Anonymous wrote:
I'm in PG County and one of my kids does have a 504 instead of an IEP. Without giving too much away he has 4 disabilities that all effect the brain but an incredibly high IQ. We were told by his school that they hadn't ever seen a kid equally as brilliant (their word) and disabled. It's kind of a difficult place to be for him because his IQ is being used against him when it comes to qualifying for services. He does well with learning via technology but not with learning in the traditional methods. The way CC is set up is not good for him at all especially since it uses different verbiages and steps.

PP, it sounds as though your highly gifted, learning disabled child s not being well served by the school district. I am sorry for you, and hope that you can find help among people experienced with 2E (Twice exceptional) children. It s hard for a child to qualify for an IEP when he is performing "average" and highly gifted kids often can use their smarts to compensate for their disabilities, so they seem like they are doing "OK" when you the parent know there is a big discreprancy between their performance and their potential.

I can see that with an easier curriculum, easier goals, it probably would be easier for your child to do OK in class. However do keep in mind that your child SHOULD be able to perform well, even if the grade level standards are raised to higher expectations. You have a child with an incredibly high IQ, you say. It may well be that as expectations are raised, your child WILL struggle -- which hopefully will make it easier for him or her to be identified as in need of services for his or her 4 disabilites.

I don't know if you are the person saying that your child s being handed books to read that are way above his reading level. Is that you? If so -- know that it s your right as a parent to question HOW the school plans to help your child get up to reading level. They must have an accurate level of your child's current reading performance, and they must have a plan to remediate. THat plan cannot be simply to have the kid read and reread a book above his level.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Where is your school? My school district is MCPS.

PGCPS

OK, so maybe I should spend some time on the PG County forum, reading about all of the parents who hate the Common Core curriculum because there's too much homework, and you can spend some time on the Maryland (meaning MCPS) forum, reading about all of the parents who hate the Common Core curriculum because there's not enough homework...

Perhaps all of the MCPS Common Core-haters should move to PGCPS?

PP, I am also a teacher in PGCPS and have kids who are in public schools here. No, too much homework as a result of switching to COmmon Core objectives has not been a big deal here.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Where is your school? My school district is MCPS.

PGCPS

OK, so maybe I should spend some time on the PG County forum, reading about all of the parents who hate the Common Core curriculum because there's too much homework, and you can spend some time on the Maryland (meaning MCPS) forum, reading about all of the parents who hate the Common Core curriculum because there's not enough homework...

Perhaps all of the MCPS Common Core-haters should move to PGCPS?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Common Core should have been phased in. The older kids in our elementary school are suffering but the K and 1st grade kids are having a much easier time.
The amount of work has greatly increased and my 3rd and 4th graders are bringing home 2-4 hours of homework each night. It's insane.

My kids have less homework under my school district's Common Core curriculum. In fact, lots of parents on DCUM complain about this.

Our school has had a ton of complaints because of the amount of homework. There have been surveys and PTA meetings addressing the hours of homework.

Where is your school? My school district is MCPS.

PGCPS

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Reports are flooding in that Kids subjected to these Common Core standards are shutting down, begging not to go to school every day. And they are in KINDERGARTEN!

Reports are also flooding in that kids subjected to these Common Core standards like school and are learning math. Or, at least, those are the reports at my house.

If you learn in a particular way, you will like the Common Core. If not, you are are deemed stupid and worthless.

If someone is deeming a child stupid, and worthless? That is a HUGE problem, but it has nothing to do with Common Core.

Again, read the blogs of parents whose children ARE struggling with Common Core. That is the takeaway message for these kids. That's how they feel, day after day, when they try to do work they don't understand.

They would feel that way if they were struggling with ANY curriculum would they not?
This is PUBLIC education, no system is going to meet the individualized needs of each and every student.
Some do well, some need something different -- that goes for ANY curriculum.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Common Core should have been phased in. The older kids in our elementary school are suffering but the K and 1st grade kids are having a much easier time.
The amount of work has greatly increased and my 3rd and 4th graders are bringing home 2-4 hours of homework each night. It's insane.

My kids have less homework under my school district's Common Core curriculum. In fact, lots of parents on DCUM complain about this.

Our school has had a ton of complaints because of the amount of homework. There have been surveys and PTA meetings addressing the hours of homework.

Where is your school? My school district is MCPS.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Common Core should have been phased in. The older kids in our elementary school are suffering but the K and 1st grade kids are having a much easier time.
The amount of work has greatly increased and my 3rd and 4th graders are bringing home 2-4 hours of homework each night. It's insane.

My kids had that, before Common Core.

Never should a child that age have that much homework. It's inexcusable. Children are suffering because they aren't allowed to be children and they aren't free to run about for a couple of hours before dinner. There just isn't any time.

My kids come home, have a snack, work on homework for several hours, eat dinner, take a bath, go to bed, wake up, go to school, come home, have a snack...................... Well, they did until I cut them off at a certain amount of time so they could go out and live in the sunshine, ride their bikes, play basketball... I unlocked the key to childhood obesity and it involved less homework.

I can also say that I don't care that they will receive B's instead of A's on their report cards. There are more important things in life than grades. Creative thinking, conflict resolution, social skills, and the like which you can't teach in the classroom.

Where do you live? What school district? Do you live in New York State?

