Re:With plunging enrollment, a ‘seismic hit’ to public schools
by somenameforme on Wednesday May 18, 2022 @02:56AM
(#31419957)
It's obviously true, to the point of tautology, that schools which pick students who will likely succeed will tend to have students who succeed. But I wouldn't say that these schools offer nothing better after controls.
If it takes Timmy, on average, 2 days to learn a lesson and Tom 20 minutes to learn a lesson, then a system that focuses more on the educator of source of problems, instead of the child, is going to trend towards each lesson taking 2 days. And Tom? Well I imagine many of us were Tom. He'll be bored out of his mind, but hopefully can manage to use his vast swaths of free time for something other than shenanigans and being the class clown. By contrast at a school where Tom is the mean student, similar lessons can now trend towards being done in 20 minutes. Tom has a much more interesting time, learns vastly more, and comes out far better at the end.
Yes I'm aware of ideals like differentiated instruction [1] but it not only poses a massive burden on educators, it also fails to solve the problem. Even in its ideal scenario, you end up sacrificing breadth for an ideal of depth that in many cases is somewhat nonsensical. Instead of having since learned geometry, Tom is instead stuck continuing to "learn" basic arithmetic he already knows, but with 'enriched opportunities for educational depth' [with basic arithmetic].
If it takes Timmy, on average, 2 days to learn a lesson and Tom 20 minutes to learn a lesson, then a system that focuses more on the educator of source of problems, instead of the child, is going to trend towards each lesson taking 2 days. And Tom? Well I imagine many of us were Tom. He'll be bored out of his mind, but hopefully can manage to use his vast swaths of free time for something other than shenanigans and being the class clown. By contrast at a school where Tom is the mean student, similar lessons can now trend towards being done in 20 minutes. Tom has a much more interesting time, learns vastly more, and comes out far better at the end.
Yes I'm aware of ideals like differentiated instruction [1] but it not only poses a massive burden on educators, it also fails to solve the problem. Even in its ideal scenario, you end up sacrificing breadth for an ideal of depth that in many cases is somewhat nonsensical. Instead of having since learned geometry, Tom is instead stuck continuing to "learn" basic arithmetic he already knows, but with 'enriched opportunities for educational depth' [with basic arithmetic].
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differentiated_instruction