5 ms·

One key thing is that students get advanced from grade to grade /no matter what/, unless they drop out. Students have little immediate incentive to work to suc

One key thing is that students get advanced from grade to grade /no matter what/, unless they drop out. Students have little immediate incentive to work to succeed, and social pressure seems set up to disincentivize students towards learning. One possibility I've thought of is that there should be early separation of students into high and low performers to 'scare' parents into pushing their kids towards the 'high' performance. If you can't succeed, you can't, but if you don't try, you'll never get anywhere. Nothing wrong (and a lot right) with vocational education, but so many kids waste money on a college education that they're not able to take advantage of.

tptacek 17y ago
Studies of social promotion also appear to indicate that holding kids back a grade has worse outcomes than simply moving them forward. Now, it may be that the outcome for those kids is better, but the outcome for their class is worse. Either way, it shows to go you that the simple observations ("they just let the kids finish the grade, even though they don't know the material!") don't carry much insight.
tokenadult 17y ago
One key thing is that students get advanced from grade to grade /no matter what/, unless they drop out. Once upon a time, schools weren't organized to segregate children into grades by age. http://learninfreedom.org/age_grading_bad.html http://learninfreedom.org/age_grading_bad.html A lot of scholars think it was crazy ever to start organizing schools that way.
- tptacek 17y ago
  So if you believe this, then why do you advocate for policies that will further regiment and ossify the school system we have? Shouldn't you want to give teachers more freedom with their curricula?
  - tokenadult 17y ago
    Shouldn't you want to give teachers more freedom with their curricula? I don't recall that I have said that I wouldn't do that, although I suppose you are concerned about my posting the link in which a third-party organization advocated that student achievement should be one element of teacher evaluation. Yes, I think teachers ought to have great freedom in curriculum design (in particular, they ought to be free to choose their own preferred textbooks and supplemental materials within very broad limits). But I also think that if a teacher announces "I teach English writing" that there ought to be some independent way to show that the students in the class made some progress in English writing by the end of an academic year. Or, at the very least, that students ought to be able to shop for preferred teachers who make them feel honored as learners and who make all the students in the class stay on task in learning. Different teachers may be a different fit for different students--that seems quite likely--so teachers shouldn't be assigned to students by administrators who never enter the classrooms to see what is going on. In general, I advocate policies that deregiment and unossify the school system we have, but perhaps that has not been apparent in the threads in which you and I have most recently interacted. I'm very much in favor of providing more choices to more learners and more teachers.

tptacek 17y ago

Studies of social promotion also appear to indicate that holding kids back a grade has worse outcomes than simply moving them forward. Now, it may be that the outcome for those kids is better, but the outcome for their class is worse. Either way, it shows to go you that the simple observations ("they just let the kids finish the grade, even though they don't know the material!") don't carry much insight.

tokenadult 17y ago

One key thing is that students get advanced from grade to grade /no matter what/, unless they drop out. Once upon a time, schools weren't organized to segregate children into grades by age. http://learninfreedom.org/age_grading_bad.html http://learninfreedom.org/age_grading_bad.html A lot of scholars think it was crazy ever to start organizing schools that way.

tptacek 17y ago
So if you believe this, then why do you advocate for policies that will further regiment and ossify the school system we have? Shouldn't you want to give teachers more freedom with their curricula?
- tokenadult 17y ago
  Shouldn't you want to give teachers more freedom with their curricula? I don't recall that I have said that I wouldn't do that, although I suppose you are concerned about my posting the link in which a third-party organization advocated that student achievement should be one element of teacher evaluation. Yes, I think teachers ought to have great freedom in curriculum design (in particular, they ought to be free to choose their own preferred textbooks and supplemental materials within very broad limits). But I also think that if a teacher announces "I teach English writing" that there ought to be some independent way to show that the students in the class made some progress in English writing by the end of an academic year. Or, at the very least, that students ought to be able to shop for preferred teachers who make them feel honored as learners and who make all the students in the class stay on task in learning. Different teachers may be a different fit for different students--that seems quite likely--so teachers shouldn't be assigned to students by administrators who never enter the classrooms to see what is going on. In general, I advocate policies that deregiment and unossify the school system we have, but perhaps that has not been apparent in the threads in which you and I have most recently interacted. I'm very much in favor of providing more choices to more learners and more teachers.