I am not sure I understood the OP, but ISTM that he was claiming it was lack of parental involvement, not low IQs.
Regards,
Shodan
The OP avoided poisoning his own well. But this thread is a spinoff of one where he claimed there was a fundamental, inherent lack of intelligence on the part of the kids (hence low IQ, hence poor results) in addition to lack of parental involvement.
Comparisons to a basketball team made up of short, unathletic kids and such.
So, while it wasn’t in this thread, the OP begins with a low IQ assumption and moves on from there.
But, as mentioned above, not only has the OP not really shown the low IQs assumption is true, the OP has also not shown we’ve hit the limits of what these kids can accomplish, either.
Businessfolk talk about how 20% of the customers cause 80% of the problems, right? There’s a suggestion that if you can get rid of those 20%, maybe 80% of your problems will go away.
Public schools not only can’t get of that 20%, it’d be a moral travesty to try. We’re committed to solving 100% of our problems to the best of our ability.
Thing is, it takes a tremendous amount of time to work with these clients, these students.
Today I gave students a problem something like this:
Before giving this problem, I’d modeled a similar problem on the board, taking about fifteen minutes to break it down in gory detail, used our vocabulary words like “difference” and “estimate,” drawn a number line–done everything I could think of to show how to think about the problem I’d discussed, how you could see that the answer had to be less than the total distance driven, so adding the two given numbers together wouldn’t work.
Most students got it.
But one girl, I saw, was trying to add 36+79 to get the answer. So I stopped her and asked her whether it made sense for the answer to the problem to be less than 79. She said yes, that the answer would be bigger than 79. So I drew a number line and put 0, 36, and 79 on it, and asked her whether the distance from 36 to 79 would be greater than the distance from 0 to 79. She said that it would be. So I had her cut out strips of paper the length of 0-79 and 36-79 on her number line and compare them. She did, and said that the 36-79 was shorter than the 0-79. I asked her if the answer to the problem was asking about the 36-79 distance, and she agreed that it was. I asked her if her answer would be more or less than 79, and she said it’d be more.
80% of my students get the basic idea. This kid? She needs intensive, one-on-one support.
Some ideologues like to scorn the idea of spending more on education as “throwing money at the problem,” as though spending money according to priorities is dumb. But I’ll tell you what would help this kid: if I had more than five minutes to spend with her. If I could spend an hour working one-on-one with her every day, I guarantee I could help her improve her math skills.
And I’ll only charge $20 an hour to work with her one-on-one: you’re getting a steal (and I’m still earning more than my hourly rate–thanks, NC legislature!)
Who’s up for paying?
The problem with your example here, is that even after making it painfully obvious that the number should be less than 79, the student simply couldn’t comprehend why. Meanwhile, the rest of the class is under-served while you try and make a square peg fit into a round circle. Please explain to me why more money will help that problem. “Teaching to the middle” is a major problem, but spending more resources on teaching to the bottom seems even worse imo.
The easiest way is to make parents actually care about raising their kids to value education and to respect their teachers.
Short of that, providing a marketplace to the parents who do care could make a major difference. This is where school vouchers, charter schools, and teacher accountability are critical.
I would assume your country has teaching assistants who’s job it is to identify and then teach in a much smaller group of kids that are struggling with the current subject being taught to the whole class.
Teaching assistants. Due to budget cutbacks, I have a teaching assistant for about 45 minutes a day–and that 45 minutes isn’t during math. If I was funded for a full-time teaching assistant, I’d have put her in a group to work on this basic numeracy skill.
Or if we had a lot more funding, this girl would be in a very small class. I’ve told the story before of a student of a wealthy family. The student was really, really struggling. Finally, they moved him to a private school, and now he’s flourishing. Class size? Three students. This girl would definitely benefit from a much higher teacher:student ratio than what she gets from current public school funding, but her parents can’t afford that.
“Throwing money at the problem,” as you like to say, would mean more adults per child. It’d mean more attention for kids like her.
And no, the rest of my kids aren’t underserved, thank you. Instead, I left her to work independently after about five minutes, because I needed to help others out. If they’re underserved, it’s because they’re all underserved, because every kid benefits from direct instruction, and we need more teachers and assistants.
