When I served on our local school board we tried to deal with this problem time and time again. The administration had clearly drunk the cool aid and while many individual teachers vocalized that potential high achieving students were being harmed by total inclusion, they had to follow guidelines from “above”. Many teachers tried to institute ways to nurture all levels of students, it made effective class room management more like a “3 ring circus”. The school was only up to 6th grade. So stakes were a bit different than what you are citing.
Since this was a well to do community, volunteers provided some supportive services such as “ Great Books”, robotics instruction and “destination imagination” teams. Most of this was done after school hours and showed community support for higher academic challenges. Being after school it was mostly self-selective of those who could manage after school time management resources.
Clearly this issue has not been dealt with well. Your final quote paragraph is a good summary.
My son was attending CRLS in the late 1990's and subjected to the all inclusive approach. No longer providing "houses" for parent selection Nearly every day a half dozen students were sent to the principals office for disrupting the classroom. Towards the end of his Sophomore year the vice-principal suggested our son move to the Belmont high school (where his mother had moved). He immediately noticed a calmer environment and excelled in all of his studies. Fortunately Cambridge discovered the error of their educational mistakes and returned to a better system. Thanks for the insightful pancake,
It's hard to disagree with either your analysis or conclusion. Sadly, we as a society have not been able to develop and implement effective strategies to raise educational achievement levels to obviate the struggles facing marginalized students. There are no easy answers for how to rectify the deficiencies.
Well I wasn't a parent or a school board member, but dumbing down doesn't work. But more needs to be done to help students with learning disabilities (which I have big time). Not to single them out but to actually help them with reading and math in particular. Lucky for me, I'm bright so I managed to develop ways to cope, not realizing I was also dealing with dyslexia. I didn't learn I had that until I was in my mid 30s. SO WHILE THE SUPER COURSE ARE GREAT. more work needs to be done to help yes the marginalized students due to socio-economic situations and/or learning disabilities.
I agree, Annie. However, too often, schools have done that by decimating budgets for advanced courses, which can also benefit other categories of marginalized students. It's ultimately a matter of resources--we can't keep robbing Peter to pay Paul. We've got to fund the budgets for both. Thanks for the comment.
When I served on our local school board we tried to deal with this problem time and time again. The administration had clearly drunk the cool aid and while many individual teachers vocalized that potential high achieving students were being harmed by total inclusion, they had to follow guidelines from “above”. Many teachers tried to institute ways to nurture all levels of students, it made effective class room management more like a “3 ring circus”. The school was only up to 6th grade. So stakes were a bit different than what you are citing.
Since this was a well to do community, volunteers provided some supportive services such as “ Great Books”, robotics instruction and “destination imagination” teams. Most of this was done after school hours and showed community support for higher academic challenges. Being after school it was mostly self-selective of those who could manage after school time management resources.
Clearly this issue has not been dealt with well. Your final quote paragraph is a good summary.
Thanks for tackling this topic.
My son was attending CRLS in the late 1990's and subjected to the all inclusive approach. No longer providing "houses" for parent selection Nearly every day a half dozen students were sent to the principals office for disrupting the classroom. Towards the end of his Sophomore year the vice-principal suggested our son move to the Belmont high school (where his mother had moved). He immediately noticed a calmer environment and excelled in all of his studies. Fortunately Cambridge discovered the error of their educational mistakes and returned to a better system. Thanks for the insightful pancake,
It's hard to disagree with either your analysis or conclusion. Sadly, we as a society have not been able to develop and implement effective strategies to raise educational achievement levels to obviate the struggles facing marginalized students. There are no easy answers for how to rectify the deficiencies.
Well I wasn't a parent or a school board member, but dumbing down doesn't work. But more needs to be done to help students with learning disabilities (which I have big time). Not to single them out but to actually help them with reading and math in particular. Lucky for me, I'm bright so I managed to develop ways to cope, not realizing I was also dealing with dyslexia. I didn't learn I had that until I was in my mid 30s. SO WHILE THE SUPER COURSE ARE GREAT. more work needs to be done to help yes the marginalized students due to socio-economic situations and/or learning disabilities.
I agree, Annie. However, too often, schools have done that by decimating budgets for advanced courses, which can also benefit other categories of marginalized students. It's ultimately a matter of resources--we can't keep robbing Peter to pay Paul. We've got to fund the budgets for both. Thanks for the comment.