Posted on 07/03/2010 10:13:46 PM PDT by thecodont
(07-03) 10:41 PDT Kansas City, Mo. (AP) --
Forget about students spending one year in each grade, with the entire class learning the same skills at the same time. Districts from Alaska to Maine are taking a different route.
Instead of simply moving kids from one grade to the next as they get older, schools are grouping students by ability. Once they master a subject, they move up a level. This practice has been around for decades, but was generally used on a smaller scale, in individual grades, subjects or schools.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2010/07/03/national/a104032D76.DTL#ixzz0sggB0HKe
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Advancing them based on ability??
That’s just crazy talk!!
Ping!
Then the students will find out their union teacher is the dunce.
I can just imagine the age peer ridicule
Actually, it sounds more like the way all-in-one schools used to work, by merit. One of my second grade teachers allowed me to read at a higher level (she had to stop at a sixth grade book, since she was borrowing a reader from within the school.) However, when I was transferred from to another school on the same base, my new teacher was not interested in challeging my reading skills. Oddly enough, the first class was a much friendlier class; I suspect I would’ve learned more from a teacher who was willing to try a little harder.
It will be interesting to see the results.
I think that one room country schools did much the same... back in the day.
I think it will be interesting. Especially when you have 6th graders doing 2nd grade work.
Of course they could use Saxon Math, but they may not like the results...it would make it harder to argue for “more money” to ‘fix’ the problem.
I disagree. I took many "self paced" classes at UCSD. Advancing through the syllabus required passing a written test with a perfect score for each unit. Later, I acted as the in-class "TA" for the self-paced physics classes. That required knowing the material cold. UCSD tracked the academic performance of students in subsequent classes that built upon the skills acquired in the self-paced classes. They consistently did better than students who attended the traditional lecture/quiz/midterm structure. The self-paced physics students did take a midterm and final exam administered by a full professor. Their final grade was based on those exams.
From 1980 to 1983, I employed the technique in a microprocessor design and programming class I taught at Southwestern College. The program was co-sponsored by the Regional Occupational Program. At the end of the 3 1/2 year time frame, ROP reported that 91% of my students had been hired by DEC or IBM. The approach achieves accountability and results.
In May 1983, I started a full time software engineering position at PacBell and moved 25 miles north to be closer to my office. That made the one-way commute to Southwestern into a 35 mile trip instead of 9 miles. I completed the term in June 1983 and ceased teaching.
And beating the Hell out of the 2nd graders doing 6th grade work.
There need be no plan B. The lazy and the dullards fail; school and to a degree, life. They used to be the manual labor force in America. In the Military, they were the labor battalion.
I think one of the best reasons that one room schoolhouses worked is because the younger children learned all the time from the older children and while the teacher was presenting lessons for the older children the younger ones were listening.
What is needed, and now possible thanks to computers, is individual learning and advancement. That is, the entire curriculum should be put in an interactive multimedia format, in which the student is taught, reviewed, evaluated and tracked individually.
The software behind this can adjust to student speed on different topics, permit digression when a student is “on a roll” in a particular subject, and provide them slow and thorough instruction on subjects they are having a hard time with.
This means that a student might be working at the 4th grade level in math, 6th grade level in social studies, and 7th grade level in English all at the same time.
Add to that computers can teach several subjects at the same time. It can teach the same subject in two different languages while teaching spelling and grammar. Say a bloc of history, with geography blended in, showing multimedia of what those times looked like, what people wore, and the music they listened to.
This multi-curriculum means that students get far more instruction in a shorter time. So much so that other subjects can be added to their curriculum that are only rarely taught today.
True
This is wacist in 3 - 2 - 1.
Not so new. Homeschoolers have been doing this for years ;-)
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