Are you the parent who has a child who has a language-based learning disability, but no IEP? My child had a disability (dysgraphia) which was causing him to spendhours and hours on homework. This predated Common Core, however. Fortunately we were able to get him a 504 (not an IEP) which allowed hm to be able to type his answers instead of having to laboriously handwrite them, and we got other assignments modified. That has made all the difference.

I'm in PG County and one of my kids does have a 504 instead of an IEP. Without giving too much away he has 4 disabilities that all effect the brain but an incredibly high IQ. We were told by his school that they hadn't ever seen a kid equally as brilliant (their word) and disabled. It's kind of a difficult place to be for him because his IQ is being used against him when it comes to qualifying for services. He does well with learning via technology but not with learning in the traditional methods. The way CC is set up is not good for him at all especially since it uses different verbiages and steps.

Ironically, I grew up on NY, and one of my elementary teachers is employed by CC and she has had an instrumental part in setting up the curriculum. She started using it on her K students before it was implemented state wide. Starting kids off that way is one thing but doing a huge switch like this is difficult for the older students. Especially those with learning disabilities, ADHD, or on the spectrum. These kids have gone from "learning" to spew out answers for tests to a large work load and the majority of the kids I know are having difficulty adapting. My disabled kid went from a 4.0 to 1.0 and that was with his teachers being generous. He's not designed to sit there and crank out work all day and there have been many days where he's just shut down completely and refused to do any work at all. He's of course the kind of kid that doesn't respond to rewards or punishments.

My other kids got a 3.5 and a 3.6 because I'm not pushing for them to finish all of their homework every day. If they do the majority of it, for each subject, that's good enough for me. I just don't want them to get zeros on their work because those are hard to recover from. Besides, homework accounts for just 15% of their grade, so if they get a "C" on it, I don't feel like it's a huge deal. These kids are (and I may totally give myself away) in 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade and college preparation is what is being drilled into them at elementary level. If they keep going like this they will burn out and end up in a trade school instead of university.

We are just entering the second quarter of the school year and I'm hoping for some change. I just know that the teachers at our school aren't happy with the change, the majority of parents and students aren't either. I get that change isn't easy, look how people freak about facebook layout changes, so I hope that eventually things will smooth out. Right now though it's really difficult.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Common Core should have been phased in. The older kids in our elementary school are suffering but the K and 1st grade kids are having a much easier time.
The amount of work has greatly increased and my 3rd and 4th graders are bringing home 2-4 hours of homework each night. It's insane.

My kids have less homework under my school district's Common Core curriculum. In fact, lots of parents on DCUM complain about this.

Our school has had a ton of complaints because of the amount of homework. There have been surveys and PTA meetings addressing the hours of homework.

Anonymous wrote:

And if you were already a struggling reader, now you are 6 or 7 levels behind. You are not given a chance to read books at your level...instead, you are told to just read the "more rigorous" material over and over and over again, until you "take deep meaning" from it.

PP, this is NOT what is happening in my school. Where are you located?

I am an ESOL teacher, and I primarily teach remedial reading and writing. ALL my students are behind in reading. They most certainly ARE being a chance to read books at their level. We teach them decoding skills, and fluency practice. We are working up to the grade level standard. NO CHILD is being given grade level text that is 6 levels above her reading level, and told to read it over and over and over until she takes deep meaning from it.

We are a "Common Core" school. So whatever is happening at your child's school -- there is a problem, but it isn't the fault of Common Core. You should post your concerns on the "Special Needs" section because people there may have some suggestions for you as to how to get your child the appropriate instruction he needs. No child should be given frustration level text, and told to read and reread it until he "gets it". That is not how reading instruction should occur.

Please post a link to your schools website, and show where it states that struggling readers must be forced to reread grade level text, instead of getting appropriate remedial instruction.

Anonymous wrote:
Common Core has shoved 6th grade concepts down to 1st grade.

No, you are incorrect.

It has also shoved down reading levels, so all of a sudden 4th graders need to read at 8th grade levels -- overnight.

Again, no. False information.

Here is a list of SUGGESTED texts for grades K-5 to be considered "on grade level".

http://www.corestandards.org/ELA-Literacy/standard-10-range-quality-complexity/texts-illustrating-the-complexity-quality-range-of-student-reading-k5

For grades 4 and 5 some suggested texts (not mandatory) are: Black Beauty (1010) , Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (860), and Where the Mountain Meet the Moon (820).

Yes, these Lexile levels indicate higher reading proficiency expected by the end of 5th grade than was expected on the past. Students are being required to read longer books, improve their reading stamina, and gain more exposure to higher level vocabulary words.

If your child's teacher is expecting this overnight, and if your child has a language based learning disability, but no IEP, I can definitely see how this change in expectations is hurting your child. I think you should continue to fight for an IEP, because clearly your child is not going to succeed without specialized instruction.

But the answer isn't to lower standards for all. Please provide extra help for those who need it. But many children are perfectly capable, with assistance, of reading Black Beauty and other books at the 1000 Lexile, by the end of 5th grade.

Here's a teacher's website that shows some of the changes under Common Core for grades 4 and 5. I think it is pretty informative.

http://www.mscoveney.com/common-core-state-standards.html







And if you were already a struggling reader, now you are 6 or 7 levels behind. You are not given a chance to read books at your level...instead, you are told to just read the "more rigorous" material over and over and over again, until you "take deep meaning" from it.