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I know I shouldn't do this, but how is that segregation? Each kid has been in the same classes for the same number of years to that point. While we can argue around the separation between and A and a B; clearly the kid with the A has performed better than the kid with the C or D.
We award medals and millions of dollars to the fastest running, the best passer, etc in sports. Why in academics is performance suppressed and mediocrity rewarded.
I'd love an educator to provide a fact base, non emotion based, explanation of why a system such as tracking that provides an ability based educational outcome, is harmful, yet holding the A's to the same level as the D's isn't.
I'm not agreeing with this argument: but the argument against "tracking" is that poorer and minority children are behind when they start school, and once a child is placed on a particular track, it becomes impossible to ever move to a higher track, since they lack the knowledge that they would have learned in a higher track, and/or there is no space left in the higher tracks.
What is needed is some way for children to be able to switch from one track to another. And some way to avoid a situation where one bad teacher permanently keeps a child on the wrong track.
I think there are also different types of tracking. Some systems do it on a per class basis, so you are with the same group of kids throughout the day even in higher grades. Others may just have a few levels.
My friend who is now teaching PE was teaching English at a time when every kid in the grade had the same curriculum. It was extremely low level, and the only thing they could to was add additional lessons to the base lesson plan that was prescribed on a daily basis. She didn’t think that was helping anyone, and I agree. The lessons seemed appropriate for 5th grade and she was teaching 9th grade. I had left teaching at the time, but it was well below anything I had learned was a normal expected reading level in middle or high school.
You also have issues where kids who are bored/not challenged end up misbehaving and then they fall behind and cause others to fall behind because the teachers have to spend more time disciplining the kids. My sister was one of those kids. She’d finish what she needed to finish quickly and then be there clicking her pen or doing something otherwise super annoying because she had nothing else to do. In the overall scheme of things, I don’t think she was poorly behaved, but some kids are worse than that.
Getting kids all in one class in the high school level is really problematic. The level differences are just too big.
I was one of those students who would goof off and not pay attention in classes where I was underchallenged.
I thought later about this post, and I want to take it a step further. I think most public school teachers would prefer some degree of tracking...until, of course, they get the low class.
I disagree, since, based on both my real life experience and the other posters on this forum, teachers prefer the average to below average students.
Yeah, tracking would actually make teaching easier because teachers could specialize in the particular tracks. Trying to teach a class with a wide variety of learning styles and aptitudes is more difficult and professionally frustrating.
That makes a lot of sense. I've mentioned before how badly I clashed with my 8th grade math teacher, and how strongly she disliked me. She was an extremely popular teacher. But the positive reviews were always the type that said things like how the reviewer never understood math until they had her. Clearly, her strength was teaching kids who struggled with math. She was not suited for teaching honors classes, even if she had the math knowledge. Her style of teaching didn't work for honors students, and she clearly had a disdain for honors students. So she should have been teaching remedial students. Another example is my brother's 4th grade teacher who I mentioned earlier. She was very blatant about only caring about remedial students. So maybe have her only teach remedial students.
As for a class with a wide variety of learning styles and aptitudes being difficult and professionally frustrating: a perfect example of that was my 7th grade science class. I mentioned before how I and several other students really should have been in honors science at that point but were not, since there were not enough seats available, and seemingly all of us were in that class. And this class also had many students who belonged in a remedial class or even special ed. And the teacher was a mean, strict, authoritarian teacher who had zero tolerances for any students who were not exactly average, which meant, he had zero tolerance for basically everybody in this class. I can see why this would be an extremely difficult class to teach, and we had a teacher who was especially a poor fit for the students in the class.
I disagree, since, based on both my real life experience and the other posters on this forum, teachers prefer the average to below average students.
I haven’t found that to be the case at all. There are so many teachers who, when they get Gifted classes, want you to pry those classes out of their cold, dead hands.
To the extent that within any individual class they prefer the poorer performance, I would say that is because school grades/assessments are typically based on annual year progress. So you really have to have those lower performing kids make progress. To that extent, having a smaller spread between levels makes more sense. Honestly, when I had gifted kids in regular classes, I just felt bad for them because I knew they weren’t doing anything. Unfortunately, there isn’t much teachers can do in that situation.
And, furthermore, as you have mentioned in the past, education is just about the only area where our society accepts and even rewards mediocrity. The City Data Work and Employment forum is full of posts by managers saying things like "average is over".
I was recently talking to one of my classmates from high school, and he admitted that back in 7th grade, he would intentionally answer questions wrongly on exams in order to get a B rather than an A so that the teacher and classmates would like him better! He also said that he regrets not having the courage to stand up for me when he saw teachers who were clearly mistreating me for no valid reason. I think it's ridiculous that somebody would feel pressure to answer questions wrongly to be better liked. I'm sure the posters in this forum will just argue that it meant that my classmate had good "soft skills" and that mine were bad, and I'm sure they'll argue that my classmate knew how to "read a room" and I didn't. But I think that's a ridiculous argument. Would you want a doctor who occasionally intentionally misdiagnoses patients?
Years ago, when my brother was in 4th grade, my mother ran into my brother's 4th grade teacher in the supermarket. And his teacher openly admitted to my mother that she does not care about my brother at all, because she only cares about the remedial students. My mother was, rightly so, annoyed, and said that for the taxes we are paying, we deserve teachers who care about all of their students. My father, not surprisingly, defended the teacher, saying that it's not her job to care about students, her job is to get paid, and that my brother has to learn that life isn't fair. Somehow, I don't think that anybody would defend a doctor who said he/she doesn't care about his/her cancer patients, and only cares about his/her heart disease patients. My brother, being a doormat, of course agreed with my father.
