7 ms·

it's true: 100% of children from north american middle-income families are gifted. They go to schools where the teachers are not allowed to mark their work with

it's true: 100% of children from north american middle-income families are gifted. They go to schools where the teachers are not allowed to mark their work with a red pen, not allowed to draw an X or circle an incorrect answer, and not allowed to call a wrong answer a wrong answer -- it's a "good try." I dont think the teachers are to blame, tho, they're also stuck in the system. You think they dont' want to grab an arrogant "gifted kid" by the shoulders and shake him, or to tear up poorly written essays in front of the whole class? The good old days....

pstinnett 18y ago
Agreed. I just think the problem is bigger than "Students are full of shit".
dhimes 18y ago
I don't know which schools you are talking about. The public schools my kids have been in mark plenty of things wrong, pull kids out of courses that they can't handle and put them in lower-level courses in the middle of a term, and fail kids who don't perform to a minimum standard.
- pstinnett 18y ago
  I'm sure this is the case in some areas, but the No Child Left Behind act has a lot of administrators putting pressure on teachers to keep kids from failing, teaching to the minimum standard tests, etc.
  - dhimes 18y ago
    I've heard comments like this, but I can't say I've witnessed it. The pressure used to be on keeping kids from failing because the parents would complain. The school principals by and large took the sides of the parents. Without an outside measure of standards, teachers would pass the kids to get keep them off of their backs. Shame on them, but their pressures were real and unpleasant. At least, those were the complaints I heard from the teachers I knew (and who occasionally opined in more public fora). When Virginia introduced the Standards of Learning tests (years before NCLB), an amazing thing happened: Teachers were still griping, but they were griping about how they were going to teach all of the stuff they now had to teach. Importantly, their conversations turned back to teaching. Yes, there is pressure to keep kids from failing. But they simply can't be given a "social promotion" now; they are going to take an exam and will be exposed. The teachers in the districts where I've been personally involved (via my kids) did something I think was pretty smart: they started getting the parents to sign progress reports and notices nearly continuously throughout the term. In some cases, the parents had to sign off on the assignments as they were give! So there are few surprises at the end of the term. Kind of a CYA move, but with all of the pressures (as you correctly pointed out) they had to do something. The standards to which they are teaching aren't minimum at all. They are pretty high. My issue with them is that they are not well defined. But I'll save that for another post. I'll conclude this post with the observation that what teachers are complaining about now is not teaching to the minimum standard tests, but rather that they have to teach to the test at all. They don't agree that what is important is being tested because it's hard to quantify. I have some sympathy for that point of view.
Jebdm 18y ago
Maybe I just got lucky, but I'm a millenial and I never experienced any of this stuff. I agree that more students are considered gifted than ought to be, but I also think that the whole three-tier gifted/normal/special ed thing is broken. It's a spectrum, so treat it that way. That said, I've never gotten a gold star that I can remember, and I've definitely received my fair share of red X's. I did get stamps/stickers on papers which were A's or, in the lower grades, check-pluses or E's. But I don't think that these in any way gave me a false sense of accomplishment; they only gave them out for top marks. (For the uninitiated, sometimes for minor assignments we were graded on a scale that went v+, v, v-, X or Excellent, Good, Satisfactory, Poor.) Maybe this is a big issue in other places, or perhaps private schools (that seems likely to me, based on the accounts of some people I know who attended private school), but it's definitely not happening everywhere.

pstinnett 18y ago

Agreed. I just think the problem is bigger than "Students are full of shit".

dhimes 18y ago

I don't know which schools you are talking about. The public schools my kids have been in mark plenty of things wrong, pull kids out of courses that they can't handle and put them in lower-level courses in the middle of a term, and fail kids who don't perform to a minimum standard.

pstinnett 18y ago
I'm sure this is the case in some areas, but the No Child Left Behind act has a lot of administrators putting pressure on teachers to keep kids from failing, teaching to the minimum standard tests, etc.
- dhimes 18y ago
  I've heard comments like this, but I can't say I've witnessed it. The pressure used to be on keeping kids from failing because the parents would complain. The school principals by and large took the sides of the parents. Without an outside measure of standards, teachers would pass the kids to get keep them off of their backs. Shame on them, but their pressures were real and unpleasant. At least, those were the complaints I heard from the teachers I knew (and who occasionally opined in more public fora). When Virginia introduced the Standards of Learning tests (years before NCLB), an amazing thing happened: Teachers were still griping, but they were griping about how they were going to teach all of the stuff they now had to teach. Importantly, their conversations turned back to teaching. Yes, there is pressure to keep kids from failing. But they simply can't be given a "social promotion" now; they are going to take an exam and will be exposed. The teachers in the districts where I've been personally involved (via my kids) did something I think was pretty smart: they started getting the parents to sign progress reports and notices nearly continuously throughout the term. In some cases, the parents had to sign off on the assignments as they were give! So there are few surprises at the end of the term. Kind of a CYA move, but with all of the pressures (as you correctly pointed out) they had to do something. The standards to which they are teaching aren't minimum at all. They are pretty high. My issue with them is that they are not well defined. But I'll save that for another post. I'll conclude this post with the observation that what teachers are complaining about now is not teaching to the minimum standard tests, but rather that they have to teach to the test at all. They don't agree that what is important is being tested because it's hard to quantify. I have some sympathy for that point of view.

Jebdm 18y ago

Maybe I just got lucky, but I'm a millenial and I never experienced any of this stuff. I agree that more students are considered gifted than ought to be, but I also think that the whole three-tier gifted/normal/special ed thing is broken. It's a spectrum, so treat it that way. That said, I've never gotten a gold star that I can remember, and I've definitely received my fair share of red X's. I did get stamps/stickers on papers which were A's or, in the lower grades, check-pluses or E's. But I don't think that these in any way gave me a false sense of accomplishment; they only gave them out for top marks. (For the uninitiated, sometimes for minor assignments we were graded on a scale that went v+, v, v-, X or Excellent, Good, Satisfactory, Poor.) Maybe this is a big issue in other places, or perhaps private schools (that seems likely to me, based on the accounts of some people I know who attended private school), but it's definitely not happening everywhere.