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."

Re:No Child Left Behind

[eric76]

No. It's not about finance.

It's about finding ways to challenge the studnets.

When I was in elementary and junior high, the school split us into classes based on academic results so far.

It worked very well. There was far less variation between the bottom and top of the class and the teachers could do a much better job of teaching to the class.

This is now deemed to be prejudicial and so the school no longer does this. The students are the losers across the board.

Re:Schools award mediocrity

[RuBLed]

Those stair like seats found around the court of playground. -> Bleachers [wikipedia.org]

Lucky for you I don't have a lawn yet...

Bad headline -- top students have IMPROVED

[abbamouse]

I know no one actually RTFA, but it actually says that scores have gone up for all levels of students. Scores have gone up HIGHER for lower students, but they've still gone up for higher students as well. It's just that raising the very top is much harder than raising the bottom, so there's been more progress on the latter. There is NOTHING in the article that says top students are WORSE off now than before NCLB (as asinine as the law is in other ways).

Teach To The Top of the Class

[b4upoo]

This is a classic conflict in public education. Who is the target student such that the level of difficulty can be set?
            If a teacher tries to keep the slower students up to speed it always hurts the better students.
            And then there is the real mode of teaching from which our concept of "High School" flows. Instead of being concerned with individuals the school decides to consider society. Therefore the trick is to teach at a level of difficulty such that a few of the brighter students, who have no difficulties, can not, after making great effort pass the courses.
          What was done in Europe years ago at about the end of the sixth grade there was a sorting out. People of normal abilities were assigned to industrial arts such as cooking. Those courses were not a joke as they usually are in the US. For example a cook might receive training from seventh grade on up to about two fulls years of college and then after all the years he has already been trained be assigned as an apprentice and finally declared a chef.
          More academically able students were then assigned to college type paths which were rigorous to the extreme. The one flaw in that mode is what do you do with the youngster who finds he has reached his level at the end of the "High School" when his path was academic. They ended up in the military as common soldiers or in the mines.
          It could be summed up that one could almost judge the quality of the university by the number of student suicides each semester. If the kids are being pushed hard enough and they are all the A student types then the proof of the university is the number of students that crack like an egg.

Re:this is why i am a mean teacher

[uffe_nordholm]

Ever tried to get people INTERESTED in succeeding in your subject?

Of course, that is the first step. But I can only try in so many ways. When all the ways I can imagine (and all the ways my colleagues can imagine) produce no results, what am I to do?

Ever wondered why some people hate Chemistry while others hate Math and yet others hate CS? I think you have the answer. If I am not good at a certain subject and am disinterested in it and the teacher ignores me because of that, I will hate the subject.

Yes. But if you show just some will to learn, I will not abandon you. (Well, at least a certain amount of will. If your level of ambition is to spend all term solving a maths problem that would take the average student 5-10 minutes, I think it would be fair of me to reassign the time I would have spent on you otherwise.)

You don't decide what merits your time.

I don't agree at all. Unless you are in the class room you cannot possibly hope to tell me how to spend my time. You can draw up guide lines, rules, draft laws and pass regulation. But when it comes down to it, only the people in the class room can decide what to do. Obviously, I will follow rules, laws and so on as well as possible, but the situations in classrooms are not always as clear as one thinks when writing rules and laws. Although my primary function in a classroom is to make sure the pupils learn my subject, I must also function as a referee/policeman, adult other than the pupil's parents, part-time friend and more.

This might be offensive, but let me assure you that if they paid teachers decent wages, with this attitude, you or the OP would definitely not have jobs as teachers.

No offense taken.

I saw this type of policy in action from the start

[Panaqqa]

At my age (I'm 44), I am one of the few people who experienced the public education system in Canada both before and after this type of policy (NCLB) took effect. I was always a high achiever, and despite getting a late start in kindergarten (I was almost 6), I quickly learned the work and accelerated several grades. I was still 6 in grade 3.

Sometime during grade 4, I noticed something going on with the curriculum. Rather than the steadily more challenging books I was expecting, reading began to be taught using a series of cards with the simplest of prose on them. Suddenly, the reading skills being taught to grade 4 students dropped to the "run Spot run" level. And stayed there.

By the time the new curriculum had become entrenched, I was in grade 6. My teacher in that grade was obligated to spend most of his time teaching the troublemakers in the class and really had very little time left over for anyone else, especially high achievers. Since this time, it has been declared that mentally retarded (sorry, NOT developmentally delayed, NOT differently intelligent, NOT developmentally challenged, mentally retarded) must be placed in regular classrooms also, along with autistic children and almost any other child not capable of learning at a normal pace. I can only imagine what effect this has had on actual learning in school.

