Reply to Can someone explain the "behind in math" thing?

Forum Index » Private & Independent Schools

Reply to "Can someone explain the "behind in math" thing?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]It means that to [b]stay competitive with Asia[/b], public schools offer accelerated tracks. Privates haven't found it worth their while to do that.

My kid is in MCPS and did Algebra 2 in 8th grade. This is not a publicly-available track - parents need to know to ask for it, and it's allowed on a case by case basis by the math coordinator at the middle school. [/quote]

No,  it is not just Asia.  US is not even competitive with many other European nations.  Within US, the achievement gap between Asian-Americans, White, Hispanics and Blacks is also very vast.

Only 30% of White men have gone to college in US. And this is the most priviledged class of citizens.  Pathetic. [/quote]

French person here. Not sure about other European countries, but I don't think they're all that advanced. They are more rigorous, which is sometimes not the same thing. Meaning, maybe they don't reach advanced calc in 12th grade, but what they do teach, they teach well.

I'll tell you what makes it harder to teach: heterogenous populations, namely -
1. Needing to integrate a large contingent that doesn't speak the home country's language; 
2. And being obligated by law to integrate students with special needs.

The USA is the country that does best in these two things. In France, you're lucky if a student with special needs is not bullied at school, sometimes by the teacher. They're not going to receive much in terms of services and accommodations. The kids with the gravest needs stay home, unlike here, in my kids' public school, where I see children who are very impacted by their issues and who have aides and paraeducators and pullouts and case managers. And for the foreign kids, in my country, they're told to go two grades below their actual age to catch up.

So even though the US may not have the best academic scores in international comparative tests... please read between the lines. I would rather live in a country that doesn't shut its doors to kids with special needs, and puts English language learners with their peers.

[/quote]

I agree that those are the two biggest issues that American public schools face. In order to do those things well, public schools need more federal funding. Special education is mandated by federal law, but is not (adequately) federally funded. Further, what about the needs of the other students who are not special education students or English Learners? Often, these students receive no attention after the staff directs most resources to these two groups.  [/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