I feel like a more trades-oriented approach with kids who don’t have the desire, motivation or aptitude for college would lead to more engagement and give those kids a better chance at success.
But, to answer the question more broadly, it's the 'equality' bit I think. I'm all for giving everyone equal opportunity, and the ability to move into accelerated pathways if you can prove you have the requisite knowledge to do so. But if you stick students with learning disabilities with accelerated students nobody is going to have a good time. It doesn't help either group and just harms them.
And, again, I say this as someone who didn't think California's math updates were all that terrible. Pushing kids to do stats as opposed to just the whole "everyone needs to aim towards calculus" attitude is a great thing and I stand behind that. But if we can differentiate classes, we can serve all groups of kids better and provide better outcomes for all. But the whole class needs to be differentiated; differentiation within a set of 30 kids is nigh impossible, especially when there's such a gap between abilities. For a personal story, the smartest kid I ever taught was in my last year teaching. He worked hard, if there was something he didn't understand he asked for more help and practice problems. The lowest kid I ever taught was in the same class. The kid was a freshman in high school and couldn't add single digit numbers without a calculator. There's no way that should ever be happening.
This was explicitly the operating philosophy of my middle school. It was terrible.
The concern is that they become a self-fulfilling prophecy. You get sorted into the lower grade, perhaps because of maturing more slowly in the early years, or a home environment non-conducive to study due to two working parents, or just economic disadvantages like having to live further away from the school and therefore spending time commuting that other kids are spending on study. (and in the US there's a correlation with race for the structural disadvantages because of more outright historical racism).
So students end up in a lower grade of class, don't get taught as complex versions of their subjects, and finish school with a lesser educational attainment, thereby setting the seeds for their next generation to be in the same place.
Even without seperated classes, this does happen to some level between schools.
An effective education is ultimately the student's responsibility. If we could somehow teach that at an early age, lot of these problems become irrelevant.
As a freshman I was placed in a geometry class in high school that included several seniors that obviously came to class high and some that spoke 0 English. I asked for more difficult problems in class, unaware that an advanced geometry class even existed at the school.
After taking a precalc class as a junior (which was after I took a precalc summer class at a local university), I was told I would be placed in AP calc AB.
I literally had to accost the teacher after class and say that was unacceptable. He said if I could convince the Calc teacher I should be in BC calc, I could take it. As luck would have it, the calc teacher was my former geometry teacher. I finished AP calc BC with an A and a 5/5 on the AP exam, but what if I hadn't been so lucky (knew the teacher) or so pissed off with my education up to that point that I had respected the precalc teacher's decision?
(1) My mom was a teacher there, so she knew what classes were offered better than I did, and was able to help me plan stuff early on without the counselor.
(2) The curriculum director used to teach beside my mom and got hired the same year (and they retired the same year even), and had known me my entire life. She often just went over the counselor's head to make sure my schedule lined up like I needed it to
(3) I had an uncle who worked over at the central administration for the school. He got sent lots of information about summer camps, etc, and passed them on both to my mom and the curriculum director to advocate for them.
All three of them are, sadly, retired now (though my mom keeps coming out of retirement because they can't find biology teachers) and there's not many at the school who advocate for the kids in the same way. The old principal (left at the end of the 2021 school year) was horrible too. I've heard the new one is better, and is slowly trying to re-rigourise the curriculum, but he's fighting against a lot of lazy teachers and our guidance office. It's a mess, but I truly hope he succeeds. It's almost made me want to go back to help push for that and for academically gifted kids, so they actually realise what's available.
My single mom worked three jobs to put me through private school and pay for my college. I grew up thinking that no college == bag groceries for the rest of your life.
How could anyone be proud of depriving themselves of the tools to succeed in life? It's like being proud of gouging out your own eyes and walking around blind.
Though lots of America is fundamentally based in anti-intellectualism. Anti-Intellectualism in American Life was an eye-opening read and helped explain a lot of what I saw around me in the rural Bible Belt.
Note, I'm biased. My undergraduate degree was not in teaching but in physics. I did a masters programme in teaching to transition to becoming a teacher. I enjoyed teaching, but just ended up finding it boring teaching the same thing six times a day, so when an opportunity to do a new masters came along, I took it. I didn't leave because I got burnt out or hated it, I just wanted something a bit more challenging.
2) They are. The masters I did for teaching was a joke. I've seen high schoolers with better writing abilities than half my professors. And these are people with 'educational doctorates'. Also, this might be different at better universities, but at least in my state several are propped up by their online teaching masters (the state requires a masters) and they exist just to pump them out. If you don't get a 4.0 something is wrong. I've heard similar issues with the undergraduate programmes in the state.
3. Kids don't want to be at school. They want to be out doing kid things, which we are limiting more and more in school. They also don't want to necessarily sit and learn the stuff they're supposed to learn. It's a complex issue, but that's my take on it a lot.
4. Yep. This is, in my opinion, the number one issue facing American schools, and why private/charter (sometimes) do so much better. They can be picky about the students they take -- thus they only take those who are well behaved and who want to be there and have active parent involvement. Parent involvement is a huge predictor of school success. Until we fix that -- including the issues of poverty and not social safety net -- some schools won't improve. Kids need a safe place at home and at school if they're to truly learn and achieve what they can. Sadly, nobody talks about this issue, nor are any steps taken to change it or the culture around education. I'm from a rural area, there's people proud they dropped out and didn't get a degree and even more proud they didn't get a college one. It gets passed on.
5. Absolutely. It's incredibly difficult to teach 30+ kids at once, of various levels. Especially when they refuse to create differentiated classes. I had some classes that ran the gamut from kids who needed extra assistance and had learning disabilities to kids who would literally be in the running for valedictorian and had all accelerated classes in the subjects that had it. If I spend time on one subset of those kids, it immediately hurts the other. Now, this is a school-specific problem and lazy guidance counselors and a principal who just didn't give a shit about academically gifted students, but I had a cousin leave the school just this year because they don't care about academics because they're too worried about passing the weaker ones (not catching them up, but just making sure they can squeak by with the bare minimum). Not entirely the dehumanisation and alienation you mentioned, but I think it leads to it when the classes can't be catered towards them.
This is the one thing where I think more money could help -- get more teachers and get smaller class sizes. It'd also be nice I think to have a teacher go all four years with the students in high school, unless there's major issues, so the students get to truly know the teacher and feel like they can trust them. It could work in my state, except for science because each subject has its own certification as opposed to just one for 'math'.