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I'm curious, do you know which three grades they picked? They didn't bat an eye at dd skipping 4th grade and they were willing to let her skip 8th grade. I'm wondering if those are two of them.
Here they're 3rd, 8th, and I believe 10th. If I'm wrong, there are generally enough Floridians around that someone will correct me.
As I read this thread, and based on the comments, it seems to me that academic and learning considerations take a back seat to social engineering, managing the self esteem of parents and children and administrative convenience leaving the teacher in the middle in what is probably a no-win situation.
As an employer, I have often held very capable people back from promotion because they were not quite ready to perform at the next level. In almost every case they hated me for it and the act of telling them was a very unpleasant experience. Then, a year or two later, having eventually been promoted, they would tell me that I did exactly the right thing and that they could now appreciate that they were not quite ready and that they would have been set up for failure had they gone earlier.
Are schools willing to have that kind of conversation with parents and their kids?
No, because of the bolded above.
Schools USED to have those conversations with parents, but that was before they started working so hard at making everybody feel good and successful whether they were or not.
My brother was held back in second grade because he missed a great deal of time due to health reasons. More kids were held back years ago because they didn't meet standards to move forward. Now there is so much stroking of the egos that it might damage little Johnny or Suzie if they were held back. Besides, the parents would feel like failures as well. A double whammy. Better move those kids along.
I think schools in general are just pathetic. Online courses for everyone.
At my school I rarely felt good about myself and I made very good grades. I had pretty low self esteem thanks to some snarky teachers. lol. I doubt the disabled and lazy kids felt any better. I'm just saying this whole "Keep the kids happy" belief is more of a myth. I don't think anyone is really happy in school.
I was never held back in grade school. But in graduate school they tried holding me back in a master's program that was in a creative field of all things. Surely, they must have been mistaken. Yep, they were. And they wanted my money to boot. The more retakes the more money they can squeeze out of me. Jerks.
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Originally Posted by NoExcuses
My brother was held back in second grade because he missed a great deal of time due to health reasons. More kids were held back years ago because they didn't meet standards to move forward. Now there is so much stroking of the egos that it might damage little Johnny or Suzie if they were held back. Besides, the parents would feel like failures as well. A double whammy. Better move those kids along.
I'm curious, do you know which three grades they picked? They didn't bat an eye at dd skipping 4th grade and they were willing to let her skip 8th grade. I'm wondering if those are two of them.
I don't remember what grades they were. He told us, though. I believe this rule was instituted after I was out of elementary school, though, as I don't believe second grade was one of them.
Isn't what you are describing the Montessouri (sp) method? Free roaming classes where students go from one to the other as their ability grows?
Our local distict is arranged by what they call houses. Kindergarten is seperate, then the lower houses are 1st through 4th, and upper houses are 5th through 8th. Core subjects are at the same time for all lower houses, as they are for all upper houses. Some kids drift at those times, but not many. Part of the problem is the Everyday math program which is being phased out in the coming years (hooray!! Just found that out this week.).
There is controversy in this system though because some parents don't want their, say first grader in with 4th graders, and 5th grader in with 8th graders. I found it so much of a spread that none of the teachers do a particularly good job.
I believe, for the most part, that students need to learn to adapt to the school, not the other way around. It's unreasonable to be so darned accommodating in elementary then expect the student to suddenly adjust to having to do it the school's way in high school.
I think multi-age classrooms would be good. Not everyone learns at the same pace, and I don't really like jumping from class to class to be in different levels of classes. This is especially true for elementary school where I think kids should be with the same kids in order to really develop bonds. I also don't get how parents don't want their kids with older ones. Honestly, they always talk about school preparing you for the real world. In the real world you don't work with only people the same age as you. I work with people from the age of 20-around 70 probably.
Schools USED to have those conversations with parents, but that was before they started working so hard at making everybody feel good and successful whether they were or not.
My brother was held back in second grade because he missed a great deal of time due to health reasons. More kids were held back years ago because they didn't meet standards to move forward. Now there is so much stroking of the egos that it might damage little Johnny or Suzie if they were held back. Besides, the parents would feel like failures as well. A double whammy. Better move those kids along.
And they discovered that the more times a child is held back, the more likely they were to never graduate. The problem is the stigma attached to being held back.
I'm sure another part of the problem is being unable to predict the number of kids in each class as well. You'd have to wait to see how many "failed" (we'd really need to find a word to replace "failed" that doesn't imply the student is a failure.)
