Public schooling versus CM schools

[Soloist]

There was a teacher who went viral on TikTok when he stated that his 12-13 year old students do not know their shapes. It's horrifying but it does not surprise me.

I teach high school. Age range 15-18 years old. I have seen students who can't do the following:

Read at grade level. Some come into my classroom at a 3rd/4th grade reading level. There are some students who cannot sound out words.
Write a complete sentence. They don't capitalize the first letter of the sentence or the I's. They also don't add punctuation. I have seen a student write one whole page essay without a period.
Spell simple words.
Add or subtract double-digits. For example, they can't solve 27-13 in their head. They also cannot do it on paper. They need a calculator.
Know their multiplication tables.
Round
Graph
Understand the concept of negative.
Understand percentages.
Solve one-step variable equations. For example, if I tell them "2x = 8. Solve for x," they can't solve it. They would subtract by 2 on both sides instead of dividing by 2.
Take notes.
Follow an example. They have a hard time transferring the patterns that they see in an example to a new problem.
No research skills. The phrases they use to google are too vague when they search for information. For example, if I ask them to research the 5 types of chemical reactions, they only type in "reactions" in Google. When I explain that Google cannot read minds and they have to be very specific with their wording, they just stare at me confused. But even if their search phrases are good, they do not click on the links. They just read the excerpt Google provided them. If the answer is not in the excerpts, they give up.
Just because they know how to use their phones does not mean they know how to use a computer. They are not familiar with common keyboard shortcuts. They also cannot type properly. Some students type using their index fingers.
These are just some things I can name at the top of my head. I'm sure there are a few that I missed here.

Now, as a teacher, I try my best to fill in the gaps. But I want the general public to understand that when the gap list is this big, it is nearly impossible to teach my curriculum efficiently. This is part of the reason why teachers are quitting in droves. You ask teachers to do the impossible and then vilify them for not achieving it. You cannot expect us to teach our curriculum efficiently when students are grade levels behind. Without a good foundation, students cannot learn more complex concepts. I thought this was common sense, but I guess it is not (based on admin's expectations and school policies).

I want to add that there are high-performing students out there. However, from my experience, the gap between the "gifted/honors" population and the "general" population has widened significantly. Either you have students that perform exceptionally well or you have students coming into class grade levels behind. There are rarely students who are in between.

Are other teachers in the same boat?

This was posted on Reddit, here are a few other posts.

As a former teacher, I took on the after school arts program in our small rural community when the arts curriculum got axed—we meet at the library and do crafts, paint etc twice a week. Kids 7-12 or so. They needed to be taught how to hold scissors, cut. Can’t fold paper so the edges lay flat and even. Even the older kids couldn’t tell what colors mix to make what. They’re all great, perfectly smart kids who had ZERO exposure to basic experiences… It startled me for sure.


My wife teaches art and says her first- and second-graders have next to no fine motor skills. It's been a problem for a long time and is even worse after COVID.

I have seen many comments talking about this; do kids not have like, coloring books and play dough?

Even if they do, the ever-present screens are more enticing.

I think that this is a huge issue! So many more families are mobile now. Not to say, this didn't exist previously, but every few years it just becomes more and more students.

I have more than half students who this week live 1 hour south from school, last month it was 10min west, the 3 months before that it was 30min north, etc. the address the school has was invalid within a month of school collecting it. Phone numbers change yearly. Emails seem to just be made up on the spot, and not actually personal email. Another school in my district has 1 out of 3 students homeless and more than 90% are housing insecure.

If you lived at the same address for more than 3 years, that's a sign of privilege at this point in my school population (I'm in a much better $ state and haven't had the 3 yrs at the same address since I was 19

You would be surprised how many times people change their phone. Don’t pay their bill it gets shut off, get a new phone, repeat. We had parents do new contact forms every 6 months, and their numbers would often change. Very few had a constant number.

Yep my 7th graders can’t spell, don’t know punctuation, don’t know multiplication, don’t know months of the year or how seasons work, it’s so sad. Basic words are too difficult for them and they don’t even try! They immediately give up the second they have to use critical thinking. They refuse to read basic instructions .

I don’t know. My best theory could be lack of family time. A lot of my students said for dinner they’ll eat in their room and watch TV. You can’t hear parents converse if you’re not sitting at the dinner table with them. Whenever I see kids out and about they are zoomed in on their iPad completely lacking awareness of their surroundings. Also, single parents.

