<p>I am trying to understand the difference between what I see in my family, and the news reports I see about the poor state of education in America.</p>
<p>We have 2 kids in high school and 1 in middle school. They are consistently given challenging material and have homework every night for hours. I also see that the numbers of students taking AP exams has been consistently increasing. All three of them are well ahead of where I was at the same age. I think this is the experience of many people, but the news articles I read about the state of US Education sounds like it is getting worse, when my experience is that it isn't perfect, but it has definitely improved over time.</p>
<p>Can someone tell me what it is that I am missing?</p>
<p>Our experience has been similar to yours - challenging courses, lots of homework, top notch teaching. Without a doubt my kids are getting a better, more advanced, more comprehensive education than I did (with the exception of basic English - I received a much better grounding in grammar, spelling, etc.). We’re in an affluent suburban district with high property taxes funding the schools and professional parents pushing both the kids and the teachers/administration. I think the problem we’re seeing in K-12 education today is similar to what we see in many other areas - a widening gap between the “haves” and the “have nots.” Your kids are most likely attending a good school with many advantages; this is not inconsistent with there being many average and below average schools where education is lagging.</p>
<p>You are lucky. In some parts of the country, the schools are excellent and the teachers are highly motivated. The citizens happily vote in bonds and tax increases so that the schools infrastructure keeps up with the needs. The local business community is supportive of the schools, and parents are happy to get involved in any way they can.</p>
<p>In others, the teachers feel demoralized after years of being blamed for everything ranging from the kids poor nutritional habits to rising rates of teen pregnancy. Voters won’t spend an extra penny, feeling that the administration is already frittering money away without adequate accountability. There are high numbers of stressed families (homeless, jobless, ill parents) who need the schools to become one-stop social service bureaus, and learning takes a back seat. Guidance Counselors have to testify in court on behalf of teens trying to be emancipated from dysfunctional and violent family situations, so they don’t have time to monitor how kids are doing academically- it’s enough they make it to school at all. High rates of truancy, and high rates of kids moving in and out of the school system due to family dislocation. High percentage of kids living in homes where English is not spoken. When parents of a kid with special needs meet with administrators to review their kids progress, they are told, “if you don’t like it, then sue us”.</p>
<p>My guess is you live in the first kind of place.</p>
<p>“All kids are well ahead of where I was at the same age.”</p>
<p>Opposite for me. That is the problem. </p>
<p>I love my D, dearly. She is a great girl. She is smart, she does her homework, she has good grades. Yet, her level of education, especially in math and science, is much lower than I had. </p>
<p>I knew more at her age! Geometry, Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Astronomy, Trigonometry came natural to me. I don’t even remember doing any homework, yet I mastered these subjects at school. My D is a bright girl, 9th grader, A-student, accelerated program … and I am appalled and frantic when she can’t solve a problem that looks so easy to me. (what are they doing at school ? …)</p>
<p>You describe a tale of two cities, an excellent school district versus an impoverished one.</p>
<p>My experience is different. “Excellent” school districts are used to having great kids. They don’t value them much, don’t promote them. Year after year they have National Merit kids … and they are used to it. </p>
<p>Urban school districts don’t have many accelerated students, and value them. Often they are more flexible, accommodating, and willing to help a gifted student. Often they have arrangements with Community Colleges or accept online education. Just my experience.</p>
<p>In comparison to my own schools, my kids’ schools are about the same in math, and way worse in English. In science and social studies (below the AP level) they are better, but that difference could be explained since my high school didn’t offer honors science and social studies classes. Language instruction is much weaker below the high school level and overall a little better. The teachers overall seem much more engaged and better at working with the kids, and most of them seem better qualified. They are paid far less than my teachers were. Overall, I’d say the teachers are better–with the notable exception of the extremely weak English program–and are obviously committed to student success when not hamstrung by the administration. The administration is horrible.</p>
teachers are qualified, experienced, but a bit lazy. Nothing wrong, but nothing great either.
