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I politely disagree. That curve you refer to has now been totally disbanded and the other extreme has taken over. Believing that stalling the learning process for the quicker learners so the slower learners don't fall behind is pure lunacy. It is not the fault of a child if (s)he learns at a different level and to prejudice against it, at either level, in the school setting is an insult. As for NCLB, the drawing board concept was commendable. The institution of it is has dwindled down to schools battling to "teach to the test" the best they can so the scores look goodl and the district is happy and eveyone wants their child to go to that school so enrollment soars and life is good.
But it's not. Our kids will be the best test takers in the world but that alone will not insure a successful future will it.
I made a post earlier stating the exact same thing. The over-reliance of test scores as an indicator of the quality of education is detrimental to everyone involved.
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Greeny I understand your point and I also want children of all ability levels to excell in school! I just don't want one group catered to over the other on EITHER end of the spectrum. But it also doesn't make any sense to me to ignore the brightest children in your system just because they are bright. The AG programs barely scratch the surface (45 minutes a week) and not everyone has the benefit of an AG basics magnet (we've been applying for 8 years and have never been accepted to ANY magnet).
I also don't blame individual teachers, but I see this downward curve for bright students as a result of NCLB and the response is almost always the same as yours: bright students will do well anyway, so don't worry about them. When it's your kid who sits there in and day out doing the same math work for weeks at time it gets frustrating and you wonder why your kid basically gets ignored at school. It's also that attitude that has so many parents leaving the school system for private, charter and homeschools which can't be good for the schools as a whole
OK, I can understand the frustration of being bored having the exact same concepts drilled into your head day after day when you already understand it. However, I believe this applies to younger children. Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't kids allowed to take higher level math and sciences starting in middle school? Are there any high schools in the Triangle area that don't offer honors and AP classes? As long as the smart kids are put on a track to get into college, the are not being hindered in any way. I think that focusing on the struggling kids early in Elementary school to bring them up to speed and give them a chance to compete with others and possibly get on track to attend college is only fair. A lot of children who do well academically aren't even necessarily "gifted". They just were fortunate enough to grow up in a nurturing environment where the parents stressed the importance of education and supplemented their schooling at home. No everyone comes from this background but has the potential to go to college if they are given a little help early on.
So would we be in support of allowing kids who test as "gifted" to volunarily quit school if it is too boring for them and allow them to educate themselves?
Yes, that's exactly what I was advocating...
But really, I quantified self-sufficient by using the words "to a certain extent". This was the point at the beginning of my post.... why does focusing on improving education in low achievers HAVE to mean we're neglecting those who aren't?
I agree to a point, but my experience is the higher achievers suffer when left to their own accords almost as much as the slower learners when forced to sit through mainstreamed classrooms.
Yes, in a perfect world, we want the kids who lack so much at home to flourish in the classroom, grasp the importance of education and find where they fall in the great scheme of life. But it is a fine, fine line and I truly believe it is not very equitable at this point in many schools across the country.
I don't want higher achievers left to their own accord, there's a delicate balance, a fine line exactly as you said. I just think some of us are ignoring the truth if we believe that public resources can be divided equally amongst all school children.
Let's just say the first 18 years of my life would have been a lot easier if I could have. It only took me about midway into the first grade to figure out I had no business being in the room with those people. Before that was different. Kindergarten was fun. For the most part the only difference between class and recess was that recess was outside. (Do they have recess anymore?)
And sometimes we'd do "work." Teacher would hand me a math sheet that had three or four 2+2-type problems to solve. I started randomly writing numbers like "16" or "27" on the bottom of the sheets. They were the amount of seconds it took me to solve all the problems. Needless to say the teacher asked me what those numbers meant. I had an unbelievably hard time explaining to this kindergarten teacher that I knew how to tell time on the (analog) clock hanging on the wall. Or that I could read everything that was in English on the walls. This led to many interesting and awkward meetings between my parents, teachers, school district social workers who get it maybe 10% of the time and myself. I never became much of a "good" student, through all that transpired in the meantime...the only thing I ever legitimately sucked at in school was algebra...then again having an English teacher trying to teach freshman algebra was useless once anyone had problems.
So I guess I've been on both sides of the equation...