I was very fortunate in that my parents, firmly in the middle class, were able to find a school with excellent academics that catered exclusively to gifted students and scrape together the tuition for it. Suddenly I was learning Latin, and Shakespeare, and actual geography and history. And this school was not afraid to kick me out for lack of academic performance.

It seems obvious to me that with a policy such as NCLB, schools will focus on getting the maximum number of students to a certain level of mediocrity. Under such a program, this is the maximum result (funding wise) for the minimum effort. And as this generation of children moves up in age, results of this policy will be easy to see. We can see them now in fact. Look at the comments on social networking sites et.al.: "like i dint no u r gonna b workig their omg that is sooooooo cool".

Just think: this is the next generation, the one that is going to have to meet the competitive challenge from India, China and others in the global battle for power and influence.

Looks like we've had our day in the sun.

Re:No Child Left Behind

[Jens Egon]

Europe isn't simply Europe, especially in this area.

If you want to see a school system that doesn't care about those left behind, we've got that too (France).

And the solution is...

[OSXCPA]

PARENTING. Your kid may be a rock or a rocket scientist, but without good parenting, they will never reach their full potential, figure out what their particular gifts are, or 'learn how to learn'. Whatever ones' opinion of No Child Left Behind and other well-intended public policies, no policy has anything close to the impact of good parenting and good teaching. The study and its implications are not relevant to the individual family - good parenting is.

Re: Teach To The Top of the Class

[Opportunist]

In theory a good thing. In practice, the "class struggle" makes it a nightmare.

I am from Europe. Actually from a country that does this "division". When you turn 14-15, it's time to decide. Either for a more manual/mechanical career where you get educated in a combined system of working halftime in a company and going to school for the rest of the day. Or for the academic careers.

The problem with this is manyfold, but the two core problems are: You are not being assigned, rather you choose. And the manual career path is viewed as lowly and usually really shitty paid.

Result: You end up with an insane amount of people in the academic path. People that simply don't belong there. You have people trying to go for academic careers that struggle with basic math, simply because their parents insist that they "have it better". They would probably be great cooks, mechanics, bricklayers or plumbers, yet they're forced to dig into trignometry, correspondence in foreign language and technical drawing.

The problem goes on. Because what's left for the "manual labour" path is only what couldn't with any good sense be forced into the academics path. People who can hardly read or write, often unable to speak the local language (a fair share are immigrant kids, sadly) and who have trouble doing basic additions and subtractions past 100. Of course, with such "material", companies are rather reluctant to even offer apprentice positions for students who want to choose the manual path.

That's what's genuinely wrong with this approach.

Re:No Child Left Behind

[RAMMS+EIN]

In the Netherlands (which is in Europe), it's not so bad.

Note: various things I've written here don't translate well. I don't use the words for various school types the same way as others, so some names will look funny to your eyes.

There are often several primary schools to choose from. They differ in religious affiliation (the common choices are catholic, protestant, and secular), but also in method (besides "normal" schools, there are also free (as in freedom) schools and Montessori schools) and level of education. Still, they all fit in with the rest of the system, so, by the time you graduate from them, you have at least learned the same basics as others.

High school is where it really gets interesting. There are various levels of high school. The system has undergone some reforms in recent times, but, last time I looked, there were VMBO, HAVO, and VWO, in order of increasing level. So, although it is not politically correct to say this, the most intelligent kids go to VWO, the least intelligent go to VMBO. I could go on and on, but the take home message is that there is a separation there: VMBO is more practically oriented; it teaches you to work, so to speak. VWO is more academically oriented, and is the only one that grants access to university. So the VWO kids don't get bogged down by the VMBO kids who don't understand algebra, and the VMBO kids don't have to learn all the academic stuff they aren't going to need for their jobs anyway.

Re:What about the C+ - B+ kids

[sjs132]

NCLB was around LONG before BUSH...

