Brad S said:
The NEA has their finger prints all over this.
Absolutely.
Dad taught high school math before going into administration.
He said from the time he started until he retired, the decline was immense. He was only supposed to use agreed upon text books, which were horrible. The ones in the 90's used such conviluted ways to explain something so absolute as math/algebra.
He would sneak in stuff from texts in the 70's, especially for his kids he took to scholastic meets and he would win about everyone if not place 1, 2, 3.
He noticed that they didn't cover a 1/4 or more of the information they once did.
With my kids in school today, it's worse.
The teacher spends all her time assessing kids and very, very little teaching. I always thought tests were created to asses kids.
Now its all on a very individual and inefficient basis. They test, but then they have zero time to correct and instruct the kid. These young teachers brought into the fold think this is normal.
One of ours failed some skill being tested. She is a very bright girl, but probably wasn't paying attention in class. I spent all of 30 seconds at home to tell her what she should do instead and she did it right every time afterward. But her young teacher had set up some extravagant plan for "intervention". Took 100 times longer to do that than just tell her what to do! And the teacher thinks she's very intelligent. She tells us all the time.
My frustration is not with her, but the rediculous system designed to dumb down children. The teacher did what was prescribed for her to do.