5 ms·

We should treat the tracking and gap as a problem and fix it. Not by holding anyone back mind you, but by making sure every kid has the opportunity to make the

We should treat the tracking and gap as a problem and fix it. Not by holding anyone back mind you, but by making sure every kid has the opportunity to make the most of the huge amount of time they spend in school.

WalterBright 6y ago
Some kids are going to learn faster than others. The only way to eliminate the gap is to hold them back.
- maxerickson 6y ago
  I didn't say we should eliminate it, I said we should treat it as a problem. If it comes down to learning speed, great, not a big problem, if a 9th grader is behind because of how K-6 is structured, fix that.
  - WalterBright 6y ago
    > I said we should treat it as a problem. It's better to just accept that kids are different. It's not a problem that some kids run faster than others. It's not a problem that some kids are interested in art and others are interested in cars. I like programming. Others detest it, but like cooking. Viva la difference.
    - maxerickson 6y ago
      You aren't reading for my meaning. The comment I replied to was speaking about 1st grade placement having trajectory. My point is that this being true is a failure of the educational system. Each kid should get their best outcome regardless of whether they enter 1st grade on that track or not.
      - WalterBright 6y ago
        > Each kid should get their best outcome regardless of whether they enter 1st grade on that track or not. I can agree with that as a goal. Their best outcome is going to be different from everyone else's.
        mlyle 6y ago
        Elsewhere you say that kids don't need to learn those things until age 6, so parents don't need to worry about prioritizing it. Here, the concern is that if the kids learn them around age 6, their trajectory could be permanently altered-- never having a chance to catch up even if capable-- because of the system's tracking of learners.
        WalterBright 6y ago
        > their trajectory could be permanently altered I simply don't buy that. The reason is simple - elementary school teaches kids at such a glacial pace there is no problem for kids catching up who started a bit late. For example, I missed the first half of 4th grade. The teacher proposed that I be held back a grade because of all that I missed. My mom put her foot down and said no way. The teacher was skeptical, but within a few days it was abundantly clear that I hadn't missed anything at all. The 4th grade class simply had not perceptibly advanced in 3 months. P.S. when going through my dad's papers after he passed a few years ago, I ran across report cards from before first grade. They all thought I was "slow". People should just lighten up about academic performance before age 6. It doesn't mean anything for the vast majority of kids. I wouldn't even worry about it until 3rd grade.
        sokoloff 6y ago
        Indeed. My 4th grader is in remote public schooling this year. He crushes the day's work in 30-45 minutes; if anything it's highlighting just how terribly inefficient the scholastics part of elementary school is. (It's also not the primary purpose of K-5, but to the extent that a sliver of it is present, it is indeed glacially slow.)
    - watwut 6y ago
      I mean, while running definitely have genetic component, right kind of training makes massive difference. In world where running would matter, I woud expect the adults to try to figure out when and how train them. Same for art actually. If art mattered more, we would cared about making kids like it and teaching all kids to draw.
      - WalterBright 6y ago
        Of course training makes a difference. But if you don't win the genetic lottery, you're never going to be in the 1% that are good enough to make a living at it. Not a chance. Me, my coordination is poor. It takes a lot of training for me to even get to the point where most people start. But it doesn't matter to me, as I'm good at things other people are bad at, and fortunately I enjoy doing those things and people pay me to do it. Nobody would pay me for my athletic ineptitude, my musical disability, or my artistic malfunction. And so what. Viva la difference.
gh-throw 6y ago
One of my kids was reading 500 page novels (not difficuly ones, but, like, later Harry Potter books) before 2nd grade. Another will be lucky to do that by 4th grade (which would still be “early”). The kids track themselves and there’s little school can do to speed them up. They can sure slow them down, though—our earlier reader regressed for most of kindergarten.
candiddevmike 6y ago
Yes, keep separating the kids, cordon off the troubled ones to shitty public schools, and ignore fixing the real issues: their parents and home life. Raise everyone in their own classful bubble to keep perpetuating status quo.
- watwut 6y ago
  > On the plus side, I take solace knowing the majority of those gifted students became addicts or suffered severe mental health issues when they realized they weren't that smart, and the rest of the world doesn't think they're special. That does not actually happen to that often in tracked school systems. Seriously.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- mlyle 6y ago
  Wow. Overall, being tracked higher is correlated with better life outcomes and higher life satisfaction. So I don't think the "majority" ends up the way you state.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
sokoloff 6y ago
I think it works similarly as kids who get tracked early into art, music, or a particular sport. The more they do it, the better they get, and the better they get, the more they do it. Then, in addition to the personal satisfaction, they get praise from people they care about, so they continue. Then their closest school friends are all in the earlier-achieving cohort, may have parents with similar feelings about education, etc. It's not like the schools are saying "you stumbled over your th-words when entering first grade, so no AP English for you 11 years later", but rather that small differences within the kids themselves becoming self-reinforcing. As WB says in a sibling thread, the only way to break the cycle is to slow these kids down, which is antithetical to me (and hopefully everyone who cares about the kids).
- maxerickson 6y ago
  I don't accept it as a given that the only way to address tracking is to slow some kids down. Like what if we tripled the number of teachers?
  - sokoloff 6y ago
    I don't think school funding is a significant driver of this. If a group of kids (in loose alliance with their parents) are more focused early on scholastic achievement, those kids will tend to continue to focus more on it (and believe they’re good at it) whether you have 30:2 or 30:6 student:teacher ratios. There's a lot more influence on students and their outcomes coming from outside of school employees than inside it. The kids are self-tracking at least as much as the school is formalizing it. You could have pretended there wasn’t an advanced math group, just like you can not officially keep score in soccer. The kids still know.
    - mlyle 6y ago
      If you don't have low ratios and tracking, you end up targeting the 33rd percentile and seeing: * Where the lower-third of the class gets with instruction with slightly too difficult material and not quite enough coaching. * Where the middle-third gets with excessive coaching on slightly too easy material. * Where the upper-third gets on their own with little help, occasionally bored by and impeded by the path of the overall class. This is somewhere affluence matters-- if you have parent volunteers showing up and hanging out to intensively coach (under the teacher's direction) the lowest readers and to challenge / help higher readers pick out books... it makes a big difference on how well class time is used. The teacher can aim square for the middle. And the stronger kids get some enrichment and opportunity for further growth. Why the 33rd percentile? Because a classroom with 1/6th of kids not getting it at all and 1/6th kind-of getting it.. is infinitely more workable than a classroom with 1/4th not getting it at all and 1/4th kind-of getting it.

