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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]This is directly related to the earlier post about top tier privates. The reason "middling" kids get in to top colleges from these schools is that colleges know that they are prepared. Many public schools are a different story.[/quote]

This.

My kid had a nearly 100% average in math in mcps middle school.

His private high school placement test had him repeat algebra freshman year…and we quickly got him a tutor to help him keep up.

Long story short: mcps math is a joke. [/quote]
Long story short is that you’re a grossly negligent parent [/quote]
dp.. how so?  Is it not the school's responsibility to make sure the kid knows the content?  Or is school just supposed to be a babysitter, and the parent is supposed to teach them at home?

-MCPS parent [/quote]
You’re a parent and don’t think to keep tabs with how your kid is doing, what they’re learning, and supporting them? This is your fault.[/quote]
The kid is getting As/Bs, and the teacher has not indicated that the kid has any learning issues. Is the parent supposed to give the kid an exam at home to make sure they know the content?[/quote]
So much of what’s missing is the basic framework of what it means to learn. My kid scored an 800 math from a public high school where the average math score is 550, and I never supplemented (no RSM, no AoPS, no SAT prep).

But I did explain a few things that the school never seemed to let the kids know:

> When a teacher asks a question, it’s not because he wants the answer. It’s because he wants the student to learn how to produce the answer out of their own head.

> So long as you are working toward the goal of being able to produce the answer out of your own head, you can ask for any amount of help, and the teacher will be happy to provide it.

> A student’s job is not just to pass the unit test. It’s to retain the information in their head until the end of the year, and then for next year, and the year after that.

With that framework, the math instruction at my kid’s mediocre public school was entirely sufficient. Without it, even good kids just roll forward, not asking questions (because they think a smart kid should understand everything immediately), completing the homework and passing unit tests (because they think that’s the goal),  and even getting As and taking accelerated math if they are a quick study, but not really learning or retaining skills.

This is exactly what happened to the PP’s kid who was accelerated in MCPS but couldn’t pass the private school placement test, as well as to the student in the article: she said she felt “like a lot of the information never really stuck with me.” It’s like no one ever told her that it was her job, as a student, to grab the information and to make it stick in her own head.

Maybe this framework didn’t need to be spelled out in prior generations. But nowadays when more and more of us never even bother to memorize phone numbers or driving directions, we need to make this part explicit. [/quote]
My unpopular opinion has always been it is the fault of parents. When people complain about schools not forcing their kid to memorize, I sit in shock that they don’t get that you should be supplementing the education with actual 1-on-1 home time and teaching students the value of education. No one should have to scream at you to memorize the content in class. Unless your kid is disabled, there’s nothing stopping your kid from learning the content.

Parents used to help kids with their learning process. Now they’ve offloaded the education to the iPad.[/quote]

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