Fear and Parenting in Las Vegas

Welcome to the first installment of Bad Habit Friday. This is a section where I’m hoping to self-flagellate and embarass myself into substantive behavioral change. After all, shame does a body good.

My name is Marge, and I’m a volunteer-aholic. Read more »

Here’s today’s follow-up story in the R-J on the math test. More interesting than the article are the comments below it. I love how “Proud Parent” has a typo. If you can’t use grammar correctly in your rant about teaching, I have little faith that his/her “homework help” isn’t doing more harm than good. I appreciated the feedback from “Richard” who is apparently a math teacher in the district. His comment illustrates the nearly insurmountable challenge we put our teachers through, expecting them to succeed.

I hate math. I think nearly all kids hate math.

Today’s Las Vegas Review Journal posted a story on the more-than-dismal pass rates of our local high school students on final exams for math classes. I skimmed through it and thought, “How could our kids be THAT bad?”

I’m no rocket scientist. Hell, I was a liberal arts major partly because it was a program that required the least amount of math classes. But jiminy christmas – 91 percent of Clark County high school students failed their Algebra I final exam last semester? Read more »