Are our children really expected to learn more than we did when we were their age? Here’s a hint: It’s not your imagination

Parents are known for telling their kids how much harder life was when they were young. As in - I had to walk to school in snow and rain. Or - I couldn’t just find research on the Internet, I had to walk to the library in the snow and rain.

So why is it that parents today seem to universally agree that their children are expected to learn more than they did back in the day? I know I definitely tell my kids this on a regular basis.

I decided to find out whether this widespread perception reflects reality. I sought out some experts and found great ones in Debbie Beldock and Geff Wilcox.

Beldock is the interim director for district and school improvement for the San Diego County Office of Education and the former executive director of curriculum and instruction for the San Diego Unified School District. She’s also a mom and started her career teaching elementary school.

Wilcox has taught second or third grade for 34 years. I knew him when my children were students at Miramar Ranch Elementary School in Scripps Ranch. You know how you get excited at the start of a school year because your child lucked out and got a great teacher? Mr. Wilcox is one of those teachers. He’s also a dad.

Without hesitation, Beldock and Wilcox agree that parents aren’t imagining anything. Academic expectations are higher today than they were a generation ago.

Wilcox said his third-graders are learning things in his class that kids in the past learned in fourth, fifth and even sixth grade.

“It’s incredibly demanding,” he said. In fact, he added, for some students, it may be too demanding.

Expectations are higher for a reason

The two educators said there are two primary reasons for higher expectations: changes in the workforce and the move over the past few decades toward standards-based learning.

All we have to do is look around us to see that a high school diploma won’t take you as far as it did years ago. Blue-collar jobs that pay enough to provide for a family have disappeared faster than cupcakes at a class party. So our kids need to learn more to get ahead. That’s not hard to understand.

But is standards-based learning a factor, too? That I wanted to know more about.

Beldock said uniform academic standards have raised the bar for all students and educators. Back when grading on the curve was the norm, it was widely accepted that not all students were capable of meeting rigorous expectations. But that’s no longer the case.

Now, students are expected to master a myriad of grade-appropriate standards. And each spring, right about the opening of the baseball season, students who are in at least the second grade enter standardized testing season.

California’s current content standards were written in the late 1990s. The move across the nation toward academic standards started well before that, Beldock said. Here’s an example she provided to illustrate the changes they have brought:

Years ago, a fifth-grader would write a report on one of our 50 states. Now, that fifth-grader would need to know the names of all 50 states and their capitals, know the definition of pluralism and be able to describe the impact pluralism has had on the history of the United States, she said.

Wilcox said students aren’t the only ones hustling; teachers also have to hustle to squeeze in all the standards over the course of a 180-day school year. Some of the standards are relatively easy to grasp for most of his students, Wilcox said.

Here are a few examples pulled directly from the state standards for third grade:

Compare and order whole numbers to 10,000.

Discuss the importance of public virtue and the role of citizens, including how to participate in a classroom, in the community, and in civic life.

But there are some doozies that Wilcox said even his best students struggle with. Here’s one:

Determine the underlying theme or author’s message in fiction and nonfiction text.

He said for years the expectation was that a children would know how to read and understand what they read by the end of the third grade. Now, third graders are expected to delve much deeper into interpreting their reading material.

Wilcox said he believes children should be challenged in class, but he worries that some kids are being pushed too hard.

“We’re trying to do so many things so quickly,” Wilcox said.

Greater expectations should not mean a greater homework load

Here’s one area where Beldock and Wilcox concur: Having higher academic standards should not mean more work for students once the school day ends. Beldock summed it up nicely: “This does not have to translate into more pieces of paper for homework.”

Unfortunately, many parents (I include myself in this camp) know our kids get more homework, sometimes a lot more homework, than we did. Beldock, whose daughter is a college senior, said there were times she was amazed by the amount of homework her daughter brought home.

She said teachers should ask themselves what the purpose of an assignment is. And parents should feel very comfortable asking teachers at the start of a school year about their homework policy. And they should feel comfortable approaching a teacher in a friendly way if they feel their child is spending an extraordinary amount of time on homework.

Wilcox said he tries to limit homework for his students to no more than one hour a night, including 20 to 30 minutes of reading. He also assigns weekly homework packets on a Thursday so parents have time to go over them with their child on weekends. He said he’s mindful that a lot of his students are from families where both parents work or where the parents are divorced.

“I think we expect an awful lot from our parents,” Wilcox said.

My final thoughts on content standards:

For years, I had a very negative view of state standards and standardized testing. I’m not sure where it came from.

I thought of standards as not particularly important bits of information that my kids had to memorize in order to fill in the appropriate bubbles come testing time. Teaching to the test was a waste of time, I thought.

I was wrong.

Prior to starting this Web site, I spent weeks poring over the standards for every grade from K though 12 to create a series of downloads that I call “Smart Kids.” What I found were practical, logical lists of facts and concepts that children should learn during a particular grade. I’d read through a set of standards and think: Of course, I’d want me child to learn this.

The state keeps its standards online at the Department of Education Web site. I have found a few school districts that include the standards on their Web sites. I decided to take the standards off their virtual shelf in Sacramento and make them available to parents. You will find them in a section of this site called Smart (and free) downloads.

I highly recommend printing out copies of the standards for your child’s grade and referring to them throughout the school year.

Beldock said statewide standards are sometimes misunderstood. She suggests when parents look at them that they concentrate on the verbs that are used, verbs like discuss, describe, understand, know, explain and solve. The verbs, she said, are proof that the standards go far beyond a recitation of cold facts.

The state’s content standards are also available on the Department of Education Web site.