@aheltzel , don’t waste another second even half regretting Pitt! Great school!
Just make sure your D knows that she can – and should-- approach profs, not just when she needs help but to make a connection, get advice, etc. Some of the success that students from better districts have is a result of better preparation, but some is also just having the the confidence and comfort approaching people who can help them. Your D just has to put herself out there to “get even” on the latter.
Yes, I will second this. Even though our school is not good and kids are on their own to figure out the college thing, the ones who do go tend to do just fine! We rarely send them to the ivies, but many go to the public flagships including UVA and william and mary. I know most of my kids’ friends are on the Dean’s list and President’s list every semester as they are published in the local paper. The ones that drop out tend to be more financial related or homesick. Not academic
Can you say more about this? Is it due to declining budgets, difficulties in hiring and retaining well-qualified teachers, or other factors? I am not so familiar with the challenges facing rural communities in the US.
By the way, there’s an organization called the Fair Opportunity Project that helps underserved students (including from rural communities) with their college applications. I am a volunteer mentor but focus on international applicants.
I have never met anyone in the UK who enjoyed jumping through the various hoops of the US college admissions process. What some people appreciate highly is the exposure to a range of subjects that’s offered to undergraduates in the US.
It’s a combination of all those factors. Limited budgets is a big issue. This is from lack of tax base. Tax base issues are caused by smaller/older homes, fewer houses, lack of industry and business as well as land use. For example in our area agriculture is the main business driver. Thankfully we don’t pay the same tax rate per acre as a $500,000 house on 1/3 acre. A smaller school budget leads to many issues. The biggest of these is the ability to pay competitive salaries for teachers. We are probably on average paying $10-15,000 less per year per teacher. There just isn’t enough money available in the budget to do more. Another factor that is impacting school budgets in Pennsylvania is teacher pensions. Poor management 15-20 years ago is now forcing districts to put a much larger portion of their budget into funding the pensions.
Aside from budget you are basically dealing with a demographic issue. Over 50% of our district is under the poverty level. The same is true for most rural districts in central and western Pa. We are dealing with kids that start out behind, have poor family situations, have no food, etc. In my daughter’s grade, it’s not uncommon to find children who have never left our county let alone state. Just getting and keeping 1/3-1/2 our students on grade level reading and writing is a huge challenge. College is not a concern for fully 35% if our students. The sad thing is that we don’t even have enough funds to focus on teaching trades. There are lots of good kids in our district, the problem is many of them don’t need algebra and biology and chemistry class. Unfortunately the state mandates all students take some form of these classes. Our district has to spend a large amount of time getting students proficient enough in these subjects so that they can pass the Passa tests and keystone tests. That being said, if your state budget is dependent on having a certain percentage of kids pass those tests, that’s where your emphasis will be. Our district loves the kids who score advanced because they don’t have to worry about them. Unfortunately that means the talented learners are left to help the other students and don’t get challenged. I gave an example earlier, in our highschool last year 5 kids were in the calculus class. 5 kids, that’s it. I understand why our district think they can’t afford this. We are lucky to have a band teacher at all. One teacher covers the entire district. I pay for private lessons for my kids because I want them to actually learn an instrument. Most parents can’t afford that. From the time my oldest started school until this year, I have seen the decline accelerate. The top public schools are doing more and more and offering there students more, while the middle and bottom are falling further behind. Even in our district, the spread between the well off students and the poor students is getting bigger. Unfortunately the number of poor students from very unstable families continues to grow. I wish I knew what the solution was. This is not just an inner city issue.
Hi again. You’ve answered my question upthread so feel free to ignore.
When our oldest was entering 7th grade he was put into a lower level math class than his ability would suggest. Guidance said they couldn’t change it. We talked with the teacher and it had been done so my boy could help a Down’s Syndrome boy he’d been with since K. Apparently he was one of the only ones with enough patience and compassion to truly include the boy in the various school activities and they wanted to keep them together.
