Posted on 04/13/2021 9:14:38 AM PDT by Heartlander
[Editor’s Note: Other articles in the K-12 Redesign series: Perfect Time for a K-12 Redesign, A Financial Overhaul, School Calendar]
The U.S. K-12 education system is based on time, not student achievement. Too many students exit the system logging the required time but not meeting learning proficiencies. A redesign that promotes students based on their competency, not the school calendar, is urgently needed.
The flawed system utilizes time as the constant and achievement as the variable — students progress from one unit to the next based on teacher lesson plans and due dates instead of concept mastery. Similarly, students advance a grade each summer when late May or mid-June rolls around regardless of whether they achieved proficiency across all learning content. What we have is a factory model with a conveyor belt running at a consistent speed rather than being correlated to the student’s learning pace.
As any parent with more than one child knows, no two children are alike. Combine each student’s unique differences with his/her learning readiness, and it’s evident that a one-size-fits-all model won’t be effective. Yet that’s how our schools, designed nearly a century ago, remain today. In Every School: One Citizen’s Guide to Transforming Education, American Center for Transforming Education Chairman and Senior Fellow, Don Nielsen, describes what an education redesign looks like.
In an achievement-based system, schools would be organized by achievement groups or levels, with class size determined by the current level of learning of the students, not by their ages. The less prepared a student, the smaller would be the class size and the more individualized the instruction. Less-prepared students would attend school for a longer day and for a longer year, until they reached a standard of learning appropriate for students of their approximate age. Only when they had learned what was required would they move on to higher levels. A good analogy to this type of educational system is the merit badge system used by the Boy Scouts. In Scouting, a young person can become an Eagle Scout at any age between 10 and 18. However, no Scout can earn Eagle rank without achieving the satisfactory completion of all the merit badges required. We thus have Eagle Scouts of varying ages, but none has failed to meet the standard.
Achievement grouping is not tracking or ability grouping, and it should not be confused with this kind of traditional grouping. Tracking and ability grouping set a student on a certain path based on the assumption that the student is either a gifted or a mediocre learner. Once on a track, the student would either be made college-ready or be given a lower level of learning designed to accommodate their abilities as assessed by others.
In an achievement-based system, it is assumed that all children can achieve at a high level. The system simply recognizes that some children have had more access to knowledge and learning than others and that some children can learn certain subjects faster than others.Don Nielsen, Every School: One Citizen’s Guide to Transforming Education
Nielsen continues by outlining how levels, not traditional K-12 school grades, would be a wise alternative:
An achievement-based system would not have grades one, two, three, and so on, nor would it have letter grades A, B, and C. Students would start the year by being placed in appropriate levels and would remain there until they had met the standard of learning for that level. Children behind in their learning would be put in smaller classes with gifted teachers to speed up their pace of learning. Then they would move to the next level, regardless of whether or not the month of June had happened to arrive.
For example, today a student takes Algebra I for a year, regardless of whether the child requires six weeks or 26 weeks to learn the material. The student is then graded on his or her performance relative to other students in the class. The grade is based on a standard of performance established by the teacher, the school, or the district office. A student may receive an “A” or some lesser grade, based on how the student does on the tests. The focus in our current system is on sorting and teaching, not learning. All students receive the same material, presented in the same manner, and students are graded on how well they absorb the lessons presented. The focus is also on time.
In an achievement-based system, the math student would move once he or she had mastered Algebra I, regardless of the time required. Such a system focuses on student learning, not teaching and sorting, and it has the advantage of not being constrained by time or age.
In an achievement-based system, children would be placed in levels based not on age but on their current level of learning. Achievement grouping would put students into classrooms in which all the students would be at approximately the same level of learning, regardless of age. By doing this we would allow each child to keep moving forward in his or her learning, and children would not be placed with a classroom group that was either years ahead or far behind where they were in their own learning. For example, if a kindergartner is already reading, but not doing well in math, that child may attend class at level two or three for reading, but go to class at level one for math.
