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We moved to America in 2015, in time for my kid to start third grade. Now she's a year away from graduating high school (!) and I've had a front-row seat for the US K-12 system in a district rated as one of the best in the country. There were ups and downs, but high school has been a monster.
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/16/flexibility-in-the-margins/#a-commons
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We're a decade and a half into the "#CommonCore" experiment in educational standardization. The majority of the country has now signed up to a standardized and rigid curriculum that treats overworked teachers as untrustworthy slackers who need to be disciplined by measuring their output through standard lessons and evaluations:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Core
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This system is rigid enough, but it gets even worse at the secondary level, especially when combined with the #AdvancedPlacement (#AP) courses, which adds another layer of inflexibile benchmarks to the highest-stakes, most anxiety-provoking classes in the system:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Placement
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@[email protected] Former teacher who is not a fan of College Board.
Say you decide to do a biochemistry degree and get AP bio and AP chem credits. It encourages the student to skip those courses in the first year. Was the AP content in high school sufficient to cover all of the first year content? How much will you remember 2 years later when you're starting the more advanced courses?
How can you standardize your education program as a college if people can skip the intro courses?