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So my uncle who is right near your age is mentally impaired (back then he would have been called retarded). He never went to school at all except for classes at a special program that wasn't even at a school building. So that may be why you don't remember severely challenged kids in your elementary school. Now he would attend regular classes probably with an aide and pull out services in elementary.
For most of elementary school I went to school in a very small district. We had kids considered retarded in our classroom. I remember the mother of one went over to the school one day to find her son sitting in a corner. That's how the teacher dealt with it then. There were a few other kids who were also much slower than the rest of the pack. I do recall some specialists showing up once in a while and pulling these kids out. That's not ideal. There may have been some severely challenged kids who didn't go to my school, that's true, though in such a small community as mine, I think I would have known. Even today, some kids are in the "resource room" in a special class.
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Originally Posted by GotHereQuickAsICould
Students in elementary and middle school and their parents are worried about G.P.A.? Who knew?
High school students take AP and Honors classes all the time. There is grumbling about G.P.A. in HS because it affects college admissions and scholarships, and many don't think it fair that those who take easier courses end up higher in the class standing, etc.
The poster you're making fun of teaches in a high school. You're right, there's lots of grumbling about GPA in high school. The bold has been an issue since forever. My cousin, a year older than me, was in a competition with one girl from first grade on. He was really hacked off when she graduated with a higher rank than him. But really, what was the big deal? He got into Carnegie Mellon!
Students in elementary and middle school and their parents are worried about G.P.A.? Who knew?
High school students take AP and Honors classes all the time. There is grumbling about G.P.A. in HS because it affects college admissions and scholarships, and many don't think it fair that those who take easier courses end up higher in the class standing, etc.
The point of my post was that we can't differentiate instruction because parents are concerned with GPA's and kids consider more/harder work to be punishment for being ahead. It sounds so easy to challenge the top of the class but we can't. We can offer more challenging assignments but they must be optional and we get few takers.
The point of my post was that we can't differentiate instruction because parents are concerned with GPA's and kids consider more/harder work to be punishment for being ahead. It sounds so easy to challenge the top of the class but we can't. We can offer more challenging assignments but they must be optional and we get few takers.
However, in high school many students do sign up for the more rigorous AP and Honors courses.
It is in elementary and middle school that we don't offer differentiated instruction. GPA is not a concern there.
I went to school in the 60's and 70's and we did not have special ed kids in our classes. They went to special schools.
I went to school in the 60's. The SpEd students were in separate classrooms but in the same building.
Now, SpEd students are mainstreamed in elementary and middle school. However, in high school they are generally in separate classrooms. Many call them "Resource Rooms." The math class is generally budgeting and practical math skills instead of algebra or geometry.
Last edited by GotHereQuickAsICould; 04-23-2014 at 06:40 PM..
However, in high school many students do sign up for the more rigorous AP and Honors courses.
It is in elementary and middle school that we don't offer differentiated instruction. GPA is not a concern there.
Even in high school here it's an issue. My friend is an AP English teacher and the local high school has open AP classes that anyone can take (they do this in part to boost their school rating because it counts number of AP students). She tells me that she has kids in her class that can't write a complete paragraph and have extensive IEPs and yet they're in AP English. When she meets with parents they insist that the school must accommodate their child. She says she's had to teach down the class and most of the kids never take the exam.
Even in high school here it's an issue. My friend is an AP English teacher and the local high school has open AP classes that anyone can take (they do this in part to boost their school rating because it counts number of AP students). She tells me that she has kids in her class that can't write a complete paragraph and have extensive IEPs and yet they're in AP English. When she meets with parents they insist that the school must accommodate their child. She says she's had to teach down the class and most of the kids never take the exam.
Somehow, I am not surprised.
So what kind of accommodation would work in an AP English class for a student who can't write a complete paragraph? An aide who does the writing?
I've seen students who have been placed into group homes at eighteen because their behavior is so out of control and yet their parents have insisted all along that the school provide accommodations so that they can be mainstreamed. It's crazy.
Mainstreaming works for some students. Not so much for others.
However, in high school many students do sign up for the more rigorous AP and Honors courses.
It is in elementary and middle school that we don't offer differentiated instruction. GPA is not a concern there.
You are correct. I'm thinking of classes that everyone takes like algebra I and II and geometry and chemistry or physics and biology where everyone is put in the same level class. AP definitely takes the top.
When was this? I'm older than most of the posters on here, started kindergarten in 1954, graduated from HS in 1967. I don't remember any such thing. Elementary school was everyone together. In fact, for most of elementary school, I was in a small multi-age school where the teachers taught three separate grades. Somehow, they accomplished this. There were a few special ed students who got some pull-out services occasionally. Junior high had an honors group in grades 7 and 8, but there was no "low achiever" group. High school had its college prep classes in a few subjects. The separation was mostly in the courses students chose, not all sorts of "tracking".
Again, if The Atlantic is your source, I'll take it with a box of salt.
Kat,
I'm six years younger and grew up about 80 miles from you. My elementary school did not have tracking. but it did have a self contained special education classroom where students were assigned for a year and sometimes moved back into the regular classroom. In 7th grade we had a tracking system where the top 25-30 students were assigned to a particular section, the next highest 25-30 to another section, etc. You took almost all of your classes with the same section. In 8th grade it got broken up a bit because people chose different foreign languages. This complicated things for the schedule makers since it was all done by hand in those days.
The same pattern continued in HS where we were grouped with students of similar ability in classes like English and history, which doesn't occur today in most cases unless you take AP or honors classes. This was a large school district with 600-700 students in a graduating class.
The only class that was not tracked in my HS was health. We also had the various tracks that you could take such as college prep, general, vocational and secretarial. Much depended on the courses you took since relatively few students in my class took physics or five years of a foreign language. We also didn't have many of the course options that students have today such as accounting, computer applications and programming, and all the AP courses.
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