Thank you for summarizing your lack of experience with these practices as that helps explain the virtual tossed-salad of ideas in your post.
I can see that self-deprecation is unappreciated here.
When you raised the topic of "
all students taking the same coursework regardless of ability" I presumed you were familiar with AP and honors courses for which all prerequisites have been eliminated, making the AP and honors courses open to all... although some students are clearly not prepared to succeed in the AP or honors course for which they enrolled. You'll find threads with articles discussing the controversy and the impact upon students who were well-prepared but denied access to the opportunity to enroll because the course maximum was reached due to the enrollment being offered without prerequisite.
That is not "equality of outcome". That's "equality of opportunity". Unfettered access to AP courses doesn't force outcomes. The students still have to pass the classes and they still have to pass the AP exams to get college credit. That some kids can't get into the classes, regardless of prior preparation, speaks to an opportunity issue, not an outcome.
IEPs address disability
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differentiation is a buzzword
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charter schools and
magnet schools do not seem to fit into a conversation on your topic of "all students taking the same coursework regardless of ability", nor into the thread's topic of data collection being used to force equal outcomes. A red herring?
First - IEP's are not only for disabilities. Per the case law in my state, they can be used for gifted students as well and often are. You're not the first person to assume that limitation and I'll assume that it's state specific. Your link is fine but people should really look at their state specific education code.
For example - my state requires that gifted education be available from the moment of enrollment. However, almost no local elementary schools have gifted programs. How is the law met? Through IEP's. You formally request one and it must be provided within 60 or 90 days (I can't remember off the top of my head).
Differentiation might be a buzzword but teachers seem to have concrete ideas of how it's supposed to be applied. Effectiveness might be questionable but the goal is not "equality of outcomes".
Charter Schools and magnets are applicable to the idea that data collection is being used to force equal outcomes since the same data is what's fueling the push for more charters and magnets.
This refers to a false measurement which finds things to be equal when they are not. For example, a test with a low ceiling is like measuring student height with a 3-foot yardstick; All graduating seniors may be recorded as being 3 feet tall and there would be no gaps in height.
I understand the low ceiling effect. That does not mean that it's being done to force equal outcomes. A lower ceiling might obscure differences at the upper end of the spectrum but it doesn't obscure the lower or middle end of the spectrum.
I do not believe it was suggested that this is a new trend. What is new is the extensive data collection, analysis of performance/achievement data, and the rating, ranking, and rewarding of teachers and schools showing equal outcomes (no performance gaps).
So if it's an old trend, are you saying that we just now started collecting data for this? Of course not. We've been doing data collection and working on the performance gaps for decades.
Better data and data collection isn't trying to force equal outcomes, it's just better data and data collection with the same old goals - better classroom outcomes for as many kids as possible.
Appearances can be deceiving; one must look beyond marketing statements and ask gently probing questions to see what is truly transpiring in a learning environment.
Sure. Which is why I said that most of the trends seem to be moving away from that approach. When I sit down and discuss these things with principals, teachers and administrators and visit schools to observe the classrooms, I get a different perspective. I'm fairly confident in my questioning skills, I wouldn't be much of an attorney if I didn't know how to ask questions that went beyond the surface responses.
I do not believe it was suggested that these grading practices are new. What is new is the extensive data collection, analysis of performance/achievement data, and the rating, ranking, and rewarding of teachers and schools showing equal outcomes (no performance gaps).
So if it's an old trend, are you saying that we just now started collecting data for this? Of course not. We've been doing data collection and working on the performance gaps for decades.
Better data and data collection isn't trying to force equal outcomes, it's just better data and data collection with the same old goals - better classroom outcomes for as many kids as possible.
Opportunities to improve what, specifically?
Improving the student's actual knowledge base and application of material...
or simply improving a score (for example, by repeating the same test)?
Opportunities to improve their understanding of the material. Opportunities to increase their sense of confidence within the classroom which is important for future learning.
Kids who need more help with what, specifically?
Help with learning to the grade-level standard only...
or also help accessing curriculum placement, pacing, and intellectual/academic peers which may be years ahead of the grade-level standard?
