Going faster and/or deeper in math doesn't prevent a child from reading or writing.

Except, it seems to.

There are a finite number of hours in a day. If you take time to push one thing, you lose time for something else.

I would much rather see children being pushed to read well and efficiently, write logically and coherently with at least decent grammar, and speak in front of people without saying "um" and "like" every two seconds.

The problem is, it's very difficult to measure progress in those easily with a single test, so nobody values them.

I mean, the NMSQT weights itself with twice the verbal. If parents really wanted to help their child, they would drive improvement in their English.

It sounds like you're saying that it's impossible for a parent to support their child to 'accelerate' in math whilst simultaneously supporting their attainment of beyond-grade-level-expectation reading and written/oral communication skills.

Have I understood that correctly?

I'm not saying it's "impossible". I'm saying that "parents generally don't do it."

I suspect it's because measuring it is more difficult. Math is easy to measure. "Can you do those problems?" English is a lot harder to measure and takes mroe time. Proofreading a paper takes time--and you have to know how to write. Listening to a speech takes time. Discussing a book means that the parent needs to read it, too.

If that’s your theory, then I don’t see how reducing time spent on math would help.

If math requires so much less time, then the amount freed up wouldn’t be enough for the type of support you expect for ELA.

If parents shy away from ELA because it requires a type of effort that math does not, then reducing math isn’t going to somehow make them more willing to read books or learn to proofread.

I’m honestly surprised that you think slowing down math will help with ELA.

>>[...] and speak in front of people without saying "um" and "like" every two seconds.

You just added a third skill -- public speaking. You're right that the bar shouldn't be so low, but we are where we are, and families need to figure out ways to mitigate. I don't believe the NMSQT has a verbal (literally, oral) component, although one (ferverently!) hopes that clear writing translates more easily to oral speaking skills for the child.

> Except, it seems to.

Based on what evidence?

> The problem is, it's very difficult to measure progress in those easily with a single test, so nobody values them.

Ease of testing is not the root of the fetishization of STEM. Perceived benefit to personal economic prospects (and active propagandization [0] around that by people trying to increase labor supply and decrease labor costs in STEM fields to unlock greater profits) is.

[0] note that I am not arguing that this perception isn’t, to a significant extent, true—that it is perceived to be is key to behavior, and that it is propagandized heavily is key to perception, but none of that is inconsistent with truth.

I'd venture a guess (possibly, a poor one) that most students who would/could be seeking accelerated math can already read. Writing, at least for my kids, is the skill that has required much more parental involvement and has not been as "easy" as reading and (simple) math.

Reading a lot doesn't seem to translate very cleanly into decent writing skills, speaking both from my own experience and watching one of my bookworm kids struggling.

Schools are more willing to differentiate learning when it comes to reading/writing than math. This is because it doesn't require different lesson plans to let kids read different books during free reading time, for example. And when grading a kids' writing, it's not hard for a teacher to focus on basic skills for kids that are slower, and more advanced grammatical nitpicks for kids who have the basics down.

You make the point down-thread that parents do accelerated math because it's easier to show a kid has mastered a given skill. This is definitely relevant, in that schools that fight parents who want to accelerate their kids (across the board) have a harder time resisting when it can be clearly demonstrated that the child understands a topic. Even with this evidence, schools still resist letting children learn at their level in math; I can't imagine how much harder it would be to accomplish in a more amorphous subject like ELA.

FWIW, in my family we emphasize both math and ELA, but we might be nonrepresentative since I work in literacy/edtech.

> Schools are more willing to differentiate learning when it comes to reading/writing than math. This is because it doesn't require different lesson plans to let kids read different books during free reading time, for example. And when grading a kids' writing, it's not hard for a teacher to focus on basic skills for kids that are slower, and more advanced grammatical nitpicks for kids who have the basics down.

Ironically, that's exactly the kind of individual-differentiation-without-group-tracking that people around here object to when it is proposed for math.

Schools are, increasingly, willing to differentiate this way for math. Conservative (in the “attached to past methods”, rather than ideological, sense, though there is considerable correlation here) factions in the populace are opposed to it, though.

Can you explain how this would work for math? How can one student learn about fractions or exponents when other students are doing addition?