Shouldn't they be starting soon?

[Sparx]

$100 for a CALCULATOR? For high school MATH?

I've had my TI 98 plus graphing calculator. It carried me from middle school through college and I still use it every week when I go grocery shopping. Definitely $100.00 well spent. I took everything from math to advanced trigonometry and my calculator worked perfectly through every function I needed it to do. The $10.00 calculators cannot do that, and are honestly wasted money if you choose those over a graphing calculator. They will need one eventually if they take any algebra.

 

[Sarah_Rose]

$100 for a CALCULATOR? For high school MATH?

My DH and I are both teachers and have taught in the UK (he in upper school and I in middle school), as well as in the US. My DH is a math/computers teacher, so I just asked him and he told me that the math that upper school students are doing in the UK is much more basic than the math that high school students in the US are taught. In fact, he was shocked at how much of upper school maths is covered in the middle school/junior high curriculum in the US.

Personally, I taught at a middle school in Suffolk with an "unsatisfactory" OFSTED rating when I started (we did get our "satisfactory" rating during the first year I taught there) and we definitely did not have the supplies needed for our students. I taught humanities and would have killed for coloring pencils (how else do you teach mapping skills in geography?) or scissors/glue sticks. I shelled out a lot of money, personally, to keep my students in basic supplies - not to mention Kleenex, decorating supplies, and reading novels. It's tough when your school doesn't have the money and the parents are not accustomed to buying school supplies.

 

[NikiM20]

I got all of DD's school supplies for $50. I was able to reuse her flash drive from last year.

I used to work as a teachers aide for special needs children. I have purchased diapers, uniforms, wipes, kleenex,blankets, etc etc for these children. We would ask the parents to send them and they would not , or could not afford them. I wasnt going to let them do without so I purchased them. Not all teachers would do this, so if your teacher goes the extra mile be sure to thank them!!

 

[golfgal]

Ok read through the rest of the thread and I want to hear from a few teachers on why they are asking for enourmous amounts of stuff and bizarre stuff to boot. I am not talking tissues and hand sanitizers or stuff like that. But I can never find college ruled paper on sale which apparently here they have to have instead of regular lined paper, the search all over hell and gone for 3 green pens and the safety goggles? I get bookcovers, folders (only one 3 one here for my kids I don't care what they say we don't have lockers here) and they want all this crap actually sent into school some of the times and give out reward points for those that get everything on the list. I am not anti teacher or anti education I am just wondering what mindset causes some of these inane requests.

The college rule paper is always on sale with the regular paper here. The reason for getting college rule is the lines are closer together which helps with penmanship but it also makes it so the kids have to write more and be more comprehensive-plus it is easier to read I think. It is like requiring 12 pt font vs 16 pt font.

Green pens-discussed earlier-some schools have banned red pens. I know in several of our kids' classes they were required to bring pens that were not blue or black so when they are doing a rough draft for a research paper they can make corrections and they are just more visible with a different colored ink.

I would think that safety goggles are obvious-if they are in a science class doing experiments they are required so you don't get chemicals in your eyes. We had to buy the back in the dark ages when I was in school too.

 

[aprilgail2]

$100 for a CALCULATOR? For high school MATH?

We need the $120 calculator in middle school.

We need that in both schools but due to the school being taken to court over that they ruled that if the district wanted you to use something so expensive that they would have to provide each student with it- so that is what they do now. You sign for it at the beginning of the year nad if your kid loses it you have to pay for it but otherwise its free to you.

Starting in middle school (6th grade), the schools have their agenda/planner made every year. At registration, you have to buy the agenda. Once school starts, the kids have to write their assignments done and the agendas have to be signed on Fridays by the parents. The kids get points for having this done by the power teacher.

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We have that too- but the school provides that too! Ours were supposed to be signed daily- I could never remember to sign the darn thing so I ended up just initialing page after page before it was even written in to keep ahead of it.

\ Unless they have some outlandish requests like the year I had to buy 7 packs of Swiffer refills, we should get out pretty cheap!

There is NO way I would be sending that in...

It works differently in different schools here; in mine, we don't let the little ones (grades 6-8) take the textbooks home; we do for grades 9-12. Sometimes we share one textbook between two students if they're in demand (i.e. two classes running simultaneously that both want the books); that said, on the whole we tend not to use textbooks anyway.
.

