Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
I am mostly worried that the teaching corps is losing its ability to create, especially the new teachers. Many are reaching for the ready made materials and they are not even looking at them before they send them home. Many items are probably irrelevant based on what has occurred in the classroom during the day or many items are just plain "bad". If they were creating their own materials, there would be a match to instruction.

Agree. DS's teacher sends home math worksheets that she couldn't have possibly previewed before sending them home. Or maybe she just doesn't care. The worksheets are poor copies, hard to read, missing information - some problems are impossible to decipher. It's unbelievable. I am having to teach my child math myself, at home. So disappointed and not surprised that DS is lagging in math.

You are complaining about worksheets that FCPS teachers are getting through ecart or somewhere else. They are not common core worksheets nor any part of a particular curriculum book. We had this same problem till finally we got a teacher who actually printed just the Pearson workbook pages and finally everything is cohesive and makes sense. This is upper elementary, so perhaps Pearson is poor in the early elementary years. I remember reading that this was true. But either way, the poor worksheets you are getting are not because of common core.

No, the worksheets I'm complaining about are from Pearson Math and they are directly aligned to the VA SOLs - I know they aren't CC, but they aren't eCART either. The quality of Pearson math is horrible and the worksheets reflect this. This is 5th grade, by the way, and the other parents feel the same way. There have been lots of complaints.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
I am mostly worried that the teaching corps is losing its ability to create, especially the new teachers. Many are reaching for the ready made materials and they are not even looking at them before they send them home. Many items are probably irrelevant based on what has occurred in the classroom during the day or many items are just plain "bad". If they were creating their own materials, there would be a match to instruction.

Agree. DS's teacher sends home math worksheets that she couldn't have possibly previewed before sending them home. Or maybe she just doesn't care. The worksheets are poor copies, hard to read, missing information - some problems are impossible to decipher. It's unbelievable. I am having to teach my child math myself, at home. So disappointed and not surprised that DS is lagging in math.

You are complaining about worksheets that FCPS teachers are getting through ecart or somewhere else. They are not common core worksheets nor any part of a particular curriculum book. We had this same problem till finally we got a teacher who actually printed just the Pearson workbook pages and finally everything is cohesive and makes sense. This is upper elementary, so perhaps Pearson is poor in the early elementary years. I remember reading that this was true. But either way, the poor worksheets you are getting are not because of common core.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
I am mostly worried that the teaching corps is losing its ability to create, especially the new teachers. Many are reaching for the ready made materials and they are not even looking at them before they send them home. Many items are probably irrelevant based on what has occurred in the classroom during the day or many items are just plain "bad". If they were creating their own materials, there would be a match to instruction.

Agree. DS's teacher sends home math worksheets that she couldn't have possibly previewed before sending them home. Or maybe she just doesn't care. The worksheets are poor copies, hard to read, missing information - some problems are impossible to decipher. It's unbelievable. I am having to teach my child math myself, at home. So disappointed and not surprised that DS is lagging in math.

Anonymous wrote:
I am mostly worried that the teaching corps is losing its ability to create, especially the new teachers. Many are reaching for the ready made materials and they are not even looking at them before they send them home. Many items are probably irrelevant based on what has occurred in the classroom during the day or many items are just plain "bad". If they were creating their own materials, there would be a match to instruction.

deliberately designed to trip students up.

Anonymous wrote:You should just use the search function on this forum. It's been discussed. Short answer, not that much difference.

http://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/369125.page

Anonymous wrote:OP here -- again.

One last thing -- anyone support common core/Virginia system?

We have done private school in the past and know first hand the benefits of not having so much testing. However, in our experience, private school was also not the perfect educational system for our kids -- math/science types that pushed the boundaries of what was offered academically at their school, and another child who has a mild LD.

Regardless of the spreadsheets that turn up, it seems to me that there is too much concern to quantify than to qualify. I would send my kids back to private if I could find the perfect fit for their skill sets and needs, but I haven't been able to. The only thing screwing up public education for my family so far is the attention to testing and teaching to the test.