And, in the interest of fairness and balance 
, here is an article debunking the above, with links to many more that do the same.
I submit that it should have been taught throughout K-12.
Anyway…I don’t know what to offer; I can only share some of what I do as a writing assessment specialist. It is a rare thing when we get an essay good enough for us to place the student in Freshman Comp. Most of the others wind up a level or two below that, or in the remedial (though we have another name for it, of course) courses. I am not counting the ESL courses, which are different altogether.
Scores run the gamut, but we’ve been placing a lot more people (fresh out of high school) into the remedial courses lately.
One big reason why more remedial works is necessary at the college level is simply that those who previously would have needed remedial help weren’t going to colleges. College (in the US) is becoming more and more the standard four (or more) years after HS. We don’t have anything even remotely like “college-bound” vs “trade-bound” HS’s that are found in some european colleges. (Oh, sure, there are some ‘vocational-technical’ HS’s, but they’re few and far between.) I have some kids in my classes who are going off to college who I just want to ask “WHY?”
HS’s in the US are not allowed to act as a filter. Thus, the colleges are now seeing students of a caliber who, fifty years ago, would not have even applied.
I agree the gifted students are what can bring us to the front of all the countries but the united states does not let us help the united states be brought to the front of the pack. if you have not noticed I am one of the students that was placed in the gifted program I was placed in there in 3rd grade all through elementary school I met in a room for about 1-2 hours a week. then once I went to middle school we met once a day for one class and you had to enroll in the class and that was the only time that you could be in there and as far as advanced classes went we had an advanced math in 6th-8th grade and an advanced English in only 8th those were the only advanced classes. my earth science teacher noticed I was sleeping in classes and was getting 100% on every test and every project so she had me do all the work everyone else did but also gave me a book full of chemistry so I could try and get further ahead but I had no instruction at times I had figured out more about stuff in the book quicker then she had. Now, I am going to be a junior in high school and last year our district decided to make several cut backs which our gifted teachers had managed to delay several years but we were able to drop in to the gifted room all day now we can only go there in the afternoon. but if you walk around the school and look in the doors every student that has any sort of disability or is a disruption has a Para to help them so there is an extra what 15-20 teachers a school if you cut that in half and made sure you had a Para in a room of 2 of those student you would have split those teachers and made it even so the more advanced kids would not be so bored. (example) last year I was in my math class (HNR algebra 2) one side of the room was mostly kids who were good at math but not considered “gifted” the other side was mostly gifted kids (was not intentional just kind of worked out that way) the gifted side was majorly disruptive but still out performed the other kids we were not paying that much attention but still did really well and got a’s in the class. imagine how much more we could have accomplished in that year if we had another teacher in there helping us learn stuff for the next year instead of having 7 or 8 of us (out of a class of 20-22) sitting there playing “temple run” to see who could go the furthest or get the most points or coins. point is how can we say that we need to get better scores but not help the kids that can actually achieve the much higher scores were helping our smartest achieve being only slightly smarter than average. It is basically how most people say do not complain about who the president is if you do not vote… well how about the teachers and government does not complain and try to make school longer if they do not address actually trying to make a difference in the area that needs the help to be better advanced. the system is set so the smart people can only hit their full potential if they get a lucky break which is wrong it is the same as saying we will let the remedial kids struggle and they can get help if a teacher notices and cares enough to actually help them. Which we all know the government would never let that happen so why would they let the gifted kids be bored and in extreme cases drop out…?
Welcome to the SDMB, thebengals85. It sounds like you have something to say that might be interesting, but the giant wall of text you posted is just too hard to read for anyone to puzzle out. Can you try again with some paragraph breaks?
When I was in school, I was always resentful when I was placed in mixed-ability groups and expected to help out the less competent. Why should I have to hang around these guys, when I’d rather be reading books on astrophysics or whatever my subject de jour was?
Years later I became a teacher, and I realized how freaking hard teaching is. Learning comes in stages- being able to repeat information, being able to use information to solve routine problems, and finally being able to integrate information your everyday life and use it in creative ways. Teaching pulls on the latter, Just ask anyone who has tried to teach English as a Second Language. It seems like the easiest thing in the world, right? I mean, you have been a master at English since you were four years old. In reality, it turns out that even when we are really good at knowing how to use it, we usually still might have a very incomplete understanding of how it works. When I started teaching ESL, the first thing I had to do was get a grammar book and actually learn grammar. I’d have students ask tough questions like “Why do we say ‘going to’ for things in the future- what does that even mean?” Simply being able to speak and write wasn’t enough- I had to achieve a full mastery of English.
I’ll grant you that when “the fast help the slow” is actually implemented in classrooms, the student often are not given a foundation in basic teaching. But it’s still a very sound concept. In the real world, just knowing stuff isn’t worth much. You need to be able to communicate and use that knowledge, with specialists and non-specialists alike. The person who knows everything about the field probably isn’t the MVP of the office- it’s the person who can put together teams where everyone shines and knowledge gets turned into action.
What I wish I had learned when I was younger is academic discipline. The joy of learning is a great thing, but gifted kids can get very good at only doing the joyful parts and skating through the tough parts. As a kid, I “wasn’t good at math,” but I could fake it through by cramming and making educated guesses. If I got called out, I’d just pull out my stellar performances in other subjects and people would usually back off. Unlike the more average kids, I never had to do things that I didn’t have a lot of natural talent in, so I never learned how to do that. I just did what I was good at and avoided the rest- no different than the basketball player who is coddled through the tough classes because he can shoot hoops.
It didn’t catch up to me until I was 30 years old and trying to take the GREs for a competitive grad program. I suddenly realized that I had never learned high school math. I could barely remember how to long division. I literally had just never learned math. I had to learn it all over, on my own. I took me two-three hours a day of study and very not-fun drills for nearly a year. The people around me (Chinese college freshman who had spent their lives studying ten hours a day) laughed at me when they saw me struggling through the basics of eighth grade algebra. And I still plugged away. Eventually I took the test, got the score I needed, and realized I wasn’t “bad at math,” I just had to work to do it well. Suddenly I realized all those avenues i had though were closed to me- scientist, doctor, etc. were actually something i could have achieved if I had ever learned to get good at something I wasn’t great at.
Now I can do all kinds of things I’m “bad at.” I can run a few miles, even though it took months of unpleasant training. I can speak some tough languages, even though I’m a terrible language learner. I learned to budget my time, even through I’m “naturally” a procrastinator.
I wish I had learned that lesson a couple decades ago- who knows what my life would be if I had learned to push myself, rather than coasting on my natural talents?