Are students in European educational systems tested and placed in separate tracks?

[Hazel]

@Balthisar

This isn’t a bad system. I still resent the fact that in high school my family moved, and therefore I had to transfer from a “good” school system to a “bad” school system – here’s the catch: the “bad” school system was very well regarded as a good school system. It subscribed to some phony belief in “outcome based education” with a silly mission statement “all kids can learn.” I don’t know if this is the point of “outcome based education,” but it meant that everybody was equal. There were no college prep classes; no advanced placement. In my senior year there was nothing left for me to take. I took swimming, journalism, Pascal, Band, Jazz Band, Spanish, German, and French. Where’s the math? Where’s the science? History? Anything important?

Yeah, I have no serious quarrel with the high school system, so long whatever steering is done is in the direction of getting kids into the program that’s best for them, as opposed to getting them into the program deemed appropriate for their social class, ethnic group, or race. And so long as there actually IS an appropriate program for just about everyone. (A common problem in the US seems to be high schools where, if you’re not being prepared for college, you’re not being prepared for anything in particular.)

It’s the elementary school tracking system I dislike. At least, as it worked in the 1950s. The theory, I suppose, is that you don’t want the best students slowed down and you don’t want the worst students struggling to keep up, and perhaps being looked down on for being behind, so you sort them into tracks. I can see the point; I tend to agree with it.

But to assign children to a track at the start of first grade, based on kindergarden performance? And this at a time when kindergarden was still looked on not as school, but as preparation for school? “Preparation for school” meaning that you were supposed to be adjusting to being away from home for a large part of the day (for most, this was their first such experience), following instructions, getting along with other kids, etc. I think, even if kindergarden had included a significant amount of study of actual school subjects, it would not be enough to base a tracking decision on. Kids tended to stay wherever they were put. Moving someone to a differnt track was rare.

What track you landed in depended mainly on how well prepared you were for school, which depended mainly on how well educated your parents were. Exception: having well-educated partents who were recent immigrants with little English disadvantaged a child to about the same degree as having poorly-educated American-born parents.

Also, parents had zero imput. School officials did as they thought best and didn’t discuss it with the parents. I don’t suppose this lasted long. Eventually, the existance of tracking became too well known for the schools to be able to get away with keeping the parents in the dark about it.

I think tracking (esp. tracking at an early age) can be a self-fullfilling prophacy. I think an average kid placed in the top track will do much better than his hypothetical identical twin placed in the bottom track. Kids tend to live up to (or down to) the expectations adults have for them.

[Hazel]

The US has tried to solve the problem of wide variations in how well prepared to start school children are. The main solution was the Head Start program. Polls indicate that the a large majority of the population approves strongly of Head Start. Yet the program has never received enough funding to include more than about half of the children who meet the criteria for enrollment.

The US has developed several other programs for babies and children that are intended to overcome the disadvangates of poverty: such as the school lunch and breakfast programs, and WIC (stands for Women, Infants, Chidren). WIC provides food and nutritian education for pregnant women, and food for babies, and small children. Same story: none of these programs have ever had enough funding to reach everyone who is qualified for them.

And then there’s our two-tiered school system. Does any other developed nation have a system where the public schools attended by the non-poor are so much better than those attended by the poor? Is this disparity a result of the US having a wider difference between rich and poor than the other developed nations (if that is indeed the case)?

[Balthisar]

@Hazel

The US has tried to solve the problem of wide variations in how well prepared to start school children are. The main solution was the Head Start program. Polls indicate that the a large majority of the population approves strongly of Head Start. Yet the program has never received enough funding to include more than about half of the children who meet the criteria for enrollment.

I always thought this program was just for poor people, not “behind” people. For example, I went to Head Start. But I’m certainly not in any way behind the curve, and never, ever have been.

[Hazel]

@Balthisar

I always thought this program was just for poor people, not “behind” people. For example, I went to Head Start. But I’m certainly not in any way behind the curve, and never, ever have been.

“Less well prepared for school” (that is, less well prepared for one’s first year of school) means exactly that – not well prepared. It has nothing at all to do with intelligence. The whole point of Head Start is to prepare young children for school. Basically, a free nursery school for the kids whose parents could not afford private nursery school, so they’d be on a more equal footing with kids who had spent a year or two in a private nursery school.