Spent months training her up to a middle school level. We moved states and she took test. No math questions on it…
It think she's covering for a lack of paying attention.
Or maybe she's young, and standards have really slipped? Because otherwise no.
I used to tutor. Quite a lot of kids missed something simple somewhere in the beginning and then were skating by having passable but not good grades. Not understanding what is taught, but getting enough points.
The tutoring consisted of going beck few years and teaching them basics again. They improved, but school never did that "maybe this person now can learn the thing he/she missed 3 years ago".
I remember “factorization” not clicking for me for the longest time in public school. My grades slowly got worse, until the right teacher came along and explained it in a way that clicked. I proceeded to have a successful math focused education in high school and university.
I wonder if part of it is that kids are at the mercy of what their teachers want to teach / the curriculum. I think kids often know which things they struggle with… they need help articulating it, and then someone to work with them through it.
We had one elementary teacher in particular who stated that there was 1 study done in some Nordic country that proved homework does not help. (reference to said study was not provided). Interesting that if you look at high school there is tons of homework; same for university. If that 1 study had any merit it would have applied across all levels. The real truth is that practice makes perfect. But teacher unions do not want that burden on teachers and students suffer in the end. I do not get why elementary schools don't assign homework (I have no doubt private elementary schools do - they get better results).
If you have a parent who recognizes this short changing and is capable of supplementing the education there is a chance for recovery or at least mitigating a decline.