Anonymous wrote:Stop teaching so many courses. We could consolidate many ap English and history courses to a series of Humanities courses- literally call them Humanities 1, 2, and 3. Make them rigorous general education courses on US and global history, English Literature, and potentially add in some philosophy/sociology in the later coursework. Increase and normalize the “fast track” where Algebra 1 is taken in 8th grade across the country; then, by senior year have students choose between a project-based stats course or calc.

Stop making students take every class under the sun for elite colleges and have them tested across these two courses: Humanities and Math to free up space for whatever electives they want. If you wanna take Humanities, Calc 3, Physics, Bio, and Chem with a language, do it. If you wanna take Humanities, Stats, Latin, Advanced European history, do it. No reason why we have to take so many classes across the spectrum that we don’t care about.

Anonymous wrote:As much as we talk about the difficulty of college admissions, American high school students are not learning enough content to compete in a global market. The SAT is not rigorous and barely tests at a pre-calculus level. Our students are dropping out of STEM programs like flies, and students aren’t graduating with the skills needed to compete in the entry level market. What reforms should we make?

Anonymous wrote:As much as we talk about the difficulty of college admissions, American high school students are not learning enough content to compete in a global market. The SAT is not rigorous and barely tests at a pre-calculus level. Our students are dropping out of STEM programs like flies, and students aren’t graduating with the skills needed to compete in the entry level market. What reforms should we make?

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Anonymous wrote:Making calculus a graduation requirement and not guaranteeing a high school diploma would fix a ton of our issues

Do your kids go to public high school?

Let’s talk about the math teachers.

I have a handful of kids in mcps (or recent grads), and most of the math teachers were subpar.

Two of the teachers were born in different countries and speak with such heavy accents that they keep an American aid in the room to basically interpret.

The problem actually begins in elementary school where they no longer group by ability and cycle through groups instead of receiving on-level instruction for the entire block.

Anonymous wrote:Making calculus a graduation requirement and not guaranteeing a high school diploma would fix a ton of our issues

Anonymous wrote:I’ve made millions as a finance professional. I did take AP Calc my senior year but blew it off before heading off to HYP. I got a 3. I can confidently say it made no difference in my life. The idea that it should be mandated is ridiculous. So basically 5 pct of the population will graduate from high school.

AI is about to do everything anyway.

Anonymous wrote:As much as we talk about the difficulty of college admissions, American high school students are not learning enough content to compete in a global market. The SAT is not rigorous and barely tests at a pre-calculus level. Our students are dropping out of STEM programs like flies, and students aren’t graduating with the skills needed to compete in the entry level market. What reforms should we make?

Anonymous wrote:Making calculus a graduation requirement and not guaranteeing a high school diploma would fix a ton of our issues

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Anonymous wrote:Making calculus a graduation requirement and not guaranteeing a high school diploma would fix a ton of our issues

I agree about not guaranteeing a HS diploma - we should force more kids to repeat grades as they do in France, for example.

But I am not convinced every HS grad needs calc. How about starting with the knowledge to pay taxes and killer arithmetic and algebra skills?

Why do people always put the responsibility of taxes on the school? That’s a parenting issue (and a reading skills issue, it is incredibly easy to file unless you’re obscenely wealthy or own a business). I do not think schools should be a ”Parental Failure 101” drop off. Also, at our local high school there are two personal finance classes, and the instructors emphasize that students say they want “life skills” until it comes time to actually do the work and learn. Many kids do not care.

+1, I guarantee you the students will not listen to Financial planning lectures.

DP. My kids did. They learned a lot from those classes, in addition to my spouse and I teaching them about personal finances.

You need to understand how many kids out there have parents who don't care about their kids' education. They send them to school and that's the end of their involvement. Many aren't even getting them to school (and that's an entirely different issue!). They aren't teaching their kids anything. That's the role of schools. I have many, many students with MIA parents. They could be incarcerated, dead, generally disinterested in their kids, living with relatives, addicted to drugs/alcohol, etc. Even the ones who aren't in these categories don't see themselves as educational role models for their kids as many never finished school. If nobody at home ever asks to see your report cards or asks about what you are learning at school, even the best student won't care about school by MS.

I agree, but not sure what this has to do with anything. All the more reason to offer these classes at school.

When your parents don't care, very few kids will care about school and learning. They are lost by MS. They don't give a crap about a financial literacy class. They often read far below grade level and don't hand in work. They don't attend school regularly because who would if your parents don't care and don't make you go.

So are you saying that because of these particular kids, classes like financial literacy shouldn't be offered? I'm sorry, but no. We don't pull everything down to meet the lowest possible standard. And I would also argue that a lot of the kids you describe find school to be a lifeline, without which they would NEVER be exposed to any educational concepts at all. Again - all the more reason to offer these classes at school.

I never said they shouldn't be offered but it won't do them any good. They are not in class, sleeping through class, on their phones/laptops, etc. My DH teaches these students and they mostly are done with school by MS. By HS, they are years behind in reading and math. Many of them have missed 50+ days of school beginning in kindergarten. It's no wonder why they are so far behind. I teach them in kindergarten and you can often see the trajectory at age 5/6. The LEAST number of days of school my kindergarteners have missed is 14 (I have 24 students). Nearly half of them were considered chronically absent (missing 18 or more days of school) by the end of the 1st quarter.

What is it, exactly, that you would like to see happen?

Here is a good start:

1) Free, quality childcare from infancy for all kids whose parents work and make below certain income limits. Sliding scale after that limit.
2) Qualify food for kids in daycare-high school. The "food" the students current get is mostly total crap.
3) A much better home and parenting situation. Something similar to the resources in the Harlem Children's Zone in NYC.
4) Paid sick leave for everyone.
5) Paid parental leave for everyone.
6) Free and required annual checkups for all kids (not just them getting shots at shot clinics). We are seeing a lot of issues in our 5 yr olds that should've been caught before this (vision, hearing problems, autism, speech issues, etc). If early intervention is key, early detection is needed.

Let's see what's wrong here ... Tax and spend even more! Every single suggestion made here is an ignorant liberal "we need to do more" argument that will resultonly in more taxes and more useless programs. And, yes, we're already $320 trillion in debt due to irresponsible attitudes like this. If you want socialism or communism (which what you are arguing) I have a few countries. to suggest.

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Anonymous wrote:Making calculus a graduation requirement and not guaranteeing a high school diploma would fix a ton of our issues

How ridiculous. Unless one is going into a STEM field, calculus is completely unnecessary - and useless.

Calculus has been a benchmark for a student's ability to handle academic rigor for at least the past 50 years.
If you can't handle calculus, you can't handle a lot of things.

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Anonymous wrote:If the SAT isn’t rigorous enough then why do so few students get a perfect score ? Why do students who are focused on humanities need to be required to take calculus in high school?

Almost a thousand kids get a perfect score every year.
That number used to be closer to a dozen.