Classical Values :: No child gets ahead!

October 18, 2006

No child gets ahead!

At the time it was pushed through Congress and signed into law, "No Child Left Behind" sounded like a noble, bipartisan idea.

The mess that resulted is being called "Whole-group instruction":

In whole-group instruction, all children are taught the same lesson at the same time, without regard to their ability or mastery of the subject. Education experts have long recognized that such instruction impedes high-ability students. Karen B. Rogers, author of Re-Forming Gifted Education, unequivocally states, "If educators should want to level the playing field of achievement so that all become mediocre in their output, then whole-group instruction is the answer!"

Unfortunately, leftist egalitarianism has combined forces with the conservatives' laudable goal of school accountability and a mandatory bottom line. In practice, this political collusion means that gifted students are being systematically ignored. By federal mandate!

As an acquaintance recently recounted, when his child requested harder math work, his teacher responded that he must "wait until the others catch up." This is, unfortunately, a refrain heard across the country.

The problems have increased under the No Child Left Behind Act. NCLB threatens draconian sanctions for failing to bring all children up to minimum proficiency but no penalties for failing to advance those children who already meet the standards. Thus it pressures math teachers to aim the discussion at the least skilled, and to ignore our future math and science leaders.

Math-ability grouping encounters resistance from across the political spectrum. Many liberals oppose expanded use of any instruction method that acknowledges students differ in their abilities. Their attitude is partly a response to the rightly discredited practice of tracking. As widely employed in the 1960s, tracking inflexibly placed students in a fixed learning tier, and frequently did so in a racially biased manner.

Liberals, while appropriately rejecting tracking, threw out the baby with the bath water. They concluded that recognizing any differences in ability is elitist. Yet a truly equitable education system would provide all children, including the most advanced, the opportunity to learn at their own level - a goal that cannot be met through whole-group instruction.

Conservatives are also reluctant to champion ability grouping. To admit that the current approach holds students back, conservatives would have to admit that NCLB is a substantial obstacle, not a solution, to improving math instruction to gifted children.

Political collusion is one of my pet peeves. What drives me bonkers about it is that so often it's unintentional. I mean, it's not as if egalitarian liberals and bottom-line conservatives sat down and deliberately contrived a system to ensure that future Nobel Prize winners would be held back. They just can't seem to learn that government-mandated, one-size-fits-all, committee solutions are inherently mediocre, and guarantee dumbing down -- from the top down. And for every problem thus created, more top-down "solutions" will be proposed. History shows that top-down government solutions don't work, not even when enforced by tactics like shooting incompetent administrators. (Stalin tried just that....)

To interject a philosophical question, why is it better to waste more time on chronically low-performing students?

This gets into a troubling area, because there is no agreement on why such students are low performing. Teachers are often blamed, but their reply is that the students' "home environment plays a larger part in determining his or her test scores than does the school environment." The other "side" blames teachers, of course, and I think it's pretty clear that both teachers and the home environment deserve blame.

But there's an ugly, emperor-has-no-clothes question which no one in politics would dare ask. Being a blogger, I can ask it with relative impunity.

Is there such a thing as human stupidity?

Common sense suggests there is, and ordinary people know intuitively that there are differences in intelligence between people. To deny that some people are smarter than other people, and others are dumber, is, simply, to deny reality. But people in government have to deny that reality, because the educational system is based upon the premise that stupid people can be made intelligent. This requires suspending disbelief and reciting slogans like "every child is gifted." If every child is gifted, then of course a child with an IQ of 90 is the equal of an Einstein, if only the educrats can devote enough time and money to teaching him. It's disturbing to see both major parties agree on what I'd charitably call dishonest demagoguery. I said "charitably" because I hope they're just being demagogues; if they really believe this stuff, they may be suffering from a form of madness.

The same mentality that opposes special programs for gifted students also opposes special programs for "slower" students. The result is called "mainstreaming" -- which mandates that a Down Syndrome child be treated like an intellectually gifted child, and that the former not be "left behind" the latter.

In logic, the only way I could see that such a fiction might be made to work would be to somehow deliberately handicap the gifted child. While we don't yet utilize technology to acheive Kurt Vonnegut's handicap society, there are nonetheless signs that gifted children are somehow being transformed into losers:

Up to 20 percent of high school dropouts test in the gifted range and nearly half of all gifted students are underachievers because the educational program they are provided is too easy.