WalterBright 6y ago

Some kids are going to learn faster than others. The only way to eliminate the gap is to hold them back.

maxerickson 6y ago
I didn't say we should eliminate it, I said we should treat it as a problem. If it comes down to learning speed, great, not a big problem, if a 9th grader is behind because of how K-6 is structured, fix that.
- WalterBright 6y ago
  > I said we should treat it as a problem. It's better to just accept that kids are different. It's not a problem that some kids run faster than others. It's not a problem that some kids are interested in art and others are interested in cars. I like programming. Others detest it, but like cooking. Viva la difference.
  - maxerickson 6y ago
    You aren't reading for my meaning. The comment I replied to was speaking about 1st grade placement having trajectory. My point is that this being true is a failure of the educational system. Each kid should get their best outcome regardless of whether they enter 1st grade on that track or not.
    - WalterBright 6y ago
      > Each kid should get their best outcome regardless of whether they enter 1st grade on that track or not. I can agree with that as a goal. Their best outcome is going to be different from everyone else's.
      - mlyle 6y ago
        Elsewhere you say that kids don't need to learn those things until age 6, so parents don't need to worry about prioritizing it. Here, the concern is that if the kids learn them around age 6, their trajectory could be permanently altered-- never having a chance to catch up even if capable-- because of the system's tracking of learners.
        WalterBright 6y ago
        > their trajectory could be permanently altered I simply don't buy that. The reason is simple - elementary school teaches kids at such a glacial pace there is no problem for kids catching up who started a bit late. For example, I missed the first half of 4th grade. The teacher proposed that I be held back a grade because of all that I missed. My mom put her foot down and said no way. The teacher was skeptical, but within a few days it was abundantly clear that I hadn't missed anything at all. The 4th grade class simply had not perceptibly advanced in 3 months. P.S. when going through my dad's papers after he passed a few years ago, I ran across report cards from before first grade. They all thought I was "slow". People should just lighten up about academic performance before age 6. It doesn't mean anything for the vast majority of kids. I wouldn't even worry about it until 3rd grade.
        sokoloff 6y ago
        Indeed. My 4th grader is in remote public schooling this year. He crushes the day's work in 30-45 minutes; if anything it's highlighting just how terribly inefficient the scholastics part of elementary school is. (It's also not the primary purpose of K-5, but to the extent that a sliver of it is present, it is indeed glacially slow.)
  - watwut 6y ago
    I mean, while running definitely have genetic component, right kind of training makes massive difference. In world where running would matter, I woud expect the adults to try to figure out when and how train them. Same for art actually. If art mattered more, we would cared about making kids like it and teaching all kids to draw.
    - WalterBright 6y ago
      Of course training makes a difference. But if you don't win the genetic lottery, you're never going to be in the 1% that are good enough to make a living at it. Not a chance. Me, my coordination is poor. It takes a lot of training for me to even get to the point where most people start. But it doesn't matter to me, as I'm good at things other people are bad at, and fortunately I enjoy doing those things and people pay me to do it. Nobody would pay me for my athletic ineptitude, my musical disability, or my artistic malfunction. And so what. Viva la difference.

