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Was that KIng George's intent? I didn't read where NCLB mandated LOWERING the bar. It stated ALL children should be expected to learn
Society and the schools decided lowering the bar was the way to achieve the goal of all children learning.
I belive NCLB is a great tool--it is just the way we have chosen to interpret the documant that is killing our students.
The problem is this: Given any skill -- math, reading, running, art, sculpture, video games -- there will be a bubble of kids right in the middle of ability and then a few outliers to either side. In short, you will have the classic bell curve.
If you want ALL children to pass X skill at X age (e.g., read text at a given difficulty level by age 6), then automatically, you will have to lower the bar for precisely 50% of the kids -- the 50% who are, statistically speaking, below average. You'll have to lower it a little for the kids who are below-but-clustered-near-the-middle and a lot for the kids who are on the far left-hand side of that bell curve.
Once the reality of implementing NCLB was instituted, "dumbing down" was the only logical direction in which school districts could go.
The only answer for education is to have a fork in the road at some point in the child's education career. At 10 years of age the serious, high achieving students should be separated and sent into accelerated programs of higher math and sciences and engineering. The rest should go for more vocational related education, especially interpersonal communication and basic math and language skills. It doesn't mean that late bloomers can't still excel and go to college but it would be a much smarter way to spend our education dollar.
Get politics out of education.
Last edited by PullMyFinger; 12-19-2011 at 09:59 AM..
The only answer for education is to have a fork in the road at some point in the child's education career. At 10 years of age the serious, high achieving students should be separated and sent into accelerated programs of higher math and sciences and engineering. The rest should go for more vocational related education, especially interpersonal communication and basic math and language skills. It doesn't mean that late bloomers can't still excel and go to college but it would be a much smarter way to spend our education dollar.
Get politics out of education.
If onlt those idiots in office thought this way...
The problem is this: Given any skill -- math, reading, running, art, sculpture, video games -- there will be a bubble of kids right in the middle of ability and then a few outliers to either side. In short, you will have the classic bell curve.
If you want ALL children to pass X skill at X age (e.g., read text at a given difficulty level by age 6), then automatically, you will have to lower the bar for precisely 50% of the kids -- the 50% who are, statistically speaking, below average. You'll have to lower it a little for the kids who are below-but-clustered-near-the-middle and a lot for the kids who are on the far left-hand side of that bell curve.
Once the reality of implementing NCLB was instituted, "dumbing down" was the only logical direction in which school districts could go.
Guess I am the minority to the right of the curve who reject this direction as logical. Then again, I also reject the notion that the Bell Curve has to be the applied norm and used as a fixed pattern..
Guess I am the minority to the right of the curve who reject this direction as logical. Then again, I also reject the notion that the Bell Curve has to be the applied norm and used as a fixed pattern..
Well with NCLB mandating 100% pass by 2014 it's pretty hard not to lower the bar so they all pass. Although I'm very skeptical that 100% can be achieved even if you lay that bar right on the ground.
Well with NCLB mandating 100% pass by 2014 it's pretty hard not to lower the bar so they all pass. Although I'm very skeptical that 100% can be achieved even if you lay that bar right on the ground.
I seriously fail to see how my students with <70 FSIQ will ever pass any standardized test. 90% of them cannot write more than 4 words across a loose-leaf paper because they have no spatial awareness. My kids are taking the same EOC everyone else takes for English, math and biology.
To ever imagine ALL students will pass is moronic, to say the least.
I seriously fail to see how my students with <70 FSIQ will ever pass any standardized test. 90% of them cannot write more than 4 words across a loose-leaf paper because they have no spatial awareness. My kids are taking the same EOC everyone else takes for English, math and biology.
To ever imagine ALL students will pass is moronic, to say the least.
I know. And poor kids -- they're being set up for failure in every sense of the word. How about measuring their success relative to what they themselves could do at the end of the previous academic year, particularly since they're obviously special-needs and shouldn't be measured with the same yardstick used to measure more neurotypical students?
Guess I am the minority to the right of the curve who reject this direction as logical. Then again, I also reject the notion that the Bell Curve has to be the applied norm and used as a fixed pattern..
Oh, believe me, I don't think it's ethical. Inevitable given the setup, yes, but ethical? Moral? Practical?
I know. And poor kids -- they're being set up for failure in every sense of the word. How about measuring their success relative to what they themselves could do at the end of the previous academic year, particularly since they're obviously special-needs and shouldn't be measured with the same yardstick used to measure more neurotypical students?
Even for the kids that are capable of passing the test, you still aren't measuring progress, you are measuring how this year's class did compared to last year's class. Any class that does worse then the class before them is considered failing, even if it is just a percentage point different. I've given this example before, 2 schools in our state, one had 98% passing one year, 97% passing the next year, the other had 43% passing one year, 44% the next year, guess which one is on "the list" as a bad school.....just stupid.
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