You know, after reading a lot of these replies about the AG programs, I'm truly amazed. 45 minutes a -WEEK- is all they get if they aren't at one of the magnet schools (and from what I gather, the waiting lists are long as all get out on those...)? I know I said I was in one "right after the dinos left", but really, I was kidding. '88 - '92 is actually the time frame I'm talking about and dang....we at least got 2 full school days a week. I can't even imagine how the kids feel today with even less than that. And for all those saying it's better to focus on the kids who aren't up to speed, as one of the "gifted" kids, I have to disagree. My 4th grade year, the year before I was put into the AG program, I nearly failed. It wasn't because I wasn't understanding the course work, it was because I was BORED with it and refused to do it. Before I get anyone saying "oh well, you should have done it anyway", I tried that at first and when I finished it -way- ahead of the rest of the class, I was assigned more mind-numbing tasks, like copying more pages from the dictionary or, as one teacher loved to make me do, write lines:"I will not be a showoff and finish my work more quickly than others." It's not fair to ignore either group in favor of the other. Kids who aren't picking things up need more attention to help them AND kids who are picking it up faster than others need attention too, to keep them from becoming bored with school and to keep them interested in gaining knowledge. There has to be some way to reach a middle-ground so both groups can benefit. :\
You know, after reading a lot of these replies about the AG programs, I'm truly amazed. 45 minutes a -WEEK- is all they get if they aren't at one of the magnet schools (and from what I gather, the waiting lists are long as all get out on those...)? I know I said I was in one "right after the dinos left", but really, I was kidding. '88 - '92 is actually the time frame I'm talking about and dang....we at least got 2 full school days a week. I can't even imagine how the kids feel today with even less than that. And for all those saying it's better to focus on the kids who aren't up to speed, as one of the "gifted" kids, I have to disagree. My 4th grade year, the year before I was put into the AG program, I nearly failed. It wasn't because I wasn't understanding the course work, it was because I was BORED with it and refused to do it. Before I get anyone saying "oh well, you should have done it anyway", I tried that at first and when I finished it -way- ahead of the rest of the class, I was assigned more mind-numbing tasks, like copying more pages from the dictionary or, as one teacher loved to make me do, write lines:"I will not be a showoff and finish my work more quickly than others." It's not fair to ignore either group in favor of the other. Kids who aren't picking things up need more attention to help them AND kids who are picking it up faster than others need attention too, to keep them from becoming bored with school and to keep them interested in gaining knowledge. There has to be some way to reach a middle-ground so both groups can benefit. :\
Good points! When my son was in pre-school, the teacher said that she was beginning to see a behavior problem...started him on behavior modification, earning stickers for every day he was able to sit still and listen with the rest of the class without being talked to...we did this all year, then finally at the end of pre-school, before kindergarten, at the teacher conference, I was told "I think Kevin is bored because he is so bright, may need to be challenged more.....well, no kidding. Since then, now going into 5th grade, that is exactly what needs to be done, extra work, LEAP programs, etc. If this had been missed or ignored, then he would have missed out.
I think it is a huge waste of a young child's mental capacity and interest to wait until high school or college to challange him/her. The elementary school years are so valuable. Then you have a child who can and wants to learn and is not distracted by hormones and adolescent concerns. Kids should not go to school to learn about boredom!
It's funny, I chatted periodically with my old neighbor in State College, PA (Penn State college town) who was a reading teacher. She just bragged about her children's (now in their late 20's) excellent education in the public schools there. She compared it a private school education. (One of the girls did go to Wellesley for college.) She said she refused enrolling her kids in the gifted program because she didn't want them to miss any of the main classroom activities. I felt a bit elitist for worrying about my own child moving from her self paced Montessori school to a public school. Eventually my neighbor said something revealing: when her own children were in school, the students were tracked. Basically her kids were kept with their intellectual peers from elementary school on. She said soon after that, the tracking policy was eliminated and her children's former teachers commented to her about the difference (for the worse) it made for those kind of kids. My neighbor pointed out that even though she was a special ed teacher, she loved that her children received the education that they did.
I'm not saying that tracking is the answer. It has been my observation, though, that it is almost impossible to have typical teacher centered instruction be challanging for the 4+ grade levels in ordinary elementary classroom. My own best early education memories were those that allowed self paced instruction. I do believe that every child deserves to not be bored out of their mind!
In schools nowadays tracking has become a dirty word because the system is worried that by putting some students in slow tracks we are sentencing those students to a lifetime of underachievement and limiting their opportunities. We also worry that we are lowering the kids self-esteem by putting them in the "slow" classes with all of the "dumbies".