Students who start school well behind in their learning would be put in smaller classes, with individualized instruction, while those at or above standard in their learning would be put in more advanced classes that might well have a larger number of students. Under this shift in approach, students who were behind in their learning would get more assistance so they could catch up, and those who were advanced in their learning would not be held back. Each type of student would be allowed to learn at his or her own pace, and would not be constrained in advancement. Also, we would use teachers’ time more effectively, thereby enhancing their ability to teach and increasing their job satisfaction.
Those students who need more work would attend school longer each day and perhaps more days each year. This increased school time would be provided to help these students catch up to their peers and to minimize the variation in age ranges that could occur. Under this system, no one would be left behind, no one would fail academically, and students would not move up until they had learned what they needed to learn.
Built into this thinking is the philosophy that all children can learn, but some need more time than others.Don Nielsen, Every School: One Citizen’s Guide to Transforming Education
Some argue that grouping students by age precludes certain negative consequences, such as older students bullying younger students or older students being embarrassed when grouped with those younger than them. However, grouping students based on experience, skill, and knowledge is commonplace and successful in youth activities outside of the school setting. Junior group tennis lessons, music practice and performances, theater companies, chess clubs and competitions, and swim teams and meets are a few examples.
Those who have experience teaching and leading cross-age groups will attest that positive benefits outweigh any negative. Younger students can learn from older students, and older students can gain confidence and develop leadership skills by interacting with younger students. This often leads to increased motivation to learn, work hard, and advance in level for the older students. Similarly, younger students are excited by the opportunity to acquire new learning and more advanced skills rather than being held back by same-age peers who need more time to grasp concepts they have already mastered.
This is not to discount the fact that children are still growing and developing, and there can be significant physical differences as well as social-emotional differences among children at varying ages. Schools may need to be creative in designing age-based activities during those times where social interactions are more predominant — for example, during recess, lunch, or P.E.
The restructuring would transform the entire K-12 experience, including the criteria for earning a high school diploma. Nielsen explains:
Under such a system, a standard high school diploma would no longer automatically represent a traditional four-year learning experience. Instead, high school would last as long as it took for the student to achieve the standard in all academic subjects and mature in their total development. Such a system would focus on the needs of the individual student and would work to ensure that students achieved at their highest level. Moreover, students would not be permitted to fail. Students would move as fast as their ability and motivation would allow. Frustration, both for the student and for the teacher, would be minimized and student learning would be maximized. Also, if children know, at the outset, that they will remain in school until they achieve a defined academic standard, they will have great motivation to engage themselves in learning. Having to attend school while their friends enjoy the summer holiday would be a huge incentive to learn the material.Don Nielsen, Every School: One Citizen’s Guide to Transforming Education
Obviously, these changes cannot occur overnight. But instead of maintaining our existing system, which fails to prepare 70 percent of students for success in life and the competitive career workforce, let’s get started with steps toward this end.
With transformational leadership and stakeholder support, America can effectively educate every student in every school. Our K-12 education system can be transformed to better serve our students and our country by a redesign based on achievement over time.
But then, our Prussian style school system ISN'T designed to create independent, free thinking citizens.
It's designed to teach kids (future adults) to DO AS YOU ARE TOLD!!
The idiot progressives now say achievement is White Privilege. For real.
Time for the “Little Red Schoolhouse!”
I certainly would have done better in school. I was running rings around my classmates until 11th grade, when I stopped caring.
I barely graduated, not due to poor grades, but poor attendance.
Perhaps if they weren't spending time with social justice indoctrination, and letting kids have time off from school to take part in BLM riots, branding math as racist, elevating LGBTQ+ studies instead of Western Civilization, maybe those kids might be better prepared.
Duh.
The government school system is hopelessly broken. It is infested with functionally illiterate “teechers.”
