A Grade-By-Grade Guide to Education

"No, Mom! You're doing it the wrong way!" That's what Stephanie Elliot, a Scottsdale, AZ, mother of three, heard when she tried to help her kids with their math homework. Elliot knew she'd have trouble -- she just didn't expect it to start so early. "Even memorizing the multiplication tables is different," she sighs.

It turns out that a lot of what we remember from grade school might be obsolete now. "In general, everything's been bumped down," says Chip Wood, M.S.W., director of curriculum and instruction at the Gill-Montague Regional School District in Turners Falls, MA, and the author of Yardsticks: Children in the Classroom Ages 4-14. "Kids are being asked to do more difficult math and reading work than they used to. So what you remember learning in first grade is now taught in kindergarten, second-grade subjects are now taught in first grade, and so on." While each state's curriculum will vary a bit, here's a general overview of what's being taught in public school in each grade.