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You have lkb, Tabula Rasa who are classroom. Phetaroi was classroom and administration. Tnff is involved in education at a policy/research level, he and I clash often. I retired last year after 32 years in the classroom.
Hey, I resemble that remark. Though I do enjoy a good, vigorous debate.
Just wanted to clarify that my involvement in education was sideways (they don't want me near a classroom). Managing courseware development using ISD (which I consider Intentionally Stupid Design because it spends a lot of money, produces a lot of paper, and creates the illusion of learning, but doesn't really help the student) and from a work and professional organization related perspective -- STEM education needs.
Based on my personal experiences, I can see how this may happen.
For a child with more advanced abilities that is unrecognized, it may be demoralizing to be in an environment that not only doesn't challenge, stimulate or motivate them to reach the highest level of their abilities, but long-term exposure to a low-performing, low-achieving learning environment and peer group may also eventually induce feelings of low worth, apathy and hopelessness. May as well give up because, what's the point?
...But, conversely, you might argue for similar levels of damage to a high-achieving child who, by not being tracked to the highest performing learning environment, finds their potential never maximized. Clustering of different abilities in groups in the same classroom is a poor compromise; none of those groups are provided with optimal learning opportunities.
It's definitely possible.
I can only speak from my experience as an academically high-performing, very academically-oriented student who, quite frankly, was lumped in with much lower performing students very often (tracking was standard, then, but essentially only in reading and math). I never recall feeling demoralized or bored or dragged down to others' levels, so to speak, but part of that's personality. I worked ahead, etc. if I wanted to, lived for the free time to read and work independently if I finished before everyone else. I'm not a person who is typically bored, and apathy wasn't ever part of my hardwiring, so that was never an issue. My abilities also didn't go unrecognized, either, even though I was in a mixed ability classroom. They were always acknowledged. I can't say that low-achieving kids "rubbed off on me, " or affected my ability or desire to learn or anything. I was always the same engaged learner, regardless.
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In both cases, identification of that child's educational potential is important so that they may be tracked to their appropriate level - not doing away with the concept of tracking altogether.
It's also important to note that is not actually realistic to identify each child's educational potential, at any given time, in anything other than a fairly iffy, prognosticating way. There are a lot of variables that can throw that educated guess off...especially if the educators are not even deeply invested in seriously considering and analyzing a particular student's observable capabilities. Lots of guesswork.
^^ It would be interesting to hear from current educators all of their various opinions on this.
I've never taught in a system that tracks, at least not in the sense we are discussing. I generally have taught students with IEPs, who are themselves subject to exhaustive methods and types of assessments by a range of specialists.
My experience with tracking is from the vantage point of being a student within that system, myself, from the early 1980s-mid-1990s.
Interesting to read about your perspectives on this issue. I guess we all form our opinions based on perspectives shaped largely by our own personal experiences, which in turn was shaped by our learning environment and the specific educational policy in place at the schools during that period.
I think any general policy trying to encompass the education of a general student population, with widely varying educational needs (in the context of education by public school, home is another topic), needs to address how to best educate the "mean" within each broad group (higher ability, average, lower ability), while minimizing neglect of the "extremes" - those at the tail ends. There will always be those who, by sheer innate personality, talents and intellect, be able to succeed academically regardless of any impediments in their way. But I would consider them outliers.
The question is, how to best design a curriculum that captures those who have the potential to succeed, but may be lacking in sufficient levels of any combination of the above to be able to overcome such hurdles? If we could, should we not look into how to lower those hurdles, and place the child in an environment that optimizes their chances? Children of all ability levels.
And from what I've observed, there are too many high ability kids at the elementary level insufficiently challenged, or not provided with optimal learning conditions due the needs of the teacher to spread his/her time and effort in order to also educate kids in those two other groups, in the same class during the same instruction period. No one wins - not the teacher stretched thin, whose instructional attention is divided between having to teach to various levels simultaneously; not the high ability kids given "open time" to essentially keep themselves occupied with busywork or self-directed reading while attention is diverted to the other groups; and not the kids in the other two groups, who also find they can only be fed a bite of the educational pie. Ultimately, the students - of all groups - are left insufficiently fed, and still hungry for more.
Remaining in track for all the classes actually was common 40 and 50 years. It started to change and then tracking was pretty much eliminated most everywhere by the mid-90s.
Oh it is not the case where I went (I was in advanced math and reading but actuall in the average writing aka language arts) or where I teach (only the science and tech are all advanced and we offered advanced or regular cp classes for other subjects).
