Anonymous
05/06/2026 09:06
Subject: She passed high school math with A’s and B’s. In college, she had to start over.
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote: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.
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.
Long story short is that you’re a grossly negligent parent
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
Anonymous
05/06/2026 09:05
Subject: She passed high school math with A’s and B’s. In college, she had to start over.
Anonymous wrote:San Francisco Unified School District removed Algebra 1 from all public middle schools (8th grade) starting in 2014 and until 2026. The policy was framed as an equity initiative to reduce racial disparities.
One party does not want to teach Algebra and the other party does not want to teach evolution. Nut jobs are running the show.
haha.. so true. But, I would restate that as "one party wants to dumb things down in the name of equity..."
I have one kid in college, and one about to go.
The one in college went to a magnet program, and they have always been very academically advanced. They breezed through HS and college (about to graduate) as a dual STEM major - 4.0 in HS and college.
The other kid is above average but not as academically advanced. I worry about how this DC will handle academics in college. The school district with their 50% minimum, retakes, no finals does not do these types of kids who are college bound any favors. And this applies to any kid, irrespective of skin color.
Anonymous
05/06/2026 08:51
Subject: She passed high school math with A’s and B’s. In college, she had to start over.
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote: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.
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.
Long story short is that you’re a grossly negligent parent
Anonymous
05/06/2026 08:35
Subject: She passed high school math with A’s and B’s. In college, she had to start over.
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Whatever policy UCSD is following is doing more harm than good. There are over 120,000 seniors who graduate high school in California every year. It is kind of sad that the UC's can't fill their freshmen class with students who can do basic math. They have free community college. Why aren't the students who need remedial help attending one of those?
The crazy thing is that California has banned remedial classes at community colleges! They felt it was discouraging for students to sometimes take remedial classes over and over, never making progress toward a degree and paying more money. Now they have to sink or swim, which results in some (many?) dropping out and not getting a degree anyway.
Sounds like a smart, cost saving measure.
Anonymous
05/06/2026 07:07
Subject: She passed high school math with A’s and B’s. In college, she had to start over.
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote: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.
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.
Gonzaga? My son had to retake Algebra in 9th and he said it was the best thing he ever did. He made it to AP Calc AB by 12th and took AP Stats as an elective. I don’t understand the rush to get the highest level of math at some of these schools. Putting 6th graders in Algebra is ridiculous.
Anonymous
05/06/2026 06:56
Subject: She passed high school math with A’s and B’s. In college, she had to start over.
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:I don’t actually think retakes are the problem. Khan Academy, for example, offers infinite retakes. The problem is that many schools never tell students that the goal is mastery. They do not understand that they need to accumulate knowledge and skills. I’m sure they’re capable of it. I’m sure every one of them has some huge store of facts about their favorite show or artist, and has learned a dozen tricks from TikTok makeup tutorials. They just don’t understand they’re also supposed to accumulate the information and skills that they encounter in school.
I don't think just telling the students the goal is mastery is going to solve the problem.
its not the students that need to be told- its the teachers and the Dept of education/boards of education that assess teacher performance. Grades should reflect mastery of the material, should be maybe 30% effort effort and we know that teachers feel bad fr kids and give them too much credit for effort.
Or test kids at the beginning of grade 9 and make high school graduation contingent on mastering three more levels of math from that point, whatever it is. Learning to learn is the most valuable lesson most kids take from high school math anyway.
Right now most states require 360 hours in a math classroom (three “Carnegie units”) to graduate from high school, which is an insane way to measure learning.
Anonymous
05/06/2026 06:53
Subject: She passed high school math with A’s and B’s. In college, she had to start over.
Anonymous wrote: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.
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.
Anonymous
05/06/2026 06:27
Subject: She passed high school math with A’s and B’s. In college, she had to start over.
Anonymous wrote:Retakes aren’t the problem. The goal of retakes should be to ensure a student goes back and relearns the material before moving on. Give a student a C as a final grade and they have zero motivation to figure out why. In a course like math, the lessons build and the student lacks a foundation. This, of course, means providing students with a new version of the quiz. DS went to a great private school that allowed retakes in math for this very reason in MS. When he got to MCPS HS, he had a super strong grasp. In HS, some teachers allowed an occasional retake. He got a 5 on his AP Calc exam and As in all his college math courses. Those retakes in MS didn’t hurt him at all. What he learned is to always go back and see what you missed and figure out where you have gaps. The point of school should be learning.
Now why was this individual unprepared. There are a slew of possibilities. Perhaps the curriculum left gaps. Perhaps a teacher was grading on a significant curve because the school was underperforming. Or perhaps they are just like me and have trouble retaining skills that are taught in isolation and not used regularly.
Yes. “The point of school should be learning.”
