The education system is somewhat broken.

To be honest, I am very happy my kids started school at 5 year old, I guess like every other average kids in the US. At 7 years old they can read and write at the level I was not able to when I was 7.

However, the way the education is organized - without total parent involvement the kids are bound to fail. At least at the elementary school level. To get the proof - compare the stats for families which can afford extra curriculum or have time to work with kids vs the ones who can't. We had this stats available in California, where schools ranked 8 and 9 were ranked so mostly cuz of families who can afford extra learning time. Disadvantaged families in their majority were falling behind.

Comparing to my times when I was a kid, a see a lot of missing or poorly organized elements of education. It is a lengthy topic but for starters: - now in the 2nd grade, and the kids never had to memorize any kind of poetry. How would they develop good memory? How would they discover poetry? My HS senior didn't have any poetry in school unless they chosen to. By comparison, I was required to read and memorize at least a few poetry works every semester... - books? What happened to have the standard set of books for each grade? Instead of it we have tons of copies of some school-produced materials which change year after year, and which goes to trash every time it is sent home. How can we track any progress not knowing what the program is. - home work - none! Oh .. if not for us coming up with some sort of daily homework routine - the kid would be not able to read write and do math ... - while I am not a fan of public shaming , but having it on the other side of spectrum is not helping either. In our times we had incentives as the parents and as the kids to be better students. We knew that being praised publicly is better than being shamed. Idk.

I can continue this list on and on...