Okay, so there’s a person named Ravitch who believes that schools with 30% graduation rates and 0% going on to college are not failing their students. This same person believes that charter schools do not benefit the students who attend them. Why should I believe what she says? The article you linked to is on Huffington Post, not a source known for its great fairness, correctness, or intellectual rigor. It contains no links to any serious research that would back up Ravitch’s claims.
“Easiest”? Are you kidding? If it’s easiest, please elaborate on your methods.
This is morally indefensible. What you’re suggesting is that we make it better for the kids who lucked out with caring parents, at the expense of kids who didn’t luck out with caring parents. The result will be terrible for the kids who didn’t luck out.
I also linked to an NPR interview. This “person named Ravitch” is not just some random person. She is an NYU professor and writer of several books who was appointed to high level positions in the Department of Education by both Clinton and Bush. That does not automatically make her right or above criticism; but it does make her an expert who is worth listening to, which is why she was so recently interviewed by NPR on this exact subject.
This is so true. It is especially sad to see in families where a trade has been passed down for many generations, but the parent feels a social pressure to give their child a so-called “better life” by sending them to college. When in fact they may not graduate, or may struggle through to get a mediocre marketing degree from a lower tier university and have worse prospects than if they had apprenticed under their father to be a mason or plumber or whatever.
QFT, very well said.
QFT again.
I was obviously making a point that the “easiest” solutions are the least feasible, as this is in part a consequence of human nature. As such, more teachers (aka more spending) is an “easy” solution that we have been trying for decades, with declining results. If all the money we spend isn’t going toward more teachers, perhaps you need to lodge a complaint with school administration and wherever else all the money we spend is being wasted. Again, maintaining the status quo but with more money is not a solution.
No, I am suggesting a true meritocracy. Where more intelligent kids who may happen to live in poorer neighborhoods can still attend a school worthy their intellect. The current system puts all kids into one room (as your example illustrates), and teaches to the middle, so as to bore the smart ones and challenge only the less intelligent ones. Such a system, in my eyes, is morally indefensible.
I don’t care about test scores. I care about choice. So…you tell me, why shouldn’t parents be allowed to send their children to any school they want? More precisely, why do low income people not get a choice where they send their kids? higher income folk can afford private schools.
Because its little more than corporate welfare as private schools are making money off of the public revenues via having taxpayers pay for tuition, takes funds away from public school districts (since funding is tied to students), and may violate the Establishment clause by funding schools where religious education occurs.
I agree we should abolish the fact that low and high income kids go to different schools, but this should be done by making private schools admit children on the same criteria as public ones and abolishing tuition thus eliminating them as bastions of elitism.
I’m not a fan of private schools, as I’ve made clear here in the past. Subsequently, I read this takedown on Slate that I heartily agreed with.
What evidence do you have that we’ve got declining results in education? Because I think you’re wrong, when you account for graduation rates and basic skills mastery of ALL students.
No you’re not. Student achievement is strongly correlated with student background. A five-year-old who has read the Hobbit with her parents and who can count to three hundred and who regularly sends letters to cousins has no more merit than a five-year-old who can’t identify basic colors or write her name; she just has a much less academic background. Your plan is to condemn the second child based on her parents, and that’s terrible.
Do you propose to give her substitute parents? How far will you take this?
Do you at least agree the burden should not be put on her teacher? She didn’t see the girl at all until five crucial years have elapsed, and then only, along with thirty other kids, for about a thousand hours a year (during which she will spend nearly eight thousand hours with parents and peers).
These posts raise an interesting philosophical question that resides beneath all these discussions. The question is, to what degree may parents seek to give their own children an advantage? I think most everyone would agree that it is incumbent upon all of us to see to it that children receive a basic education, but if someone wants to pay to send their child to a private school, does he then take on the responsibility that all children be similarly educated?
