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For all the money the US spends in reading we rank below Azerbaijan and the Russian Federation in mathematics?
[SIZE=2]Note: In the US a printing error in the test booklets for reading meant some items had incorrect instructions so the mean performance could not be accurately estimated and therefore no results were reported. [/SIZE]
For all the money the US spends in reading we rank below Azerbaijan and the Russian Federation in mathematics?
[SIZE=2]Note: In the US a printing error in the test booklets for reading meant some items had incorrect instructions so the mean performance could not be accurately estimated and therefore no results were reported. [/SIZE]
How about the idea that all kids should get the same education? It's hard to raise the bar when you have kids in your class who don't even belong there sitting beside kids who could excell. You either blow away the bottom half of the class and fail them or you bore the top half to tears. Individualizing education is a pipe dream when you have 6 classes with 25-30 students in them so we're stuck teaching to the middle and trying to pull the bottom of the class up that far. At the end of the day, there isn't much left for the top third of students who are the ones who could really go far.
How about the idea that all kids should get the same education?
Why can't kids just be at different points in that same education, as warranted? Some will be ahead, some will be behind, some will be right on par. You can find kids in a single 2nd grade classroom that range anywhere from not yet able to read ...to reading at an 8th grade level. That shouldn't be. Few get an adequate education in a class where the students ability/skill levels have a 10+ year range. Why is that even allowed?
Quote:
It's hard to raise the bar when you have kids in your class who don't even belong there sitting beside kids who could excell. You either blow away the bottom half of the class and fail them or you bore the top half to tears. Individualizing education is a pipe dream when you have 6 classes with 25-30 students in them so we're stuck teaching to the middle and trying to pull the bottom of the class up that far. At the end of the day, there isn't much left for the top third of students who are the ones who could really go far.
Which is why they don't.
That's examined by a college professor here:
The Other Crisis in American Education - 91.11 (http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/educatio/singalf.htm - broken link)
K-12 education policy needs to change, or our country will just keep getting dumber - it's a race to the bottom.
Why can't kids just be at different points in that same education, as warranted? Some will be ahead, some will be behind, some will be right on par. You can find kids in a single 2nd grade classroom that range anywhere from not yet able to read ...to reading at an 8th grade level. That shouldn't be. Few get an adequate education in a class where the students ability/skill levels have a 10+ year range. Why is that even allowed?
Which is why they don't.
That's examined by a college professor here:
The Other Crisis in American Education - 91.11 (http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/educatio/singalf.htm - broken link)
K-12 education policy needs to change, or our country will just keep getting dumber - it's a race to the bottom.
I like that idea. Now sell it. Sigh. I'd love to see a system where kids take whatever class they're ready for instead of being grouped by grade. I'd love to have classes grouped by ability.
I'm a great example of why this would work. I don't know why but it seems to have taken me longer to get to my milestones my entire life. I swear, it took me until 20 to get to where everyone else was by the end of high school but I kept going and they stopped. Had I attempted college right out of high school, I probably would have flunked out. Fortunately, I never thought I was college material so I waited. By the time I went, I was ready and excelled.
My older daughter is like me. She struggles with abstract reasoning. I did too at 14. However, by my mid 20's, I had developed the skill and then some. I graduated #5 in my engineering class. #1 in my major. A major I never would have chosen had I gone to college right out of high school. I, simply, was not ready.
I agree the top of the class gets cheated. I wish it were different. Unfortunately, adminstration pushes pulling up the bottom and classroom management demands you keep the middle occupied. By the time we do that, there's little left. If you have brighter kids, make sure they're in honors classes. Unless they are set apart, they're likely to get little attention.
I love my physics classes. I can teach to this crowd there. I blow away everyone else but I figure Physics is an elective so if they drop, they drop. I try to talk them into staying because once they get past equation shock (my term for the deer in headlights look I get until kids begin to realize that they really aren't dealing with 4 variables even if that's how many are in the equation), they start to get pretty good at the math.
For all the money the US spends in reading we rank below Azerbaijan and the Russian Federation in mathematics?
[SIZE=2]Note: In the US a printing error in the test booklets for reading meant some items had incorrect instructions so the mean performance could not be accurately estimated and therefore no results were reported. [/SIZE]
How about the idea that all kids should get the same education? It's hard to raise the bar when you have kids in your class who don't even belong there sitting beside kids who could excell. You either blow away the bottom half of the class and fail them or you bore the top half to tears. Individualizing education is a pipe dream when you have 6 classes with 25-30 students in them so we're stuck teaching to the middle and trying to pull the bottom of the class up that far. At the end of the day, there isn't much left for the top third of students who are the ones who could really go far.
