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There is one group of students — those considered academically gifted — whose needs appear to carry less priority than other groups. Teacher education programs seem to invest far less energy in training prospective teachers to identify talented and gifted students in their classrooms; in fact, only 15% put "a lot" of emphasis on identifying such students. One professor in Los Angeles explained this as simply recognizing who needed less help. "The conventional wisdom," he said, "is that they can take care of themselves."
But another professor had an even broader explanation for the relatively mild interest in training prospective teachers to identify gifted kids: "It's a fundamental philosophical issue...If education is the major building block of a democratic society, then you worry more about raising the floor...the fundamental goal is to give as many chylidren as possible the tools to participate in a democratic society." And while schools in the past would often track students by ability, the strategy has apparently fallen into disfavor with many educators. A little over half of the education professors surveyed (54%) favor less reliance on homogeneous grouping; and an identical 54% majority believes that mixing fast and slow learners in the same class would improve kids' academic achievement.
source:
Different Drummers: How Teachers of Teachers View Public Education
p. 24-5
Different Drummers
the struggle
gifted children and ed schools
constructivism and classroom discipline
16 comments:
"54% majority believes that mixing fast and slow learners in the same class would improve kids' academic achievement."
A friend and I were just talking about this same topic today. Her very bright daughter has sat all year in a classroom loaded with sped kids, potential sped kids, and a some average kids sprinkled in the mix. It has not only been a terrible experience for her daughter, but for the other kids as well.
Once, while volunteering in her child's classroom, a child tells her she wishes she was as smart as her daughter, but she is not. My friend said it was the saddest comment she had ever heard. Also, when helping one student, he asked to be excused to go to the bathroom, when he came back into the classroom, he hid behind a plant. The reason? He was totally stressed about reviewing for the state test. He couldn't do it. She said she had another crawl under the desk.
Her daughter can't concentrate because the sped teacher is calling out answers to a test for the others. It is loud in the classroom.
Whose academic achievement is being improved here when all the kids are grouped together with such a wide disparity?
I had one teacher tell me "As the administrators and teachers plan classrooms, they take into consideration even more than the individual learning and teaching styles of the students and teachers. They must craft healthy, stable, and creative learning communities for each class in each of the grade levels."
Would anyone call the classroom I described as being stable?
At my son's (ex) private school, there seems to be an interesting twist going on. At the beginning of the year, there were parental complaints about the use of Everyday Math. A couple of teachers weren't too thrilled about the program either.
However, the person in charge of evaluating math (it took her ALL YEAR), seems to think the problem is that there are a few students who could use acceleration. Are these kids gifted? Not really.
The conclusion seems to be that Everyday Math is not the problem. The problem is that a few students need more. These kids do well with Everyday Math, so the curriculum can't be the problem for the other kids.
I've come to the conclusion that the school's problem is low expectations. It's not low expectations on purpose. It's low expectations because they don't know any better; because they were probably not good in math.
It's not about discovery. "Understanding" does not mean more rigor or mathematical understanding. It means a slower pace and more explanations. They think this is "better" than a rigorous curriculum for the average student.
When I talked with the curriculum director, she thought I was talking about what was needed for the best students. Her poor background in math and low expectations do not allow her to see Saxon and Singapore Math as anything but curricula for the best students. They don't see Singapore and Saxon as bad math. They see them as bad for most students.
The problem with gifted programs is that schools can fix one problem (perhaps), but completely ignore another - low expectations. The squeaky parents will get what they want (sort of), but the rest will continue with low (self-fullfilling) expectations.
The issue of mixing sped kids with high aptitude kids is such a sensitive one that I think most parents keep their mouths shut.
Therefore, the onus is more on parents like me, who have both, to speak the truth.
Here's the truth--my sped kid is getting better served than the regular or the the gifted kids.
Is that fair? No. Will it raise the floor? Yes, but whatever happened to high expectation for each individual? Whatever happened to allowing every child to reach their own individual potential?
That's been nixed, in favor of mixing abilities, in order to give the appearance of equity.
No school sets out to dumb down the students. But wrong thinking causes dumbing down nonetheless.
I feel strongly about this, having both a fast learner and a slow learner going through school now. Neither one is served well by this religious-like zeal our school has about mixed groups.
My fast-learner son experienced a lot of boredom up until about 7th grade. He was never accelerated, only “enriched”. That was mainly a waste of time.
