Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Toxic Educational Practices-- a rogues gallery

Agreed. Some have suggested to the educational institution that they audit, review, and cross-reference their assessment questions, labeling each with where the material appears and is sourced from in the curriculum... likewise labeling the curriculum as to which assessment item(s) it feeds into. When the curriculum or assessment may change, the educational institution may easily follow through to synchronize the two.

Censoring knowledge accumulated outside the classroom, in a FREE society?! Chilling. Imagine a future where one must receive permission to know anything beyond that which is specified: ... permission to travel, to self-select books to read... as those may accumulate knowledge.

Here is a roundup of toxic educational practices regarding grading.

Requiring a child to choose between advanced work or social inclusion is another toxic educational practice. More at this post, which highlights a few points from an article on the Davidson Database called "Gifted Children: Youth Mental Health Update" (Julia Osborn, 1996).

Here's a post including reasons which some schools have given for not cluster-grouping children by similar level of ability and readiness. These are examples of working against the mental health of the gifted pupils.

Many of these experiences serve to undermine the growth of gifted pupils and/or invalidate the academic needs and/or social inclusion needs of gifted pupils, causing the gifted to become collateral damage of an educational system which is focused on closing gaps and achieving equal outcomes.

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NOTE: The article "Gifted children: Youth mental health update" by Julia Osborn, 1996, published by Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Schneider Children's Hospital, is backed up on WayBack Machine, Internet archive.
Links:
1) article -
https://web.archive.org/web/20200112034938/http://www.davidsongifted.org/search-database/entry/a10170
2) list of archive dates/times -
https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.davidsongifted.org/search-database/entry/a10170

Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!! :rofl:

Such a suggestion is, unfortunately, going to fall on deaf ears, just as it has for the past ten years.

(I only WISH that I were kidding about that)

While education may not have been monolithic in the past, mark my words-- y'all are REALLY going to regret having turned curriculum/assessment over to Pearson.

Dig a little and find out what they now enjoy as "market share" here in educational markets if you are wondering what I'm referring to here. They are the future of assessment.

They don't have a CLUE what they are doing, and they are most emphatically not "educators" there-- they are businesspeople and profit IS the bottom line, regardless of validation or pedagogically sound practices. There is no connection between those writing assessments, those with content expertise, and those 'writing' curriculum (mostly 'Smurfing' open-access and free content from various places around the web, by the way).

Be afraid. Be very afraid.


Common Core standards are an awesome idea. Pearson's implementation is a nightmare. But there is good news, because they are going to make a LOT of money. Then they'll get to make more to fix it all.

Okay-- you really know that your child's school is so not set up for gifted children when there is an entry on a form that reads:





Wouldn't graduating "off cohort" (a year or two early) be... um...

okay?

And one wonders exactly what sort of "actions" would be taken to put a stop to it, actually...

I'd Love to Teach, But...


I think I see where some of the problems associated with educational settings for our HG+ learners are coming from, actually...

the sequelae of this particular Op-Ed (with which I concur about 110%, if that were possible) is that:

a. Our kids can't POSSIBLY be granted actual challenging learning environments, because those would result in too many of their "gifted" classmates not earning A's, so it's best to just teach material that EVERYONE can earn A's on, and keep our kids quiet. There aren't as many of us and our kids to complain, after all, so this is a win if you're on the other side of things.

b. Who WOULD stay in this profession?? Seriously. People who are either so devoted to it that they can't fathom doing anything else... or... people who are so desperate that they can't DO anything else. I've known both types, and I can tell you which make up the majority of the 'gems' in the profession.

c. Good luck getting your child opportunities to "distinguish" him/herself from all of the other "gifted" children in his/her classroom. They're ALL 4.0 students now. See a. for why. No wonder there is a crazy arms race for spots in prestigious colleges. And no wonder there is starting to be pressure to "fix" grades in higher ed, too, as this cohort of kids gets there and expects to "do over" every assignment, to be able to turn things in late or not at all, and still earn the A's they've always gotten. Super-scoring is an abomination. And it's all of a piece, in my opinion. My DD didn't need super-scoring, and neither do any other genuinely high-ability kids. Sure, anyone can have a bad day. So have a good one some other time.

