Re:Boston public schools suspend advanced learning classes
by yarcob on Sunday February 28, 2021 @03:11PM
(#26296594)
My experience in school (and now with my kids in school) was that there was no such thing as a group of "average" students. There's a huge variation in most grades.
Sure, you could pick the smartest kid in each class and put them in a gifted program, und give extra help to the slowest learners. But that wont help the rest of the class that still spans a huge range.
That's why I think that education should move away from the "everyone does the same thing" type.
I took some extra physics classes in high school. And guess what, in those extra classes every student got their own exercises. Because we were all at different levels and had different interests.
Why don't they do that in normal classes?
Re:Boston public schools suspend advanced learning classes
by zozbot234 on Sunday February 28, 2021 @03:01PM
(#26296504)
Well, one problem is that practically every teacher wants to teach the easy, gifted students that already know most of the material anyway. No one wants to deal with the not-so-easy ones, where teacher quality and proper discipline actually makes a huge difference to quality of education. That's why explicit tracking is so unpopular - it exposes these not-so-comfortable dynamics.
It's silly to expect for the average teacher to be able to teach every kind of student. Some teachers are better at challenging gifted students. Some teachers are better at teaching large groups of "average" students. Some teachers are better at teaching basic concepts to students that the educational system has failed.