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Helping Some Students May Harm High Achievers
palegray.net writes "According to a new study performed by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute in Washington, increased emphasis on helping students with a history of lower academic achievement results in lower performance for high achievers. This trend appears to be related to the No Child Left Behind Act. Essentially, programs designed to devote a large number of resources to assisting students who are deemed to be 'significantly behind' leave little room for encouraging continued academic growth for higher-performing students."
Story of my school's life. I don't know what kicked it off, but in 1999 a group of parents got together to stop the awarding of best-in-school awards to the top students, because it had the effect (they claimed) of causing all the other students to feel they weren't as good at school. The idea being that three students would end up awarded for excelling, and seventy others in the same year would be indirectly labeled as inferior.
Within two years we had academic success awards removed, and all kinds of other awards, including ones for one total misfit who'd been caught multiple times shitting on the bleachers. He got an award for exemplary social behaviour or some such, because he went a couple months without taking a crap on school property.
Now the smart kids go without awards, but the dumb shits get an award for not smearing their own feces all over the place. Mediocrity ftw.
I think it is more important to make sure the whole population is well educated and informed than distilling every year's Nobel prize winners while leaving the masses in ignorance. The "success" of the current president is a terrible reminder of that lesson.
As a teacher in a results factory, can I just say: No Shit!
I work in the UK education system, which is governed by targets and league tables.
The focus from management is on the "borderline" kids, those who might just fail (below a C). There are lists put out, constant checks on their progress and their photos on a wall in the staff room.
Our Gifted and Talented program consists of going to the local university to "raise aspirations" once a year.
This is what happens when you govern by setting targets without any thought over the actual outcome. Train your teachers then trust them to do the job that they love.
In norway we've practiced "no child left behind" in the lower grade schools for the last 20 years (up til high school). I've never read any official studies about it but I can confirm that teachers are indeed spending a lot of their time getting the "slower" students through the curriculum.
It's interesting to read that the lack of attention indeed slows down the high achievers as well. I would be interesting to know how much attention they would require to achieve what they are good for. Optimally you leave no one behind and you make your bright minds excel!
This isn't a new problem. (I went to school in Texas, which has had standardized testing since long before Bush took office as either governor or president.) NCLB just made it worse.
I agree, however, that it is blatantly obvious that a system where your "success" as a school is determined by the percentage of students who pass leads itself to focusing disproportionate amounts of resources on the students who are most likely to fail.
This is my sig. There are many others like it, but this one is mine.
When I started high school I was the dux of the grade (split up across 5 classes). It was a boys school, and academic performance was looked down upon, so I was roughed up a fair bit, and was actually trying NOT to do well, but like it or not I still came dux.
The next year the Year Advisor thought it might be fun to take the worst performing kid from the bottom class and put him in the top class.
Guess who he targetted for a fight every day? That's right, the best performing kid in the top class - me.
So one day he gives me a good going over on the station after school.
Finally my parents woke up and sent me to a different school.
Needless to say I don't believe in mixing the stupid and lazy with the bright and talented. Physical assault is just not on, even between kids.
this is why, as a teacher, I only focus on the top students in the class.
I'm sorry, but if you aren't going to try your best, then I would be a fool to waste my time trying to reach you. bugger off. Go and fail in life.
I'm a teacher, I'm in charge of teaching. The 'learning' part is your job.
If you are making an effort, I will do everything I can to help and support you. But you still suck after getting extra help, I'm not going to sugar coat things or give you an 'A for effort'. Some kids are just dim. parents need to learn to deal with it.
I'm sorry for sounding so grumpy and uncaring in this post. It's been a long 2 weeks of solid speaking/listening tests, and I just failed 75% of my 1154 students, because they can speak absolutely zero English, even after 7 years of Education.
Then I was told to make my questions easier, because if a student gets less than 40 points, they have to repeat the year, and the school administration doesn't want to deal with that, so we prevent them from failing by lowering standards.
