I’m not familiar with the French system, but my understanding is that the German system starts at the equivalent of a Junior year of High School (possibly Sophomore) in the US system - around 16 years old. Which is exactly the age at which more differentiation in course availability is expected even in a detracked system.
Most of the discussions regarding tracking are focusing on the 6th-10th grade levels (in the US system).
I think a well-funded vocational system would be a boon for the US, but it requires significant resources both from the government and private industry. My understanding is that it’s basically a contract between the student and a company that they will get trained and then have a job after they finish the apprenticeship program.
Not typical for Europe, but they do seem to get good results.
Separating kids into separate schools is more extreme than merely having them in some different classes in the same school. I don’t see why anyone would object to the latter but be fine with the former. It’s not at all obvious that honours programs would have to cost more either; it’s the same number of teachers teaching the same number of kids, just split up differently.
I just googled and it looks like they are commonly separated in 5th grade, at the age of 10. It also says kids in the more vocational schools have the option to transfer to the gymnasium at 16 if they want to get a college education (and presumably if their performance is good enough).
I think it would for the UK, too. We have too many graduates, with too much debt, chasing too few jobs - whereas the trades get far too little respect. Supporting it has worked out well for Germany, at any rate.
What are you talking about? Even at the college level the so-called “smart” kids are waaaay easier to teach than the struggling kids.
Lectures and in-class activities are way easier because you only have to explain once, at the appropriate level, and the “smart” kids have no trouble participating. Grading is easier because they get most things right. Tests are easier because you don’t have to give more remedial assignments and you don’t have to do as much analytics to see where people are struggling. There’s usually less cheating and plagiarism. You don’t have to do as much tutoring. Instead, you can spend time doing fun sciency things or career advisement outside the classroom. It’s way easier to test out innovative teaching methods or get into cutting edge research on a topic without worrying about getting behind or students complaining.
But where the challenging students are so much more work is administration. Constant messaging to get their work in. Constant answering emails on where to find assignments and how to do them. Dealing with complaints. Dealing with cheating. All the “retention” paperwork and meetings. If you have a class or teach in a school with mostly challenging students, a huge amount of your time is dealing with these issues. You have less time and energy to focus on the subjects of your course.
I don’t know of anyone who wouldn’t rather teach the “smart” kids because they’re afraid that they would know too much and embarrass them.
That’s because you have some weird mistaken idea of what I actually believe.
I don’t have a problem with people studying entirely different streams of study. Which is not what an honours class is.
This may be my non-honours maths* talking, but 2 classes vs one would seem to require … wait, nearly got it …
any sec now, this abacus is sticky… double the teachers.
It’s an entire extra class, with all that that entails. Now, granted, this isn’t a full-time extra class, so not double teachers all the time, but it’s still more teachers than required if those students are all in one class.
Yeah, I was looking too closely at the VET program itself rather than the stages leading to it. It does seem that they track far earlier than I would be comfortable with, depending on the extent to which the transition between a “vocational” school and a “gymnasium” is possible. I would imagine there are pretty strong class-linkages between what school a 10-year-old student is placed that would make me uncomfortable. But maybe not - maybe it is strictly down to student aptitude and interest. I just find it hard to believe that a 10-year old would really decide “college isn’t for me, I want to be a whatever” and actually be able to make that decision accurately.
I would probably prefer a system that has more heterogeneity until age 15 or so, when you could provide more vocational tracks. But maybe I’m wrong and there are significant enough indicators at age 10 that you can accurately determine who is a better fit for vocational work, without getting entangled in the race and class confounding factors.
Typically a school has lots of teachers teaching the same subject. Having two teachers teaching the same subject versus two teachers where one is teaching the regular class and one teaching the honors class is the same number of teachers overall. In most cases, the existing teachers can be juggled around to provide whatever classes are needed.
But I’m not sure that schools need classes with the “honor” designation anyway. Just have classes like Physics I, II, III, IV, etc. that get harder as they advance. The kids who don’t care or struggle in physics don’t need a simplified Physics IV class because they won’t have any interest in going that far. The kids in Physics IV are almost certainly going to be the kids capable of advanced work and can overlap with honors, college prep, and AP level classwork.
I don’t think my high school had accelerated classes until my senior year when they introduced the first AP classes at that school (AP Calc and Physics). Students trying to get a regents diploma would take more math classes and more English classes, but I don’t remember there being levels of those classes.
My kids’ high school had AP classes, accelerated classes, CPA (college-prep A) and CPB (college-prep B). There was definitely a stigma that came with being in CPB classes. So, if that high school decided to combine the two CP classes into one, would that be “Equity” for the purposes of this thread? Maybe they should split into more classes – AP, accel, CPA, CBP, Vocational? Or, fewer – AP, and non AP.
What’s the right level? Whatever it was last year? Why?
That’s not how I was reading it - if all the kids are in one class, and then some of them go off to an honours class, you still need a teacher in both classes. Even if your honours class is pulling from, say, 3 regular classes, that’s still 4 teachers needed, vs three. Yes, it’s just for that one lesson, but I’m assuming that goes across grades too, so the total school complement may only be plus 2 teachers out of 20 or something. But there’s also the extra classrooms, and other resources, to consider.
