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It's important to understand the changes to curriculum at all grades rather than just focusing on this one specific change. Under Common Core, the general principles of algebra are introduced far earlier (1st grade, actually) than they were in the past. As the lady in the article mentioned, rather than suddenly hitting students with pre-algebra in 7th grade (or at least that's when it was for me), they will be introduced to these concepts throughout elementary school (which used to be nothing but arithmetic). My mother has been a first grade teacher for over 40 years (just retired last year) and was involved in a bunch of stuff like choosing textbooks and what have you. She says that, under Common Core, even in first grade they do exercises that are basically algebra from a different perspective where students will be asked to, for example, "make 100 using 7, 3, and 10" and then asked to add/subtract/multiply/divide the latter 3 numbers to reach the first number (it's a good exercise because the more advanced students can be as creative as they want). Basically, if you look at the entire curriculum from 1st-12th grade, math isn't being dumbed down by Common Core. I'd be a little concerned if they started to remove AP Calculus from classrooms or something, but the change mentioned in this article is not a problem and parents only think it is because they don't understand the purpose behind the changes. edit: Actually, come to think of it, what exactly is the benefit gained by having all students take calculus one year earlier? I was one of those kids who take calculus 3 at a local college after school in 12th grade, and in retrospect I don't think I really benefited in any significant way by being slightly ahead when starting college. I think that many of us are just thinking "well I took calculus and it was good, ergo I want other kids to be able to take calculus" and just assuming that the benefits outweigh the costs. edit2: blah_blah posted:You go to a bad school if there aren't enough people taking Algebra I in 9th grade to make up a whole class. At the school I went to during 9th grade (before I moved back to Canada), the solid students were in Geometry in 9th grade, the really good ones were in Algebra II, and there were a handful of people in Pre-Calculus and Calculus AB as freshman. This was a solid school in an upper middle-class area, but not a magnet school or anything like that. I'm pretty sure this is only the case at top schools. I went to the top public school in Memphis, TN and while we had full classes of people taking Algebra II in 9th grade, most kids were taking Algebra I. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 22:23 on Sep 11, 2015 |
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Sep 11, 2015 22:16
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computer parts posted:It's not a track because you can belong to some AP courses but not others. I have a friend who was big into AP Bio and Chem (and is now in med school) but had a more or less regular History and Physics class (and was in Pre-Cal her senior year). There's also the fact that the overwhelming majority of students, barring a very small minority, will not be taking all/most AP courses during their junior/senior years (whereas people usually do stick to nothing but standard or honors courses). While many of us might have, most students only take one or two each of those years, if any at all.
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Sep 11, 2015 23:48
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blah_blah posted:Yes. My point is that presenting Algebra I in 9th grade as something that is only relevant to the top echelon of students is absolutely wrong. If you are taking a math course lower than this in 9th grade, your likelihood of going to a high-quality postsecondary institution is not high (and I'm not talking about Harvard/Stanford/MIT/etc, I'm talking about University of {state name}). Um, I think you might be confused about something, based on several of your posts in this thread (I don't mean this in a condescending way; it seems like you genuinely just misread the OP or something). There is no proposal to remove Algebra I from 9th grade. The OP discusses removing it from 8th grade (ignoring the fact that some/most of the material would still be covered throughout the curriculum). If they were preventing anyone from taking Algebra I until after 9th grade, then yeah, that would probably be a bad idea (it would make it more or less impossible to take Calculus during high school). Fortunately that is not the case.
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Sep 12, 2015 19:01
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madlobster posted:Common Core math teaches that in 6th grade. They actually do similar things even earlier; like I mentioned in an earlier post, my mom was doing simple "solve for x" math with her first grade class under Common Core. It seems like the OP (and many others) just fundamentally don't understand the changes that were made and like the idea of being enraged over dumb things.
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Sep 12, 2015 20:45
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Unseen posted:Isn't separating kids into different class levels all about helping them succeed? The thing is, in reality the main difference between kids in more advanced courses the the rest of students isn't that they're just magically more dedicated and intelligent (the fact that these classes are disproportionately made up of white/wealthier students is all the proof necessary that this is the case). Tracking isn't necessary inherently wrong, but the way it is implemented (in a way that basically splits students into a "smart" and "dumb" group that only ever intersects for courses like PE and usually provides a substandard learning environment for the latter) is extremely bad and harmful. I think many people in this thread are coming from the perspective of fortunate people who enjoyed (and were capable of) taking more advanced courses. I do not think it is inherently wrong to make the small percent of super high achieving kids sacrifice something if it would have a massive benefit to less fortunate ones (which, from what I understand, it absolutely would; mixing up more and less advanced students absolutely has a positive impact on the less advanced ones). It's not ideal, and I would prefer (and be open to the possibility of) an option that allowed students to take more advanced courses without loving over the majority who don't. But the current situation is not acceptable, and I think many people are seeing the situation through the rose-tinted lens of someone who was never exposed to the rest of the system.
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Sep 13, 2015 05:21
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Obdicut posted:Again, tracking and AP classes have nothing to do with each other. Nobody is getting rid of AP classes. My boss (who is a geneticist, which I think is relevant given the whole nature vs nurture debate) has pointed out that, while certain individuals might be marginally more intelligent due to their genes, life is basically a series of events that reinforce whatever small advantage may have initially existed. Like, if you have better parents/home life, your chance of getting into an advanced program very early on is higher, and if you get into a very early advanced program, your chance of getting into honors/AP courses later also improves (and then a good college, job, etc). When looking at final outcomes, actual inherent ability plays a very tiny part.
