I remember literally spending weeks of schooling in primary school learning how to bubble in a multiple choice answer sheet. 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, for weeks on end having the fact we need a #2 pencil and that you shouldn't fill outside the bubble when answering the scantron on the TAAS test.

My original school system was always trying to push me forward; they placed me in gifted programs, encouraged me to compete in academic competitions (you know the ones I'm talking about), and often recommended to my parents that I should be allowed to skip a couple of grades.

Conversely, my latter school system, in an attempt to meet standards and retain order (I assume), simply taught down to the lowest denominator. As a result, I lost a lot of the drive and motivation previously impressed upon me. It's only after growing up that I've gotten some of that back, however, I doubt it will ever reach its previous high.

So, as unemotional as it may seem, there should be a mechanism for either removing those at the bottom in order to accelerate their learning and return them back to the general population, or a similar mechanism to allow the higher levels to avoid decline.

In any case, I'll share another funny anecdote: I took a reading comprehension test in 3rd grade. It said I was reading a college level. I'm not really sure what that meant then, but in any case it was as high as the system went. Not only did I have to take the same test in 4th grade again, my parents were sent a letter with a very concerned tone. It said I was not making progress on my reading skills and that soon I would fall behind the other children. It recommended I be placed in a remedial comprehension course so I could catch up.

This goes to show that the problem is more localized than state level, it is a municipal and district-level choice so long as you meet minimum testing requirements. Now when students don't meet minimum testing requirements, most districts unfortunately fall into the trap of teaching to test as opposed to teach.

The #2 pencil is spot on. I carried an entire box of pencils and would trade them for a slice of pizza at lunch.

For those not from Texas or too young to have experienced it, TAAS was horrible even compared to other standardized tests.

Other standardized tests at least pretend to assess a student's learning. TAAS assessed a students ability to parse octuple negatives and poorly typeset mathematics.

So, there were three portions: reading comprehension, math, grammar, and persuasive writing. The maximum score for any of the TAAS portions is a 4, with 3 as the minimum passing grade. The first three were ridiculously easy, but the writing portion was a nightmare.

I don't remember all the details anymore, but IIRC you were expected to include a statistic and a quote from an expert in your paper. The kicker? You weren't allowed any outside materials, and you were expected to make up the statistic and the quote. That's right: the assignment was to write something that would be considered fake news nowadays.

I got a 2. I only passed because I got a 4 on the grammar portion, because for some reason the persuasive writing portion and the grammar portion were averaged together to form what they called the "writing" portion.

My year (10th grade 2000-2001) was the second-last to take the TAAS, and we were the last to take only the TAAS, as it was being phased out in favor of the TAKS. The year behind me took both the TAAS and the TAKS, with only the TAAS counting for graduation requirements (they only had to take the TAKS because the state wanted to do a dry run before switching over), and the people two years behind me only took the TAKS. The timeline went like:

* 2000-2001: 10th grade takes the TAAS (my class)

* 2001-2002: 10th grade takes the TAAS

* 2002-2003: 11th grade takes the TAKS (dry run, same class as above)

* 2003-2004: 11th grade takes the TAKS (for real)

Exact same situation here, but Florida. Elementary school was alright, but middle school became pure FCAT preparation and nothing else. My parents withdrew me from them at that point and put me back into regular classes.

They also used a "block schedule", where each day, you would only attend half your classes, but for twice as long, alternating which classes on which days, and then rotating the order of the classes. (So of your 6 classes, you attended daily: 1,3,5 then 2,4,6, then 3,5,1, then 4,6,2, then 5,3,1...).

Here's an calendar I found of a school currently doing this, tell me this isn't confusing as hell:

http://ponce.dadeschools.net/blockschedule.asp

Until I eventually got into private school for the last 2 years of high school, I had never had to work to get straight As. I could often complete homework assignments before class was even over.

Unfortunately, this conditioned me to be incredibly lazy. As I never developed a strong work ethic, in college I continued to put in a minimum of effort though that wasn't enough for straight As.

I've never really had the experience of consistently trying to do something hard. Even though I'm trying to force myself to do it now (setting ambitious fitness goals and taking advanced online classes), I can't help but feel that it would've been a lot easier to develop this grit when motivation didn't entirely depend on me.

I'm not 100% sure but I believe these were similar to Northern Irish grammar schools where at the end of primary school you took an exam to determine if you could go to the grammar school or if you would go to the standard high school. I went through this system. Recently they have been slowly removing it and personally I go back and forth on whether that is a good idea. The biggest issue is that the amount of pressure placed on 10/11 year olds to pass that exam and get into a grammar school, not to mention the 18 months or so of preparation is very high. Too high arguably. It also fails children who don't do well with standardised exams. I know people who failed that exam but were lucky enough to still get into a grammar school and who did very well.

A better system may be having one school with optional advanced classes (we even had this for GCSE Maths/Advanced Maths in out grammar school). That way people can take advanced courses in the areas they naturally excel at rather than hindering their entire education by denying them the higher quality teaching at a grammar school.

Could this be attributed to the school being of higher quality/better funded, higher performing teachers, or surrounding oneself with higher performing students? Or all of the above?

