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Joined: Sep 2007
Posts: 99
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OP
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Joined: Sep 2007
Posts: 99 |
Exactly, Tallulah. The result is such myopic rigidity that the schools really DO NOT work for the HG+ kids in them. Which can be, as you note, a fairly sizeable percentage of the kids. Our town's district ID's a full 30% as "gifted." I don't know that it's wrong, since the major employers in town are a fortune 25 hi-tech company, a regional medical complex, and a state flagship uni. So yeah, there ARE a lot of ideally bright and probably MG kids in town. No question. But what gets aimed at that group doesn't suffice for the kids who are actually EG or PG, and it's all the more maddening to listen to the administrators, teachers, and school board patting themselves on the back for doing such a bang-up job of it all when you ask them questions ABOUT that minority group of students.It's as though it doesn't compute, your question-- as though you couldn't POSSIBLY have actually asked it, because you don't understand how Super Awesome their program is.  Wow, you nailed how I feel a lot.
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Joined: Sep 2007
Posts: 99
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OP
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Joined: Sep 2007
Posts: 99 |
It's a game. Student learning is incidental to winning the high-stakes testing rounds, and lack of learning is irrelevant unless it directly affects scores on high-stakes tests.
IMO, most of the US K-12 education system should be pillaged of anything of value in it, with the rest being burned to the ground and buried under a two-foot layer of salt. It is a game. It is all about the scores and how you can play with the numbers to make it all look good.
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Joined: May 2013
Posts: 2,157
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Joined: May 2013
Posts: 2,157 |
Um, in one district--might even be yours--they bus kids to lower performing schools to take AP tests to improve the ratings for the lower performing school. In another district, they put GT programs into the lowest performing schools to hide the fact that there are lower performing kids who are not getting what they need. A game indeed. I think when parents presented the idea of a gifted magnet in our district, that's one reason it was so attractive to the school board. There was one school that was flunking in terms of test scores, so they put the magnet in that school and the scores were immediately brought right up. Esp. since the kids accepted into the magnet need to have achievement test scores above the 98th percentile. Problem solved!
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Joined: Feb 2011
Posts: 5,181
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Joined: Feb 2011
Posts: 5,181 |
MoN, what you describe is absolutely nauseating.
Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.
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Joined: Sep 2007
Posts: 3,299 Likes: 2
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Joined: Sep 2007
Posts: 3,299 Likes: 2 |
Master of none and blackcat have proven, once again, that no matter how deeply you dig into the pits and caverns of American education, no matter how often you think you've finally hit the bottom, there is always, always a spot where your pickaxe will go through the floor, revealing another layer of badness below, waiting to be explored.
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Joined: Oct 2011
Posts: 2,856
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Joined: Oct 2011
Posts: 2,856 |
Master of none and blackcat have proven, once again, that no matter how deeply you dig into the pits and caverns of American education, no matter how often you think you've finally hit the bottom, there is always, always a spot where your pickaxe will go through the floor, revealing another layer of badness below, waiting to be explored. I can't say I'm in any way surprised, though. The whole system of state testing and linking it to teacher evaluations and school funding has basically created huge incentives to do exactly this sort of thing. Basically, we put all kinds of accounting mechanisms into the education system, much like we do in the finance system, and then watched as educators turned into bankers.
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Joined: Aug 2010
Posts: 3,428
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Joined: Aug 2010
Posts: 3,428 |
The whole system of state testing and linking it to teacher evaluations and school funding has basically created huge incentives to do exactly this sort of thing Yeah. Don't forget that the schools are being forced to play the game by the legislature, at least in my state. I've had several teachers speak frankly to me about the system, and they hate it more than we do, but feel trapped. Their schools can be shuttered, their evaluations can plummet, and their pay can be docked if they don't produce the right numbers. What would you do, under the circumstances?
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Joined: Mar 2013
Posts: 1,453
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Joined: Mar 2013
Posts: 1,453 |
I can't say I'm in any way surprised, though. The whole system of state testing and linking it to teacher evaluations and school funding has basically created huge incentives to do exactly this sort of thing. Not surprised here either. Accountability is good but the problem is the politics that disrupt its intent. Teachers are expected to pass everyone with no regard for the actual abilities of their students. You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. Were all kids IQ tested as a matter of course it would be far easier to set realistic expectations. The way things are, teachers live in mortal dread of really dull kids not making the cut putting their livelihoods in jeopardy. In the same situation, what would you do?
Become what you are
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Joined: Feb 2013
Posts: 1,228
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Joined: Feb 2013
Posts: 1,228 |
MoN, what you describe is absolutely nauseating. MoN, what you describe is virtually universal.
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Joined: May 2011
Posts: 269
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Joined: May 2011
Posts: 269 |
The woman I spoke to admitted to me that "We don't take special ed. students. They are better-served in the other schools in this district."  As painful as this sounds, at DD7's school every classroom has one or two kids that are in the room half-day with a dedicated para. These kids sometimes can do some of the work but DD complains that their artwork always comes out best because the para does it for them. Last year's special ed kid was nonverbal. Honestly, I would be disturbed by a high achieving/gifted magnet that did take these kids; the benefit of having them in the room at all seems to be purely to help them learn to mix socially in a mainstreamed society, and help the other kids react normally to severely disabled persons. Not understanding the 2E concept is something else entirely.
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