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But as UNC's Domina points out, most schools have also found it very difficult to institute what Katy Tang calls a "one-size-fits-all" mathematical curriculum w

But as UNC's Domina points out, most schools have also found it very difficult to institute what Katy Tang calls a "one-size-fits-all" mathematical curriculum without boring the math nerds to tears. Here in lies the fundamental issue of the (well intentioned) focus on No Child Left Behind. The schools tend to underserve the best students because energy is focused on the weakest. (If the weakest were being well served, this would be a worthy trade. My experience in large cities is this is the exception rather than the rule.) This used to bother me quite a bit, but I think the best students can find other ways to be intellectually stimulated. (Online, etc) The downside is for most of school they're bored out of their mind, and this can develop bad habits for when school eventually catches up to their abilities.

eitally 10y ago
Your last point can't be overstated. It's a major problem, but imho can be remediated during high schools years with things like dual-enrollment in a local community college, MOOC participation, local special interest research groups, etc. My wife & I are taking the approach that responsibility for primary education lies with parents first, then teachers, so, to your first point, we don't particularly perceive this as a huge personal problem.... The fact is, education in America is classist and the kids of white collars households have incredibly unfair advantages. Bootstrapping from poverty & ignorance to professional success and higher education is harder than it's ever been.
- mathattack 10y ago
  It does seem like things start to improve in high school because the class schedules are such that kids can have more flexibility. I think MOOCs aimed at younger kids will improve too. I hear you on parental ownership. Even in the most elite NYC private schools, parents pay for tutoring or scramble to cover what they perceive to be gaps. For public schools, it's the same. A school may be good at Math, but weak at music, or vice versa. It's up to the parents to close the gaps. (And parents know their kids best)
- existencebox 10y ago
  Because this turned into a bit of an essay, let me frame it: I'll be discussing your statement about not worrying about harming the advanced students by requiring more from parents than schools, and following from that to consider the OP article concept of "one size fits all." An inverted anecdote re your statement on the the parents first point: I went to a "big east coast city public highschool". While you say that you don't see the lower effort on the top demographic as a (to your credit, personal, so I may be misinterpreting it as a generalization) problem, I'd make some following statements. Of the people in my AP/accelerated classes, about half were _definitely_ not white collar. Parents in manual labor working 2 jobs, non-english-speaking immigrant families, etc. If we did not have what little acceleration was given, they would _never_ have gotten ANY attention they needed because their parents simply did not have it in them. It can be said that "that's their job" but even decades later I can't find any fault to their focus on providing some vestige of financial stability first. What I'm saying is that by assuming all families CAN have the parents shoulder education is an assumption rooted in much more of what I've seen of white collar than blue collar families. Pushing all families to take this on would likely hurt those without the spare time and background far more than those with. ANY opportunities we provide in that sense will continue to cyclically reinforce those with the resources to better leverage future opportunities. While I am not disagreeing to how invaluable teaching at the home is, I see publically taxed schooling as the great leveler, where the people have the chance to reallocate some of this opportunity to where it is most effective. Now, for the "incendiary" part of this post; where is "most effective", while I'm no teacher I can also say that a one size fits all policy with only the option of "do this material more deeply" for extention would absolutely _gut_ what little educational value existed for some of the top tier students in a comparable fashion to if you pushed the remedial classes into middle school calc. If I've learned one thing from decades in school, (and as an interesting tidbit, supplemented by years of open offices) it's that humans are so hilariously far from "one size fits all" in how they learn, and while reasonably consistent in "you'll get to do less of this near-purgatory experience" being FAR more of a motivator than "you'll get to do more", it's individualization and communication that bridges this gap, not regimentation.
- lettergram 10y ago
  I know several kids who never went to highschool. At 12-13 they enrolled in the local community college and got their GED at 16-17. It cost (at the time, in district) $2000 - $2500 per semester at the junior college. Although that's significant, the school district was actually paying ~$10,000 per student per year for public school so it was actually WAY cheaper. Regardless, those kids who went straight to college from middle school seemed 10x better off and all of the ones I know (or am friends with) are doing great.