We are way too concerned about self esteem and not nearly as concerned as we should be about actual ability.
I think schools in general are just pathetic. Online courses for everyone.
At my school I rarely felt good about myself and I made very good grades. I had pretty low self esteem thanks to some snarky teachers. lol. I doubt the disabled and lazy kids felt any better. I'm just saying this whole "Keep the kids happy" belief is more of a myth. I don't think anyone is really happy in school.
I was never held back in grade school. But in graduate school they tried holding me back in a master's program that was in a creative field of all things. Surely, they must have been mistaken. Yep, they were. And they wanted my money to boot. The more retakes the more money they can squeeze out of me. Jerks.
It has become so political that the students are who end up losing. I think especially the administrators use schools like a production company, like a big business. It's all about the bottom line. I think many, many teachers think of it the same way; just get to the end of another school year by pushing as much as you can down the throats of who is put in front of you.
I think multi-age classrooms would be good. Not everyone learns at the same pace, and I don't really like jumping from class to class to be in different levels of classes. This is especially true for elementary school where I think kids should be with the same kids in order to really develop bonds. I also don't get how parents don't want their kids with older ones. Honestly, they always talk about school preparing you for the real world. In the real world you don't work with only people the same age as you. I work with people from the age of 20-around 70 probably.
Takes you back to the one room schoolhouses where all grades are in the same room. I've heard there are still a couple around; at least there were not too long ago.
The house set-up worked for most students, but some parents fought it. Next year they will have the option of two grade houses for parents who don't like the four year.
A couple problems that come from that approach is disparity between houses in what is taught, and there is no cohesiveness within grades throughout. Each house pretty much is seperate from the others in their daily activities which makes it difficult for kids to spend time with anyone in their grade except those in their house.
Do US schools "stream" kids? That is, for each grade level, have several classes arranged by ability. When I was a kid, many moons ago, we were streamed by grade and by subject with four streams A-D. Thus, I was in the A grade for History and the B grade for English but the C grade for Maths.
Now, I know that, in the UK, this went out of fashion as being elitist. But, I understand that it is sneaking back in now as educators began to realize that not all kids have the same level of ability and some form of streaming allows them to learn at a pace they are comfortable with.
It went out of fashion in the U.S. as elitist also. When I went through the College of Education, you were all but openly labeled as a fascist if you dared to suggest that having (for example) mentally challenged, neurotypical, and gifted children in the same classroom might not be in the best interests of the students. I only wish I were engaging in some degree of hyperbole here, Jaggy, but regrettably, I am not.
What you are proposing is what they do now here. Promoting or retaining kids on an as needed basis. What needs to change is the attitude towards doing either. The classes are already in place to make this happen. Unfortunately, parents take issue when THEIR child is the one held back. Other parents will push their children forward before they're ready for bragging rights. You'd need an impartial way to decide which child goes where and you'd have to remove the stigma attached to moving between grades.
Personally, I think in grade school what we need are multigrade classrooms. Put a high performing 3rd grader in a 3/4 split with lower performing 4th graders but let them keep their grade. I guess you could do a 3/4 split, a 4th grade and a 4/5 split if the school was big enough. That way kids could be with the kids who are preforming at their level for a while before you decide if they belong there permanantly.
Yes -- and that way, multiage classrooms would be the norm, not the exception. This is somewhat of a silly comparison, but I'm thinking of martial arts classes. Regardless of your age, you begin as a white belt. Now, if you're 37, they don't put you in class with the seven-year-olds, but you might be in a class with some 17-year-olds of the same ability level. I see no necessary reason why they can't do that for children in school.
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I do agree that students should be kept at one level until they master it but to do that, we need to remove the stigma of taking more than 12 years to get through school. With one of the factors for AYP being the percent of students who graduate in 4 years, the cost is too high. Personally, I see nothing wrong with taking 5 years to graduate.
Well, if you think about it, remediation needs to be just that: remediation. Let's say I have a kid who's a sophomore, technically, but has the ability level of a freshman. If I'm spending his sophomore year remediating him, then all I've really been able to do by the end of the year is bring him to sophomore level...but by then, he's technically a junior. It's a slippery slope. Either there needs to be dedicated tutoring after school hours or during the summer, or (as you proposed) a high school career that (for some people) takes more than four years.
Oh, and you're welcome -- it was a good question for a thread, and I didn't want to see it buried.
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