In a message dated 6/17/2003 9:44:13 PM Central Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: > > 1) I think that the community school concept is flawed. I don't > think that you can effective teach a highly diverse group of > students. It works satisfactorily only if you set your standards > low. Teaching is for the most part what is called a "conjunctive > task," the progress of the group is limited by weakest students.
The MPS "community school concept" has nothing to do with the issue of whether or not to put students into separate instructional groups (or classrooms) according to ability. The MPS established guaranteed attendance areas for schools it designated as "Community Schools," saying it would facilitate greater parent involvement, which would in turn improve student performance. The district argued that its Community Schools plan would help to "close the gap" in academic achievement between white and black students, between poor and non-poor students, because the average distance between home and school would decrease more for black and poor students than for white and 'middle class' students. That hypothesis is not supported by the data on student achievement which the MPS has been subsequently collected. RE: ABILITY GROUPING Most of the Mpls district schools put students into separate instructional groups and classrooms by perceived ability. In the early elementary grades students are put into separate classes for reading instruction Most elementary schools also have a class for "gifted" students (generally the students who are placed in the highest ability reading group) . I think the best practice is to base instruction for the general student population on a college-bound curriculum and individualized educational planning. I don not agree with MA that students should be segregated by ability. MA has not objected to the district's practice of segregating students by ability. MA objects to how the district is doing it. Many of the school districts in Minnesota do not engage in the practice of differentiating the curriculum within a subject area, such as reading and math, at any grade level. On the other hand, most of the public schools in Minneapolis place students into different instructional groups within a classroom and into separate classrooms according to perceived ability in the early elementary grades (as early as Kindergarten). I estimate that nearly half of Minnesota's school districts do not ability-group students into separate classrooms and do not encourage teachers to do intra-classroom ability-grouping at any grade level. >From the early 1980s until 1997 the state did not specifically fund any gifted and talented programs. About half of the school districts did not have gifted and talented programs in the early 1980's (Hertz, L. "The role of ability grouping in the education of gifted and talented children." The Minnesota Elementary School Principal, 1985, Fall. pp. 24-25.) As far as I know, only about half of the school districts applied for a matching grant offered by the state to fund programs to identify gifted students in 1997. In a message dated 6/18/2003 6:20:19 AM Central Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: > Getting back to the crux of the argument, Michael writes: > > > The MPS function at a sufficiently > > high level of mediocrity that, as has been stated repeatedly, > > students can get into college. What they don't do is > > educate many of the minority students that attend them and > > they do not provide a true quality education for gifted students. > > I agree with the first part of the last sentence (though it has more to do > with poverty), disagree vehemently with the second (the point I've been > trying to make throughout the debate). I'd ask Michael to cite ANY data that > indicates gifted students aren't being well-educated in MPS. > > District-wide test scores say nothing about individual talent cohorts, by > the way. > Here I agree with David Brauer. The district seems to do a pretty good job of educating students it identifies as "gifted." I think that a sizable minority of the students are getting a good education. However, I think that the schools could do a much better job of educating most of its students. I disagree with Michael Atherton's assertion that "The MPS functions at a sufficiently high level of mediocrity that, as has been stated repeatedly, students can get into college." The data suggests that a big majority of students do not acquire the knowledge and skills generally required to test out of 'remedial' noncredit classes that are prerequisites for many required 'for-credit classes in Minnesota's system of public colleges, tech schools and the University of Minnesota. Data from the Minnesota Basic Standards test, a curriculum content test, indicates that a majority of MPS students entering high school have serious deficits in reading, math and writing. Most of the students who do not pass the MBST on the first try do not finish high school (though many who dropout or are pushed out do eventually get GEDs). In a message dated 6/18/2003 6:20:19 AM Central Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: > This is my point about the broad brush of critics. MPS has a huge problem > educating kids from broken homes and in poverty. There may be better ways to > do it, but no one has proven that on a districtwide scale. > > At the same time, there are thousands of kids - who are not mediocrities, > and neither are their parents - who are getting a great education at MPS. > > While I disagree with Doug Mann's "proof," he is at least banging at the > right problem - whether MPS educates poor and minority kids well while > educating better-prepared and -supported kids. > I don't know what David means by "proof." I have supported my arguments for untracking the Minneapolis Public Schools with evidence like data from National Assessment for Educational Progress math and reading exams, and data on high-performing, high-poverty, high-minority schools from the Education Trust (Dispelling the myth reports). The $64,000 question is whether strategies designed to "close the gap" such as 'untracking the schools' will necessarily lead to inferior outcomes for the top students. I think that part of the reason that the public schools were generally making progress toward closing the gap from about 1970 to the late 1980's is that the schools were generally moving toward strategies that had the effect of closing the gap. There was a C-change in K-12 education policy during the 1980s with movement in the direction of implementing policies that widen the academic achievement gap, which has had the effect of widening the gap since the late 1980s. It is a generally undisputed fact that curriculum tracking produces a wider gap in test scores and other measures of educational quality than not tracking, but there are differences of opinion about why this is so. Supporters of curriculum tracking generally say that the most advanced students benefit from curriculum tracking, and that it does not have a negative impact or even produces better results with the more academically challenged students than not tracking, but that the benefits of curriculum tracking are greater for the top-performing students. Note that I use the term 'curriculum tracking' here to connote the practice of segregating students by perceived ability into different instructional groups and classes. Minneapolis schools has a curriculum tracking system per that definition. -Doug Mann Educationright.tripod.com TEMPORARY REMINDER: 1. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. 2. If you don't like what's being discussed here, don't complain - change the subject (Mpls-specific, of course.) ________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