My slow learner daughter is frequently playing catch-up in class. She finds it difficult to follow lectures and instructions due to her APD. She has “homework buddies” who are supposed to help her understand if she missed directions. We’ve stopped that, after she verbalized that the “smart kids” were helping her.
Also, since she must be pulled out of class for extra help, she’s missing out on classroom activities from which the other students are benefiting.
To me, this is just bizarre.
Another thing, my fast learner son has never had to work hard to get high grades. He’s been praised and rewarded for just “showing up”. In hindsight, I should have done things differently in helping him be challenged.
He’s a 9th grader now, with poor study habits and still getting by all right (high B’s & low A’s) just doing the minimum work. In a conversation with his guidance counselor, she told me this is common with many bright kids. When I think about it, it’s not surprising. The school does not see this as a problem.
From the perspective of teachers:
I teach what are supposed to be "Honor" classes (8th and 7th grade). These students take Regents in Math, Living Environment, and Spanish in grade 8. One should expect more or less similar level of achievement, especially given that teachers get together every June to decide who should stay in honor class and who should not.
But no. I can honestly state that 40% of my students would benefit from regular pathway. I even have a sped student with learning disabilities hosed into an honor class because they had no place for her in other classes!
But -when I bring the issue of careful tracking of students achievement before letting them skip a year (and they skip instruction in 8th grade physics and earh science because in grade 8 I teach Biology HS curriculum), many teachers COMPLAIN that they don't want to get ONLY THE WORST STUDENTS! (And there I am - selfish, looking for "easy" good students to teach them regents course). I got it from the principal, too when asking the permission to create an accelerated program starting in grade 6 - in ALL subjects, just 1 class that would be taught grammar in English, proper math, science for grades 6-7-8 in 2 years.I even found math, ELA, SS, and French teachers willing to do that! Oh no, "your fellow teachers are against it, and the classes should be of mixed abilities..."
I have one child in special ed (a rising 6th grader) and another (rising 2nd grader) that achieves well. I'd agree my sped child is better served. It's a sensitive subject. I hear comments all the time from parents about how they don't want "those special ed kids" in their child's class...like the district should just stick them in self-contained all the time and ignore them. Self-contained has its benefits for my daughter, especially in math and writing where she needs the most help. But often she misses out on group activites she would really enjoy--science experiments for example. My other daughter is bright and I also get frustrated at the secrecy about everything; I wonder what she is learning and disagree with a lot of the stuff taught (or not taught). There's also a big reluctance by teachers to say your kid is a high achiever. Recently Emily scored in the 99th% on the Naglieri test. I had to do the research to figure out what the score meant, as the school just gave you a number. Then when I followed up with the teacher I got so many non-answers..it's like no one wanted to admit this was a really good score.
Anonymous,
"The issue of mixing sped kids with high aptitude kids is such a sensitive one that I think most parents keep their mouths shut."
I think that is true and unfortunate because it helps no one. This year at our school parents have started complaining about how the classes are arranged. So for the next school term, the principal would like to know what teaching style and manner regarding what works best for our children. You can write a letter or email. What is coming out of this is inclusion and non-clusion...where do you want your kid placed. Honestly, I don't think it is going to matter. The curriculum is the same for all. Some classes are more enriched than others, but basically they are all the same.
I wouldn't say our sped. students are being better served. I know several parents who aren't happy with the sped. department.
My issue with mixed-ability is the kids' perceptions. What is it doing to their self-esteem?
I don't think my friend's attitude is againist special ed kids. She was coming from the stand point of what is better for the group as a whole. She sees mixed ability isn't working in her child's classroom. The teacher has complained to the principal and the principal says realizes this is a problem and she'll look into it.
I wonder how many families have both types of kids?
Back in the day, when people had big families, I bet lots of families had the range.
I was a straight-A kid; school learning was extremely easy for me; I "breathed it in."
(Of course, when Algebra 1 and Algbra 2 cover the material covered in a normal Algebra 1, that's not so hard, but never mind.)
My next-born sister had more trouble, though she's super-bright. She probably wasn't taught to read correctly, as I think back on it, because she couldn't spell & can't spell to this day. (This is my worry with C.: he can't spell. He's MUCH better now because I've worked on it with Megawords etc....but he had no formal instruction in spelling in his grade school apart from word memorization. NONE.)
My next sister was also a straight-A kid.
Then came my brother who had major problems. He didn't talk intelligibly until he was 6. (Family story: his first intelligible sentence was "She hit me." Guess which sister he was talking about?)