administration operates in an alternative universe. They are concerned with reporting, statistics, etc., but don’t care about education. Individually, they are very nice people. Yet you can’t get any practical support from them. </p>
<ul>
<li>Curriculum is crazy. </li>
<li>Textbooks are horrible. </li>
</ul>
<p>First, habitues of CC are not exactly the norm for students. I agree with Blossom much of it flows from the have/have not divide. Both my Ds had more options in school and are smarter than I. Middle Class/Upper Middle Class schools are more challenging than when I was a kid. Inner city schools are failing.</p>
<p>My experience is like the OP’s. I attended what was supposed to be a pretty decent public school district in Minnesota in the 70s and 80s, but the quality of the teaching was spotty, and in many ways I was largely self-taught. I spent all of seventh grade reading novels inside my math textbook and no one ever noticed. My D attended public schools in New Jersey and they were better than the ones I went to. My D had much better math and science instruction than I did. </p>
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<p>Erin’s Dad, I think you are onto something.</p>
<p>Erin’s Dad: We’re from the same area. The Dayton area has a number of excellent suburban school districts. Because of WPAFB, the hospitals, UD etc. there are a lot of well educated parents who value education and they gravitate to those areas where the education is the best. The challenge is in Dayton proper and those suburbs where the parents aren’t as well educated. Per capita spending is less in the suburbs than it is in the cities, however, when a child is encouraged and helped to learn at home they will be better students.</p>
<p>My experience is that the education in our district (which is a good district) is pretty good for above-average students despite the school and district adminstrators (who are horrible). There are also a lot of programs to prevent drop-outs that seem to be doing an okay job of keeping more kids in school. For the kids in the middle, the education is not up to par. When I was in high school (the same one my kids attended) in the 80s we didn’t have honors and AP classes and what I learned in the regular English, math and science classes, is now being taught to the honors and AP students. The average students get a very dumbed-down, education. My oldest daughter is average and just did what she needed to do to get by (she didn’t have to do much) and my younger daughter is advanced and she had to work really hard for her 3.64 unweighted GPA. </p>
<p>In my opinion, lowering the bar for the average students is a direct result of No Child Left Behind. If ALL students have to pass their tests by a certain year, the bar has to be lowered so everyone can jump over it. Unless parents teach their kids themselves (which a lot of parents do) or teachers go above and beyond what is required (the teachers who have a classroom full of advanced kids do this because there are no stragglers), the students just measure up high enough to jump over the low bar.</p>
<p>I just want to give one example of the dumbed-down education for the average students at my kids’ high school. My youngest D took AP world history as a sophomore. The teacher gave them way too much homework which overwhelmed my D. Playing school soccer also contributed to the problem by sucking up a huge amount of time after school each week. </p>
<p>So junior year my D decided to take the regular US history class instead of AP because she didn’t want to be overwhelmed again. The first day the teacher gave them a map of the US and gave them 5 minutes to fill in all the states. My D was the only left writing when time was up (she had 3 states left). Most of the others only filled in a few states. When the teacher collected the maps she said by the end of the year they would know how to complete the map. My D said she learned that in 5th grade and couldn’t believe they were going to go over that again as HS juniors. </p>
<p>The second day the teacher distributed a political worksheet to determine where the students fell on the political spectrum. After completion, the teachers had the students raise their hands so they could see how they compared to their classmates. My D felt that was a violation of her privacy and was very turned off by that.</p>
<p>The third day the teacher had them watch a movie. After that class my D talked to the AP US history teacher to find out about the amount of homework (nothing compared to AP world history) and she switched into the other class. It turned out to be one of her favorite HS classes.</p>
<p>Back to the OP’s original post about the state of our education system. It isn’t perfect but it’s also not completely horrible like the press makes it out to be. You’ll all probably think I’m crazy but I’ve been researching education policy the last few years and Common Core (the assumed “savior” of our education system) has created a new way for investors to make a huge amount of money. New curricula has to be purchased and new tests created. Also, if schools don’t measure up, charters can jump in and take them over. There is oodles of money to be made via the Common Core.</p>
