<p>@austinmshauri I am speaking from experience. Sudden “issues” in math are almost always due to poor prep early on and a lack of discipline. Teachers are tired of hearing the excuses. Claiming your child suffers from some newfound disorder is much easier than 10 years of monitoring your child’s math homework. Or if it’s not a disorder, it’s always a teacher from last year or three years ago that’s to blame. Unless you’re illiterate, there’s no reason to blame your teacher’s 8th grade algebra I teacher on their performance in trig or pre-calc. Any college educated parent can teach and monitor their child’s math home. Parenting is a full time job, a lot of parents operate on cruise control when things are going well, then when things get challenging it’s so late in the game that needed adjustments are difficult to implement.</p>
<p>I am speaking from experience.</p>
<p>Since this is the parents forum and not the “chance me” thread, I believe we are all speaking from experience.</p>
<p>I don’t agree that poor math performance is necessarily poor prep early on and a lack of discipline. I was all over my kid – I did check the homework nightly, and I worked with his teachers and private math tutors for years to give him help. (I was actually good at math, so it wasn’t the blind leading the blind, either.) But there was some strange disconnect that my son had with the subject. Interesting that a poster mentioned dyscalculia, because I had never heard about this until I started trying to figure out what the deal was with my son. Let’s all remember that at one time, dyslexia was unknown as well.</p>
<p>It’s okay – not everyone is good at math. Of course, this means you have to accept early on that his math scores and grades and courses may keep him off the path for the most competitive colleges, but that’s okay, too. I think my role as a parent is to nurture his talents and make him as well-rounded as possible besides. If being a math genius isn’t in the cards for him, then I just have to play the hand I’m dealt, not beat myself up about it. </p>
<p>Ellen: My kids got 100s early with no effort. Even in HS when one moved from the very hard honors class to the “advanced” class he got 100s with no effort at all. It is difficult to keep up that motivation if the kid is acing the class. But don’t ask them to do more of the same work or extra “enrichment” problems, they had no interest. Why work that hard if you don’t have to? Even in elementary school, my kids were not willing to do boring “extra credit” if they already had an A. There was nothing to be “on” them about - they did their work, they aced the tests, they were interested learners and active class participants. </p>
<p>This is certainly true for many bright kids. Elementary school is generally not meant to be hard. It is meant to let kids learn and achieve. However, some kids, due to their personalities and maturity, recognize that more work is required when they get to middle school and high school and work as needed to achieve the As. Others have a harder time with the transition. </p>
<p>Very smart/gifted kids are also very savvy. With differentiated instruction, for example, the teacher would give a “pre-test” to determine which spelling words or math homework the kids would have to do. Some of the brightest kids learned that if they purposely miss-spelled a work on the pre-test, they had to learn the “easy” list instead of the hard one and since they already knew those words, their spelling work was done? And they knew they would get an A, rather than have to work and possibly miss a word or two. Are these kids lazy, unmotivated or really smart. An old business adage is work smarter, not harder, and that may well apply in school. </p>
<p>Next thing you know, people will start posting against helicoptering. Lots of opinions here- and a few harsh judgments. In general, I’d say, when in doubt, when you tried and so does the student, when there isn’t an obvious cause, (eg, not completing work,) and signs point to some functional issue, just get some testing done. The initial levels of this can be easy. These are our kids. We’ve got to realize there is no one path, nor any one explanation. And no one fault to point at. </p>
<p>The way our district teaches math is spiral curriculum.
Optimally the intent is to reinforce concepts that are required to move ahead, but in reality, it depends on your teacher and whether they supplement the chosen material and how quickly they move through it.
Some concepts are just skipped. I was surprised to learn that long division is no longer taught for instance.