Instead the teachers are told to differentiate the instruction but of course no one can exactly explain how to do that except to say "give the advanced kids more difficult problems." I find that response silly because 9 out of 10 kids would be angry if you gave them EXTRA work with no incentive. I often give challenging questions at the end of assignments but then I give bonus points. Of course, challenge questions does not replace the gifted courses. Classroom discourse is completely different in an advanced class. Maybe parents of gifted kids need to sue a school district in order to obtain more options for their gifted children. That is what the parents of the low-achievers did. It would be difficult to prove how a mixed-ability class was harmful to the gifted child's education. Any ideas?
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Originally Posted by alice_61
I think it is a huge waste of a young child's mental capacity and interest to wait until high school or college to challange him/her. The elementary school years are so valuable. Then you have a child who can and wants to learn and is not distracted by hormones and adolescent concerns. Kids should not go to school to learn about boredom!
It's funny, I chatted periodically with my old neighbor in State College, PA (Penn State college town) who was a reading teacher. She just bragged about her children's (now in their late 20's) excellent education in the public schools there. She compared it a private school education. (One of the girls did go to Wellesley for college.) She said she refused enrolling her kids in the gifted program because she didn't want them to miss any of the main classroom activities. I felt a bit elitist for worrying about my own child moving from her self paced Montessori school to a public school. Eventually my neighbor said something revealing: when her own children were in school, the students were tracked. Basically her kids were kept with their intellectual peers from elementary school on. She said soon after that, the tracking policy was eliminated and her children's former teachers commented to her about the difference (for the worse) it made for those kind of kids. My neighbor pointed out that even though she was a special ed teacher, she loved that her children received the education that they did.
I'm not saying that tracking is the answer. It has been my observation, though, that it is almost impossible to have typical teacher centered instruction be challanging for the 4+ grade levels in ordinary elementary classroom. My own best early education memories were those that allowed self paced instruction. I do believe that every child deserves to not be bored out of their mind!
Although I agree that our school system could use some work I would like to add two points (good post tluv00, by the way):
1. Parents need to take more responsibility for their children's education!! There is too much blaming the teachers, administration, society, etc. I went to one of the worst schools on Long Island and went on to graduate top of my class in college, have a great job, and am looking into my MBA. This was from good parenting and support from family not the hole of a school I went to.
2. We need to be careful what we wish for. Some of these other countries may have better schools but you wouldn't want to fall under some of their other government systems. We need to improve schools, yes, but we need to be careful how much of our lives we let the government run.
Just my two pennies
Amen to that. I am a teacher AND a parent. I have seen what happens when parents do not supplement their child's education. It is not a good thing. Aside from textbooks, there are so many opportunities for learning. Yes the school day ends at 3, but does that mean that all learning stops there too!
I'm sure I'll get flamed for this post but: Chemteacher, your post just reiterates that fact that in urban school districts such as Wake County, the focus and research remains on the the lowest performing students and basically ignores the higher performing students as a result of NCLB. It's almost as if the system thinks that high performing children are going to either teach themselves or their parents are going to do it for them. In my 8 years within the wcpss, I see higher achieving students actually getting less and less quality education and "good" teachers. There's more focus on getting the 2nd grade kid not reading at grade level to meet the goal than the 2nd grade kid reading ABOVE grade level. Why the differentiation?
At best, the teacher throws a third grade book at them and tells the parents the kid is meeting grade level objectives without furthering the students educational needs. That IS basically closing the achievmemt gap, right? Accelerating the slow learner with one on one teaching and stagnating the fastest learners. The brightest kids get ignored by the system in lieu of making sure the lowest achievers pass the tests.
That is the problem that I had in NJ. My son is 6. He is going into second grade and reads at a 4th grade level. His teacher recognized this and did her best to work with him. I also sent him to school with supplementary materials in case he finished his work early. Unfortunately, he was in a class of 24 with no aide. The principal, refused to belive that my child was smart.
I know my child. If he gets bored, he will misbehave. He fought me every morning because he did not want to go to school. He is 6! School should be fun and interesting. I understand that we need to to help those students who are behind but we can not forget those who are ahead either.
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When my son was in pre-school, the teacher said that she was beginning to see a behavior problem...started him on behavior modification, earning stickers for every day he was able to sit still and listen with the rest of the class without being talked to...we did this all year, then finally at the end of pre-school, before kindergarten, at the teacher conference, I was told "I think Kevin is bored because he is so bright, may need to be challenged more.....well, no kidding. Since then, now going into 5th grade, that is exactly what needs to be done, extra work, LEAP programs, etc. If this had been missed or ignored, then he would have missed out.
it is difficult to differentiate instruction