<p>If people don’t buy into the “fact” that education is “broken,” they won’t be willing to spend precious education money to “fix” the “problem.” The Common Core is nothing new–it’s just different standards and different tests. We still have the SAME system we had with No Child Left Behind–standards and tests–and we all know how well that works :(.</p>
<p>I DO think we have a huge problem with poverty in this country and until all kids are sent to school well rested, fed, and supported by their parent(s) in a safe home environment, we’ll never succeed in educating everyone. I really wish the money being wasted on the new Common Core curricula and testing (and all the technology needed to take the online tests) would be spent helping the poorest students improve their situations at home.</p>
<p>I live in NYC. The variation in the quality of schools is incredible. </p>
<p>At least here, it isn’t all about how much $ you have. There are some amazing private schools, but the strongest of them give fin aid to a significant # of students. There are also some excellent public schools, especially those which admit by competitive exams or other selective criteria.</p>
<p>We also have some less well known high schools, both public and private, where the teachers are wonderful and the kids are engaged. </p>
<p>But then…we have some really, really awful public schools. </p>
<p>The whole process of applying to high schools in NYC is as competitive and confusing as applying to college is for most people. And there are always some kids who get shut out everywhere. A certain # of people pack up and move to suburbia when the admissions results come out. Some folks don’t have that option, though.</p>
<p>“In my opinion, lowering the bar for the average students is a direct result of No Child Left Behind”. The bar was not lowered. The ceiling was. </p>
<p>“The Common Core is nothing new–it’s just different standards and different tests. We still have the SAME system we had with No Child Left Behind–standards and tests–and we all know how well that works” </p>
<p>Standards and tests work only as well as the standards and tests. High standards and difficult tests encourage teachers to teach more and students to learn more. Notice that the APs are also a pretty standardized curriculum culminating in a standardized test and while valid criticisms can be made, some APs are better than others, and there’s certainly room for improvement, on the whole I think they are a reasonably good curriculum and test and in most classes the kids learn quite a lot. </p>
<p>Any time we try to shoehorn all kids of a certain age into meeting certain standards, we’re going to be faced with the problem that those on the low end will struggle and those on the high end won’t learn anything. As long as most schools insist on not “tracking” students before high school, there really isn’t any way around this. Ultimately, it’s a social problem, not a curriculum problem, and no tweaking of any standardized curriculum will ever provide the best education for many kids.</p>
<p>Our kids had trouble in public school from middle school. On the first day of class in the social studies GT class, S asked questions the teacher couldn’t answer so the next two years she had him, she pretended he was invisible and looked through him and totally ignored him. D was accused of plagiarizing because she wrote a paper that the teacher felt was above someone in middle school. She later discovered that D’s spoken vocabulary was totally consistent with her written work, and belatedly apologized to D and us when we had open house (saying, “Oh, your D is such a writer!”</p>
<p>We transferred our kids to private HS after these upsetting experiences, where they could take AP and other challenging courses and were among teachers and peers who had extensive vocabularies and were never again accused of plagiarism because the teacher admitted surprise over their vocabularies.</p>
<p>The quality of public school in our upper middle class neighborhood is below where it was when I attended (in my opinion), but the private HS was well above – S didn’t learn anything new or have to study in his engineering courses until 4th semester and was able to do well in the 14 or more AP courses and exams he took in HS.</p>
<p>I feel there is a much greater divide between public and private schools in our state. Many others seem to share this belief, as most of the public school teachers we know and political officials and folks who can afford it opt to have their kids in private schools, at least by HS. We have an unusually high % of our population attending private school, which greatly adds to our already very high state cost of living. :(</p>