Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion NYT opinion: No (rich) child left behind

I've repeated it before, I think it was Grinnity who said it here, the only practical answer is to time block the classes in a school, MAP test the kids periodically, and place the kids in the right class for each subject by ability and achievement, not by grade or age. This is for the struggling students too. What kind of education are they getting being shuffled along, tutored after school, and still sitting through a poor-fitting classroom. Meet them where they're at. It sounds so simple on paper. I'll bet that helps the drop-out rate too. Even if it doesn't then you met their real educational needs while they were there. And this could be done just in the school system without having to convince the rest of the government or people anything.

For logistics the time blocking only works when you don't have specialists as teachers.

+1 deacongirl, although this board tends to skew toward the extremes (PG, 2E) who are an especially poor fit for the system.

I grew up a child of privilege in a small rural town close to a large industrial complex where the school population ran the SES gamut. The biggest difference between me and other kids was not exactly the values but the assumptions. Not graduating from high school was unthinkable. College and a masters or a doctorate were a given.

When a similarly situated friend got the career assessment in middle school and was told she had a future as a hairdresser, her parents laughed it off. When the daughter of blue collar parents was told the same thing her parents were ready to go with the suggestion, despite the fact that her grades were in the top decile. Arguing with figures of authority at school was unthinkable.

Absolutely!

And in this system the truly bright kids growing up in the least privileged families will realize that the educational game is stacked against them, and opt out.

Since our school district and state has decided to label my kids as English Language Learners, I have recently amused myself by attending parent meetings targeting those families. The assumptions by school/district personnel re. parents and children are unbelievable. And the parents who care enough to come to those meetings (and that's most of them!) just swallow it up. And sob while thanking the people who are making sure in early elementary school that their kids will get tracked to nowhere by high school.

I was listening to a conversation between parents and staff about rising high-schoolers who were refusing to go to the non-neighborhood high school with the special programs for ELLs. Their parents were terrified. The staff was telling them they had to do what was best for their kids. And I was thinking that those teens who had already spent 8 years into remedial classes, never catching up with their peers, were actually pretty smart to realize that maybe more of the same wasn't going to be much help.

California governor Jerry Brown wants to increase funding for ELL students and the schools that serve large numbers of them, which will increase the incentive to classify students as ELL.

http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolaler...tion-plan-as-civil-rights-issue-too.html

That sounds like the kind of thing I could support, but...

Wouldn't such a system exacerbate the differences between the kids who get enrichment at home and those that don't?

What happens if the statistics of achievement don't change in a way that is popular politically?

I really don't think of it as "political" in any way that most people would like to see an educational system that does GOOD things for everyone that it serves.

It doesn't seem like the current system does truly good things for the majority of participants, quite frankly.

IF there is a genetic basis for SES, then that gap is fine. But there is pretty compelling evidence that suggests that is at least mostly untrue.

What that means, then, is that some students are getting WAY FEWER of their needs met-- educationally and otherwise-- than the cohort fortunate enough to have parents who are educated and economically empowered to do something better for their children.

Presumably we here are about 90% in that latter group, in one way or another.

I'm not sure that improving the educational system will do it, because it does nothing about the very real fact that when you look at the lowest quartile of the SES, those people as a group have children who are less concerned about educational needs because they are a lower priority than other needs which are ALSO going unmet.

In other words, I see a study like this one and I'm left thinking....
DUH. Is this really news??

School is a safe harbor for kids in that lowest decile-- it's predictable, it's cool in the heat, and warm in the cold, there is food there every day, someone to take care of some medical and hygeine needs, etc, and your only real responsibilities are to follow the rules (which are the same EVERY DAY!) and do what you're told.

Believe me, that sounds like Nirvana for some children. There are plenty of kids who would love to LIVE at school if they only could. Frankly, they'd be better off for it, too.

Studies like this one that show what happens to children of privilege versus children of grinding poverty over their "non-school" time... is unbelievably sad to me. But not surprising in the least.

I don't think there is any way they can meaningfully increase the number of students labeled as ELL (not without a backlash from the privileged minority). Right now in CA 95% of entering K students who indicate they have been exposed to a language other than English at home get the label. The 5% left won't make much of a difference.

What they can do is make reclassification an even more convoluted process. Right now kids only have to prove they are performing above average in language arts to reclassify. Maybe ask that they perform in the top quartile?

There is a certain segment of the population that will never be convinced that a school is doing good things for everyone if any kind of achievement gap can be measured. It seems to me that schools have been implementing policies specifically designed to lessen or eliminate achievement gaps, but they persist. If our schools met every kid at their level (and no policies were enacted to address what kids are dealing with outside of school), I think some of the gaps people concern themselves with would grow larger than they are today (a natural reaction to eliminating programs designed specifically at reducing the gaps).

As someone who grew up in a broken home, and received no advocacy regarding a public school education that never challenged me mathematically, I see the appeal of meritocratic education. As a parent with a family income over $165,000, I will be doing everything I can to make sure my kids have their educational needs met, in and out of school. I will do my best to set them up for success, and I am not interested in funding an equally enriching childhood for every one of their peers. Contradictory and hypocritical... maybe. I can kind of see things from both sides.