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Nothing seems to satisfy you. Perhaps you should look for an alternative school for your son. BTW, your son could score a "5" on his AP tests and still not get college credit, if the college won't take them. I doubt Harvard, MIT, Caltech or Stanford take a lot of AP courses for credit.
You are completely missing the point, why I'm not sure. Just used my kids as an example. But I'm not worried about them because I am taking the steps to ensure they succeed where they choose to go.
What I AM worried about is the overall education of this country's youth. In multiple terms across multiple goals. Just to list a few, in no particular order:
a. Cost of providing K-12.
b. Quality of education provided.
c. Cost of college and mounting college debt.
d. Better students being held back to teach to the lowest common denominator.
e. Students being pushed beyond their ability at excessive cost for no value added.
f. Students who don't have the ability to make the most of it being pushed into college at either debt they can't afford or higher cost to the taxpayers.
g. Too much teaching to the test and the problems caused by NCLB and CC.
h. Teacher quality.
i. Preparing students for the world they will enter, not just for academia.
That's why I believe we need tracking so that students can be best set up for success to enter the workplace with skills rather than mounting debt. Like Ivorytickler I also believe that students should be expected to perform to the level of the class rather than getting a free ride. I believe that getting a high school diploma should actually mean a certain level of education. I believe that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. I believe there should be a Constitutional Amendment outlawing AstroTurf and the designated hitter. (some of you may get the reference ).
How many times has "remove disruptive" students been recommended?
A million and it will still be recommended a million more. This ONE move would improve education for the kids left in the class. There is a noticeable difference in the amount of learning that goes on in my classes where I don't have to deal with disruptive students and the ones where I do. My experience is that if you put 4-6 disruptive students in one class no one learns anything. All of the teacher's time is taken up dealing with the disruptions.
You are completely missing the point, why I'm not sure. Just used my kids as an example. But I'm not worried about them because I am taking the steps to ensure they succeed where they choose to go.
What I AM worried about is the overall education of this country's youth. In multiple terms across multiple goals. Just to list a few, in no particular order:
a. Cost of providing K-12.
b. Quality of education provided.
c. Cost of college and mounting college debt.
d. Better students being held back to teach to the lowest common denominator.
e. Students being pushed beyond their ability at excessive cost for no value added.
f. Students who don't have the ability to make the most of it being pushed into college at either debt they can't afford or higher cost to the taxpayers.
g. Too much teaching to the test and the problems caused by NCLB and CC.
h. Teacher quality.
i. Preparing students for the world they will enter, not just for academia.
That's why I believe we need tracking so that students can be best set up for success to enter the workplace with skills rather than mounting debt. Like Ivorytickler I also believe that students should be expected to perform to the level of the class rather than getting a free ride. I believe that getting a high school diploma should actually mean a certain level of education. I believe that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. I believe there should be a Constitutional Amendment outlawing AstroTurf and the designated hitter. (some of you may get the reference ).
Since we never had the type of tracking you and several others want us to "go back to", I don't know what your basis is for saying this would improve things. In some countries that do have rigid tracking, it's becoming less rigid rather than more.
a. If you want to cut costs, you're never going to get what you want.
b. Define quality
c. A media hype for the most part. The average student debt is about the price of a new car, something people usually don't think twice about going into debt for.
d. What's your evidence for that happening now?
e. Ditto
f. Ditto
g. Yes
h. What's your solution to that if you want less money spent? The major portion of a school's budget is money.
i. This idea that college, and even high school, should be a major career prep experience is something I never heard about except on CD.
But your last question really gets to the heart of the matter. So, what's wrong with stratification? Why is it wrong to focus college prep on those who have the ability and stop trying to push kids who will never get it into a college prep track where they will fail?