That was fine with us for the younger grades - and sort of fine for middle school upper grades, but it would mean my guy couldn’t get into the math classes he would need to be in for the best foundation for college. We wanted him in the highest level math class (all As in math - and in every other class for that matter), so we went to talk with the Principal. We told him our son was likely to have higher aspirations and would need higher level math in high school. This is what we were told (though over the years, the wording isn’t necessarily verbatim - the meaning remains the same):
“Public school isn’t here to help the advanced student. It’s here to help the average students, and around here the average student goes to cc, joins the military, or works for (insert company name). Then the state requires we help those below average, so we do. The advanced children will do fine no matter where they end up. You don’t have to worry.”
We fussed a bit more and got my lad into that class, but by 9th grade we pulled all three of ours out to homeschool them. They were starting 9th, 7th, and 5th respectively. We supplemented with a few cc classes at the cc during high school.
My youngest returned to public school for his high school years and everyone there considered him a genius. The four years of high school were telling though. Even he will tell you his education would have been better if he had stayed homeschooling, but to him, academics aren’t his priority. He went to college and graduated just fine, but now he’s my Permaculture Farmer. He’s showed me the Naturalist section of Multiple Intelligences is real TBH. He’s been that way since toddlerhood.
But I digress. I work in the high school. Once I was talking with one of my friends who teaches 8th grade English and she told me she was upset because the Powers That Be required her to use a 4th grade level book to read in class across all of her classes. Why? Because not all students were up to reading at an 8th grade level and they didn’t want them left behind. What about her students who were already reading at a 12th grade level? Don’t worry about them. They’ll be fine.
I recall an incident where we (teachers - as part of our school day) were helping all students get ready for their state English test. I was to assist my group with synonyms and antonyms. I quickly found out every single one of them knew what a synonym and antonym was. Where they were stuck was knowing the words - words like tedious and porthole were foreign to them. Maybe, just maybe, they’d have recognized far more words if they had been reading up to grade level by 8th grade?
Fortunately, as I said, our school has improved some since those days. Keystones help. New Admin with a different view has helped. We’re not up to the level of schools talked about on here, but there’s definite improvement. I hope your school can improve some too.
Thanks for responding. Quite a challenging situation and sad as well, for the kids and their families. I agree that not everyone needs to get a college degree - Germany’s apprenticeship system seems to work well in preparing people for well-paying trades careers rather than steering everyone towards universities.
I live in the UK and tutor a 12 year old in reading once a week. I am stunned by what he has not yet learned. Although I don’t know him so well, he comes across as bright - he often answers my probing questions about the passages in the lesson plans thoughtfully but, initially, reacted like no one had ever asked him such questions (the lesson plans typically just require extraction of basic facts so I often deviate and ask more interesting and analytical questions). So my sense is that the educational system may be failing him and others like him.
I can’t tell you how much this sets me off. It is why we felt forced to leave public school. My kid was NOT fine. There are real mental health consequences when you don’t address the needs of advanced kids, too.
It’s terrible to say, but that is the reality of most public schools. They have to bring everyone up to the minimum and there’s very few resources left for anything else. The keystone tests have actually hurt our school because all the teachers are dedicated to helping students pass the English, math and biology tests. What I wonder is when that mindset in schools about teaching to the middle happened. It wasn’t like that when we attended public school 30 years ago. We have seen a significant slide in the last 13 years that my oldest has been in school.
I don’t fault anyone for pulling their high performing kids out. We actually did pull our oldest out for 8th grade. Unfortunately, I can afford to pay for the high quality online classes and don’t have the option to stay home and create a rigorous curriculum. My kids love being in school, but they are incredibly frustrated with the lack of challenge they receive. One thing we have found is that those kids who are the top of their public school classes struggle in college because they have never been challenged. They have never had to actually work for a grade because there is no one to push them. In our case, I recognize that and we have gone the extra mile to make sure our kids get challenged and understand what it means the not always be the best. So many of their peers are not getting that. Our school just keeps telling the kids they are doing great and are the best out there.