At least they're not being "left behind."

Maybe the solution to the problem posed by these gifted children is to simply stop calling them "gifted." That would put an end to claims that they're being "misdiagnosed," and their neurotic tendency to "get ahead" could be treated and medicated. That way, the "getting ahead" disorder won't cause them to be "left behind."

(Well, at least we can all agree that they need help....)

posted by Eric on 10.18.06 at 08:28 AM

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Comments

Have you ever read Ayn Rand's essay "The Comprachicos" (collected in _The New Left_, among other anthologies)? If not, I think you might find it interesting.

Aaron Davies · October 18, 2006 11:56 AM

No I haven't read it. I'll check it out. Thanks!

Eric Scheie · October 18, 2006 12:32 PM

Rejecting tracking (in all subjects) was not "appropriate". Ensuring that tracking placement was not racially biased, and allowing students to challenge out of low tracks, would have been the apppropriate response to finding that schools were automatically tracking black children in slower tracks.

Bring Back Tracking!

Anthony · October 18, 2006 02:09 PM

The implication from the quote about kids who "request harder math work" is that before NCLB they could get their own specialised harder track of math assignments and grading.

Was this ever true for a significant number of classrooms and schools? As far as I understand the pre-NCLB state of most schools, kids couldn't get that anyway (not that most kids, even those quite capable of doing harder work, would tend to ask for it).

I also don't understand how NCLB magically prevents kids from being moved up a grade (in some subjects, at least) if they're significantly ahead of other students.

NCLB requires only that the kids pass the tests, right? So if Jimmy's ahead if math, there's no incentive to retard him for NCLB - he can pass the tests easily already. (There may be other ideological reasons, as stated, to hold him back - but to blame NCLB seems unjustified, at best.)

Sigivald · October 18, 2006 04:51 PM

Fantastic post!

"why is it better to waste more time on chronically low-performing students?" Because it is pennies on the dollar, imho. Dumb people need a good basic education more than smart people, because they will have a hard time teaching themselves, or choosing to go back to school, than smart people who drop out, or whatever.

Assume the positive benefits a nobel prize winner provides society might outweigh the positive benefits of a 1000 dumb kids. It therefore makes sense to create a system that rewards potential nobel prize winners, even if it those 1000 dumb kids get the shaft.

EXCEPT, the positive benefits of a noble prize winner won't outweight the negative costs of 1000 dumb kids who got shafted on a good education. Especiall when you consider these people will be voters, and each of their votes is as powerful as the nobel prize winners.

The solution is NCLB PLUS.

Harkonnendog · October 18, 2006 04:57 PM

Hark, thanks and I agree with your point.

I'm not arguing they shouldn't devote more time to chronic underperformers, only that maybe this shouldn't be done in the same classroom wasting precious time which could be devoted to educating everyone else.

Eric Scheie · October 18, 2006 05:20 PM

Eric, we more agree than disagree. There should be honors programs for gifted students, certainly. Tracking, if it could be done well and fairly, probably would be best.

Having said that, if it is either/or, I'd concentrate on the dumb kids. Intelligence (high or low) is inherited, so smart kids usually have smart, that is successful, parents. They at least have the option of sending their kids to private schools or homeschooling them.

Harkonnendog · October 18, 2006 09:11 PM

If by "focus on the dumb" kids you mean, teach them how to make burgers, pick peaches, and mop the floor, I'd agree. But you can't make dumb kids less dumb, just by giving them more attention. If, in fact, they really are dumb.

Yes, there ARE dumb kids, but focusing more attention on them will not make a person with a 90 IQ suddenly have an IQ of 120.

What SHOULD happen is that dumb kids don't get passed along. Once they reach their academic potential and can go no further, they should go no further on the taxpayers dime. If a miracle were to happen and they were to discover (years later) a stockpile of IQ and cleverness hidden in a closet somewhere, they can complete their education on their own (such as at community colleges).

This would open up more space and money for the children who could go further.