If you dont understand the underlying concepts, it will not matter if you spend three hours a day or 20 minutes.</p>
<p>In my case, my brain shuts down after a few hours, so more time would be a hinderance rather than a help.</p>
<p>The spiral concept of teaching math looks great on paper, but failed miserably with both of my kids. </p>
<p>The first was not a natural at math, but could understand it well if taught. The problem with the spiral was that she never felt like she had mastered anything. Just when she understood something, they would introduce a new concept very briefly, only introducing the kids to the idea, not expecting the kids to understand or learn it. That subject would come around again in a month or two, when it might actually be taught. She felt she was always behind, always trying to catch up. Math worked much better for her when she outgrew the ridiculous elementary spiral and was taught each topic in turn.</p>
<p>The second kid was quick to understand math concepts. The spiral failed with her because she understood the concepts the first time they were presented, when kids were only introduced to them and not expected to learn them. Thus most of the math curriculum became boring repetition, which completely turned her off from math.</p>
<p>The only thing to remember is that testing and even diagnosis does not solve the problem. If a kid has inattentive ADHD, the medications are not that effective. If there is a processing disorder, it is not always easy to fix. going to the “resource center” instead of taking a particular class can be worthless. Extra time is not always helpful, if the kid doesn’t understand the materail. For many kids, the learning difference may mean that they aren’t able to do as well as their IQ might suggest. That doesn’t always mean there is something that can or needs to be fixed. Performance is the combination of IQ, learning style, and personality traits like perseverance and desire to obtain good grades. </p>
<p>This may sound like heresy to a lot of the people here, but I’m not sure OP’s kid has such a terrible problem. This is a (presumably talented) aspiring artist who basically gets As and Bs, tends to get Cs in math, but has done well enough throughout the curriculum to reach the precalculus level for 11th or 12th grade? Sounds like a perfectly legitimate way of being, and of going through high school, to me. Is the electrical engineering department at MIT going to roll out the red carpet for this kid? No. But who cares? This kid has other talents and aptitudes and goals.</p>
<p>We can’t all be perfect at everything. I think there’s nothing wrong with testing, as I said up-thread, but realistically, if a student is going into 12th grade with the overall respectable academic standing we see here, even if the testing shows some deficits, there won’t be much that a special ed department can (or will) do beyond offering extra time on tests. They work to get you through the HS diploma (which will be a slam-dunk for the student in question), but the special ed people should also wean supports to prepare you for college, especially when you’re in 11th or 12th and you’re clearly college-bound without help.</p>
<p>So, yes, I encourage the OP to pursue testing (if the student wants it – that’s very important by this stage of the game) but I don’t imagine it will fix much, and I don’t think there’s really much if anything “broken”.</p>
<p>“She is not a terribly hard worker” says the OP. I haven’t read this thread very carefully but the fact is that high school math is not easy for most people and the difficulty ramps up every year. A kid who doesn’t work hard and is “careless” on tests and homework cannot just keep waltzing in and do well–and this does not mean they have some kind of learning disability. </p>
<p>And yes, it can mean that the kid got a poor foundation. Our school has a significant problem with students who struggle in algebra2 or precalculus due to not having really understood algebra 1. I know that many of them didn’t get it because I’ve heard many times from my kids how their classmates who supposedly completed algebra 1 were unable to write down or understand even the simplest algebraic equations. And yet these students got honor grades in algebra1 and were passed along to struggle in the higher level courses.</p>
<p>A little late on the train but, I’ve experienced the exact same issue with my son.</p>
<p>He was a straight A student through middle school and due to this, he jumped up one math level in high school and this was by far the worst decision we could have made. As a freshmen, he earned a C in his advanced math class and it only spiraled from there. Sophomore year he said things would change and we even got him and expensive tutor but to no avail, he once again ended math with a C. Junior year we tried to switch him out of advanced pre-calculus to regular pre-calc but the guidance counselors told us there was no more room in regular and he would have to continue the advanced math track. He received a D one semester and a C the next. Senior year he took AP Statistics and earned an A both semesters. But like many have said above, by senior year it is too late to do anything on the college GPA front. These Cs and D naturally got my son rejected from our state flagship. </p>
<p>Though it may be too late for OP, as a message to others in this situation if you can drop down a class difficulty level, do so! Some people are just not good at a particular subject and that’s ok! To the OP, I hope she finds that great art school that wants her all the same! </p>