While I think it’s wise to provide a basic education for the poor child, I also think that should be able to work to give their own children every advantage they can. This notion of doing away with “elitism” is misguided. Continually striving to elite performance is good for schools and good for individuals. And the fact is that if you try to rejigger the system to remove elite anything, you strip it of the highest levels of excellence. The fact is that kids are and will be competing with each other for future jobs. Before that, to get into the best colleges. The kids that work hard to get into the best school they can, hopefully even an elite school like Harvard, MIT or Stamford, will generally do the best in life—even if they fall slightly short of their goals. Sending younger kids to elite private schools is a way to increase the odds they’ll get into an elite university. And why should a parent not be expected to help his kid as much as he can. I fully understand that there are plenty of kids who don’t have parents that are as helpful as others. And some are completely unhelpful. But when you bring a kid into this world, that kid is your responsibility. We should be solidifying that notion instead of trying to soften it. Again, I’m not saying that we shouldn’t try to a good job with all kids, particularly poor kids. I’m saying that parents should be able to give their own kids any advantages they can.
It seems that Qin Shi Huangdi’s is so egalitarian as to be counter-productive.
This is thus when government fiat steps in. Since individuals will naturally pursue the self-interest of their child, the government’s regulatory powers helps remove this dilemma for parents (of their own child’s good versus that of society’s).
I agree all students and schools should strive for “elite performance”, but I’m opposed to the notion of segregating “elite” students from others in separate schools which sets a terrible precedent.
Except a lot of elite colleges admissions are not decided by hard work but rather nepotism and many of them have revived the infamous glass ceiling for Asiatic students.
Quite frankly, I’m leaning toward the opinion that most of the top private universities need to be nationalized and become the flagship of a federal university system (along with some federalized state public university such as the top UCs) which will base admission solely on grades and test scores (for example research indicates students have a far easier time getting into Ohio State then even UCSB because of the student populations in those respective states).
I do believe parents should take responsibility and this won’t be diminished here. A parent at the same income level who devotes far more of his time to his child’s education is going to get better results and wealth is going to similarly have a positive effect owing to genetics (usually at least), the atmosphere at home, and other factors.
I don’t think that any parent is absolutely responsible for any other child’s education. I do think that the government should do its damnedest to ensure a quality public education for every child, and not lift a damned finger to help anyone leave the public education system. If despite all that you still want to leave public education, good luck and godspeed, but don’t expect government assistance on your journey: you want government assistance, the public schools await the return of the prodigal student.
Personally I lean toward a radical shifting of pedagogy: rather than lumping all the nine-year-olds in one room regardless of aptitude, I’d much rather lump all the kids working on double-digit addition in one room regardless of age. There’s a very useful pedagogical concept called the “zone of proximal development” (ZPD): it’s the area of knowledge that a student can work on but only alongside a master of the material. If you don’t know how to add single-digit numbers, double-digit numbers are currently outside your ZPD, and if you already know how to add 2-digit numbers, adding them together is also outside your ZPD.
Because we lump kids together by age, we get classrooms with wildly varying ZPDs, and good teachers have to teach wildly different lessons in order to work within every kid’s ZPD. If we lumped kids instead by ZPD, then a single lesson would address the vast majority of kids in a room, and kids could progress faster and with deeper understanding of the material.
I don’t see any evidence that the student “couldn’t” understand why. I see evidence that she didn’t. “Don’t understand right now” always looks like “can’t ever understand”, but there is truly no way to tell the difference.
You would not believe the dumbbutt students I have seen grow into capable learners over the years. It’s not something that’s really obvious to fellow students–the perspective is all off because you only see the kid in class, you only hear what says, you never seen the scope of his work–but from the point of view of a teacher, stupid kids can and do turn into smart kids, and they do so more often, more quickly, and to a greater degree when they work really really hard with a talented teacher who knows how to elicit that drive to work and to show a student how and where to apply that effort.
So kids who were irritated with the slow kids in class go off in life vaguely scornful of the slow kids, and never realize that any number of the people they know and respect as adults WERE that kid, in a different class.
But teachers, or at leas this teacher, see the changes and the progress and we think “If only I had more time. If I could work with this kid alone for an hour once a week, if I could let that one read to me for an hour, if I could if I could if I could . . .” We know we could help more kids be more knowledgeable, more capable, more competent their whole lives if we just had a little more time. And we feel guilty as hell that we can’t manage it. So when people come along and suggest just . . .writing those kids off . . it’s horrific. It’s like telling doctors not to not treat cancer patients if they didn’t respond to the first round of treatment, even though there is plenty of research that shows those people may well still be saved.