How some in the world of K-12 get around this is to advance average and smarter kids to higher grades. It's easy. Just move a 5th grader to the 7th or 8th grade and move a smart 5th grader into 10th grade.

Eric, you would be APPALLED at the level that is being taught in public school and what constitutes a passing grade. Chimpanzees could pass (but 15% of Chicago teachers couldn't).

The problem is that education departments represent the lowest quintile of the SATs. Then they go out and teach the next round, and the lowest of that quintile enters the education department. It's not too difficult to figure out that the education departments are unqualified to teach anything. It should come as no surprise then that education graduates focus on the dumbest kids, when the lowest common denominator in the room is often the teacher.

In the linked PDF file, the conclusion is:
The Board of Higher Education, working in partnership with the Illinois State Board of
Education and the Illinois Community College Board, should require a passing score on the
Illinois Test of Basic Skills as a condition for admission to all Illinois teacher preparation programs.

WRONG AGAIN! All that data in front of them and they STILL get it wrong. The local middle schools should require passing of basic competency exams before passing students to HIGH SCHOOL, not COLLEGE! The basic competency exams are 8th grade level! How does someone pass the 8th grade when you can't pass an eighth grade competency exam?

Mrs. du Toit · October 19, 2006 12:51 AM

You have one or two valid points (although a little lacking in compassion and common sense in places), but I take particular exception to using the word 'stupid' to describe low intelligence.

Everyone knows the most stupid people -- for example those who believe absurd crackpot theories such as socialism, social darwinism and libertarianism -- are very often those with the highest IQs.

Kip Watson · October 19, 2006 10:11 AM

Compassion on this issue is a veil of deception.

A kid with a 90 IQ is not going to become a brain surgeon. Suggesting if he works hard he will, is LYING.

Why is it that we have no problem telling a 190 lbs girl with 2 left feet that she isn't going to be accepted by the ballet, but we tell a kid with an IQ of 90 that they CAN make it to the Sorbonne or the Astronaut program if they apply themselves?

That's NOT compassion and it helps no one.

Mrs. du Toit · October 19, 2006 11:41 AM

Mrs. du Toit you misunderstand me. I don't want schools to concentrate on dumb kids so that they become clever or smart, I want them to concentrate on dumb kids so that they become EDUCATED.

Again, these kids are the least able to educate themselves, and the least likely to feel motivated to return to school as an adult to be educated by others. It is therefore paramount that they are well educated by the public schools while they are forced to be in school.

Harkonnendog · October 19, 2006 06:18 PM

Educate them in what? To what level? For what purpose?

I'm serious. What is a reasonable expectation?

Children used to be in school until they were 13 (8th grade). An eighth grade education meant they could read, write, figure, knew their history, and their nation's laws (essentially what an AA or BA gets you today). By that age, if they showed academic prowess, they moved on to high school (where they were taught advanced mathematics, science, arts, economics, more history, and Latin, etc.). If they did not show academic prowess, they moved into an apprenticeship. That worked. It worked quite well for hundreds of years. Then we mucked with it.

Teachers' college used to be a 6 months program following a high school diploma. A high school diploma used to mean something.

One in eight Americans cannot read. They're not broken. They just can't read. Some of them are really smart (and many can be taught to read later in life).

Dumbness isn't a disease that can be cured with education. Ignorance can be cured, but everyone has an upper limit of what they're capable of.

Teach basic skills and move 'em into the workforce/apprenticeships if they've reached their academic limit.

As Sobran put it, "In 50 years we've gone from teaching Latin in high school to teaching remedial reading in college."

Yeah, it worked out so much better this way.

Mrs. du Toit · October 19, 2006 07:11 PM

I forget where I heard this, but the story goes that one day George Washington, who just happened to be in town, went to visit Thomas Jefferson as he worked on the Declaration of Independence. By and large George liked what he saw, until he came to a certain phrase.

After reading it he said to Jefferson, "Tom, I think this part should read, 'They are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.' because that 'created equal' part is going to do a lot of damage some day."

Tom said something about the phrase "created equal" being figurative, and that future generations wouldn't take it literally. He wouldn't believe George when Washington pointed out Man's amazing capacity for taking most anything literally.

Looks like George was right.

Alan Kellogg · October 21, 2006 09:11 AM