Rock and a Hard Place

iVillage Member
Registered: 11-12-2003
Rock and a Hard Place
1524
Thu, 11-20-2003 - 10:45am

There's something on this board that has been bothering me, and I hope I can articulate it.

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iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Fri, 11-28-2003 - 9:44am
No, they have in fact been having a hard time convincing parents that mixed grade classrooms won't do their child harm.
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Fri, 11-28-2003 - 10:01am
So then, how do they decide if a child requires extra help or extra challenge? This is only meaningful in the context of a given class, afterall. The fact is, our school hosts the gifted class fed by the entire region, from Gr 5-8. That class by definition is above average. But it still has a distribution that needs to be considered. The fact that if the class data were mixed in with the data from the regular classes at just this school, would show that ALL these kids are absolutely at the top - don't mean squat to how a particular child is doing within that gifted class or how the class needs to be handled in terms of itself. On the other hand, if a child is really struggling in a particular average classroom, where by and large the other kids are succeeding...it really doesn't matter where the struggling one is in terms of expected performance for age as determined by a much larger population sample. What does matter is that the struggling one is unable to handle HIS environment without extra help.
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-27-2003
Fri, 11-28-2003 - 10:20am
But the teacher didn't KNOW the kids weren't read to. She just assumed it. But if you are in a school system where books are truly alien to children (and parents?) of half the class, doesn't that worry you. Kids often cave to peer pressure, particularly the pressure to "dumb themselves down" to fit in. It won't manifest this young, but later on , if education is really that rare and looked down on that children don't recognize the purpose of books and letters by 5, your children are at risk of being the school nerds and automatically assumed to be intellectual snobs.

I understand there are places in the country where books and reading aren't taken for granted as part of the background noise of homelife. I guess you live in one of those places. I live in a place where a college degree isn't necessary for parents to read as a form of entertainment for themselves and their children. And daycare isn't the only place that children encounter a book.

Or maybe the teacher was exaggerating about this whole "half the kids don't even know what a book is for" line. You should hope so. Being the most literate amongst children who aren't familiar with books by age 5 is no great shakes.

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-27-2003
Fri, 11-28-2003 - 10:26am
The replacement of candles with light bulbs didn't alleviate the problem. Not all eyestrain is from poor lighting. Much of it comes simply from the fact that when literacy is mandatory, you have to spend a huge amount of time looking at something that is very close to your face rather than extremely far away. It changes the muscles that hold the eyeball. That's why people who look at writing- especially on screens are advised to periodically look off into the distance.
iVillage Member
Registered: 07-02-2003
Fri, 11-28-2003 - 10:30am
Not to mention the fact that if this is actually true, that half the children have never encountered a book, how would the infamous comparison chart have any meaning at all? How valuable would that information be? Even moreso than normal, in this case, the comparison of these children is like comparing apples and oranges.
iVillage Member
Registered: 08-29-2002
Fri, 11-28-2003 - 10:31am
"So then, how do they decide if a child requires extra help or extra challenge? This is only meaningful in the context of a given class, afterall."

No, it is only meaningful in the context of what set of skills the child should gain by age x. If the child is not gaining those skills in the expected fashion, extra help is given. The idea of extra challenge, btw, pretty well doesn't exist, which is one of the downsides of the system. The point is that every single solitary child should be capable of a certain set of skills by grade 8. The skills that they should develop are based on national expectations, not on what any individual child happens to be doing in any particular class. Children are tested in various ways along the way to make sure that they are developing those skills at the expected rate (ie, should be able to read x, y, z by end of grade 1, should be able to add and subtract in the 100s by end of grade 2, etc.).

If a child is very far ahead of the curve, they are assumed to be doing fine and extra challenge is not considered a necessity for them. A good teacher will try to work with such a child to some degree to keep them at least minimally challenged, but not everyone does that. And, yes, this really is the down-side to the system: there is absolutely, positively no such thing as a gifted program in the entire country. Gifted children are handled in regular classrooms and usually get much less attention then the children who are struggling. Again, the main point of education up to grade 8 is to ensure that every child in school has learned the set of skills considered necessary and appropriate. If child x is ahead, that is meaningless. If child y is behind, that child needs extra attention to get up to speed. If child z is meeting the goals as expected, nothing needs to be done about it since the goals are being met. The upside of the system is that the general population, as well as the poorer students, all end up with a very solid education (which is reflected by the latest round of PISA results, in which the Scandinavian countries outperformed the U.S. and all of Europe). The downside of the system is that giftedness is not particularly challenged or catered to.

"On the other hand, if a child is really struggling in a particular average classroom, where by and large the other kids are succeeding...it really doesn't matter where the struggling one is in terms of expected performance for age as determined by a much larger population sample. What does matter is that the struggling one is unable to handle HIS environment without extra help."

