likely to get less vociferous opposition, because the changes will be less dramatic, and in the process of doing it are likely to learn more about how to make this model both more effective academically and more attractive to families (important for retaining the more invested families/higher performing kids you are trying to spread around). [/quote]

Or if there was more trust that all kids are going to get the level of instruction they need, instead of pretending it is wrong to want your kid to get that. And of course the current fad for disregarding, you know, actual teaching and learning methods, is much worse for poor kids than rich kids. If instruction at Maury hadn’t been so haphazard already it might have been an easier ask. [/quote]

This for sure. Even now at Maury, several teachers have told me how difficult it is to effectively teach the range of children they are presented with in each class. Broadening the range — or weighting it further in one direction — would only make it that much harder to provide the needed education to each student there. If a school offers tracking, and you can be confident your kid will be taught content at their level with a cohort around the same level, you can fill the school however you want. [/quote]

But you kind of miss my point. The teaching methods are horrible now, no matter the track. all computers, no homework, no drilling, no tests to study for, no books, no consistently corrected papers. No independent research. It’s bad for our privileged kids and even worse for unprivileged kids. [/quote]

What school are you at? I have to give kids HW and teach PK4…
The upper grades only use the computer for iReady or exams. We also have physical books…
Also the drill and kill method has proven to be subpar at least a decade ago. 
Kids also do projects and as far as testing it’s frequent because iReady tests, paper tests are kept to a minimum to avoid going even more overboard, teaching to test is something people try to reserve for CAPE. 
[/quote]

You literally just listed at least 5 things in there that reinforce what I am saying about instructions. (and no, there are not text books.) [/quote]

I surely did not, paper tests aren’t a form of teaching and again drill and kill isn’t learning. And maybe at your school there’s no physical books, my school has them.
Either way education does need a little less tech, this will only happen if we cut class sizes in half or the lower grades Pk-1 get 2 aides and the upper grades get 1. 
Both are unlikely to happen unless parents want to advocate too?[/quote]

Drill and kill is the way kids in fact learn, especially math. [/quote]

Drill and kill might help kids memorize procedures, but research consistently shows that learning rooted in conceptual understanding, active participation, and varied practice leads to greater understanding, retention, and problem-solving ability—and even better exam outcomes.

Why are parents arguing with me on this? You can easily do a search to show I am correct. The way you learned as a kid is not how it’s taught now by any reputable teacher.

1. Active learning outperforms lectures (and by extension, rote drills).
2. Prioritizing conceptual understanding yields stronger retention than combining it with procedural drills.
3. Three decades of math reform reinforce the value of conceptual connection over rote rule-following.
[/quote]

Because you're conflating fluency practice with "rote drills" whatever that means. Fluency is important in math. It is there to support conceptual understanding, not to replace it. Practice and repetition bring concepts from short-term to long-term memory where they can be processed at a deeper level and retained over time.[/quote]

You are misrepresenting what I actually said and oversimplifying the research on math instruction.

Let's not Strawman here, I never said fluency practice (repetition to build automaticity) was useless. I criticized rote drills without conceptual grounding. Current evidence shows fluency practice works best when it’s paired with conceptual understanding, not when it’s done in isolation. You are conflating “repetition” with “rote” -Repetition can be meaningful (embedded in problem solving) or rote (mindless pattern-following). You imply all repetition is equally valuable, which is not supported by learning science. Without meaning attached, repetition tends to build brittle, short-term performance rather than flexible long-term understanding.

You're also ignoring the order of learning –and your framing makes it sound like procedural fluency naturally leads to conceptual understanding. But in math education research, the relationship is reciprocal, and when students start with conceptual grounding, fluency gains are stronger and more transferable.

Fluency matters — but research shows rote drills without understanding build brittle skills, while fluency grounded in concepts lasts and transfers.[/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