How is it decided which kids to place in which tracks? Are the kids tested and they use test scores? Teachers opinions? Parents opinions? Combination of all?
Mostly test scores and somewhat teacher recommendations. Most parents don't have the educational background to know whether their child is really gifted or ahead of their peers.
It's also important to note that is not actually realistic to identify each child's educational potential, at any given time, in anything other than a fairly iffy, prognosticating way. There are a lot of variables that can throw that educated guess off...especially if the educators are not even deeply invested in seriously considering and analyzing a particular student's observable capabilities. Lots of guesswork.
I am not sure what you mean by this or why you think it's true. I am in charge of most of the "big data" at my schools and we are not making "educated guesses" when it comes to placement. Just one example: student scores on the AP physics exam senior year are very strongly correlated with the midterm exam score from their Junior physics midterm (the correlation is not as strong for the final). The r value is over 0.9 and p was less than 0.05. That means it is statistically significantly capable of being a great predictor of how they will do in the more advanced class. And there are other less obvious predictors. One of the best predictors for picking which level of senior thesis they will succeed at is actually their sophomore English grades from the third marking period. This is when they complete heir major research literature paper and it corresponds well to their final grade in their science thesis paper.
So if schools track well it is hardly an educated guess.
What has happened over the last almost 20 years now since the adoption of NCLB (which I maintain was a good concept but was wrecked by the implementation) is that many school systems spend 80% of their time and resources trying to raise the bottom 20% of students. What made that poisonous is that the increase in those scores, and in small schools one or two kids can wreck your numbers, was how schools and now teachers are evaluated and determined to be successful or not.
While emphasis on the advanced classes continued, the Gates Foundation dumped a lot of money into AP and IB programs, the kids in the middle, 70% if you use a Bell Curve, are who suffered, they kind of got lost.
To illustrate how that worked I was punished for something one year and had to teach Government, a targeted subject with the High School Assessment for graduation. It was a mess.
It was a 10th grade class in my system. The class (38 total) make up consisted of kids who had failed the class but passed the HSA, kids who had passed the class but failed the test and kids who were first time takers of the class and test. Those kids ranged in ability from kids who should have been in Honors to kids with a 2nd grade reading level.
I spent the vast majority of my time continually remediating those kids who had failed the test (a couple were Seniors so had taken it several times by that point) and those kids who were way behind the curve on reading level. The average and above average kids kind of fell through the cracks.
It didn't help that the system designed every two week Benchmark tests didn't follow the adopted curriculum so the kids would crash those tests every two weeks.
I agree that while the intent of NCLB was good, its specific design and implementation was poor - leading to many of problems we see today from some of the students who have gone through it. Many reasons, I know, because the problem is complex when you are trying to address large populations of humans with so many external and internal variables.
I think it is ironic that in the drive to mostly target the bottom 20%, NCLB would actually result in more children being left behind in the remaining 80%, than before this policy was implemented. Although I'm sure a percentage of those 20% were indeed helped, one must ask whether that could have been achieved without adversely affecting the other 80%. Cost to benefit. I think that is where we are at today in trying to set public educational policy for the general student population.
The sad fact is that there will always be some children "left behind" (here, academically), regardless of all of the external factors applied to prevent it. I think Gates, Zuckerberg, Winfrey, et al have observed this. This is partially due to set innate variabilities in any population - human or otherwise. I've even observed this phenomenon in large populations of bacteria, under a variety of environmental conditions, where regardless of applied or pre-existing external conditions, there was always a small percentage of bacteria that "behaved" in a manner counter to the larger majority.
I sometimes wonder how much of the NCLB policy was driven by a certain level of naivety and idealism, how much due to a lack of information, how much due to a lack of insightfulness about the human condition and social dynamics, etc. etc.
And of course, we are aware of NCLB's negative impact on teachers and their ability to effectively teach in the classroom.
Call it what you will, there is established research (i.e. Kulik and Kulik) that strongly suggests that ability grouping, including acceleration and enrichment, is generally a preferable classroom arrangement for advanced students than heterogeneous settings. I have a hard time supporting any policy that forces advanced students into a setting that is not in their best interest, which I believe has unfortunately been the trend in recent decades.
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Though I do enjoy a good, vigorous debate.
because it spends a lot of money, produces a lot of paper, and creates the illusion of learning, but doesn't really help the student) and from a work and professional organization related perspective -- STEM education needs.
