Not to get into the middle of a political discussion, but does anyone feel that the federal mandate (with funding tied to the mandate) to "close the achievement gap" has hurt the higher performing kids?

It has been on my mind a lot lately as our district has sent out many county-wide emails talking about how proud the district is of closing the achievement gap by 21%.

At the same time the emails are going out, the school REFUSES to test or let my child go past a (dictated by central office) reading or math level. They won't even test him. It is a county-wide rule that kids can't be tested/taught past a certain level.

It kills me when I see the emails go out about the "excitement over closing the achievement gap" because in my mind I'm thinking "yea, I know how you closed it!" I can't help but think that the achievement gap isn't closing because the instruction is better on the lower side, but rather the learning is halted on the upper end.

Am I wrong in this line of thinking? Please correct me if I am.

The achievement gap gets closed when higher-performing kids stagnate, so yes, you're right. The whole point is to stop the bright kids and teach the underachievers. If you let the bright kids move ahead, most of the underachievers wouldn't be able to catch up and the achievement gap would stay in place in schools just as it does in the real world. Can't have that!

The educators I've spoken to about this don't see themselves as not allowing bright kids to learn. They take the view that these kids are already "proficient," which to them means that no more attention is warranted. When I've asked, "Why not teach the bright kids too?" the reaction from the majority with whom I've spoken has been confusion: "Why would we do that? They're already proficient."

I've tried to argue that it's important to strive for excellence, but I've never got much of a response.

I think that this approach is part ideology, part a response to the demands of NCLB, and part a failure of imagination. Some of them really don't see that excellence can mean more than getting 100% on a grade-level test of basic material.

NAGC has a report "High Achieving Students in the Era of NCLB" http://www.nagc.org/uploadedFiles/News_Room/NAGC_Advocacy_in_the_News/Fordham.pdf on this issue. On the NAEP, from 2000 to 2007, students at the 10th percentile (near the bottom) made larger gains than students at the 90th percentile, but one ought to look at the trend lines of the 10th and 90th percentiles before the NCLB era before drawing even provisional conclusions.

I have written about the achievement gap in other threads.

You also have to put into the equation that in many places, a teacher's pay and their school's funding (so essentially their jobs) are all tied to closing the achievement gap. I know as a teacher it is like having your hands tied because the amount of stuff I HAVE to do for the lower 25% of my student population takes up so much time that I physically don't have enough hours in a day to do much of anything for my higher end kids.

When I do "rebel" and take time for them I get asked all sorts of questions about why I haven't been keeping up with X,Y, and Z, and don't I realize that if they don't show " a year's worth of growth" our school could get in trouble or our school grade could drop and we could lose what little money we get?

Many of my colleagues have adopted the attitude of "why would we spend time of the upper end - they will already pass the test" for survival reasons, not because they necessarily believe it to be the right way to do things. I can't really blame them because if you are in a state like Fl then starting next year 50% of my evaluation will be tied to how my students do on the state exam. Now, if I taught all honors classes, like some people that would not be an issue for me - I'd say great, no problem, BUT when 50% of my teaching load is the lower end of the spectrum, who are low achievers, for a variety of reasons (including the fact that they really don't care and are just treading water until they are 16 and can quit, or are 18 and graduate some how) - I am not happy with this change in things. Of my students who will determine how well I get evaluated I would say that about 25% of them will not pass any standardized test given - no matter what I do with them, and no matter how easy the test is.

I am philosophical about it though and since, I agree that there is an achievement gap, and we should try to do something about it, I do rebel when I can so that the gap isn't being closed at the expense of the higher kids. Would I do this as often as I do if I didn't have 2 daughters at the higher end????? I don't know, because I don't think I would be as acutely aware of it as I am now.

So, as much as you would like to think that teachers are sacrificing our kids for the good of the other end, I seriously believe that many are doing it because they honestly believe that our kids and others like them will succeed, despite all of this nonsense.

Thanks everyone for posting. I really appreciate your thoughts.

Kerry, thanks for posting from the teacher view. It is so great to hear your view from both perspectives!

I agree with everything you said, except for the part about the kids succeeding anyway. I disagree there and present as partial evidence 1. our poor performance on international tests, 2. our need to import grad students and skilled workers, 3. the existence of this board and the many stories we've read here. Proficient on a standardized test is a long way from excellent in any domain.

It seems to me that the US is beginning to fall behind other countries, and if too many of those educated smart people from abroad decide to leave, we'll be in trouble.

Our education system just doesn't create people who are thoughtful. But that's another story. I met my deadline and now I must eat!!

Val

If we are intent on ensuring that all children make educational progress, and we are intent on being able to measure that progress through testing, it seems to me that, rather than having a single (low) passing score which all children must meet, which pretty much dooms the high-achieving kids to educational neglect, the rational way to approach this would be to track individual scores on meaningful measures yearly, and mandate that the schools ensure that all children who are performing at or above grade level at the beginning of the school year make at least one year's worth of progress from that point by the beginning of the next school year, and that children who are performing below grade level move closer to grade-level performance.

This would mean that low-performing students would need to make more than a year's worth of progress in a year, which might mean that districts would actually have to (gasp!) start providing services and intensive instruction to the kids that they identify as having learning disabilities. It might also mean that teachers would not be able to just ignore kids who had already mastered all the grade level content, but I for one, am willing to take that risk. They would have to provide appropriate subject acceleration or risk not meting their targets.