I personally have no problem with it, but it's a discussion that we as a society must have before we simply allow it to happen with certain folks reaping the benefits at the expense of others. The mere existence and popularity of exclusionary charter schools makes it clear that people like schools that sort those with potential from those without. But this decision has not been made democratically, so instead it's been implemented through the backdoor and with for-profit corporations needlessly running the show. If we, as a society, decide that the sorting of students is acceptable, then the charter sector becomes even more redundant because public schools could simply expand magnet options including developing more schools that have barriers for entry and standards for staying enrolled.
In terms of stratification, there are two problems: 1) The implication from your post that all of the "best" teachers (assuming we can identify them) should end up in the "best" schools, and 2) the likely and serious potential for non-meritocratic segregation.
Do you think life will not stratify? Like it or not people have different abilities. There is nothing to be gained by trying to treat everyone as if they are the same and much to be lost. Life IS competitive. School should be too, however, school should also offer second chances because we're dealing with kids but forcing someone who lacks the intelligence or work ethic onto a college bound track does no one any good. We need to serve kids where they are and that means tracking. Don't put the kids who can't read on the college bound track. Put them on the remedial reading track.
Come on, you and I have been posting here long enough to know that I have no problem with tracking as it were, even on a school-wide level. As I mentioned above, my issue with tnff's post was the implication that only the students in the highest track should have access to the best teachers (assuming they can be identified).
Since we never had the type of tracking you and several others want us to "go back to", I don't know what your basis is for saying this would improve things. In some countries that do have rigid tracking, it's becoming less rigid rather than more.
a. If you want to cut costs, you're never going to get what you want.
b. Define quality
c. A media hype for the most part. The average student debt is about the price of a new car, something people usually don't think twice about going into debt for.
d. What's your evidence for that happening now?
e. Ditto
f. Ditto
g. Yes
h. What's your solution to that if you want less money spent? The major portion of a school's budget is money.
i. This idea that college, and even high school, should be a major career prep experience is something I never heard about except on CD.
re: h- I meant to say the major portion of a school's budget is salaries.
I personally have no problem with it, but it's a discussion that we as a society must have before we simply allow it to happen with certain folks reaping the benefits at the expense of others. The mere existence and popularity of exclusionary charter schools makes it clear that people like schools that sort those with potential from those without. But this decision has not been made democratically, so instead it's been implemented through the backdoor and with for-profit corporations needlessly running the show. If we, as a society, decide that the sorting of students is acceptable, then the charter sector becomes even more redundant because public schools could simply expand magnet options including developing more schools that have barriers for entry and standards for staying enrolled.
In terms of stratification, there are two problems: 1) The implication from your post that all of the "best" teachers (assuming we can identify them) should end up in the "best" schools, and 2) the likely and serious potential for non-meritocratic segregation.
Ok, so we may be closer to agreement than it sounded like. I'm not really arguing for or against charter or any type of school, but for principles on how to best educate the majority of students. I'll disagree that about the argument on stratification in one aspect in that I think we as a society had agreement, and had some amount of stratification, but the changes to a one size fits all, lack of sorting was rammed down our throats by a timely coming together of educratic theories with an assortment of special interests each of whom saw opportunity to push their agenda in societies fear of "the likely and serious potential for non-meritocratic segregation."
Because yes, I think your number two statement is the giant bogeyman hidden behind all this discussion. People are so terrified by that word segregation that they'd sacrifice anything, including meritocracy to avoid even having to discuss it.
Come on, you and I have been posting here long enough to know that I have no problem with tracking as it were, even on a school-wide level. As I mentioned above, my issue with tnff's post was the implication that only the students in the highest track should have access to the best teachers (assuming they can be identified).
Define best? I have a masters in engineer and teach chemistry, math and physics. Should I teach the bottom kids or the top? Which group would "I" serve best?
What is "best" is depends on the student's needs. For many students what is best is a teacher who can remediate what they never learned in the first place. The top kids need subject matter experts who can raise the bar high. The bottom kids don't. They need teachers who can help them fill in the gaps.
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