gh-throw 6y ago

One of my kids was reading 500 page novels (not difficuly ones, but, like, later Harry Potter books) before 2nd grade. Another will be lucky to do that by 4th grade (which would still be “early”). The kids track themselves and there’s little school can do to speed them up. They can sure slow them down, though—our earlier reader regressed for most of kindergarten.

candiddevmike 6y ago

Yes, keep separating the kids, cordon off the troubled ones to shitty public schools, and ignore fixing the real issues: their parents and home life. Raise everyone in their own classful bubble to keep perpetuating status quo.

watwut 6y ago
> On the plus side, I take solace knowing the majority of those gifted students became addicts or suffered severe mental health issues when they realized they weren't that smart, and the rest of the world doesn't think they're special. That does not actually happen to that often in tracked school systems. Seriously.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
mlyle 6y ago
Wow. Overall, being tracked higher is correlated with better life outcomes and higher life satisfaction. So I don't think the "majority" ends up the way you state.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

sokoloff 6y ago

I think it works similarly as kids who get tracked early into art, music, or a particular sport. The more they do it, the better they get, and the better they get, the more they do it. Then, in addition to the personal satisfaction, they get praise from people they care about, so they continue. Then their closest school friends are all in the earlier-achieving cohort, may have parents with similar feelings about education, etc. It's not like the schools are saying "you stumbled over your th-words when entering first grade, so no AP English for you 11 years later", but rather that small differences within the kids themselves becoming self-reinforcing. As WB says in a sibling thread, the only way to break the cycle is to slow these kids down, which is antithetical to me (and hopefully everyone who cares about the kids).

maxerickson 6y ago
I don't accept it as a given that the only way to address tracking is to slow some kids down. Like what if we tripled the number of teachers?
- sokoloff 6y ago
  I don't think school funding is a significant driver of this. If a group of kids (in loose alliance with their parents) are more focused early on scholastic achievement, those kids will tend to continue to focus more on it (and believe they’re good at it) whether you have 30:2 or 30:6 student:teacher ratios. There's a lot more influence on students and their outcomes coming from outside of school employees than inside it. The kids are self-tracking at least as much as the school is formalizing it. You could have pretended there wasn’t an advanced math group, just like you can not officially keep score in soccer. The kids still know.
  - mlyle 6y ago
    If you don't have low ratios and tracking, you end up targeting the 33rd percentile and seeing: * Where the lower-third of the class gets with instruction with slightly too difficult material and not quite enough coaching. * Where the middle-third gets with excessive coaching on slightly too easy material. * Where the upper-third gets on their own with little help, occasionally bored by and impeded by the path of the overall class. This is somewhere affluence matters-- if you have parent volunteers showing up and hanging out to intensively coach (under the teacher's direction) the lowest readers and to challenge / help higher readers pick out books... it makes a big difference on how well class time is used. The teacher can aim square for the middle. And the stronger kids get some enrichment and opportunity for further growth. Why the 33rd percentile? Because a classroom with 1/6th of kids not getting it at all and 1/6th kind-of getting it.. is infinitely more workable than a classroom with 1/4th not getting it at all and 1/4th kind-of getting it.