Then I learned that my "zero" I was giving my students is actually being entered in the books as a 15 out of 20.
that's right...if you absolutely nothing, if you are complete failure as a students, who has learned nothing after seven freaken years of school, you STILL get 75% on your test. pathetic.
-I only code in BASIC.-
When I was in highschool I was in the top percentile of the school. The some of the smartest kids were just as bad as the dumbest kids. Instead of resorting to physical violence they went on verbal diatribes and basically were just being douches. My school was an inner city school with a nationally recognized magnet program (to boost the grades). I grew up with these guys and they weren't necessarily bullies but they could smell fresh blood in the water. If you were meek you were an easy target. A lot of them have been told they were dumb or remedial their entire life and some douchebag that likes to remind them by insulting their intelligence only drives the knife deeper. My friends came from all walks of life and I respected their opinions and helped them when I could (homework, food, money). Because of the company I kept no one tried to fight me because I was smart and had good grades. I never resorted to calling anyone stupid. And you learn there is a lot of different smart. Some were great musicians and composers, rappers, poets, and negotiators. I've had to intervene on a few occasions where a friend in the smart class just didn't have the "street smarts" to avoid a bad situation. I do believe the No Child Left Behind Act is doing a great disservice to everyone. It strips the schools of their ability to educate and reduces them to diploma mills. I was their when the last woodshop class came to an end. There were no plans made to replace it with any options. Just get the kids to take and pass the test.
I'll put it out there, I'm an advanced learner, and here's what I've seen through my old learning "career". It was an excellent program at first, but over the years things really dropped off.
In the second grade, while attending John J Blair Elementary in Wilmington, NC, I was tested in the top percentile of the school. This allowed me to go every Tuesday on a bus to a special learning center downtown where we were taught logic puzzles (you find a dead body hanging from ceiling, pool of water under him, how did he die?) how to work with C64 computers and how to perform basic coding. That was 1987, and I was 8.
Then, a school restructuring took place in the districts. I was moved to Blunt Elementary, half an hour farther away. This was a very poor school, but due to the increase of advanced students coming in, they hired an A.G. (Academically Gifted) teacher. We met twice a week for a few hours to work on basic Latin, mind puzzles, logic, etc. I was in that program from 3rd to 5th grade.
I then moved to Leland Middle School, in Leland, NC. Things were dropped another notch. There was a similar A.G. structure there, but just for math and English. For Math, we basically met privately with the Math teacher of the next grade up and learned their topics. For English, we had a dedicated instructor that taught us in a outside structure next to the special-needs room. There we learned writing skills, more advanced Latin (and how to use it to break apart words and sentences). Budget cuts came along, so much so that the school implemented half days every other week. Instead of having a dedicated Math and English teacher, we simply attended the classes of the next grade up with those students. In 8th grade more budget cuts came. With no where to send us, they had us just sit through normal Math and English courses with the rest of our grade... relearning information we already knew. The administration was defensive and noted that it would help us build our skills by helping the others in the course - pure BS. We sat, bored, for the whole year.
Family issues arose, and I attended high school in Woodstown, NJ. There was no program in place here; it was a farming community. They had their 4-H, and that was it. There was no support for those who broke apart from the norm. As such, as a teenager, I rebelled and made life Hell for those around me. I was stuck, bored, relearning material I was taught years earlier. After three years of fighting, my parents and I convinced the administration to let me attend college courses at night. From what I hear, it's now an official part of their system for the advanced students.
Over the years I've seen how budget cuts and overall lack of caring has changed curriculum and delivery styles through the school systems. At the end, as the "smart" students, the administration felt that we were best left to our devices while they focused on getting everyone else up to par. Even worse was when they forced us to help them teach the other students, sometimes forcing us into mentorship programs, and buddy systems where we would have to call our buddies each night to ensure they did their homework correctly.
