- The Pandemic really set that generation of kids back, particularly kids who were in elementary during that time.

- Public school is essentially daycare. They try to integrate special education students more into the regular classrooms, but the teachers end up spending disproportionate time dealing with them and their behavioral issues, which hurts learning for regular students.

- I don't have strong, set in stone opinions about Common Core, but it's approach is certainly hard for parents trying to catch their own children at home. Eg. there is no emphasis on memorizing multiplication tables, but rather it's on learning rather esoteric and hard to remember (albeit valid) math algorithms.

- The teachers are generally poorly trained, poorly motivated, poorly paid, poorly educated, and poorly adapted to teaching students.

- Learning high school math has been enjoyable. I only took up to geometry in high school, but they are doing much more advanced math. I don't know any of it, and they barely do. So it's been fun learning it and then having to teach it to them in the matter of a day or two. Being a programmer has been exceptionally useful in that regard.

If public school is essentially daycare, why did the pandemic set a generation of kids back?

My oldest has done both common core math(kinder and 1st grade) and Singapore math(2nd through 5th). Both emphasize understanding over procedure and repetition. I do think in the long run it's more valuable since she has an understanding of concepts instead of just having things memorized. She never really her learned her multiplication tables as it was never required, her homework is real world word problems that challenge even me. I think it's much more valuable than rote memorization that traditional math education focused on. It's just a lot of work from both the teacher and the student. That's the challenge teaching these types of math educations over traditional math.

This was trending long before the pandemic.