And, when mastery is the goal, “retakes don’t hurt students at all. What they learn is to always go back and see what you missed and figure out where you have gaps.”
Schools that teach students to strive for mastery are great schools. Schools that forbid retakes and accelerate students who grasp the material quickly, but who might not retain it, are teaching all the wrong lessons.
Anonymous
05/06/2026 06:21
Subject: She passed high school math with A’s and B’s. In college, she had to start over.
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote: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.
Tell that to this area's top publics, which teach math beyond AP Calc BC. My 10th grader in Montgomery County Public schools is going into multivariable calculus next year. No private school in the DC region teaches that.
Maybe you should accept that decent universities know a bit more about the rigor in private and public high schools than you do.
Our private as well as a nearby private teaches mulitivariable and linear algebra as post-BC courses. PhD’s teachthe courses
+2 My kid’s DC private teaches MV and linear algebra every year. Not a lot of kids are in the class, primarily public school kids that were pushed ahead in math in 6th grade and then switched to private school for high school. The top kids that have been in private k-12 are usually reaching Calculus by 12th. Private schools believe in depth over acceleration.
Anonymous
05/06/2026 06:20
Subject: She passed high school math with A’s and B’s. In college, she had to start over.
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:I don't get the issue. There are kids at all colleges who need remedial help - even the elite ones. If they're getting the help they need, then what is the problem? Oh, that they took spots from kids who had good math instruction in high school?
Because elite college admissions should go to qualified students otherwise these college aren’t elite anymore.
Who ever said UCSD was elite? It’s the third best public school in its state.
Anonymous
05/06/2026 04:00
Subject: She passed high school math with A’s and B’s. In college, she had to start over.
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:At my kid’s school, the best students got into UCSD this year. Perhaps they’re paying closer attention.
My son’s school as well. He attended a rigorous public school where there are no retakes, no test corrections, and lots of pop quizzes.
Despite taking AP Calculus he was waitlisted for UCSD. Many of his classmates were rejected or waitlisted as well.
My younger son still attends that high school and just showed me the list of colleges this year’s graduating class will be attending. There were so many students planning on attending. It went from 3 to at least 9.
My top stats kid was rejected by UCSD but was accepted by multiple ivies and T10.
Anonymous
05/06/2026 03:55
Subject: She passed high school math with A’s and B’s. In college, she had to start over.
Anonymous wrote:At my kid’s school, the best students got into UCSD this year. Perhaps they’re paying closer attention.
My son’s school as well. He attended a rigorous public school where there are no retakes, no test corrections, and lots of pop quizzes.
Despite taking AP Calculus he was waitlisted for UCSD. Many of his classmates were rejected or waitlisted as well.
My younger son still attends that high school and just showed me the list of colleges this year’s graduating class will be attending. There were so many students planning on attending. It went from 3 to at least 9.
Anonymous
05/06/2026 03:52
Subject: She passed high school math with A’s and B’s. In college, she had to start over.
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote: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.
Tell that to this area's top publics, which teach math beyond AP Calc BC. My 10th grader in Montgomery County Public schools is going into multivariable calculus next year. No private school in the DC region teaches that.
Maybe you should accept that decent universities know a bit more about the rigor in private and public high schools than you do.
your defensiveness is telling. I said "many" not "all." Clearly your child's public school is an exception and clearly many public schools have a wide range of kids, many of whom learn what they need to learn for college and many of whom do not.
Very few MCPS schools have MVC so I don't get the point of the comment. Many of our kids do MVC in 10th and some privates do allow it.
Anonymous
05/06/2026 02:59
Subject: She passed high school math with A’s and B’s. In college, she had to start over.
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:I don’t actually think retakes are the problem. Khan Academy, for example, offers infinite retakes. The problem is that many schools never tell students that the goal is mastery. They do not understand that they need to accumulate knowledge and skills. I’m sure they’re capable of it. I’m sure every one of them has some huge store of facts about their favorite show or artist, and has learned a dozen tricks from TikTok makeup tutorials. They just don’t understand they’re also supposed to accumulate the information and skills that they encounter in school.
I don't think just telling the students the goal is mastery is going to solve the problem.
its not the students that need to be told- its the teachers and the Dept of education/boards of education that assess teacher performance. Grades should reflect mastery of the material, should be maybe 30% effort effort and we know that teachers feel bad fr kids and give them too much credit for effort.
Anonymous
05/06/2026 02:55
Subject: She passed high school math with A’s and B’s. In college, she had to start over.
Anonymous wrote:San Francisco Unified School District removed Algebra 1 from all public middle schools (8th grade) starting in 2014 and until 2026. The policy was framed as an equity initiative to reduce racial disparities.
One party does not want to teach Algebra and the other party does not want to teach evolution. Nut jobs are running the show
.
I wish there was an applause emoji here!