Luckily, I grew up to be a teacher... but not for schools. I develop and teach computer forensic techniques. But, I remembered my lessons from growing up. Every exercise I teach is built with multiple difficulty structures, and there are layers of hidden material that I push the advanced students to find. Having one single system to train all students will not work, as the teachers will just focus their attention on the students falling behind. There is a whole generation of very smart and advanced children, many of whom do not have the support they need at home (I was lucky to have a father that bought me QuickC for my 11th birthday). These kids will grow up bored and frustrated. They will lash out and adults will assume it just to be because of angst or the need for Ritalin, when the kid just wants to learn.
I'm not saying that many people actually evaluate studies. I'm saying they literally just need to hear the magic words "studies prove". It may be that there are people rubbing garlic on their feet to get rid of headaches (hadn't heard that), but I assure you a lot more would if there were a rumor that "studies had proven" that garlic on the feet was a good headache cure. Get someone to say on TV that "studies have proven" it, and everyone will do it.
Anyway, I said *some* people won't believe obvious things until you say that "studies have proven it". You respond by providing an example where other people have believed something that's not at all obvious without having evaluated any studies. So your example obviously doesn't serve to rebut but claim.
But yeah, some things are counter-intuitive, and so you can't always trust "obvious"="true". I don't agree, though, that "obvious" is completely subjective, nor the implication that obvious things should be ignored until proven. Obvious things should, under most circumstances and for most purposes, be assumed to be true until otherwise proven.
I would explain further or try to give examples, but I think the truth of my claims are rather obvious.
I remember i was looking at being a teacher once, so I was tagging along with a teacher in class. This one test, the smart girl finished early, and told the teacher. So they teacher just told her to sit quietly and wait for the end of the lesson (which was the end of the test for everyone else). I was dumbstruck, the kid was sitting there for 20 minutes, doing nothing, when she could have been doing some work!
My daughter is in a similar situation (she just finished 2nd grade), but we've worked with the teacher and bought a few extra grade level workbooks - 2nd and 3rd grade, covering math, writing, etc. Now when v2.0 finishes something early (which she often does), her teacher finds a few pages worth of stuff to do that is similar to what the class is working on in the book and has her do it. Occasionally instead of "more" work, v2.0 is allowed to do some extra "fun" reading as well.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
Back when I was at primary school (in the mid 70s) in the UK, this kind of stuff was rampant.
A quick note to all of you guys that say "Well, the bright guys will just teach themselves".. That doesn't work, for exactly the same reason you say the less academically apt (not necessarily less skilled; just their skills aren't academic. Live with that, as I'm less skilled in the non-academic skills than countless others, and I value them as much as they value me). Kids, being kids, haven't seen enough of the world to know what's on offer.
On the reading side, I lucked out in that my folks taught me (read LOTR by the time I was 5 1/2). All the basic Math I picked up on no problems. Then, for the next 4 years in that place, I had to keep reading the 'Peter and Jane' books in big letters. I wasn't allowed to use the time to get my own reading material in at my level. I had to sit in class with this one children's book with a reading age at least 10 years below my abilities, and dutifully trot up to the teacher to demonstrate that I could read this little book, despite many complaints from me (and my folks) that I should be allowed to read my own stuff, or at least have my own book in class. Denied.
Not quite so lucky on the Math.. My father worked late (ran his own business, so couldn't spend loads of time with me), and my mum just wasn't a math person. I learned what I could from what I was introduced to, but had problems working out what the progression was from there. And speed went at the pace of the slowest (no kid left behind). Result of that (which went on right though the years 'till age 11) was that I got private tuition to get me through all the things my school hadn't taught that were subjects on entrance exams for the good schools. I picked it up no problem, but NOBODY had ever previously told me what to look for next. I'd picked up math books myself, but, lacking the theory that was assumed, it was hard to find a book at the right level for me to learn properly.
Even the "Academically Inclined" don't teach themselves. They need to be shown, and guided. Encouraged, not held back.
From where I am now. I'm successful, and have done pretty well for myself. However, I know enough to know I'd have been able to better myself even more, if I'd been able to get more of the basics done at an earlier age, giving me a more thorough grounding to spend my later time concentrating on the more advanced topics.