Mom and Dad aren't teachers at all anymore. That's the problem. They don't even think it's their jobs to help their kids with homework.

It's a cultural problem, so there won't be a solution without a real cultural shift. We don't value education in America and it's gotten to the point where many are openly hostile towards teachers and educated people. Nothing will change until that changes.


To further your point, Mom and Dad are barely Mom and Dad anymore...


They try to be friends more than parents and don't want to cause even momentary discomfort for their kids, instead making every little thing easier for them. They don't allow the children to experience consequences for negative actions, so children are losing out on the learning and problem solving experiences that come from dealing with those consequences.


We're creating young adults who can't deal with criticism at their jobs, get frustrated and quit when life is not easy, and don't know how to take care of themselves because they're used to someone else taking care of everything for them.

[Soloist]

The education/parenting crisis is part of why my husband and I are choosing to just be poor and live in a 1 bedroom with our kid rn. My husband stays home while I work, just one job that covers the bare minimum.
Kiddo is not school age yet but we plan on home schooling and we both play, read, and take kiddo outside every day.
I'd rather him grow up poor than completely detached from us and with zero foundational learning. It's heartbreaking how starved for connection many kids are these days

I 100% support this. My dad fathered me at an older age, so he retired early and my mom is disabled so she couldn't work. This means I was raised by two parents at home on nothing but a single pension. When I was a kid i resented that my family didn't have as much money as my classmates' families, but as an adult I feel very privileged to have grown up in that environment. I wasn't homeschooled, but I learned a whole lot at home. Money can't buy a child the experiences that their parents can give them.


So your solution to staving for connection, is to imprison them with only their parents? Yeah, that's not going to work.


Yeah, socializing with kids their age is incredibly important.


He gets socialization through gym care (the daycare at the gym my husband goes to in the mornings), the library, and playdates. Also he spends plenty of time with other family as well. Once he is school age we plan on joining a homeschooling co-op or group so it's not just us, but we are ultimately open to public school depending on our situation when that time comes.


You are choosing to be poor by living life on a single income. Why wouldn't your husband get a job so you can afford a house or maybe private schooling? You are not doing your child a favor home schooling them.

The response to someone choosing homeschooling instead is depressing

[Soloist]

Im a first year teacher teaching 8th grade here is a non-exhaustive list of things I've had to teach that I feel like the kids should already know when they're in 8th grade.

How to round
Number places (ones, tenths etc...)
The industrial revolution
How to spell Telescope
How Time zones work
"Google" is not an acceptable citation.
How to find the volume of a cube
That pollution didn't start 10 years ago
The prefix oct- means 8
That there is no air in space
They are so behind and there will be a reckoning in a few years when industry begins to suffer because we won't have a skilled work force and it will get blamed on teachers even though parents and admin keep pushing kids through who have no skills.


I was eating lunch the other day at burger joint and there were a couple kids sitting behind me who looked like maybe Junior or Seniors in HS.

They were working on basic multiplication and were laughing at how hard it was. Just calling each other stupid and having a jolly old time knowing they were going to fail tomorrow’s test, calling it “way too hard” and “pointless”.

These are older teenagers about to enter the work force and they were just trying to work through 1st and 2nd grade math. Honestly it stunned me. I understand people have development issues, but it was the fact they found their lack of math skills HILARIOUS. Absolutely baffles me. At their age I had so many hopes and dreams about what I could be in life. I feel like they had already given up and they weren’t even done with HS. So depressing.

[Soloist]

My children are doing miles better in the CM school.

My son still struggles with math, but the difference is night and day. Pretty much all of my children are regularly getting 90% and above on most of their subjects, they have homework they get help with, they eat at the table with their family...

The contrast between our schools and public schools has much more to do with parents then simply the teacher child ratio and we are seeing these issues more and more as time goes along. Covid really accelerated some of this to.


Ken do you see things like this from single parent families? housing unstable families, both parents working families?

How much of this is exaggerated relatively speaking?

Sdzfan?

[Soloist]

If even half of this stuff is true, it makes me thankful we run our own schools and that we have relationships with our spouses and children.