There are more kids in the school than the gifted kids. Teachers still have a responsibility to those kids. That the system is poorly designed for the kids who are years ahead of the material doesn't change that the school system is also tasked with educating the vast majority of the kids and they sit in the middle somewhere.
Rewarding equal outcomes provides disincentive to meet the needs of gifted kids and facilitate their continued growth.
Except that isn't what you've been describing. You've been the describing the decades old efforts of public schools to educate the masses as an attempt to force equal outcomes to the detriment of the exceptional.
The exceptional are exceptional because they are rare. They are not the masses. Educating the masses is different from educating the exceptional - I think we all recognize that. So it makes little sense to judge the efforts to educate the masses by the effects on the exceptional.
I do not believe it was suggested that teachers ought not to help the marginal and struggling students.
Not directly but the majority of the practices that you are criticizing as "forcing equal outcomes" are the policies aimed at improving outcomes for marginal and struggling students. As I stated before, you are taking the efforts used to help the <90% of students learn and be better students and are critiquing them based on how they negatively impact the >99% students.
2 different student populations. 2 different student needs.
Without a 1:1 student:teacher ratio, time must be divided.
Student grouping by ability and readiness may divide a teacher's attention into a few good-sized slices;
An "inclusive" classroom with a broader range of abilities and readiness divides a teacher's attention into mere slivers or splinters.
Absolutely accurate. And when one child is in the 1% and most the rest of the class is in the 50-90%, the school district and education departments cannot be reasonably expected to ignore 90% of their responsibility.
That is why advocating for gifted kids requires so much work and why it's an uphill battle. We're advocating for the allocation of resources away from the many towards the few. And when parents of gifted kids become indifferent to that reality, they make it harder for us to achieve the goals we want.
Good advocacy recognizes the limitations that the other side is working under and structures it's critiques and needs with that in mind. And good advocacy for gifted kids must recognize that school districts have limited budgets and teachers have limited time in the day and yet must still educate all of the non-gifted kids with that budget and those teachers.
Criticizing the efforts made on behalf of the average and marginal kids because of they don't benefit gifted kids is being myopic as to the limitations of public schools.
You may wish to consider homeschooling or a private, parochial, or independent school.
Thank you and I'm already doing that. I've been preparing for this since he was 6 months old. I have good friends from college and extended family who teach in independent schools, public schools and one online school, they are teachers, principals and vice principals in schools around the country. I'm on a 1st name basis with my local school's principal and occasionally find myself in social settings with the Superintendent. We've been homeschooling for a while, we only changed for classroom exposure since we'll be an independent school for pre-K. I'll give it it's chance to show me what it can do.
But in that vein, I know that advocacy-wise, I have more leverage over the public school system because they are constrained by legal rules that the independents and other privates can disregard.
Data-wise, privates and parochials do not yield better outcomes than public schools, with the exception of Jesuit schools and college prep schools (although the research is unsure as to why - somewhere between better preparation and better student selections processes).
I'm not someone who was waiting until school age to start getting a firm grasp on schooling. I even lurked here for more than a year before making a profile.
I do not believe it was suggested that marginal/average kids be pilloried.
Some may say that in actual lived experience, it is the gifted kids who are put in the pillory, undermined, and/or cut down as tall poppies.
See my above writing as to the responsibilities of a public school system re: the masses and the importance of keeping critiques in the context of those responsibilities.
In expressing your perspective, you appear to be a person who may not have experienced being denied appropriate instructional level, curriculum placement, pacing and intellectual/academic peers... while being told to wait for others to catch up, being required to tutor other students, being assigned extra homework, and being criticized for speaking the truth that you have learned nothing new in school that day, week, month, or year. Unfortunately, these are all-too-common experiences among gifted pupils.
And you would be wrong with that assumption. I won't bore you with all of my personal experience with these very issues or my longer for more stimulating work. I told my 3rd grade teacher to let me do my homework in pen instead of pencil because unlike my other classmates "I don't make mistakes." They called my parents on that one, I was slightly dismissive of my teachers abilities for many years.
I finished my entire high school math curriculum, including the computer science math courses before 10th grade and was pressed into teaching programming to my age mates because the school had nothing else to teach me and I was too young for a driver's license to go to the community college. I'd started school year early in the first place so I was already a year younger. And this was a school that had a highly rigorous entrance exam for it's gifted program.
