Anonymous wrote:Yes, clearly desegregation was bad for the public schools. Feminism too! We should get rid of both of those things.

Meanwhile, I'm moving my family to Texas, or maybe Mississippi or Arkansas. That's where the teachers' unions are the weakest, so that must be where the schools are the best.

Places like Texas are lousy because of weak regulation and standards, not to mention Tea Party nuts who think it's fine to teach kids that Adam and Eve rode around on dinosaurs 6,000 years ago in a SCIENCE class.

Yes, clearly desegregation was bad for the public schools. Feminism too! We should get rid of both of those things.

Meanwhile, I'm moving my family to Texas, or maybe Mississippi or Arkansas. That's where the teachers' unions are the weakest, so that must be where the schools are the best.

Why have schools in the US lost their edge since the 1960's? Is it the end of segregation? Could it be the fact that professional organizations of teachers such as the NEA turned into labor unions? From Wikipedia: "Before the 1960s, only a small portion of public school teachers were unionized.[26] But that began to change when, in 1959, Wisconsin became the first state to pass a collective bargaining law for public employees. Over the next 20 years, most other states adopted similar laws. The passage of these laws had a significant impact on NEA, which began to serve members as a labor union, in addition to serving members as a professional association. Passage of these new labor laws, along with NEA's new role as a labor union, helped NEA membership grow from 766,000 in 1961 [26] to roughly 3.2 million today."

My kid goes to Montessori. We are not people of means, and we do not do it to show off. It's just what works well for him, and we believe it in, so we do it. It's a modest school. I went to public school my entire life--big, urban schools, in fact--and I did well. They were "rough" schools by some people's standards, but it was the only place to go. My choice for him is not about me; it's about one of the "non-reasons" this author cites. I wonder on what other subjects people should have no choice, in her opinion?

This article is completely vapid. It's author is not even being provocative--she's spitting in the wind and it's blowing back on her face.

The Finns have a different approach - they place a huge early emphasis on math and science, starting right in primary school - and Finnish teachers must have at minimum a Master's degree.

In America, there's less emphasis on content - and math and science languishes, math drags on slowly in the early years, and there's very little meaningful exposure to science until the later years.

6:49 did you have fractions in first grade? If not, then yes, I still consider it a recent change to teach fractions to kids in 1st grade. I don't think it's hard stuff at all. I just think it's ridiculous that one year halves are taught, then next year eighths are taught and the next year 1/2 is compared to 1/8 and the following year fractions are added and subtracted. Those could all easily be taught in one or two years except for a pacing curriculum which demands that a little bit be taught each year. All I was trying to get across is that private schools have more freedom to teach what they want when they want and from those different curriculums innovative ways of teaching are formed. Private schools probably started teaching more about the environment and now that is part of the standard curriculum. Public schools also used to have less character development but now since they can't have any religion in their schools, character development or ethics is starting to come into the curriculum more. Can you not see any benefits alternative schooling has on public schools?

Anonymous wrote:Finland has a homogenous environment. They don't have the level of poverty that we have, large percentages of ESL students, racism, school violence, students with behavioral and learning problems, and a list of other issues. You can't compare a country that is the size of Rhode Island with it's limited issues with the United States which has multiple issues. Also, some Americans would go crazy if they had to pay the amount of taxes that people pay in Finland and in other European countries. So, stop comparing Finland to the USA. We have a long list of problems and we can't operate American schools like they do in Finland.

Finns have their share of problems, too. But Americans make a lot more excuses and do a lot more whining than the Finns do.

Anonymous wrote:I don't believe fractions were introduced in 1st grade till recently and certainly not to the specificity that I've seen in some common core and state law standards where one month each year a child learns a little bit about them. They may have previously waited till 3rd grade but then went into more depth about them. Many schools teach phonics first and then reading comprehension, however other schools teach a lot of reading comprehension and acting first and then work on phonics and fluidity. Some schools have a geography class whereas most public schools don't have geography graduation requirements. Etc. etc.

My kid had fractions in first grade, before Curriculum 2.0 (which is Montgomery County's Common Core curriculum). Singapore Math has fractions in first grade.

And here is the Common Core standard related to fractions, for first grade math:

"Partition circles and rectangles into two and four equal shares, describe the shares using the words halves, fourths, and quarters, and use the phrases half of, fourth of, and quarter of. Describe the whole as two of, or four of the shares. Understand for these examples that decomposing into more equal shares creates smaller shares."

Do you think that first-graders learning about halves and quarters is a recent and specific change?

Anonymous wrote:Finland has a homogenous environment. They don't have the level of poverty that we have, large percentages of ESL students, racism, school violence, students with behavioral and learning problems, and a list of other issues. You can't compare a country that is the size of Rhode Island with it's limited issues with the United States which has multiple issues. Also, some Americans would go crazy if they had to pay the amount of taxes that people pay in Finland and in other European countries. So, stop comparing Finland to the USA. We have a long list of problems and we can't operate American schools like they do in Finland.

Yes, cross-country comparisons are problematic, I agree.

On the other hand, it's also problematic to say: Competition and school choice are the keys to good schools! Because Finland shows that it is possible to have good schools without competition and school choice.

Finland has a homogenous environment. They don't have the level of poverty that we have, large percentages of ESL students, racism, school violence, students with behavioral and learning problems, and a list of other issues. You can't compare a country that is the size of Rhode Island with it's limited issues with the United States which has multiple issues. Also, some Americans would go crazy if they had to pay the amount of taxes that people pay in Finland and in other European countries. So, stop comparing Finland to the USA. We have a long list of problems and we can't operate American schools like they do in Finland.

Tools of the Mind is a program that was started in public schools after experimenting at smaller private preschools and is based on Russian Vygotskian influences. Before DC had all traditional preschool classrooms, but I believe most of them now use Tools of the Mind for at least a year of pre-k or K.

Lets see. Some other private school influences. Google's 20% time proposal for education is about giving kids 20% of the school day to have for their own to learn. I believe this idea came out of their Montessori influence where children are given freedom to choose what they want to work on for however long they want to work on it. The decided that 100% of the time would be too long for their clients however wanted to maintain a certain amount of freedom so that their employees could continue to have time to be innovative and creative. The Sudbury model and the unschooling models of learning have similar influences. The Finnish schools also are influenced this way where children have long breaks between classes to be creative and form clubs, play games, and engage in discussions.

I don't believe fractions were introduced in 1st grade till recently and certainly not to the specificity that I've seen in some common core and state law standards where one month each year a child learns a little bit about them. They may have previously waited till 3rd grade but then went into more depth about them. Many schools teach phonics first and then reading comprehension, however other schools teach a lot of reading comprehension and acting first and then work on phonics and fluidity. Some schools have a geography class whereas most public schools don't have geography graduation requirements. Etc. etc.

Anonymous wrote: Common Core as I've read it indicates the standards to be learnt for each grade. They are pretty specific such as 1st graders should know phonics and be introduced to fractions .

You consider this specific?

I agree that funding for schools should come from other taxes that everyone pays into so they all feel they have a stake in their child's education, however I don't get how that relates to rich parents choosing private schools for their kids. I've never heard a supervisor say they are lowering the tax rate because the rich parents are complaining. Maybe it happens, but I haven't seen it. More likely they are lowering or aren't raising it much because of complaints from the lower income tax brackets.
I do think too much money is coming from real estate towards education and it needs to be more diversified. It's too risky if the real estate market crashes and leaves all the renters feeling like they aren't really contributing financially to the educational system. Parents who do pay real estate taxes then bemoan the parents who pay no taxes towards the schools.