Anonymous wrote:Thanks for the friendly response, I don’t know if we’re applying to the school your kid attends but I sure as hell hope not.

Perhaps I could have been more kind. But you sound like so many NYC moms. And based on your tone, you sound like someone who is clearly very focused on top schools, hence my assumption you want TT.

Your kid actually sounds a lot like my younger one who is roughly the same age. Having had an older child who had top notch academics and executive function skills, having a kid who needed more handholding was a change. But we quickly figured it out. Plus kids who are now in roughly grades 4-8 are the ones who got hit hardest by Covid as they missed the key early school years where you learn basic functioning skills.

You will quickly find out that particularly in public school, you need to personally stay on top of things - there are a number of incredible teachers, but there are plenty who are just trying to get through the day and managing the really difficult kids, so if your kid is doing "fine," which understandably is probably less than your expectation for your child, they will get ignored.

I wish you the best of luck. And I hope you step back and focus on what is truly best for your kid and prioritize accordingly. And I also hope our kids do not end up in the same place (my older child is not at a "TT" even though they were more than capable of going to one - my younger child will almost definitely not be going to a TT because it would not be the right place for them, even though they are academically smart enough to handle it).

Also where in my post did I say that this was TT?

Thanks for the friendly response, I don’t know if we’re applying to the school your kid attends but I sure as hell hope not.

You sound like a hot mess.

1. In an application year, if you knew 5th grade grades were being submitted, you should have been staying on top of that. No surprises. Ask the kid daily if they have any evaluations coming up. Then follow up and ask how they went. It might annoy the kid but c'est la vie.

2. Do schools really take grades this late in the game? It has been a while but I'm pretty sure when we applied to HS they didn't take 8th grade grades. But I might be mistaken.

3. Your kid seems to have some executive function deficiencies. Maybe they shouldn't be in a TT school. It might be overwhelming for them. Get over your need for status and do what is best for your kid in the long run. Doing well on tests is only one sign of giftedness.

4. Teachers are not paid enough to deal with this crap.

We had a weird situation with our kid in 6th, where formerly all 4s tanked to 2s and 3s in math — 20+ points lower than previous years on jumprope (at least in middle school they update the percentage continuously in jumprope).

Teacher and vice principal asked us to take our kid out of screened program for 7th because they were not bright enough.

We declined, but got a tutor and our kid also started RSM (and, weirdly, loves it), and kid is back in the mid 90s in math this year. RSM teacher and tutor seem confused about what the problem was last year. Seems to be a math teacher-specific problem, because all other grades were good last year too.

So yeah, a bad teacher can cause chaos. We didn’t go ballistic at the school, although I suspect we pissed off the VP when we declined to pull our kid from the screened program over a bad year in math.

We did tell the kid to work harder and lean into getting help because I feel like this is a situation that will repeat itself in college and HS and even in careers, so they may as well learn how to deal with it. Also need learn how to deal with and overcome adversity/unfairness and keep self esteem intact when dealing with someone who is bad at their job or doesn’t like you.

Fingers crossed our approach has worked. Now that math is largely sorted out, we already had a tutor in place for SHSAT prep, which has been helpful.

Anonymous wrote:NP. I would gather that the teacher was incompetent by misleading the parent by not informing them of missing assignments or letting the parent know that the kid had some issues in math. The kid is still a kid and the parent was under the impression that all was well after relying on the conference with the teacher.

That was my intention, yes.

He hasn't displayed any of these issues elsewhere, and the one actual piece of classwork he brought home was his math workbook, which does not have any grades written in it but which appears to be both correct and complete (showing his work and understanding everything perfectly). His homework - which apparently they don't grade - has also been excellent, both for math and ELA; I've watched him do his math homework and he's completed it quickly and easily.

I'm still trying to get my hands on the actual graded work this is all based on, but my best guess at the moment is that it's an executive function problem that got out of hand. He genuinely didn't know he had any work missing, and he only recalls one graded assignment that was not an "excellent," so somehow either they didn't make an effort to make him aware of his missing / incomplete work, or they did make him aware of it, he didn't do it anyway, and at that point rather than bringing me into it they simply gave up.

The teaching profession has its share of narcissists and sociopaths like any other line of work. It’s the equivalent of a toxic work environment and horrible boss. Take OP at his
Or her word and for advice accordingly. Some teachers absolutely want to ruin a student’s
Life and she should be grateful it’s now as opposed to eleventh grade when grades matter more

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yeah, I forgot the old adage about never attributing to malice that which can be explained by incompetence.

Whose incompetence?
The teacher? The kid? The parent?

NP. I would gather that the teacher was incompetent by misleading the parent by not informing them of missing assignments or letting the parent know that the kid had some issues in math. The kid is still a kid and the parent was under the impression that all was well after relying on the conference with the teacher.

Anonymous wrote:Yeah, I forgot the old adage about never attributing to malice that which can be explained by incompetence.

Whose incompetence?
The teacher? The kid? The parent?

Yeah, I forgot the old adage about never attributing to malice that which can be explained by incompetence.