If a child is struggling in the scenario you are suggesting, then presumably this would be seen regardless of whether the comparison is done with other children in his class or to an expected standard. OTOH, a series of coincidences could led to unreasonable expectations if the comparison is solely based on the other children in the class. For example, if the class happens to be full of very bright students and student x is pretty well average, then student x will appear to be struggling when, in fact, he/she may well be meeting the expected goals in a reasonable fashion and thus, require no intervention. The problem is, until one looks at the entire classroom in the context of a much larger sample, there is no way of knowing whether that classroom is average, above average or below average. So judgements based solely on a single classroom are no less subjective than judgements made of an individual without any reference at all.

Laura

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Fri, 11-28-2003 - 10:40am
Wrong. If your child is not keeping up with his classmates, it really won't matter going forward if he is meeting broad based standards, or not. He will require something more than the average child in the class in order to achieve average results in the class. A parent may prefer to ignore the little classroom detail, but what the class is achiveing overall is going to have alot more impact on what the particular child is achieving, than will any large faceless population distribution achievements. Kids are affected by their environments to a HUGE degree. These situations are all different, not only in terms of what a teacher might decide to do, but in how a parent is going to advise, direct, encourage a child and how a child is going to feel in the environment. Trying to direct an advanced child to identify personal challenge and motivation in case 2) is not the same game as faced in case 1) where the child can find (and will have to face btw) external challenge as well. Finding motivation and challenge in the achievements of others is not some kind of evil. Its an absolutely ingrained unavoidable human instinct. Pretending it doesn't exist for children is like pretending adolescents are devoid of sex drive. Kids need to learn how to benefit in positive ways from what goes on around them. They will be influenced by it. Telling them to ignore it all together because its useless is wrong because a)its wrong and because b)they won't anyway. They only thing to do is help them figure out how to use this information constructively.

1)kid is well ahead according to general standards but is only avg in class

2)kid is well ahead according to general standards and is well ahead of class

3)kid is behind according to general standards but is avg in class

4)kid is behind according to general standards and is behind his class

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-29-2002
Fri, 11-28-2003 - 10:56am
"Telling them to ignore it all together because its useless is wrong because a)its wrong..."

Now that is what I call a classic tautology :-). It's wrong because...it's wrong.

"1)kid is well ahead according to general standards but is only avg in class

2)kid is well ahead according to general standards and is well ahead of class

3)kid is behind according to general standards but is avg in class

4)kid is behind according to general standards and is behind his class "


The Swedish system (I am not advocating here, just pointing our what the consequences of using general standards are) would handle the cases the following way: case 1), nothing needs to be done because a child is meeting expectations. Case 2), nothing needs to be done because expectations are being exceeded. Case 3) the child needs extra help in order to be able to meet the expectations and will get that help. If the class, on average, are also behind then the class as a whole need extra help (which would be provided). Case 4) the child needs extra help to get up to speed. Case 1, if a single classroom is used as the point of comparison, could lead to a child being expected too much of if they had the bad luck to end up (as an average to above average student) in a class full of very much above average kids. The child appears to be doing only average, but he/she is actually doing quite well. Case 3 also points up the problem of using the class as the standard for comparison: if general standards are not considered or used, that child (and pretty well the whole class) end up slipping behind other children their age because they appear to be doing "average", but in fact they are doing worse than average according to more general expectations for their age group.

Laura



iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Fri, 11-28-2003 - 11:38am
As usual. There are more people who don't understand, than who do.

Here's help for the statistically challenged:

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If Jonny is in a class of 20 and is behind Suzy, Bobby, Teddy, Macie, Marcy, Patty, Harry, Tommy, Robby, Stevie, Rickie, Paulie, Sonny, Betty, Lizzie, Maddie, Toby, but ahead of Chrissy, and Marky, there may well be a problem with Jonny or with Jonny's situation. Part of the information can be relayed in terms of "Jonny is behind most". A distribution chart will show you just how far behind how many, which gives you much more information.

If you are a university student who just got 49% on a math exam, and you are told you are behind most, that means only a little. The class distribtution that shows the range of marks was 40% to 75%, with 70% of the class scoring below 55%, tells you a little more. It doesn't tell you the same thing the class distribution showing a mark range of 100% to 48%, with 70% of kids getting better than 75%, shows. Each distribution tells you a whole lot about what YOU need to do to succeed in this class, and what your chances for success are, given what you know about yourself. But the tell very different things. The fact that your math ability may be well above that of 80% of 20yr olds in the world...really doesn't matter. The fact that you could to go an unknown school rather than your prestigious and elite one and be at the top of your math class...doesn't matter. What matters most is what is going on where YOU are, not what is going on with EVERYONE else, EVERYWHERE else. If you work in capacity ABC at your company and make 40% less than eveyrone else who works in capacity ABC at your company, you have one situation...one that is very different than that of the person who makes 40% more than the others who work in capacity ABC at your company. It doesn't matter one iota what the overall population average salry is for people working in capacity ABC at all the companys who hire people to work in capacity ABC. You have a situation to deal with, one way or the other. Adults never try to pretend what others out there achieve "doesn't matter" and affects nothing. Its very strange that parents are so determined to do it to their children.

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Fri, 11-28-2003 - 11:40am
Of the children I have met, very few have demonstrated the tendancy to be braggarts. Boys or girls.

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