And simply saying "I could have taught myself".. Well, in a lot of things, I did.. But it cost time to work out how to do it, where to find the information (pre internet, and honestly, you don't always get the right answer from google), and sometimes, you can just miss whole topics (or misunderstand something that a teacher with the right knowledge could put right in minutes).
It's not a disaster, but it's an irritation, to know I could have been better with just a little bit of time and encouragement (or even just the words "You may want to try this book in your own time", rather than the "This is what we teach, and we don't move on until the class is ready").
One size does NOT fit all. Tests are NOT the answer to everything. You CANNOT have everyone with the same academic education. People are different. Education should be about finding someone's talents, and nurturing those talents to the best of the kid's abilities.. For all that I'm pretty good academically (though yes, I do know quite a few that blow me away in that arena), without people doing the non-academic stuff really well, I'd be royally screwed in any job I did. We need all kinds of talents, and they all need to be trained and worked on.
Otherwise, China and places like that, where they do compete to try and keep up in every area (so the brightest from each set of talents gravitate upwards faster) will walk all over us in technology and science in the very near future. Have a good look at history, and you'll see the results of that course writ large.
I'm a glorified teaching assistant in Japanese schools. They call us Assistant English Teachers.
I'm watching the system here every day. About all we can learn from it is that it's just a variation of the push-everyone-down-to-the-same-level approach.
Oh. And standardized tests are way too one-dimensional.
Violence? I stopped a homosexual rape today.
As an educator, I can tell you that it's not quite this easy, but it's close. The major issue is how NCLB actually measures "success". Generally, there are four categories for a student to score in:
Below the Standard
Approaching the Standard
Meeting the Standard
Exceeding the Standard
The way the law is written, a certain number of students need to Meet or Exceed the "standard".
If you're a school with a fair number of kids "exceeding", but a lot "approaching" the standard (which is nebulous and changes from year to year and state to state) it makes far more sense to stop trying to get the kids in the top category to improve, as they can't, nor does it gain you anything. The only metric which will show that you're improving as a school is if more of the kids below the standard move up towards it. If kids above it fall, it's not a big deal, as long as they don't fall out of the "meets the standard" category.
If it was a school average, or a correlation coefficient or something like that, it would make sense to help the smart kids. But because it's a straight "% meeting or exceeding the standard", there is no benefit in pushing or even caring about the smart kids.
There is only one judge in American education today, and it's whether or not your school can leap over the moving and wispy NCLB "meets the standard" bar. It's stupid, poorly designed, and utterly worthless as a metric to determine school success. But it's simple enough that stupid people can understand how their school is doing, and thus we will use it as an excuse to prop up a pretty shoddy education system. The bright kids will continue to get put down, and the dumb kids will be given enough support that they will all poke their noses above the standard, and everyone will be happy that their school "met the standard".
And yes, I say this as a teacher.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
Sure, but the smart kid isn't there to serve. He is there to be taught. If you pair him with a slow kid with the justification that it will help motivate the slow one at the expense of the smart one, you need to start paying the smart kids.
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This is common, but from a kid's perspective, most would rather be sitting quietly or reading a book than doing more *work* than everyone else has to do.
You try "sitting quietly" for an hour of so in an exam room. It is just so much more fun than work, especially when it's a multi-day test - oh boy, another hour of sitting quietly tomorrow! Let me tell you, I would have gladly read the phone book if it had been an option, but outside material (even if it was only for use after the test) was never allowed in these tests when I was in high school way back in the olden days of the 1990s. In fact, I did manage to pass some time after a math test once by staring at log tables, so I imagine that a phone book would have been good for at least an hour. You were lucky if you could even get a piece of paper to doodle on in these types of tests. I remember that I was only able to get through one of them because I had a few Weird Al albums memorized, and that wore thin after two or three days. As far as I'm concerned, "sitting quietly" is nothing short of psychological abuse. And yes, I am bitter; some things just can not be forgiven.