Why are American schools slowing down so many bright children?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/why-do-schools-slow-down-so-many-bright-children/2015/06/21/39992086-14a4-11e5-9518-f9e0a8959f32_story.html

by tokenadult • 11 years ago

13 19 11 years ago

washingtonpost.com

mattbrewsbytes4• 11 years ago

A major reason is the standardized testing (common core) where teachers are being measured on averages on these tests. When they have kids that are advanced and above average they aren't incented to spend any extra time with them because they are focused on the ones below average. They sure don't want them out of their class either since that would bring the average lower.

Now sure there are teachers that are really good at pushing kids ahead but the entire system isn't geared towards that.

ColinWright• 11 years ago

    > ... the entire system isn't
    >     geared towards that.

You can make a stronger statement: The entire system is explicitly geared against it.

It's not even neutral.

dragonwriter3• 11 years ago

A major reason is the standardized testing (common core) where teachers are being measured on averages on these tests.

Common core has nothing to do with that (except perhaps that they different phenomena that share some very distant degree of common causation); you may be confusing Common Core (which is a set of curriculum standards) with No Child Left Behind (which is a national policy that, among its accountability provisions, includes testing with incentives similar to those you describe.)

xname• 11 years ago

It also has nothing to do with NCLB. Without NCLB, teachers were not helping gifted students anyway.

It is a stupid political thing to blame NCLB or common core. People always have tons of excuses for being lazy. Of course there are good teachers way beyond average, but most teachers are like average person need incentive to make them work harder, especially when they are protected by teacher tenure which does not exist in most fields.

mattbrewsbytes4• 11 years ago

It does since there are (in NY at least) state tests to measure progress of the students and those results are never released to students or parents but used in "grading" teachers.

It seems very closely tied with the Common Core rollout. I get that employers (state governments) want to measure teacher performance but how do you do that realistically? Will it change anything if a teacher has poor performance? They are under union contracts these days anyhow and some are tenured.

mindcrash• 11 years ago

the entire system isn't geared towards that

George Carlin said it best: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acLW1vFO-2Q

"But there’s a reason. There’s a reason. There’s a reason for this, there’s a reason education SUCKS, and it’s the same reason it will never, ever, EVER be fixed.

It’s never going to get any better, don’t look for it, be happy with what you’ve got.

Because the owners, the owners of this country don't want that. I'm talking about the real owners now, the BIG owners! The Wealthy… the REAL owners! The big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions.

Forget the politicians. They are irrelevant. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice! You have OWNERS! They OWN YOU. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They’ve long since bought, and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the state houses, the city halls, they got the judges in their back pockets and they own all the big media companies, so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear. They got you by the balls.

They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying, lobbying, to get what they want. Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else, but I'll tell you what they don’t want:

They don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that. That doesn’t help them. Thats against their interests.

Thats right. They don’t want people who are smart enough to sit around a kitchen table and think about how badly they’re getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago. They don’t want that!

You know what they want? They want obedient workers. Obedient workers, people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork. And just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shitty jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it, and now they’re coming for your Social Security money. They want your retirement money. They want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street, and you know something? They’ll get it. They’ll get it all from you sooner or later cause they own this fucking place! It's a big club, and you ain’t in it! You, and I, are not in the big club.

By the way, it's the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe. All day long beating you over the head with their media telling you what to believe, what to think and what to buy. The table has tilted folks. The game is rigged and nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care! Good honest hard-working people; white collar, blue collar it doesn’t matter what color shirt you have on. Good honest hard-working people continue, these are people of modest means, continue to elect these rich cock suckers who don’t give a fuck about you….they don’t give a fuck about you… they don’t give a FUCK about you.

They don’t care about you at all… at all… AT ALL. And nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care. Thats what the owners count on. The fact that Americans will probably remain willfully ignorant of the big red, white and blue dick thats being jammed up their assholes everyday, because the owners of this country know the truth.

It's called the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it."

mattbrewsbytes4• 11 years ago

Not sure why my comment got down voted.

Here is a blog post from a highly awarded Principle in NY describing the exact teacher evaluation process using Common Core testing as a component and how "every high-school teacher will be incentivized to push weaker students out of challenging classes like Advanced Algebra, Physics and Chemistry"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2015/04/...

paulhauggis• 11 years ago

Maybe because there are no winners and losers and everyone gets a trophy? We have taken away the ability for many to get ahead all in the name of political correctness.

This mentality has now started entering our workforce. All of the articles on how to 'manage millennials' show examples of this behavior.

The only thing it has done is make us less competitive in the global marketplace.

csbrooks• 11 years ago

Do you have any evidence that this is the case, besides your gut feeling?

I'm a gen-X'er, and people used to say this about us. But I don't think it was ever really true; every generation just wants to believe the next generation has it easy, for some reason.

TheSpiceIsLife• 11 years ago

Isn't it true though? Hot running water > vaccines > smartphones. Even the 'poor' in this country (Australia) have smartphones, drive a car, smoke and drink.

Doesn't everyone want a better world for their kids? And then complains about the younger generation having it easy. Ironic I suppose.

Has there ever been a time in the past when life was easier for young people? I mean generally speaking, in the developed world, despite all it's problems.

whistlecrackers• 11 years ago

I agree. In all seriousness, I think soccer is aiding the decline of America.

argumentum• 11 years ago

As someone who skipped kindergarten and 1st grade, and later tested through some math classes, I am dubious about the ability of the existing public school system to accommodate such acceleration without harming students.

Being younger than everyone was fine until 7th grade (i.e. until puberty). From that point on I had to deal with a lot of bullying through 11th grade (when I finally grew taller & stronger) and never felt like I fit in until college. It was quite traumatic, and I would def have preferred being "normal".

People mature at different rates in different respects. While intellectually many kids are ahead of their age, they may or may not be so emotionally or physically. Rather than trying to fit square pegs into round holes, an ideal system would permit "bright" children to advance at their own pace academically within an environment of social peers.

JoeAltmaier• 11 years ago

Home Schooling can do that. I know, everybody associates it with kooky religious people. But the policies and mechanisms are in place, so that ordinary folks can take advantage for their own children.

bediger40002• 11 years ago

It's not that hard. Public Schools were designed in two phases, for two different reasons: 1. grade school. Get enough reading so as to be able to read The Bible, and get enough math so as not to let the city slickers cheat you when you get your cattle/pigs/grain to market. 2. High school. Get everyone ready to work in a factory. Arrive on time, move when and where you're scheduled to move. Take short breaks on command in boring environments, and don't talk back.

Public education is for flyover people on the farm, or people who will work in factories. Public schools aren't supposed to accommodate anyone at the "smart" end of the scale, and they're supposed to shuck off any one lying at the "dumb" end of the scale. You can verify this by looking at the curriculum for contentious subjects ("social studies", and biology), which is exceptionally weak, and emphasizes Andrew Jackson and ignores evolution.

Yes, I'm bitter.

WalterSear• 11 years ago

You implicitly imply it's an American problem. I assure you, it's not.

bediger40002• 11 years ago

The article was about American schools, and I only have experience with American public schools. I cannot speak truthfully about anything else, but your assurance is valuable.

Why are American schools slowing down so many bright children?

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