EDIT: In keeping with the trend, took about 30 seconds to get downvoted.

It's pretty simple, really: you're looking from your own, self-centered perspective. From the point of view of the society, it may be desirable to restrict options available to individuals in order to mitigate negative effects of everyone making self-interested choices.

Whether or not options should be restricted in schooling is a topic for cost/benefit analysis, but as a general point, I don't see anything mind-boggling about this perspective.

EX: My high school had a swim team and a chess club. We had almost every AP class, lot's of general ed, even some handicapped students. When they split the school a lot of that was lost.

IMO, it's the disruptive students that need to go not the gifted. Unless your talking boarding schools even NYC does not really have enough exceptionally gifted students for their own high school.

I can't find the link, but I've heard strong arguments for models where school days are 4 hours long and kids go to community centers afterwards where they do homework, play sports, games, club activities, hikes, music lessons and just hangout. As a bonus, the people in these areas DON'T need a masters degree to do their job as we separate educational aspects of schools from social aspects.

Dozens of small schools could easily work together in a community under this model with changes in the classroom schools having no impact on the activity centers. You could even go to certain schools on different days for areas of specialization/interest being taught.

There are a whole world of possible options that open up if we don't lock in the model that we have today. IMO, it's not about defunding the schools. It's about WANTING to fund them.

Unless, these are simply different building right next to each other. Which is fine, but you could do the same thing in one building.

My point, as applied to this case, is that giving the option of "smart-only schools" will predictably lead to people taking it, which may lead to issues described by 'habosa here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13483591. It's a reasonable question to ask if this is what is beneficial to the society (including its economy), and if the answer is no, then not giving such an option in a first place is an entirely logical approach.

The recent fraud investigations in the USA for-profit college market (eg where several scam-ish type outfits churned out expensive but useless degrees to people lured in by slick marketing) absolutely shows that, sometimes, more options can be worse.

I agree that for-profit institutions have no place in education.

I didn't find that at all. There is more to school than classes, and we did have a bunch of classes that weren't segregated by ability (history, geography, religious studies, shop classes, sometimes PE, etc.) Plus we had lunch and all breaks together. My friends where absolutely not all in the same math set as me.

Is streaming out of fashion in state schools these days? I know its alive and well in public schools as my son was streamed.

Edit: For those outside the UK: public schools are a type of private school.

You ideally need to be able to promote and demote, which means having at least one subject teacher per stream per year, so that pupils can shift between streams without timetable changes, and having small enough class sizes that the teachers can all cope with a few more being added (as well as possibly doing a bit of extra coaching to get a promoted pupil up to the level of the rest of the class).

Selective schooling as a norm can write talented kids off at age 11 if their talents aren't broad enough. Streaming means that children can still excel in their best disciplines even if they are lacking in others.

People were moved between streams fairly frequently.

You break kids up by test score and then put all the top kids together, all the middle kids together, and all the bottom kids together. My public school experimented with it for one year, but reverted. Rumor was, parents felt like their kids were being written off in the 6th grade.

You have to sit an exam called the 11+ to enter which is much more like an IQ test than a standard subject based exam.

The most comman argument against them is that privelleged families can afford to tutor their kids specifically to pass this exam.

I was lucky enough to pass the exam, and while there definitely were instances of well off kids who had massive amounts of tutoring, the vast majority were from all kinds of different backgrounds, and levels of education.

For me it was an overwhelmingly positive experience, but I completely understand both sides of the argument.

Sure you need to be able to talk to other groups of people but not to the extent that you require 35 hours a week of education along side them for years. Additionally I'm not sure being educated alongside them actually helps. There are a a hell of a lot of intelligent people who become resentful of that situation and that attitude can take years to mature out of, if they ever do.

I ended up teaching my AP Statistics course. It was ludicrous: as a junior I somehow understood the material better than the teacher and was expected to teach a class full of seniors.

Yes, it was more educational than the alternative (sitting in a corner reading a book while totally phoning it in) but I also have no doubt that I would've learned far more in a course which actually challenged me.

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Also, this notion that our real world experiences are anywhere near as heterogeneous as public schools is downright ludicrous. It's not like we hire random people off the street to be software engineers. The average IQ of everyone I interact with is well the national average.

Honestly I think the worst part is when teachers would get annoyed that you weren't 'paying attention' and force you to stop doing the crap that's keeping your mind busy and 'focus on school', even though you already get pretty much straight A's.

I definitely believe that they work, it's a shame they don't have them in England.

For example, if they made half the kids do better, and half the kids do worse, does that count as working? While you sometimes get claims that it's for their own good that less academically inclined pupils are sent to the non-grammar schools, I'd guess the same people who say this would freak right the hell out if their own kid failed the exam and didn't get in, which kind of undermines that argument.

I take your point about the wider ramifications, but I feel as though I got a good education, and if I ever have kids, I would want them to go to a grammar school too.

Source: Personal experience. I went a grammar school in the UK. I also taught in a top UK grammar school and a not-very-good comprehensive school. I've seen it happen numerous times.