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Sep 13, 2015 06:14
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Regarding how ridiculous the whole system of whole ends up on "advanced" tracks is, the whole CLUE program (may go by different names in different states?) comes to mind. Basically, there were two ways you could get in; either have an IQ over some cutoff (130 I think?) or submit a portfolio. The latter was basically a way for anyone with aggressive enough parents to get into the program (not that using the IQ was that much better, but at least it wasn't quite as transparently unfair). Basically, if someone is from a well-off family and their parents want them to end up in advanced courses, then that's where they'll end up (unless they're literally retarded or something maybe).
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Sep 13, 2015 06:30
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PT6A posted:Surely everyone would be (very rightly) enraged if schools said, "gently caress it, anyone more than two standard deviations below the mean cannot be helped, we need to focus on the majority." Why does this all of a sudden change when you switch "below" with "above", especially considering that giftedness often presents with some form of learning disability? The education system has an obligation to meet the diverse needs of all students. This logic doesn't make sense. It's entirely reasonable for someone to only care about people at the bottom of whatever spectrum. It's like saying that it's wrong to help the poor at the expense of the rich. The big, obvious difference is that a poor (as in bad, not income, though the two often coincide) student who is disregarded usually ends up with a pretty awful life working as a wage slave. A gifted student who is forced to take a less challenging curriculum may be bored but will still be better off than most other students and perform better at college and likely end up with a much better job. Basically, the consequences of disregarding (or more accurately, just giving less focus to) one group are far greater than with the other. Focusing on people at the bottom is a completely reasonable thing to do. (Regarding this specific situation, I would imagine that there's no need to disregard gifted students; I'm just pointing out that "it's just as bad to ignore the gifted as it is to ignore the disadvantaged!" is stupid logic.)
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Sep 16, 2015 19:59
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PT6A posted:So, the alternative should be that kids who learn faster should simply sit there and be bored, forbidden from learning things that might give them an advantage somewhere down the line? That's loving ridiculous, you know that, right? You're talking about making kids suffer, when it would be easy to prevent that suffering, just to maintain some notion of equality. That's reprehensible, and I'm glad the people in my school district had no such ridiculous notions. Um, the status quo of separating gifted kids from the rest of the student population also causes harm. You (and a number of other posters in this thread) seem to only be looking at things from the perspective of a gifted child; probably because that's the only experience you personally have. Non-gifted (for lack of a better term) students benefit greatly from being placed in classes with more gifted students and suffer from being relegated to inferior classes. Ideally it would be possible to provide a high quality education to all students in a way that doesn't result in schools where all the gifted classes mostly consist of well off white/asian kids (which absolutely is currently the case; children in well off families generally perform better in school for a number of reasons*). Maybe this is possible, and I don't feel equipped to argue that it isn't possible. I just find that a number of posters in this thread seem to be concerned only with gifted children, despite them only making up a tiny portion of students (again, this is likely because you were a gifted child yourself and, like most people, sympathize more with people like yourself). *Just to elaborate on this, it's not completely clear what the all the causal factors are, but lower income students (of which minority students are disproportionately a part) absolutely do poorer in terms of academic achievement than those from better backgrounds. Whether this is due to factors directly related to wealth (like the stress or poor nutrition often associated with poverty) or things indirectly related to it (better schools being in more wealthy districts, which is more due to the massive economic(+racial) segregation in American communities), it is still an important factor.
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Sep 18, 2015 02:45
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blah_blah posted:This is not substantiated by the NBER paper I referred to earlier (which I just realized that I failed to link to correctly -- see here). Students who just make it over the cutoff for admission to magnet schools do not outperform their peers who are just below the cutoff, despite the fact that they have access to better peers and teachers (and likely a more sophisticated, challenging curriculum as well). Thanks, that paper is interesting. There are a couple questions I have about its results though. The first is that, when discussing the poor performance of students near the cutoff, it states "this result is consistent with an invidious comparison model of peer effects, whereby students are demoralized or garner fewer teacher resources by being placed lower in the achievement distribution of their class." This makes me think that the results might be at least partially due to a problem in the way education is administered in the magnet schools in question; ideally students near the bottom shouldn't be receiving fewer teacher resources, for example. The second is that I was wondering how the paper deals with the fact that the students in the magnet schools would presumably be taking more advanced courses when measuring achievement. It seems that they maybe used a standardized test? It seems that, if testing the same material, that it's true there wouldn't be much of a difference between children in the magnet schools and those just below the cutoff, but that the children in the magnet schools would still have learned more information that doesn't show up on the standardized tests by virtue of taking the more advanced courses. I'm pretty sure the paper addresses this, but I'm kind of tired and would appreciate it if someone else could explain that aspect of the results. In my post I had in mind some study involving students from a poor, majority black school being sent to a wealthier, more diverse school and performing better as a result. I forget what the specific study was, though. Either way, it seems like I might be wrong about the benefit of mixing up gifted/non-gifted students, though I would like more evidence/a better understanding of existing evidence between confidently believing there's no benefit.
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Sep 18, 2015 05:36
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