[QuietlyListening]

I'll speak from what my daughter in law in seeing. She is a speech therapist and went back this year part time. She is working with the younger children 3-5 y/o. Some of the 3 and 4 year olds cannot sit still or follow simple directions and she said this seems to be a post covid thing as they were not exposed to other children early on and lack of parental guidance/structure.
My 3 oldest grandchildren attend public school. They are doing well but have much parental involvement but I'd say it isn't so much if it's single parent, working parents as how much parental involvement is there. You can have a lot of parental involvement with a single parent or both parents working and very little from a 2 parent with only one parent working. It's more how the parents choose to involve themselves.

But overall from what my daughter in law is seeing and hearing- covid had a huge affect on students and how they are doing in school today. Some were able to move forward and others couldn't for various reasons.

[Josh]

I'll speak from what my daughter in law in seeing. She is a speech therapist and went back this year part time. She is working with the younger children 3-5 y/o. Some of the 3 and 4 year olds cannot sit still or follow simple directions and she said this seems to be a post covid thing as they were not exposed to other children early on and lack of parental guidance/structure.
My 3 oldest grandchildren attend public school. They are doing well but have much parental involvement but I'd say it isn't so much if it's single parent, working parents as how much parental involvement is there. You can have a lot of parental involvement with a single parent or both parents working and very little from a 2 parent with only one parent working. It's more how the parents choose to involve themselves.

But overall from what my daughter in law is seeing and hearing- covid had a huge affect on students and how they are doing in school today. Some were able to move forward and others couldn't for various reasons.

Strangely enough, Covid had very little impact on Amish schools and in other ultra conservative schools who decided to ignore the lockdowns. Life for them just goes on as usual.

[Ken]

Despite all the random anecdotal stories, what the US public schools really have is a race problem.

If you look at the performance of White and Asian students in the US they outperform their counterparts in every European country and all but a very few Asian countries. And Asian-American students outperform everyone else on earth. There is a reason why wealthy Asian parents from places like Korea, China, and India bring their children to the US to be educated.

The real problem with American public education is figuring out how to bring Black and to a lesser extent Hispanic students up to the level that White and Asian students are already at. And that is an enormously complex problem involving economics, poverty, inequity, racism, social mores, culture, and an endless list of other complexities that make simplistic solutions impossible.

So sure, compare public schools to religious or CM schools if you want. That is all fair game. But if you want an honest apples to apples comparison you should really compare equivalent subpopulations and control for all the other economic, racial, and social factors that affect school and student performance. I honestly doubt that has ever been done in any sort of systematic way. But I could be wrong.

The contrast between our schools and public schools has much more to do with parents then simply the teacher child ratio and we are seeing these issues more and more as time goes along. Covid really accelerated some of this to.

Ken do you see things like this from single parent families? housing unstable families, both parents working families?

How much of this is exaggerated relatively speaking

Yes, of course. Poverty, unstable family situations, and unstable housing have a lot to do with it. In fact, around here housing has a LOT to do with it. I know I drumbeat the topic of housing and affordable housing but it is real and affects everything including education. I have many students who bounce in and out of school and between schools because their housing situation is unstable, even if they happen to be in stable families. And that is due to the housing shortage and high cost of housing around here. One month the might be be in some short term housing situation near my school. Next month they are across town staying temporarily with the brother in law. Next month maybe another short term situation across town. Maybe they find a place but then get evicted with the rent goes up by $500/mo. and Dad's job is unstable. When you bounce kids around like that their education suffers no matter how much you try otherwise.

[Soloist]

Ken do you see black children from well off families having academic problems?

[Josh]

If you look at the performance of White and Asian students in the US they outperform their counterparts in every European country and all but a very few Asian countries. And Asian-American students outperform everyone else on earth. There is a reason why wealthy Asian parents from places like Korea, China, and India bring their children to the US to be educated.

The real problem with American public education is figuring out how to bring Black and to a lesser extent Hispanic students up to the level that White and Asian students are already at. And that is an enormously complex problem involving economics, poverty, inequity, racism, social mores, culture, and an endless list of other complexities that make simplistic solutions impossible.

Are you sure about that? What if we just compare Asian countries (perhaps Korea, Japan, and China) and European countries (perhaps Luxembourg, Sweden, Germany, France) to some African countries. Are the same differences still present?

So sure, compare public schools to religious or CM schools if you want. That is all fair game. But if you want an honest apples to apples comparison you should really compare equivalent subpopulations and control for all the other economic, racial, and social factors that affect school and student performance. I honestly doubt that has ever been done in any sort of systematic way. But I could be wrong.

You seem to be making an assumption that our CM schools are composed of just one ethnic group, which is not the case.