  - jtbigwoo 10y ago
    A minor quibble: The state subsidizes all public colleges, most likely including your community college. Where I live (Minnesota) that subsidy accounts somewhere around half of the total cost. So community college probably costs about the same as high school.
    - lettergram 10y ago
      Fair point, I also know our city and county tax went there as well.
douche 10y ago
For math, at least, the solution is pretty simple: give them the book, and let them work through it at their own pace. Hopefully the teachers can keep up with the grading... We used the Saxon math program when I was in elementary/middle school, and the repetition was key there. I could get away with teaching myself, because I'd be seeing the same classes of problems over, and over, and over, long after I finished up the chapter introducing them. Unfortunately, after 7th grade, and burning through the Algebra 1 book, the district switched curriculums, and I didn't learn anything new until I took discrete math in college.
- colanderman 10y ago
  As someone to whom that solution was "applied", it's crap. Most teachers don't know enough of the material to answer questions, so you lose the guidance of experts, and since you're no longer working with peers, you lose the social aspect as well.
  - douche 10y ago
    Well, it's better than the usual alternatives, in my experience. If your teachers are incompetent, they won't be able to help you one way or the other, so it's best if they just get out of the way. As for the "social aspect", you rarely actually get to work with peers, and instead are coerced into doing the teacher's job for them. It was incredibly frustrating to drag along with people who just didn't have the brainpower to deal with the material.
    - dpark 10y ago
      I hated group work in school. It is incredibly frustrating to be forced to work with people who are not pulling their own weight, whether because they don't want to or just can't. Nonetheless, this is an important thing to learn to deal with. Frustration is part of life. So is dealing with both struggling and apathetic people.
      - CaptSpify 10y ago
JustSomeNobody 10y ago
When I was in HS, I was bored out of my mind and I would sleep through most of my classes. I had one teacher tell me I should just quit. I woke up to my accounting teacher telling another student that I've missed one question in nearly 2 semesters, so as long as my grades are that good, I can sleep all I want. Bored smart kids can be just as distracting as frustrated average (and below) kids.
Kuiper 10y ago
>The downside is for most of school they're bored out of their mind, and this can develop bad habits for when school eventually catches up to their abilities. This is something that I noticed as a significant problem when living in the freshman dorms during undergrad. You had a lot of smart kids who spent most of the school day bored, and they spend most of the school day reading novels in class before going home to spend 40+ hours a week playing video games or browsing reddit, all while maintaining perfect grades and never having to ask for help from teachers or peers. Then, they get to college where they encounter material that actually challenges them, but they're still in the habit of spending the hours of 3 PM to 11 PM playing World of Warcraft or League of Legends, and when they start falling behind they're still in the mindset of "I'm the smart kid, I shouldn't need to ask for help." You have kids who were high school valedictorians who end up failing classes during undergrad because they never learned how to properly function in a challenging academic environment. It can be quite a shock to transition from an environment where you might be in the 99th percentile of performers (top marks without having to try hard) to be one where you may not even be in the top 50% and actually need to put in more effort than your peers.
- CaptSpify 10y ago
  It doesn't even have to be the valedictorians. I got B's and C's basically without studying until college. I had to learn how to study in college. We even had an introductory "how to study" class in college because it was such a problem. I was always told that "HS is hard, you can't just breeze through it", which was completely untrue, and I absolutely breezed through it. So I thought the same thing would apply to college, which it turns out, actually is hard.
  - mathattack 10y ago
    I agree. In undergrad Computer Science, I had my first "Oh sh*t" shocks. (My undergrad was a large state school, so I could coast outside of CS) I got a few more in grad school in other subjects.
  - amag 10y ago
    This is exactly my story as well. Even in HS, if I studied for an exam it would be a couple of hours the night before. Not so many A's maybe but plenty of B's and C's got me through just fine. Then it was quite a shock when I got to college/uni and learned the hard way that in many cases it took weeks of studying for an exam. Now in retrospect I'm quite proud of myself that I didn't give up. There were certainly times when I felt like doing just that.
ack 10y ago
In the elementary school my kids go to, everyone is grouped together. On a per-subject level, the kids who are stronger than the others go to a "plus-group" for that subject. It works pretty well. This is a school in the Netherlands, though.

