Wow...DD's HS team seems to be struggling academically

[00fpdaddy]

This is the 1st year in Common Core in our area. The math part is absolutely ridiculous. That's a whole different thread.

My DD1's school feels that if the whole class doesn't do well on a test, the teachers didn't teach it well. They acknowledge that the teachers are learning this new math as well. A couple times this semester, a "make up" test was given. This has only been in math.

Just discussing this with a friend yesterday. His son is in 5th grade, father great in math, he cant figure the cc(common core) process of this math being taught to his son. He will get to the right answer but the son tells him his process is not want they want therefore will not get credit for the right answer. Any teachers here that can further explain why the majority of us are now not smarter than a 5th grader?

 

[00fpdaddy]

why is having a 3.8 or higher so important? This upper echelon of players have a great work ethic, they care about thier studies more than the avg. student. At high school they have thier ducks in a row, in college that all gets blown up. They have no time for themselves during the season. There just so many hours in a day. Members here with dds playing in college can attest to it.

 

[00fpdaddy]

I can see their point, that the coach should've done this a bit more discretely. OILF thought the coach would've been fired in her district, but that is HER district, not yours.

Let me play Devil's Advocate here, si'l tu plais. (Remember, I am in favor of the coaches pushing the kids to do better in school).

One thing they noticed at my kids' HS, and this is NOT uncommon, is that kids who participate in sports tend to do better than the kids who do NOT participate in sports. One reason is better time management, another is that there are very strict rules. For example, the AD requires every kid to get every teacher to sign what they call a "Tuesday Report" (since this is done on Tuesdays) to affirm that the kid is going to class and doing the homework.

There is a wide variety of socio-economic backgrounds in Madison. Some are families that came to Madison so their parents could teach at one of the local colleges or work in a high tech field. Others are families that came to Madison from Laos or the south side of Chicago so their kids wouldn't get shot on the way to or from school. Some are in-between.

Kids of certain socio-economic groups tend to be more active in some sports than others. For example, when DS was on the freshman track team, he had friends who were from the lower socio-economic backgrounds. Not that these were necessarily dumb kids. One of his friends, from a Hmong refugee family, had a full-ride scholarship at Harvard lined up. Other kids were really struggling just to keep from failing school.

When DD #1 was on the school freshman softball team, the socio-economic distribution was different.

I could see that, at your school, the kids on the team could all be from the sort of socio-economic backgrounds where it wouldn't be THAT big a challenge for the kids to do that well at school. and should be expected.

That does not mean we shouldn't have high expectations. I've taught in colleges in some places where some people fear to tred. I used to teach classes in the South Bronx (Eugenio Maria de Hostos Community College) and in Crown Heights (Medgar Evers College) on the same day. And, I pushed my students. I remember one young lady, who was VERY upset because a professor refused to push her class, saying it would "frustrate" the students. I told her I was going to push her, and make her work hard. She said: "You'ld BETTER!" (She earned an A in that class).

But, we must choose our battles, I remember a few cases where I considered it a great victory for a student to get a C, or even a D.


OK, Devil's Advocate time over. If the students on the team are all students who SHOULD be getting those grades, the coach is right to push them to get those grades. If not, then that is a very different story, and she should probably go by the normal school athletic rules.

I would have a beer with you! Great post