I remember, clearly, that my parents thought he might be mildly retarded; my mom also thought he was deaf, but couldn't get any kind of testing or help. We lived on a farm in central IL. She wrote letters to experts in Chicago; nothing came back.
He wasn't retarded, and they figured that out pretty quickly, but he did so badly in school that my mom was constantly worried he was going to be put in the class with the retarded children. That was the only other option, the regular class, or the class for retarded children. (And nobody believed in "mainstreaming" then! There just wasn't anything else.)
He struggled mightily in school. The thing that "saved" him, as so many adults say, was sports.
He emerged from each school year an emotional wreck, then play sports all summer long, which he was good at. He'd go back to school in good spirts & make it through another year of struggle and failure.
He grew up, went to college, majored in computer science, works in management for the state of IL, has a great wife, 3 perfect kids (the only one of us who pulled that off!) and a nice house.
I assume he had a language disorder related to all the autism in the family.
He had no problem learning to read; reading was his huge strength. He couldn't "hear" spoken language well, but he could read.
I was the same way, in fact, and still am.
I've come to the conclusion that the school's problem is low expectations. It's not low expectations on purpose. It's low expectations because they don't know any better; because they were probably not good in math
We suffer from this acutely in my district except that the math teachers are leading the way, and I think there's more than a little hostility mixed in.
(There's a lot of hostility mixed in as a result of my blogging about Ms. K last year. However, it was there prior to that. In fact, blogging about Ms. K happened because of the way we were treated by the school and by the department, something you could demonstrate reading through ktm-1 sequentially.)
The district has been hearing me say, for two years now, that average kids in other countries and in the Bronx master algebra in 8th grade.
I think one of the reasons there's such ferocious hostility at this point is that the math department probably now doubts itself instead of the kids.
They don't think they are capable of teaching algebra to all kids. They're not really teaching it to the fastest kids; the parents and tutors are doing a fair amount of the teaching and they know it.
So they're probably thinking, "OK, we're not managing to teach the fastest kids, and now they want us to teach everyone?"
And of course they have their "If we can't teach them, nobody gets to teach them" attitude where the answer keys are concerned.
That's an ongoing THING I haven't been blogging about.
He’s a 9th grader now, with poor study habits and still getting by all right (high B’s & low A’s) just doing the minimum work. In a conversation with his guidance counselor, she told me this is common with many bright kids. When I think about it, it’s not surprising. The school does not see this as a problem.
I had ZERO study habits coming out of high school!
My issue with grouping is the Engelmann issue, not particularly the SPED issue: all kids can learn faster than they're learning now -- AND flexible ability grouping, with constant assessment to see whether it's time to move a child up (or sometimes down) -- is best for all kids.
I'll have to write about the Joplin plan, which seems to be maybe the best plan schoolwide if you're not doing flat-out Engelmann or Slavin. (And of course Slavin is one of the great enemies of gifted children, so to heck with him...)
Kathy Iggy
You said it on the secrecy business.
You need to keep hold of those scores and USE THEM.
We're going to start doing that.
What we see is, IMO, severely depressed achievement across the board here in Irvington.
As I said in an earlier post, they're applying the "American bell curve" to a self-selected population of parents & kids.
I'd bet the ranch the average IQ in Irvington are higher than the average IQ across the entire country.
I don't say that to be elitist, and if someone wants to think I'm elitist, tant pis.
I'm going to start telling the administration that I have a kid who is capable of doing Honors level work across the board in high school, in science and math as well as in verbal subjects, and I expect to see them teach him Honors level material, not throw stuff on the board and tell me to hire one of the staff as a "tutor" to teach it on the side.
Catherine,
I have the full gamit of kids.
1st grader - struggles with reading, good at math
3rd grade girl - struggles with reading, ok at math, very verbal
3rd grade boy - gifted in math, above average in reading, special ed for articulation and auditory processing
6th grade girl - was struggling math student until this year. Brought up math grade from 77% to 99%. Advanced reader.
We also have a 1 year old, and are talking about possibly having 1 or 2 more kids.
Rory
I think that must be standard in large families.
The whole idea that parents of regular kids are pitted against parents of SPED kids only "works" in an era of small families, and even then I'm not sure it works.
I remember years ago, at an autism conference, being told by a psychologist that her standard scenario was diagnosing one child in a two-child family with autism, then sending the other child off to the gifted-children people.
My own kids: 2 with autism (very different levels of ability) and 1 quite smart.
Even with small families it's not at all uncommon to have 1 "regular" kid and 1 SPED, especially given how huge the SPED category is these days.
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