I stand by what I say
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In summarizing this wealth of data, the authors note a simple premise, that “no goal can be both challenging and achievable by all students across the achievement distribution.” Instead, two options exist – standards can either be minimal, thereby presenting little in the way of challenge to typical students or they can be rigorous and challenging, and ultimately unattainable by below average students.
The basic problem is state standards. These standards have to be suitably low so that a politically palatable percent of students can pass in 45 minutes a day, 180 days a year, in a class of 25–which means that a student with an IQ of 85 has to be able to do it after a 5-10 minute demonstration and maybe 2 minutes of individual help.
This means that in a classroom that teaches only the state standards, anyone with an IQ over 110 is going to be routinely bored out of his or her skull. The proportion of classrooms teaching only (or almost only) the state standards isn’t going to decrease in response to a mandate saying that everybody has to pass but not saying anything about those who pass easily; for this reason, I would be fascinated to see a study examining trends in dropouts’ IQ and other aptitude scores.
This isn’t a totally classic NCLB bash; NCLB is probably as good as it could possibly be, considering that it’s a system designed by politicians. Let’s face it, most politicians are kind of dumb about the real world, and they had to do something when, for example, fourth grade writing scores in Oregon were at a 40% pass rate and the school districts were more or less OK with that until it hit them in the wallet. Fill-in-the-bubbles tests are probably the worst possible way to measure real learning, and a single forced-topic timed writing sample barely better, but that was the kind of system the schools got stuck with because it was what politicians knew how to design; the way to avoid NCLB would have been for the education profession to beat the politicians to designing the accountability system.
What’s the answer now? I don’t know. I still think that leveled classes, or at least acknowledging and teaching to different levels within classrooms, is necessary to set up an education system that works for everyone. I still think that trying to force everyone to be college prep is a bad joke–there is only so much of the job market for which a degree is necessary, and so much beyond that for which a degree is useful, and so many fields that college doesn’t teach for.
My solution would be to set up a range of levels within each grade, with the understanding that kids can bounce up a level by catching up through tutoring or summer school (which would be provided for anyone who wanted it), with a different set of standards for each level, and with the levels for whom college isn’t realistic eventually taking fewer academic and more career-prep classes in high school (the kids who do have college as a realistic option could also choose career-prep through their electives). Unfortunately, because that would require accepting the fact that some classes would operate below grade level, that wouldn’t be legal in most states as far as I know–which is a shame, because acknowledging that success looks different for different people might end up letting everyone have a shot at success.