So if you have 6 classes per grade level in a particular school, why not have 2 for the kids who are "above grade level", 2 for those "at grade level" and 2 for those "below grade level" (as determined by their end of year tests)? Then kids who excel in their particular class can move up, or those who are struggling can move down...all to the same end, which has become taking the end of grade test...........
So if you have 6 classes per grade level in a particular school, why not have 2 for the kids who are "above grade level", 2 for those "at grade level" and 2 for those "below grade level" (as determined by their end of year tests)? Then kids who excel in their particular class can move up, or those who are struggling can move down...all to the same end, which has become taking the end of grade test...........
Why not?
Mostly because the teachers unions are against it - I've seen position statements that state such, as are most Ed School professors, and this 'education laboratory': Heterogeneous Grouping
To understand how and why it became desirable to dumb everyone down to the same level, read this article - particularly the sections titled 'The Incubus of the Sixties' and 'The Shock of College-Level Demands':
"A college professor looks at the forgotten victims of our mediocre educational system--the potentially high achievers whose SAT scores have fallen, and who read less, understand less of what they read, and know less than the top students of a generation ago." The Other Crisis in American Education - 91.11
I always looked forward to first through 3rd grade. After that, I hated school with a passion because of crowded schools. I wanted individualized attention, and classes with no more than 10 students. Good teachers make a child want to learn, but if the school experience is bad, their hearts are not in doing anything. (Teachers and children.) If schools concentrated on the individual, and not processing kids like commodities, life would be better all around.
So if you have 6 classes per grade level in a particular school, why not have 2 for the kids who are "above grade level", 2 for those "at grade level" and 2 for those "below grade level" (as determined by their end of year tests)? Then kids who excel in their particular class can move up, or those who are struggling can move down...all to the same end, which has become taking the end of grade test...........
That would be nice but somewhere along the line we decided that grouping by ability is BAAAAD. You see it makes the kids who don't make the top track feel dumb so we can't have that. We have to pretend that everyone is the same and needs the same education even though doing so serves no one well.
I always looked forward to first through 3rd grade. After that, I hated school with a passion because of crowded schools. I wanted individualized attention, and classes with no more than 10 students. Good teachers make a child want to learn, but if the school experience is bad, their hearts are not in doing anything. (Teachers and children.) If schools concentrated on the individual, and not processing kids like commodities, life would be better all around.
It's not as much about processing kids like commodities as it is about social engineering to equalize outcomes to transform society, regardless of varying levels of potential. The higher-ability students are sacrificed to the desired social vision.
The dumbing down of the curriculum is a significant factor in what has gone wrong in our country's K-12 education. Alarmingly, the dumbing is intentional social engineering - not just to 'reach' the lowest common denominator, but to 'equalize' educational outcomes in order to equalize incomes with the end goal of redistributing wealth.
This has happened under the ideology of social justice education and educators' desire to reform society into one in which nearly everyone's educational levels and income levels are equal so that privileged or disadvantaged members of society no longer exist.
In order for the vast majority to reach the same educational level, that level would have to be quite a bit below average so that much more than 50% of the population could realistically reach that educational level.
Where does the idea of equalizing educational outcomes come from?
Just two examples:
Education and Social Cohesion: Recentering the Debate, The Peabody Journal of Education, Vanderbilt University, 76(3&4), 1-6 (2001)
The premise is depicted (as Figure 1) in the Journal article as follows:
"Educational Outcomes Equality => Income Equality => Social Cohesion"
and explained as:
"Put simply, countries with education systems producing more equal outcomes in terms of skills and qualifications are likely to have more equal distribution of income, and this in turn promotes social cohesion."
and...
Professor Paul George (University of Florida - College of Education) has stated that middle schools should become "the focus of societal experimentation, the vehicle for movement toward increasing justice and equality in the society as a whole... Schools are not about taking each child as far as he or she can go. They're about redistributing the wealth of the future." (emphasis mine)
Educators have been led to believe they are doing the right, moral, ethical thing by thwarting average ability and advanced students' efforts to develop their potential. They are convinced that it isn't fair or just that some students will be able to reach higher levels of achievement than others, so the goal is to keep everyone to a below-average level to ensure the vast majority will obtain equal educational outcomes. Unfortunately this has resulted in our average and above students' lack of competitiveness with their international peers.
Educational leveling to promote income leveling to promote social cohesion. Noble intention, but what has gone horribly wrong in this 'social leveling' scheme is that the world has evolved into a global economy in which one's marketable skills are now facing worldwide competition in the global arena - and other countries' students are kicking our students' butts.
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