@LostInTheShuffle , it is quite likely that the child you are helping has a learning difference. It may be a visual processing disorder. Which means he’s going to struggle to read. Which means people will think he’s dumb. Which means he’ll find ways to deal with that, whether disappearing, acting out, or something else. Which also means teachers assume he can’t or won’t learn.
For a lot of kids, getting that diagnosis helps them understand that they aren’t dumb and that working with suggested strategies may help. Good for you for helping him and encouraging him. If a formal evaluation is possible, it’d probably be very helpful.
Actually, he reads fine. But his vocabulary is not so extensive for his age and his analytical skills not as advanced. Encouragingly, he has increasingly shared interesting and thoughtful ideas. So, I’ve been wondering whether he is a victim of low expectations.
Reading this article in The Economist today left me scratching my head about the lack of professionalism and standards in American education. Who teaches kids to read by showing them pictures of cats? And all this done in the name of making education “fun”, lest kids have to think a little harder and challenge themselves. Dumbing down even such a fundamental skill as reading so no child is left behind.
20 some years ago, we sat in a presentation for the new “Everyday Math” curriculum in our school district. We were told to be happy that our daughter’s class was the first to get this great new program. No more rote math chores of memorizing times tables…just fun ways to learn math. One year of what we saw as illogical and inane activities…and out of the district we went.
She was the class of 2017, and our old district math scores on assessment and SAT testing have slowly fallen over the past decade.
Occasionally, learning requires (and rewards) work.
I guess we seem to have undervalued rote learning - certainly not fun but perhaps it builds persistence and resilience in us. I feel it is similar with learning classical music - practicing everyday is such a drag but it also teaches young people discipline, persistence, high(er) tolerance for routine, etc.
This was the pits IMO. It’s equivalent version we switched to in the high school is the main reason we pulled ours out when oldest hit 9th grade. Our school has since switched away from it thankfully, but it took years for them to figure out it only worked for a few students, not most of them.
There’s nothing at all wrong with making learning fun, however. Understanding concepts, whether math or science, provides a much better foundation than just learning facts. “Boring” times are needed when one has to learn the vocab involved and similar things, but beyond that, class can be something kids look forward to vs Ferris Bueller’s day.
Although it seems that every educational idea from rote learning to “new math” to “everyday math” etc. will somehow manage to be taught with very uneven quality across US schools, usually in correlation to SES of the area.
Also, would it be surprising that anything new and different from the old way will be taught with worse quality in its first years (compared to either the old way, or the new way some time later after teachers have experience and practice)?
There is a fair amount of research supporting not just the value…but the need for rote knowledge. Daniel Kahnemann won a Nobel on the research that supported his book “Thinking Fast and Slow”. If you don’t “automatically” know the answers to simple questions, It’s just exhausting to solve more complicated problems.
The brain is an amazing muscle, but it needs to be exercised to build (and maintain) strength.
Yep, and it gets exercised by thinking and figuring things out. Rote knowledge is important for some things, esp when time is of the essence, but it doesn’t involve much thought. This is why learning a new language or task beats repeating the same old, same old.
Knowing 7x8=56 is helpful. Knowing 7 pizzas sliced into 8 slices each will give you 56 individual pieces at your party and being able to use that info to decide how many people you think it will feed is worth far more.
Too many kids learn rote learning without being able to transfer that knowledge to word problems. The student who can do the word problems will eventually remember the rote part because the brain will get tired of working that step out all the time. (Just don’t allow calculators to do it for the student.)
The student who merely memorizes the steps to do the quadratic equation on their calculator will get a lot of things wrong because that’s tougher than knowing how to use it doing a bit in their head.
A lot can go wrong with memory. Not nearly so much goes wrong when one knows the concepts and can apply them. Plus, if one knows the concepts they will have an idea when they’re wrong if they make an idiot error in the math.