It does at times feel like public education at least is focused on mediocrity. Or, if not mediocrity, pushing to the minimums.
Regarding your classmate who would deliberately score lower than he could, that's not unheard of. Esp for females. The pressure within a school system, from teachers, and from classmates to be average or below is tremendous. High scoring students are ostracized as if it's somehow their fault the scored higher than others. The bullying to conform can get so strong it's pretty near, if not actually, physical and mental torture.
Your dad probably came up in a era where you didn't disagree with a teacher and whatever happened, you just sucked it up. There is a great deal of wisdom in knowing that life isn't fair and not expecting it to be. If anything our education system spends too much effort on trying to be "fair" rather than "just." Because while life isn't fair, if someone were to go to a nice steakhouse and paid for a dry aged, 22 ounce porterhouse, cooked medium rare, with Bernaise sauce, and instead got an overcooked Big Mac with Thousand Island, they wouldn't accept "life isn't fair" as an excuse.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mitsguy2001
I disagree, since, based on both my real life experience and the other posters on this forum, teachers prefer the average to below average students.
My experience is pretty much the same that most teachers prefer to teach to the average or below. They may like having good, quiet, high scoring students in the classroom to make their scores look good, but they prefer dealing with the average.
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Originally Posted by RamenAddict
I haven’t found that to be the case at all. There are so many teachers who, when they get Gifted classes, want you to pry those classes out of their cold, dead hands.
To the extent that within any individual class they prefer the poorer performance, I would say that is because school grades/assessments are typically based on annual year progress. So you really have to have those lower performing kids make progress. To that extent, having a smaller spread between levels makes more sense. Honestly, when I had gifted kids in regular classes, I just felt bad for them because I knew they weren’t doing anything. Unfortunately, there isn’t much teachers can do in that situation.
Gifted classes are not the same as preferring to teach to the average. Pretty much regardless of the classroom focus, my experience as both student and then parent matches more closely to MITSGUY that in any group of students, teachers prefer to teach the lower end of that class.
In my case at least that experience predated the obsession with assessment so that linkage is very weak.
I've never seen this to be true. I see teachers wanting to teach AP classes in high schools.
I never saw a department bloodbath over who would have regular ed classes. I did, however, see more than one when AP/Honors classes were assigned (and also who wouldn't teach multi-level classes. For the education "experts" those are classes that contain both regular ed kids and kids with cognitive deficit IEPs).
All I have to say is that some of you had some pretty ****ty teachers and, even more amazing, you had them every year all through elementary, junior high, senior high and college.
It does at times feel like public education at least is focused on mediocrity. Or, if not mediocrity, pushing to the minimums.
And again, a good question is why did it get to that point, and why is mediocrity not accepted in any other aspect of life other than education?
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Regarding your classmate who would deliberately score lower than he could, that's not unheard of. Esp for females. The pressure within a school system, from teachers, and from classmates to be average or below is tremendous. High scoring students are ostracized as if it's somehow their fault the scored higher than others. The bullying to conform can get so strong it's pretty near, if not actually, physical and mental torture.
That's really sad. A good question is, what can be done about it? It doesn't help that the people who post on this forum claim that my classmate had good soft skills and mine were bad, or that my classmate knew how to read a room and I didn't.
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Your dad probably came up in a era where you didn't disagree with a teacher and whatever happened, you just sucked it up. There is a great deal of wisdom in knowing that life isn't fair and not expecting it to be. If anything our education system spends too much effort on trying to be "fair" rather than "just."
What is the difference between fair vs just, in this context?
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Because while life isn't fair, if someone were to go to a nice steakhouse and paid for a dry aged, 22 ounce porterhouse, cooked medium rare, with Bernaise sauce, and instead got an overcooked Big Mac with Thousand Island, they wouldn't accept "life isn't fair" as an excuse.
Exactly! Why is it that education is the only place where people just accept "life isn't fair" as an excuse? I also question how many of these cases really are intended to be life lessons about life not being fair, vs how many are just using "life isn't fair" as an excuse to justify poor performance?
I never saw a department bloodbath over who would have regular ed classes. I did, however, see more than one when AP/Honors classes were assigned (and also who wouldn't teach multi-level classes. For the education "experts" those are classes that contain both regular ed kids and kids with cognitive deficit IEPs).
All I have to say is that some of you had some pretty ****ty teachers and, even more amazing, you had them every year all through elementary, junior high, senior high and college.
Not that amazing if you stop to think about it. There are a couple of basic axioms that ring pretty much true in the work world and there's no reason to believe school is any different.
The first is 20% of the workforce produces 80% of the results. The other is one bad employee can do more damage than 10 good ones can fix.
Of those bad employees, the worst, most damaging, are not the ones so bad they get fired, but the ones who are just good enough not to get fired. They hang on, year after year, dragging the whole organization down with them.
It's also true that top performers like to work with top performers. Let those bad performers hang on a few years and the top performers will leave, their place to be taken by mediocre performers. A's hire A's. B's hire C's and C's hire D's. Over time the organization will standardize on mediocrity without some force to prevent that from happening.
So given that, it's not really surprising that a lot of us had a lot of mediocre teachers and very few outstanding ones over the years.
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