The state of New York recently passed a law requiring prospective school teachers to take a literacy test to get their license, but repealed it the following year because 36 percent of whites, 54 percent of Hispanics and 59 percent of blacks failed on the first try.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/13/nyregion/ny-regents-teacher-exams-alst.html
This a brilliant idea and well presented.
The posers running things will never allow it.
this will be just a finish the level and move on, with nothing mastered.
Schools can’t be fixed unless all the psychologists and the Drs of Education are purged from the school system as well as shutting down the Dept of Education.
And the unions disbanded.
>>this will be just a finish the level and move on, with nothing mastered.
Indeed, no system is so well-designed that humans can’t find a way to muck it up. Hell is other people, but that’s no reason to give up trying to improve things.
Let’s see...
Small classes with individual attention for stupid and lazy people.
Giant classes with no individual attention for gifted and motivated students.
That will sure work out well. /s It’s probably better than what we have, but it’s not what our best and brightest should have.
Hey! Montessori already do what is proposed in the essay above. And, they do it very successfully.
Solution: Begin the privatization of all schooling from Pre-K through to university graduate school.
The problem is the monopolistic chokehold that government schools have on the education market.
Even with a proposed new “magical” system, one will have to have measurable levels of achievement. If certain groups have the “political pull” to avoid being held to any standard it will fail too !
Before you blindly criticize the “Prussian system” look at the number of Nobel Prize winners it produced. Particularly back in the days of Prussia and the German Empire. Compare it to our system as it existed then & the UK's production during a similar time period. I don't see creativity stifled.
Any system adopted will fail without a common standard all are held to. That standard includes discipline as well as learning.
Also we don't really have the Prussian system. It was very selective. Very early in a students progress it marked you for "trades" (Nothing wrong with the "trades" if you get to freely choose it!) or higher education. We have a system that doesn't even require our teachers to have any mastery of the subjects they teach (And I'm not talking PhD level mastery!). That in itself is not very Prussian! Aditionally we require very little demonstrable subject learning in our students. How can we when it's supersatureated with poltics, union jobism & racial animosity. Until those three things are removed no system will work !
Today it’s not just K-12, but PreK-12. Children who do not know their numbers, letters, colors, as well as how to read and print their name and simple words by the time they get to kindergarten, are already academically behind those students who can.
Also in Texas and other states, qualified high school students can apply for and be selected to take accredited math and science college courses their junior and senior years, which can result in getting a state college degree in another two-years. While a private university may not give credit for those courses during the two years, there the student might be allowed to initially enroll in advanced university courses with the result that after four years, the student has completed the course work needed for both a bachelor’s and master’s degree.
The problem of a grade school advancement based only on achievement is NOT that smarter students will end up taking academic classes with older students (as occurs even now). Smarter students can usually handle the age disparity.
The problem is that older, but academically-slower students will end up in classes populated mostly with younger children. This can cause problems.
BTW, one teacher explain to me that in some schools, emotionally-unstable students were put into classes with above-average students because those students were better able to deal with the occasional disturbances from the emotionally-unstable student than average students in standard classes.
I came up through the CA public schools in the 60s and 70s. At the time they were the best in the nation.
But when I hit the military in 1977, every complaint I had about the public schools was resolved.
The shift to self paced individual learning was a Godsend for me. School was no longer boring or stupid.
It was now challenging and exciting.
And that’s exactly what the author proffers.
“Anything is better than what we have now.”
Actually, MY public schools are just wonderful and do everything right. Otherwise, I’d be a greedy idiot to send my kids there.
Tailored education has been a dream for a long time, especially when people started realizing the power of television and computers to educate people. But educators, who are largely of a personality type that values process and group efforts, have fought it. Right now the only ones with IEPs are those with learning disabilities. Every learner should have one. Most, if not every, learner has some subjects which are easy and some which are difficult. Yet schools are not equipped right now to deal with that, other than to force those who have an easy time learning a subject to teach their classmates who are slower on the uptake instead of letting the advanced student advance to their potential.
I would have loved to have been in a system like this - I probably could have been done with college before I was out of my teens.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.