No Child Let Ahead
Let's talk about smart kids for a bit.
The reformy plan for educators is to fire our way to a better teaching corps. The firings will be based on standardized tests scores run through some sort of statistical meat grinder. Here in Jersey, our DOE is partial to Student Growth Percentiles; elsewhere, they're using Value Added Models. It's all pretty much the same: if you're a teacher, your fate hinges on how your kids do on bubble tests.
(And let's not start with that "But it's only part of the evaluation!" nonsense. It may be only part of the evaluation, but it's all of the decision.)
Now, one of my biggest challenges as an elementary educator is to differentiate instruction. Because all of the kids are pretty much taught together. Sure, there's some pull-out time for either end of the bell curve: the high-achievers and the strugglers. But we do try to mainstream children as much as possible, as I believe we should.
This changes in middle school: we start tracking kids, and they spin off in different directions. In my own kids' district, math instruction splits to three separate paths in the Sixth Grade. Where I work, we do some differentiation in Fifth, and then split into tracks in Sixth. Language arts comes later, science next, and then, by
The reformy plan for educators is to fire our way to a better teaching corps. The firings will be based on standardized tests scores run through some sort of statistical meat grinder. Here in Jersey, our DOE is partial to Student Growth Percentiles; elsewhere, they're using Value Added Models. It's all pretty much the same: if you're a teacher, your fate hinges on how your kids do on bubble tests.
(And let's not start with that "But it's only part of the evaluation!" nonsense. It may be only part of the evaluation, but it's all of the decision.)
Now, one of my biggest challenges as an elementary educator is to differentiate instruction. Because all of the kids are pretty much taught together. Sure, there's some pull-out time for either end of the bell curve: the high-achievers and the strugglers. But we do try to mainstream children as much as possible, as I believe we should.
This changes in middle school: we start tracking kids, and they spin off in different directions. In my own kids' district, math instruction splits to three separate paths in the Sixth Grade. Where I work, we do some differentiation in Fifth, and then split into tracks in Sixth. Language arts comes later, science next, and then, by