We don't share textbooks and we do take them home if needed for homework. The kids with ADD/ADHD also get a full second set of books to keep at home as part of their "plan". My daughter best friend gets that so now when my kid forgets a book all she has to do is run over to her friends house and borrow one from her collection at home LOL!

 

[Kath2003]

Yes, graphing calculators are pretty common in high school for kids taking advanced math classes. Don't your kids take advanced math (Calculus, etc.)?

Of course they do, but our graphing calculators are about $30-50. The students don't have to take math after 10th grade unless they wish.

Personally, I taught at a middle school in Suffolk with an "unsatisfactory" OFSTED rating when I started (we did get our "satisfactory" rating during the first year I taught there) and we definitely did not have the supplies needed for our students. I taught humanities and would have killed for coloring pencils (how else do you teach mapping skills in geography?) or scissors/glue sticks. I shelled out a lot of money, personally, to keep my students in basic supplies - not to mention Kleenex, decorating supplies, and reading novels. It's tough when your school doesn't have the money and the parents are not accustomed to buying school supplies.

That's just bad budgeting by the school - we have a very small department and a very small budget but we can afford all of those things.

 

[golfgal]

Of course they do, but our graphing calculators are about $30-50. The students don't have to take math after 10th grade unless they wish.


.

In our state you have to have at least 3 years of high school math to graduate so kids take math at least through 11th grade but most take at least 4 years of high school math, many take 5 by having 2 math classes in a year or taking one over the summer like our kids just got done doing.

 

[Kath2003]

In our state you have to have at least 3 years of high school math to graduate so kids take math at least through 11th grade but most take at least 4 years of high school math, many take 5 by having 2 math classes in a year or taking one over the summer like our kids just got done doing.

Well you get your basic qualification in maths after the 10th grade; you can then take further qualifications in grades 11 & 12 if you want. In 11th and 12th grade, most students only take 3-4 subjects.

 

[NotUrsula]

In our state you have to have at least 3 years of high school math to graduate so kids take math at least through 11th grade but most take at least 4 years of high school math, many take 5 by having 2 math classes in a year or taking one over the summer like our kids just got done doing.

The basic difference in the UK is that what Americans think of as "graduation requirements" must all be completed by the 10th grade. Kids who are on what we would think of as a "trade school" trajectory can leave high school at that point, once they pass their GCSE examinations. Everything in the UK equivalent of 11th and 12th grade is strictly directed at college prep, and is normally further directed at a planned college course of study.

There are plenty of situations where a kid who was hoping to go to a school like Imperial College (a very selective Engineering/Medical school) might take 3-4 math classes in their final two years of high school; they just would not be likely to be taking any English or History classes at the same time.

The UK and Irish systems drop any pretense of generalist education after 10th grade, and they always have reserved the upper levels of high school for the college-bound -- in fact, in my parents' day, the cut-off in the Irish system was 8th grade. I was always having to fend off well-meaning social workers who wanted to give my parents information on GED classes when I was in school, after those surveys we used to have to fill out that asked about family education levels, which always phrased it as "number of years of schooling completed." My parents did have their HS diplomas; they just got them after 8th grade. They both went to trade schools after that: my mother studied tailoring and my dad was a master cabinetmaker.

PS: For our interested UK teachers, the calculator DS was required to have for 7th grade was a TI-30X Scientific Calculator, at around $20 (http://www.officedepot.com/a/products/176928/Texas-Instruments-TI-30X-IIS-Solar/). Starting in 9th grade, he'll be required to have a TI-84+, at around $100 (http://www.officedepot.com/a/products/208377/Texas-Instruments-TI-84-Plus-Silver/). As a pp noted, there are some schools that supply the calculators on a deposit system, but in most places it is more common to require each student to purchase their own. Since they have to be used for exams, they normally cannot share them. However, it should be noted that by no means all schools in the US require this level of math; there are many, many districts where the TI-30X would be the most advanced calculator you would ever need.

 

[golfgal]

The basic difference in the UK is that what Americans think of as "graduation requirements" must all be completed by the 10th grade. Kids who are on what we would think of as a "trade school" trajectory can leave high school at that point, once they pass their GCSE examinations. Everything in the UK equivalent of 11th and 12th grade is strictly directed at college prep, and is normally further directed at a planned college course of study.

There are plenty of situations where a kid who was hoping to go to a school like Imperial College (a very selective Engineering/Medical school) might take 3-4 math classes in their final two years of high school; they just would not be likely to be taking any English or History classes at the same time.

