In a message dated 11/11/2001 5:59:15 PM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
> So, from my experience in my children's schools, and my own efforts at > classroom management, I do not see how on earth we can expect, from one > person in a room with 20 (or at higher grade levels), 25 kids -- a customized > > program that fully addresses the needs of each child. I really cannot > suggest any practical way around a broad "teach to the middle" with some > additional effort made to support the kids who real outliers... For a couple of months (several years ago), my son was enrolled in a Montessori preschool. More recently I spent a few hours observing a Montessori classroom for kids who would be assigned to grades 1, 2, or 3 in the public schools. The teachers don't assign their students to groups by age or ability, or by any other criteria. The students group themselves as they see fit. The teacher is a facilitator of learning activities. By caparison to a traditional (20th century) classroom teacher, the Montessori teacher seems to provide a lot less direct instruction, and to do a lot more active observation, assessment, planning, and evaluation. The traditional 19th century common school (public school) also assigned K-8 students to mixed-age, mixed-ability classrooms. Cooperative learning strategies, including peer / cross aged tutoring, were widely utilized. Peer tutoring was carried to the extreme with a system of instruction that come on the scene in the 1840s, which I believe is referred to as the Lancaster method. The traditional 20th century classroom is based on the factory model. The little neighborhood K-8 schools scattered across the city of Minneapolis in 1890, for example, were replaced by elementary schools, which became larger and fewer in number as time went on. Elementary school students were assigned to same-age class rooms and a lockstep curriculum was introduced. Junior highs were invented as a mechanism to bring together students from different neighborhoods, then sort them, and assign them different curriculum tracks. Diane Ravitch does a pretty good job of describing how the public school system was overhauled during the progressive era, 1890-1920, in her book, "Left Back." I did a short review of Left Back, which can be found at my web site, <http://educationright.tripod.com> (scroll down to the Heading "Urban Education" and hit the link for "recommended reading") There was some experimentation with "ability-grouping" within same-age elementary classrooms around 1900 onward, but it wasn't commonly practiced, even in urban centers until the 1960s. Resistance to ability-grouping from parents and teachers at the elementary school level was strong because it involved people who resided in the same neighborhoods and were more or less part of the same social class. The segregation of neighborhoods and elementary schools by race and class was also a progressive era reform. During the 1950s, ability-grouping became the preferred model for elementary school education of the US department of education and the departments of education in all 50 states. Most of the states in the Deep South mandated gifted education programs by the early 1960s. The prospect of "race" and class mixing in the elementary schools was the stimulus. Ability-grouping was the response. MY EXPERIENCE I was enrolled, as a student, in the South Washington County, MN school district from 1962 to 1973, grades 1 to 10. There was no ability-grouping / curriculum tracking at all prior to the 9th grade. Most kids took algebra in the 9th grade, and geometry in grade 10. Others took algebra in grade 10 and geometry in grade 11. When I transferred to Murray High (St. Paul Public Schools) at the beginning of spring quarter, 1972, the high school counselor asked me if I took advanced or regular classes in math and English. I said, "Regular, I guess." So he assigned me to the "regular" classes. By the start of Spring quarter, the "regular" geometry class had covered less than half as much ground as the geometry class that was offered at Park High, THE high school in South Washington County, at the time. Several weeks passed before I raised this concern with the school administration. At this point I discovered that "advanced" math and English classes in St. Paul were equivalent to the classes that everyone took in the So Washington County school district. Almost all of the Murray High students who took "advanced" courses resided in North St. Anthony Park, one of St. Paul's better neighborhoods, and / or attended the elementary school in that neighborhood. Almost all of the students who took "regular" courses resided in much poorer, white working class neighborhoods outside of the SAP elementary school attendance area. I didn't think that there was basically much difference between students from the wrong side of the tracks / freeway / fairgrounds who I went to school with in St. Paul and the kids from the wrong side of the tracks / freeway who I went to school with in South Washington County. However, the kids from the wrong side of the tracks / freeway in South Washington County got a much better education. It is also noteworthy that the first black family moved into South Washington County in the early 1970s. There is a much larger black community there now. Parents my age and somewhat younger who currently reside in South Washington County have complained that the kids aren't the same as when we were public school students. "They are harder to educate, more disruptive, and so forth." I suspect these changes coincided with the introduction of gifted and talented programs and ability-grouping in the elementary schools. No doubt, black kids are concentrated in the "low-ability" groups, and the high schools are now offering "regular" and "advanced" math classes (just an educated guess). See "Why ability-grouping widens the academic achievement gap" at the Doug Mann for School Board site. -Doug Mann, King Field Doug Mann for School Board Web site: <http://educationright.tripod.com> _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A Civil City Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