I walked out of the LSAT after 1 hour because I knew I'd done enough to get into a good law school and I barely studied for the bar exam but still passed it on the first try.
I have the classic underachiever issues that come with inadequate stimulation
So, for a forum dedicated to gifted kids and their needs, I'm surprised that you would make the assumption that I don't have the relevant personal experiences
This seems to be a confused statement. The push by whom to get more attention on the needs of gifted kids? Advocates for meeting the needs of gifted pupils are not forcing equal outcomes. Forcing equal outcomes comes about by rewarding teachers and schools for reporting a narrow range of variation in achievement measures for all students. Disincentives are provided for teachers and schools reporting a broad range of achievement: Upon analysis of the extensive data collected, teachers may be dismissed for failing to close gaps sufficiently. Similarly, schools with persistent gaps may be given poor report cards, ratings, and ranking. Funding may be decreased.
Let me restate that previous idea since it may have been confusing in how I typed it. The push for greater resources for gifted kids was not rooted in the problem that public schools were trying to force equal outcomes on kids. It was rooted in the problem that gifted kids were being ignored.
Schools were, and still are, focused on getting as many students as possible to a base level of proficiency and in their zeal to achieve that, they have systematically ignored the needs of those kids at the upper end of the classrooms.
It's about meeting basic requirements. If the 3rd grade teacher is tasked with imparting 3rd grade math then the focus will be on getting as many kids proficient with 3rd grade math as possible, not with getting any kids proficient with 4th grade math or higher.
At a point in time, there may have been an innocent lack of knowledge. With growth of the internet and broad dissemination of information, there may now be
pockets of willful ignorance, however there may be
widespread lack of will to meet the well-known
needs of
gifted pupils.
I think that's wrong. You operate in a space filled with parents of gifted kids advocating for their gifted kids needs. The vast majority of the population rarely encounters this issue. Even the vast majority of schools rarely do, especially at the level that leads to the existence of forums like this one.
I've sat in legal education classes on student advocacy, the upper end of the abilities spectrum is rarely encountered and policy makers don't make policy for the rarely encountered.
This returns to my previous point about understanding the constraints of your opposition. It's not wilful ignorance or a lack of will. It's basic economics. Individualized education is expensive to administrate - although becoming less so thanks to technological innovations. So, policies are written towards the masses because it's the most bang for the public buck. Those with individual needs will have to find a way to operate/advocate within those realities.
I speak the truth. You may wish to read up on data collection, uses of the data collected, school rating/ranking. You may also wish to seek out teachers who've witnessed the change in their grading instructions and in their performance review criteria. The original pages of the Common Core standards are also interesting reading. Although the most telling information has been wiped from the official website, with a bit of sleuthing copies can be found on the internet archive.
I've read up on the subject. I also know teachers, principals, administrators, etc. Which is why I disagree with your interpretation of events.
See above. I don't know what state you're in but many jurisdictions keep legal opinions online, google can find them or at least the archive.
You may wish to read up on data collection, uses of the data collected, school rating/ranking. You may also wish to seek out teachers who've witnessed the change in their grading instructions and in their performance review criteria. The original pages of the Common Core standards are also interesting reading. Although the most telling information has been wiped from the official website, with a bit of sleuthing copies can be found on the internet archive.
See above.
It is the mandated collection of data, the use of collected data, the rewards/punishments based on student achievement gaps detected in the data, and the resultant, systematic planned and organized use of the practices to cap the growth of students at the top which are being criticized.
See above. The attempt to raise the bottom is not synonymous with an intent to cap the top.
You may wish to read up on data collection, uses of the data collected, school rating/ranking. You may also wish to seek out teachers who've witnessed the change in their grading instructions and in their performance review criteria. The original pages of the Common Core standards are also interesting reading. Although the most telling information has been wiped from the official website, with a bit of sleuthing copies can be found on the internet archive.
See above.
While you are certainly entitled to your opinion, after developing your knowledge base in this area, your opinion may change.
I wish all the best for you and your child. At just 4 years old, he has not experienced much of the educational system.
My knowledge base is well developed and I'd bet money that between you and I, I'm the only one whose read litigation on the issue. Our disagreement here isn't over the facts, it's over the interpretation.
