This is 100% the lazy approach to creating equity. Instead of investing more to help the kids at the bottom move up, they just cap the top.
Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity
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Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity
#22[flagged]
Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity
#23Is there anyone out there who disagrees with this? I have not seen a single person (aside from the few people actually implementing these changes) that agrees with it.
Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity
#24The Dallas experiment is interesting, and it’s not surprising at all that the students actually learned more than if they had been in less-advanced classes. The question I have is what the grades look like for the kids who were somewhat involuntarily included in the class. In junior high, grades don’t matter all that much, but come high school it could be worse to have lower grades in more challenging courses, depend…
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Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity
#25It seems that these meta subjects, where rather than teaching a STEM topic the usual way. Facts and tests.
They try to teach how to think about a topic without hard tests.
Simply does not work.
Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity
#26Stuff like this is why I will remain a proponent for true vouchers for the rest of my life. No parent should be stuck without options when educational governance goes sideways like this. Pull your kid. Find them a school that gives them the greatest opportunity to succeed and use the funds earmarked for their education to ensure they receive it. Currently, options are restricted to parents who can afford to move to a…
There's the theory that, by forcing the kids with the most engaged parents to go to schools with the kids of less engaged parents, the engaged parents will drive school districts to implement good educational policies.
In reality, though, that doesn't seem to have worked. School board elections have very low turnout usually, and the people elected to them are disproportionately ideologues who treat engaged parents with contempt for being "privileged."
Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity
#27Just get rid of GPAs and grading altogether. If a kid wants to learn algebra, support them. Why does everything have to be dumbed down to the lowest common denominator?
A lot of people in positions of power are currently obsessed with achieving equality of outcomes (aka equity) and dumbing down to the lowest common denominator is an only working way to achieve that goal for large groups of people.
Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity
#28Just get rid of GPAs and grading altogether. If a kid wants to learn algebra, support them. Why does everything have to be dumbed down to the lowest common denominator?
How do you know who's doing well then? Seems like eliminating quantitative measurements will only make things worse.
A kid takes a French class. Can he speak French afterwards? Can he read/write in French? I guess that's how you'd know if he learned it. Is that a test? I guess so but I'd like to see grades take a backseat to actual learning. Maybe that's a bad position to take.
Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity
#29This is 100% the lazy approach to creating equity. Instead of investing more to help the kids at the bottom move up, they just cap the top.
There's only one equal state, among many states of being. We'll probably never have true equity at all, and if we do it is vanishingly unlikely to last. It's like getting a coin to land on the edge.
What we should probably strive for is an environment where you can catch back up if you fall behind as long as you're willing to put in effort. This can be accomplished by helping everyone who is disadvantaged (e.g. poor) equally. This will disproportionately help any group that has been disproportionately harmed for whatever reason, so it's self-correcting over time and only gaps in effort will remain.
Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity
#30Just get rid of GPAs and grading altogether. If a kid wants to learn algebra, support them. Why does everything have to be dumbed down to the lowest common denominator?
How do you know who's doing well then? Seems like eliminating quantitative measurements will only make things worse.
How about eliminate grades but only have standardized exams? Standardized exams are less susceptible to the grade fiddling.