We're in big, big trouble when we refuse to even ADMIT that some people are actually smarter or more capable than others, or that some people's efforts just aren't good enough to be considered "adequate" much less "exemplary."

How many of us here have had the experience of a shocked classroom teacher giving our child's half-baked work an "A" and having one of us say (to the child or to the teacher, or both) "Um-- well, I certainly wouldn't have given that an 'A'. More like a 'D.' Here's why."

When I have that conversation with teachers, I can tell you-- they LOVE me for saying it. And they are super-surprised. They *think* that a kid like mine *must* be the result of careful hothousing/grooming/Sikorsky management, and are delighted and enchanted to discover that she's the real deal. Well, the good ones are. The bad ones not so much-- they continue poking to figure out just HOW the trick is done. {sigh} But I can see WHY they do that, given the reality that they live with.

We forgot another one. Not allowing kids to go to the bathroom when they have to go.

DS13 had a teacher who gave the kids one bathroom pass per semester a couple years ago. If you didn't use it, you got 5 extra credit points on the final.

DS11's math teacher has new policy for 2014. She takes away recess if a student has to go to the bathroom during her class.

When they were little, DS13 and 11 could only use the bathroom during recess.



When I was a kid, this was never an issue. If you had to go, you raised your hand, asked, and off you went. Later (as in, 11th grade), I changed schools and the new school was more restrictive: you had to get the hall pass from the teacher before you left the classroom. I don't remember a lot of abuse of this quasi-freedom.

What are other people's experiences in this regard?

Good lord! DS11 has enough intestinal issues without being restricted from being able to go to the bathroom if he needs to! He restricted himself for quite a few years because he didn't want to go anywhere but at home, and that was more trouble -- I think he's finally gotten over that (I hope, anyway), but if I heard about a teacher refusing him, I'd go down and raise the roof!

We, of course, could get it put into his ALP or reinstate his IEP if necessary to fix it, but what about everybody else?

Yeah, a teacher really wants a bunch of kids sitting there and thinking about nothing other than how badly they need to go to the bathroom. That should help those test scores.

I just can't even imagine "restrictions" like those Val reports. I mean, sure-- if it's a problem with a particular group of students, I suppose that placing bounds on it might be in order... such as "you'll have to wait until the hall pass comes back with another student" or "please restrict your restroom visits to times when the class is doing centers/individual seat work" and such. KWIM?

I had a meeting with the principal of my child's elementary school last month because the teacher refused to allow DS (6 years old) to use the bathroom. DS is so used to going when he wants that he almost had an accident "holding it in". He was highly upset, crying and distressed and had to be taken to the front office from where I got the phone call about how this crying child had to be handled. I was told that children need to learn "self control" and they expect kids to control their urge to go to the bathroom - I do agree that there are a lot of kids who use bathroom breaks as a way to avoid seatwork. I gave them a piece of my mind and also told them that this was America and they were violating my child's rights and freedom if they restricted his right to go to the bathroom. They had the gall to ask me if DS had any medical problems and if they were not informed of it.
Long story short - the principal "allowed" DS to go to the bathroom at any time he wants to "as a special case" - because I had become one of those "noisy, problem parents". But, the teacher still uses "a mean voice" to give DS permission if he wants to go to the bathroom at class time according to him.
And the end effect is that DS got a remark on his report card that said that he "lacks self control" - this about a kid who is mature beyond his years, so well adjusted and loves going to school and follows rules.
The good thing is that they are building an "attached bathroom" to his classroom now - previously, they had to cross the playground to get to the bathroom - which was bad for little kids in a hurry to go to the bathroom. Something good came out of this, atleast.

It is mind boggling to me that apparently what makes DS's k-8 an awesome school is not all the wonderful gifted accelerated things they do, it's that students can just raise their hands with a signal for the bathroom and for the water fountain - apparently, gasp, they can have water needs too!!!

I feel so bad that your kids have to deal with this crap!

DeHe

I attended a session led by the head of a social innovation fund earlier this week and watched her proudly endorse a man who argues that there is no such thing as innate math ability. He was her organization's golden calf. They needed to step back two feet to be able to register the irony of an organization whose mandate it is to pick winners claiming that ability is uniformly distributed. Yikes.

"This human characteristic is uniformly distributed in the population..."

...said no one ever.