eitally 10y ago

Your last point can't be overstated. It's a major problem, but imho can be remediated during high schools years with things like dual-enrollment in a local community college, MOOC participation, local special interest research groups, etc. My wife & I are taking the approach that responsibility for primary education lies with parents first, then teachers, so, to your first point, we don't particularly perceive this as a huge personal problem.... The fact is, education in America is classist and the kids of white collars households have incredibly unfair advantages. Bootstrapping from poverty & ignorance to professional success and higher education is harder than it's ever been.

mathattack 10y ago
It does seem like things start to improve in high school because the class schedules are such that kids can have more flexibility. I think MOOCs aimed at younger kids will improve too. I hear you on parental ownership. Even in the most elite NYC private schools, parents pay for tutoring or scramble to cover what they perceive to be gaps. For public schools, it's the same. A school may be good at Math, but weak at music, or vice versa. It's up to the parents to close the gaps. (And parents know their kids best)
existencebox 10y ago
Because this turned into a bit of an essay, let me frame it: I'll be discussing your statement about not worrying about harming the advanced students by requiring more from parents than schools, and following from that to consider the OP article concept of "one size fits all." An inverted anecdote re your statement on the the parents first point: I went to a "big east coast city public highschool". While you say that you don't see the lower effort on the top demographic as a (to your credit, personal, so I may be misinterpreting it as a generalization) problem, I'd make some following statements. Of the people in my AP/accelerated classes, about half were _definitely_ not white collar. Parents in manual labor working 2 jobs, non-english-speaking immigrant families, etc. If we did not have what little acceleration was given, they would _never_ have gotten ANY attention they needed because their parents simply did not have it in them. It can be said that "that's their job" but even decades later I can't find any fault to their focus on providing some vestige of financial stability first. What I'm saying is that by assuming all families CAN have the parents shoulder education is an assumption rooted in much more of what I've seen of white collar than blue collar families. Pushing all families to take this on would likely hurt those without the spare time and background far more than those with. ANY opportunities we provide in that sense will continue to cyclically reinforce those with the resources to better leverage future opportunities. While I am not disagreeing to how invaluable teaching at the home is, I see publically taxed schooling as the great leveler, where the people have the chance to reallocate some of this opportunity to where it is most effective. Now, for the "incendiary" part of this post; where is "most effective", while I'm no teacher I can also say that a one size fits all policy with only the option of "do this material more deeply" for extention would absolutely _gut_ what little educational value existed for some of the top tier students in a comparable fashion to if you pushed the remedial classes into middle school calc. If I've learned one thing from decades in school, (and as an interesting tidbit, supplemented by years of open offices) it's that humans are so hilariously far from "one size fits all" in how they learn, and while reasonably consistent in "you'll get to do less of this near-purgatory experience" being FAR more of a motivator than "you'll get to do more", it's individualization and communication that bridges this gap, not regimentation.
lettergram 10y ago
I know several kids who never went to highschool. At 12-13 they enrolled in the local community college and got their GED at 16-17. It cost (at the time, in district) $2000 - $2500 per semester at the junior college. Although that's significant, the school district was actually paying ~$10,000 per student per year for public school so it was actually WAY cheaper. Regardless, those kids who went straight to college from middle school seemed 10x better off and all of the ones I know (or am friends with) are doing great.
- jtbigwoo 10y ago
  A minor quibble: The state subsidizes all public colleges, most likely including your community college. Where I live (Minnesota) that subsidy accounts somewhere around half of the total cost. So community college probably costs about the same as high school.
  - lettergram 10y ago
    Fair point, I also know our city and county tax went there as well.