" it's just another incarnation of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, one of President Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society monuments. That law's centerpiece program, known as Title I, has pumped billions of federal dollars into education for poor children over the past 43 years. And the Improving America's Schools Act, signed by President Bill Clinton in 1994, was No Child Left Behind-lite, with similar expectations for states and districts but fewer rules and timelines. "

Here's some more fun info on NCLB... If folks are gonna point fingers, at least read up on it.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/28/AR2008032802976.html [washingtonpost.com]

And Wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Child_Left_Behind_Act [wikipedia.org]

Re:No Child Left Behind

[Tweenk]

In Poland that's exactly the opposite. When you pass 9th grade you go through a merit-based recruitment process for the high schools, and the best schools only take the top students. Moreover, the best schools are all public. The second round of elimination is at the college level - day courses at public universities are free of charge (!), and those "free" courses are generally the best, so there is fierce competition - at the University of Warsaw, around 25 students apply per place for the most popular courses. It may be cruel, but since for the best students the entire education path is free of charge, it's not uncommon for smart people from the countryside to become top professionals in their field, and advance into the middle class in one generation.

On the other hand, the not-so-genius students can have a hard time. but then there are decent private colleges which usually recruit people on a first come, first serve basis.

Re:Stupid and lazy.

[Bartab]

The general result was that 50% of the schools resources was poured into 15-20% of the students. If you think that's fair that's your problem I for one will respectfully disagree.

Why is it ok for resources to be expended disproportionately when they are spent on the dysfunctional, but it's not ok when they are spent on the bright and talented?

Specifically, the cost to "normalize" say, a Down's child is far more than the avg cost of a normal student. Since you're disagreeing with "pouring" resources into a small fraction of the students, surely you're against such policies.

Teacher isn't allowed to teach my gifted son

[Duck of Death]

I have a son just finishing the first grade. Before he started kindergarten he could read, write, add and subtract any number, do some basic multiplication, and knew all the US states and capitals. When first grade started we were sent a list of all the things that would be covered during the year - he had already mastered most of them. We had him tested and the results were a 140 IQ, and where the scores were broken down by category he scored above the 99th percentile in all. Armed with all of this information, we went to his teacher and asked "what can you do for him?" The answer was that she could give him extra work but only more of the same. Why? The teacher is not allowed to teach the kids anything that will be taught in a later grade. She wasn't allowed to read Charlotte's Web to her class because it is part of the 4th grade curriculum. And even though my seven year old is ready for 5th grade math, she can't give him any assignments or class work that deal with those concepts because they will be covered in the 5th grade. All she can do is give him another sheet of single digit addition problems. Whee.

I think the public schools are designed to handle about 80% of kids. There's tons of resources available for kids in the bottom 10% who need help but next to nothing available for kids in the top 10%. People treat the gifted and the parents of the gifted like they won the lottery. Why should lottery winners get anything extra? They're going to be fine no matter what - they won the lottery! That may be so, but unless we figure out how to pay for private school, right now it looks like winning the lottery means my son spends the next 11 years being forced to sit in a classroom for 6 hours a day being "taught" concepts that he mastered years ago. He's so lucky.

Re:Except when it comes to sports!

[Insightfill]

But when people start equalizing society, I always think of the blind. Some people, you see are blind. Now this is clearly a disadvantage. And with some the problems are so severe that they cannot ever be fixed (e.g. myelin problems on the optic nerve, there won't be a treatment for at least 200 years for that one), so how do you create equality ?

Reminds me of this story [wikipedia.org] by Vonnegut.

Summmary: "In the story, societal equality has been achieved by handicapping the most intelligent, athletic or beautiful members of society down to the level of the highest common endowment. This process is central to the society, designed so that no one will feel inferior to anyone else. This is overseen by the United States Handicapper General, Diana Moon Glampers."

Read the Executive Summary

[picross]

If you read the executive summary the salient point is that "Children at the tenth percentile of achievement (the bottom 10
percent of students) have shown solid progress in fourth-grade reading and math and eighth-grade math since 2000, but those at the 90th percentile (the top 10 percent) have made minimal gains."

The article is attempting to spin this into FUD that helping the lower performing students is having a negative impact on the upper performers, when in fact the upper performers just aren't gaining as much.

There are certainly some things that can (and should) be done better, but the tone of the article (and most of the posts) seem to miss the actual facts here.

Re:Sweden Has Not Been Ruined By It

[danzona]

Paradoxically, after decades of this wrong-headed policy, Sweden seems very enterprising, very prosperous and well supplied by good leaders. I can't explain it.>

You missed this [slashdot.org] vote yesterday

Re:Death Coil

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

(devil's advocate)Teaching something is a good way to master it and practicing knowledge transfer is a useful skill for later(/devil's advocate).