People value what gets measured and what gets praised or punished. If you don't measure and you don't reward appropriate education for gifted learners, you can't expect to see much of it happening in the schools.

Too often these discussions ignore the existence of low-IQ children. Treatable learning disabilities are hardly the sole cause of low performance, and I doubt they are the main ones. Many students are low-performing because they are low-IQ. Low-IQ children learn more slowly than children of average IQ. Expecting a group of low-performing students to learn faster than average students (not to mention high-performing ones) is unrealistic, although there will be individual cases of low-performing children (who may have had especially bad teachers or missed many school days in the prior year) who catch up.

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NCLB and children with disabilities

From your link:

"In addition, a great many students within the other four categories (multiple disabilities, mental retardation, traumatic brain injury, and developmental delay) are also able to function at grade level on the tests with or without approved modifications or accommodations."

I think that is bunk. If students with mental retardation are able to function at grade level, that's a strong sign "grade level" is not being defined in a way relevant to average IQ students, much less gifted ones.

Said in this forum, where it seems that everybody's kid has special educational needs, I find that idea troubling.

One of the problems seen by parents with mentally handicapped kids in our district is that the standards set for these children are so low that the school is barely required to teach them anything at all. That is, a kid with Down's who has the capacity to learn to read is not required to be helped to learn that skill, so the school won't bother putting in the effort.

If you think your kid has the right to reach their educational potential, please consider seriously the possibility that everyone's kid has that right.

DeeDee

I don't think that there is a single poster on this forum who believes that their child has a 'right' for the school to provide them with the opportunity to 'reach their educational potential.'

Most of the kids here are never going to reach their educational potential and no one would want them too! It's a scary thing. What I see here is parents wanting schools to put their child where the child will have a chance to learn in their 'readiness to learn zone' and learn good work ethic. In other words, don't force my kid to sit in a classroom where there is no chance of learning something new because she is X years old.

(And yes, I do want that for every child.)

Let's take all the 'preconceived notions off' what children a X age, or what children with X label are supposed to be able to learn, and develop tools and methods to see exactly where each child's readiness to learn level is - such as the MAP test is attempting. And then let's use that information for placement, with supports as needed, in as efficient a manner as possible.

Make sense?
Grinity

One thing I know about Special Ed funding is that it is mandated by law. If there is a child who is profoundly autistic (for example) and needs a 1:1 aide to be able to be in the classroom, that has to be paid for and set up by law. That money to cover that comes out of the general ed fund. Or if the child is blind and needs everything translated into Braille, etc. That must be done and paid for.
To me, it would be cheaper/better in the long run to find out why kids have these disabilities and work early on to prevent them. For example, pay for early intervention to help at-risk autistic children not become profoundly autistic (you get the idea).
My son is very gifted and hearing impaired. He's a "special Ed" student- the county bought him an FM system for $1500. The teacher wears a Mike and it puts her voice wirelessly into his hearing aid. I was invited to join the county's board of education committee for Special Ed, which is how I have learned about all of this.

Jack'smom, yep, that's how it's supposed to work. We have, however, seen some shocking violations of law in our district. And to my knowledge, the federal government has never fully funded IDEA, which means that districts have financial incentives to spend less on kids with disabilities than they should-- even though they will never acknowledge those incentives.

Many schools and districts are doing the best they can. And some really aren't.

DeeDee

Yes, that is so true. Here in California, we rank dead last out of the 50 states for funding IDEA.
All we wanted/needed for my son's hearing loss was the FM system, which is relatively cheap for them to pay for, and the school did. His IEP doesn't address his giftedness, but we have an excellent gifted program that starts in 4th grade that he will hopefully get into.
I mention the above things since I didn't understand how it works. There is one educational pot of money. Funding for special ed comes out of it, leaving less for the general ed fund.

Just wanted to point out that services for children who are disabled under IDEA are at least partially funded with Federal dollars granted to the states, and those dollars are earmarked specifically for such use. Acceptance of those funds is actually what binds the states to provide FAPE for children with disabilities.

I couldn't agree with this more.

The differences in school culture are staggering, with many sincerely interested in helping children learn, and others interested primarily in maximizing the pot of money available for administrative salaries.

IDEA funds are disbursed through grants to the states, which then use some of them for state-level disability-related services, and flows the rest though to LEAs (local education agencies). I would be really surprised if only one percent of disability-related spending in your district was funded through IDEA. Your district might be counting the state-distributed IDEA grant money as coming from the state, or the document you were referencing might be looking at Federal dollars as a percentage of the overall district budget, in which case I would not be surprised to see a fairly low percentage funded through IDEA, since the majority of students aren't disabled, and the majority of students with disabilities don't need special education and related services (IDEA), just accommodations and modifications (504), which generally cost the school system nothing. The regular education budget really dwarfs the special education budget in most districts.

It is a tough situation.

Genius Denied How to Stop Wasting our Brightest Young Minds
by Jan & Bob Davidson with Laura Vanderkam addresses this issue.

Your comment about not getting "political" made me smile, because that is exactly what this is all about. Political hokey-pokey; "cooking" the books so-to-speak, to make the schools look like they are improving when actually American schools are falling behind (on average) over many other nations.

Unless, or until excellence in education for all students is the objective, and not some arbitrary number that must be met in an evaluation, gifted kids will be pushed to the back of the bus. JMHO