douche 10y ago

For math, at least, the solution is pretty simple: give them the book, and let them work through it at their own pace. Hopefully the teachers can keep up with the grading... We used the Saxon math program when I was in elementary/middle school, and the repetition was key there. I could get away with teaching myself, because I'd be seeing the same classes of problems over, and over, and over, long after I finished up the chapter introducing them. Unfortunately, after 7th grade, and burning through the Algebra 1 book, the district switched curriculums, and I didn't learn anything new until I took discrete math in college.

colanderman 10y ago
As someone to whom that solution was "applied", it's crap. Most teachers don't know enough of the material to answer questions, so you lose the guidance of experts, and since you're no longer working with peers, you lose the social aspect as well.
- douche 10y ago
  Well, it's better than the usual alternatives, in my experience. If your teachers are incompetent, they won't be able to help you one way or the other, so it's best if they just get out of the way. As for the "social aspect", you rarely actually get to work with peers, and instead are coerced into doing the teacher's job for them. It was incredibly frustrating to drag along with people who just didn't have the brainpower to deal with the material.
  - dpark 10y ago
    I hated group work in school. It is incredibly frustrating to be forced to work with people who are not pulling their own weight, whether because they don't want to or just can't. Nonetheless, this is an important thing to learn to deal with. Frustration is part of life. So is dealing with both struggling and apathetic people.
    - CaptSpify 10y ago

JustSomeNobody 10y ago

When I was in HS, I was bored out of my mind and I would sleep through most of my classes. I had one teacher tell me I should just quit. I woke up to my accounting teacher telling another student that I've missed one question in nearly 2 semesters, so as long as my grades are that good, I can sleep all I want. Bored smart kids can be just as distracting as frustrated average (and below) kids.

Kuiper 10y ago

>The downside is for most of school they're bored out of their mind, and this can develop bad habits for when school eventually catches up to their abilities. This is something that I noticed as a significant problem when living in the freshman dorms during undergrad. You had a lot of smart kids who spent most of the school day bored, and they spend most of the school day reading novels in class before going home to spend 40+ hours a week playing video games or browsing reddit, all while maintaining perfect grades and never having to ask for help from teachers or peers. Then, they get to college where they encounter material that actually challenges them, but they're still in the habit of spending the hours of 3 PM to 11 PM playing World of Warcraft or League of Legends, and when they start falling behind they're still in the mindset of "I'm the smart kid, I shouldn't need to ask for help." You have kids who were high school valedictorians who end up failing classes during undergrad because they never learned how to properly function in a challenging academic environment. It can be quite a shock to transition from an environment where you might be in the 99th percentile of performers (top marks without having to try hard) to be one where you may not even be in the top 50% and actually need to put in more effort than your peers.

CaptSpify 10y ago
It doesn't even have to be the valedictorians. I got B's and C's basically without studying until college. I had to learn how to study in college. We even had an introductory "how to study" class in college because it was such a problem. I was always told that "HS is hard, you can't just breeze through it", which was completely untrue, and I absolutely breezed through it. So I thought the same thing would apply to college, which it turns out, actually is hard.
- mathattack 10y ago
  I agree. In undergrad Computer Science, I had my first "Oh sh*t" shocks. (My undergrad was a large state school, so I could coast outside of CS) I got a few more in grad school in other subjects.
- amag 10y ago
  This is exactly my story as well. Even in HS, if I studied for an exam it would be a couple of hours the night before. Not so many A's maybe but plenty of B's and C's got me through just fine. Then it was quite a shock when I got to college/uni and learned the hard way that in many cases it took weeks of studying for an exam. Now in retrospect I'm quite proud of myself that I didn't give up. There were certainly times when I felt like doing just that.

ack 10y ago

In the elementary school my kids go to, everyone is grouped together. On a per-subject level, the kids who are stronger than the others go to a "plus-group" for that subject. It works pretty well. This is a school in the Netherlands, though.