The UK and Irish systems drop any pretense of generalist education after 10th grade, and they always have reserved the upper levels of high school for the college-bound -- in fact, in my parents' day, the cut-off in the Irish system was 8th grade. I was always having to fend off well-meaning social workers who wanted to give my parents information on GED classes when I was in school, after those surveys we used to have to fill out that asked about family education levels, which always phrased it as "number of years of schooling completed." My parents did have their HS diplomas; they just got them after 8th grade. They both went to trade schools after that: my mother studied tailoring and my dad was a master cabinetmaker.

PS: For our interested UK teachers, the calculator DS was required to have for 7th grade was a TI-30X Scientific Calculator, at around $20 (http://www.officedepot.com/a/products/176928/Texas-Instruments-TI-30X-IIS-Solar/). Starting in 9th grade, he'll be required to have a TI-84+, at around $100 (http://www.officedepot.com/a/products/208377/Texas-Instruments-TI-84-Plus-Silver/). As a pp noted, there are some schools that supply the calculators on a deposit system, but in most places it is more common to require each student to purchase their own. Since they have to be used for exams, they normally cannot share them. However, it should be noted that by no means all schools in the US require this level of math; there are many, many districts where the TI-30X would be the most advanced calculator you would ever need.

Which people also forget when they are comparing US High School student test scores to UK and the rest of the developed world. Sure, if we took only our best and brightest we would be at or very near the top in the world.

 

[Sarah_Rose]

That's just bad budgeting by the school - we have a very small department and a very small budget but we can afford all of those things.

I have no doubt that that is true - there's a reason we were an "unsatisfactory" school. The school was also spending gobs of money on basics for other programs (calculators, books, etc. - mostly for classes where the students had to write SATs, as the school desperately needed to improve their SATs results) and the needs of many departments got lost along the way. My department was one of those... and so I spent my own money to make up the difference so that my students would actually learn something.

 

[Lisa loves Pooh]

Last check, we will be spending near $1000. That is the cost of curriculum---new reusable materials are bought for the oldest such as her textbooks, plus consumable/non-reproducible workbooks for her and the two younger ones as well as syllabi for the older two. Even though syllabi could be reused, I use it as a checklist. I have until mid-September to get all that.

But I want to hit those discount bins at walmart. I'm not sure I will have unpacked our house by the time they take those displays down.

 

[Kath2003]

Which people also forget when they are comparing US High School student test scores to UK and the rest of the developed world. Sure, if we took only our best and brightest we would be at or very near the top in the world.

But the scores usually compare "compulsory" education - after 10th grade, education isn't compulsory. The UK stats which are used for comparison are those at the end of 10th grade. Believe me, our system isn't perfect, but it's certainly not poor. The kids who can stay on to 11th and 12th grades need to have "average or above" results, nationally - so yes, it's the top 50% that stay on for non-compulsory further education. Kids in the UK spend just as much time in school as kids in the USA even without those extra two years anyway - we start school at 4. Ironically, the USA actually spends a greater % of their GDP on education, even without supplying kids with the basics.

11th & 12 grades are TOUGH in the UK; only 3-4 subjects and in much greater depth. It's one of the reasons why our college courses are generally considered a walk in the park in comparison to the endless work done by US college students.

 

[golfgal]

But the scores usually compare "compulsory" education - after 10th grade, education isn't compulsory. The UK stats which are used for comparison are those at the end of 10th grade. Believe me, our system isn't perfect, but it's certainly not poor. The kids who can stay on to 11th and 12th grades need to have "average or above" results, nationally - so yes, it's the top 50% that stay on for non-compulsory further education. Kids in the UK spend just as much time in school as kids in the USA even without those extra two years anyway - we start school at 4. Ironically, the USA actually spends a greater % of their GDP on education, even without supplying kids with the basics.

11th & 12 grades are TOUGH in the UK; only 3-4 subjects and in much greater depth. It's one of the reasons why our college courses are generally considered a walk in the park in comparison to the endless work done by US college students.

My first 2 years of college were pretty much review from what I had in high school and most kids that graduate from a top high school will say the same. Most of the kids that graduate from our high schools in our state already have 1-2 years of college credits under their belt too because of the duel credit program available. If you take the kids that are going to college here and stack what they take up against what your students take my guess is that they are very similar and difficult programs. The difference is we also still have the kids that don't want to be in school and sleep through class bringing down our test scores.