This may be a difference in our school systems. In the US, most school departments have several teachers and they teach a wide variety of classes. So something like the math department may have a dozen teachers each teaching 5-6 math classes a day with lots of subject overlap and duplicate classes. Changing around the curriculum typically just means rearranging which teachers teach what and adding/cutting some of the class sessions. So instead of having 4 Trig classes, they might instead have 3 Trig classes and 1 AP Trig. Quite often the quality and educational background of the teacher isn’t really taken into account, so it’s not unusual to have a teacher teaching a subject they don’t really excel at. If the district says they need to teach Trig, AP Trig, and College Prep A/B Trig, then teachers will be told which classes they will be teaching even if they aren’t Trig experts.
Aah, that’s mostly the same as here, except I was under the impression that the Honours math teacher would be a specially qualified math teacher, not one of the regular teachers (so e.g in my daughter’s school, there’s the regular music teacher, and then the extra teachers for individual extra music lessons). In that case, the resource differential gets a lot less.
Also, I assumed there weren’t that many honours students that they would change the number of classes in the regular stream. Like only a handful from each class, so you’d still need the normal number of regular classes.
All school children should be offered equal opportunities - and the chance to make the most of their abilities within a classroom setting regardless of background. Schools should play an active role in this by providing some meals for those in need and a degree of in loco parentis supervision. Equality should mean people all are treated fairly and lawfully.
Students will vary in their interest, ability, rate of progress and parental involvement. No amount of “equity” will change the fact variations exist. More attention should be paid to students struggling with important concepts. Similarly, enriched material should be made available to students who desire it. These students may or may not need more attention depending on the details. In smaller places, a separate honour class may not be feasible. But in big cities like Vancouver, I think honours classes are reasonable if access is generally fair and inclusive.
People vary in social skills and athletic ability too. An effort should be made to improve these without judgement. There is still enormous value in sports teams, clubs, interest groups and these should be inclusive but allow for expression of talent.
But offering the exact same thing to every student is silly and a waste of teacher expertise. I was reading a book which implies education used to be better because talented women had fewer other opportunities. I do not think I agree, teaching ability and talent differ. Teachers in Canada are well paid and educated and should use this to maximize every student including the gifted ones, the differently abled and all in between.
If you have a school with five or six classes for each year group, then the students can be divided into them either according to ability, or randomly. Either way you need one teacher for each class, so there is no extra expense.
So it’s okay in your view to teach students a whole different and probably simplified curriculum, in separate schools, but it’s not okay to have students at two different levels in the same school? How does that make any sense?
Yeah, I tend to agree with you. I don’t see how kids at 10 can possibly be ready to make that decision. Even though it is possible to switch to a Gymnasium at 16, I should think it’s more difficult and a bit of a shock to do so. It’s the opposite of a flexible system where kids can be at different levels in different subjects and easily move up if their performance improves, which IMHO would be the ideal.
How convenient that the obvious, only answer you can come up with to the question: “why does school X struggle to retain teachers” is: progressive policies make the workplace untenable.
@Sam_Stone: the style of argument you use throughout this thread is my problem with you, and why you come off as disingenuous to me.
It would be one thing if you were putting for actual counterarguments to what people are saying. But your strategy seems to instead be to create ridiculous strawmen and then to just say them as if they are obviously ridiculous.
The actual issue in this thread is that The OP is wrong and no one is being held back. Advanced placement classes still exist. No one is being left behind.
What is changing is that kids are no longer being separated into dubious tracks which assume that how you did in, say, seventh grade, is indicative of how well you will always do. Instead of using tests that may have cultural baggage that gets in the way, they just let the student try, and see where they end up.
Sure, maybe you can argue that you don’t think this strategy will work. Maybe you can argue that this will somehow hold people back. That would be constructive.
But you instead just assume that these policies will hold people back, and then mock everyone else who doesn’t think, making up shit they never said. What value does that add?
An actual conservative argument can be valuable. But sarcastic, snarky strawmen are utterly pointless unless your goal is just to poke the libs. You’re smart enough to know that none of this nonsense makes for convincing argument.
I was chosen for a “gifted stream” and attended for grades five through eight. The teachers were exceptional and chosen for those classes. There were students from all over the city and while some were well off, several lived in poorer neighbourhoods. I opted not to choose the gifted stream in high school but some of those kids were friends of mine. In grades five and six, the school itself was located in a rougher neighbourhood with the idea of broadening exposure. The curriculum was basically left up to the teacher with few formal lessons. This could have gone badly with less qualified teachers.
Dr. Katz in the article seems to be way off base. I doubt any of the kids in our class received additional tutoring. Racism and systemic racism were not obvious factors and the class was pretty diverse. Despite Vancouver famously having a significant population of Asian-Canadians I suspect these factors are still being overemphasized.
The contempt for the artisan is a bit obvious, here. Like those maths geniuses will be so hot in welding class…