How does someone master the "key skills and knowledge" without learning all the pieces? By osmosis?

First of all, students often receive extra credit for such things as wearing school colors on Spirit Day; for bringing their parents to PTA meetings; for cleaning the classroom after school; for buying items that support the school's funding; for bringing extra pencils and other supplies to class; etc., etc., etc. I've seen it done in schools where I've taught and find it way out of line.

Secondly, many teachers regularly give homework and/or special assignments simply because it's expected of them whether the student needs reinforcement or not. Special assignments that actually allow the student to demonstrate mastery of skills are welcome but too many times that's not the case. "Busy work" that is piled on pupils does little more than take up their time and rarely has any direct relevancy to educational goals.

Finally, I think that schools focusing on authentic evaluations which in reality actually prove the students' level of learning is a good thing. It's a move in the right direction toward true student accountability.

But that's just my opinion.

so hard for them to pretend like they are learning what they already know.
this would have made my kids school experiences so much less grinding.
this can really make some room for kids with different learning styles.

I have kids doing scut work because I can't just excuse them. They'll get good grades on the test. They "got it" seconds after I said it. So they have to sit there and be bored instead of trying to find useful things to do. I get it.

But it's disaster for a lot of low-achievers, who need to have everything spoon fed and take lots of little baby steps. It's bad enough, having a kid take a test and fail it after he's not done any of the work that's intended to build mastery. Then he goes and turns in the work late.

Let's say he passes the test when he takes it several weeks later, but because he didn't know that content he failed the next test. He's running weeks behind. The semester ends and because his brain came back from summer vacation a month after his body did and nobody was allowed to kick his butt to get his brain moving, he fails.

And it really doesn't work for kids playing school. They turn in assignments without mastery, they take tests and fail, and in the end they're not going to care about Algebra II or physics, Beowulf doesn't do it for them. They're going to be farmers or welders, construction workers or truckers. They've been playing school for so long--not taking it seriously, but focusing just on checking off the boxes as they turn in assignments--that they can't do the work. Algebra II? Heck, they can't give a good answer to 9 x 8 = _____ without a calculator.

Can't separate them all out--GT kids might be separated if they reach critical mass, but unless you offer different classes and content for the high and low achievers you can't track or ability group.

environment with people talking, taking phone calls, texting, eating, walking around the room, and otherwise disturbing any chance of a routine.

And of course, you can coast for a while on previous knowledge, but there is going to come a time when you will really need to know how to closely read for meaning, take efficient notes for recall without having to do the whole sequence again, and learn how to work with other people.

The idea that results can be divorced from process is stupid, really.

Process is all we have in the end, because simple "facts" change often in our lifetime as new analyses are done, new discoveries made, more curious questions answered. I give this program three years at the most. It'll take a decade to straighten out the mess it leaves.

and real learning will happen.

i guess bottom line is that i am all for overturning stupid rules, and sure that good things will bloom from their manure.

I do. I teach inclusion classes at the senior high school level, economics and government this year.

What this means is that I have "regular" students, special ed, deaf, wheelchair, blind, 504 (dyslexic and other conditions not special ed which require modifications), 5th year (up to 8th year) seniors who are now overage 19-22 years old, exchange students, students on probation or parole, English Language Learners, with an average of 32 in the classroom, which has 3 student computers and a smartboard for technology.

I have a special ed inclusion teacher for 5 of my 6 classes every day, and I have a deaf interpreter one period.

The room is 22' x 24', and is part of the 1946 addition to our 1909 high school, renovated in 1988 to include air conditioning.

Here's the sum total of my rules for handling 32 students and up to three teachers at a time:

Special note on classroom behaviors and etiquette:
Mutual respect is the key to civilized behavior. We will all use normal courtesy when dealing with each other at all times, such as saying “Please” and “Thank you” and by listening attentively when others are speaking and by having something to say when talking. “Content-free” comments are a waste of everybody’s time.

In addition, I have no problem with bringing drinks to class, provided that all trash ends up in the trash can at the end of the period. Please, no food. No one, including me, will be excused during class to purchase snacks or drinks from any source, including vending machines and the cookie fund-raiser across the street.

Absolutely no hats or electronic devices will be permitted. They are unwelcome distractions to our learning environment.

Cheating is unprofitable, and therefore, will not occur.



Please just throw out all the rules there that you find stupid. Thanks.

(Oh, I forgot to mention that 85% of my students graduate each year and have for 18 years now.)

but have 5 kids, so yeah, i "taught" for many years including 8 years of homeschooling.
so, had a kid in the magnet program, taught kids myself, sent kids to the local school, had a kid in a therapeutic charter, so, been in and out.

might have valuable insight into education and i might not, i guess.

eta- sure have spent enough time cleaning up the mess made by factory schools, tho.

87% of kids in our district qualify for free or reduced lunch.

We have more than 400 homeless students identified in our 3600 enrollment high school.

We have more than 200 students on probation for felony offenses.

Our county has the highest rate of HIV/AIDS, teen pregnancy, teen traffic deaths out of 254 in Texas.


Take some education courses and see what you missed. You obviously care, but you badly need knowledge on differentiation, pacing, and environment. Thanks for posting, and thanks for caring!

This may will help smarter, self-motivated students, but they're going to do well regardless of the situation. But everyone else will likely suffer. Even those former students can always benefit from some practice (what's now known as "drill and kill&quot .

"...because simple "facts" change often in our lifetime as new analyses are done..."

I have to disagree with you here though; "thinking" is making connections between facts. If you don't have any facts to think about, you can't think (critically or otherwise). While some facts may indeed change over time, most facts will remain the same (or change only slightly).

But some kids mistake great knowledge of content, even trivial content, for actual learning.

My only point is that they need a process to deal with new facts and to integrate them into their own personal schema.

And yes, 5% of students will do well no matter what you do.

many of those kids are ground to a pulp by their time in school. you don't notice them, because they skate by you. mom's scrape them up off the floor when they get home.

Students are invited, take tours, and it all looks great. They sign up in droves.

Then, further down the line, when they've earned no graduation credits, they get booted back to their regular HS, taking no credits with them and already at least a term behind.

From the article:

Yes, that will prepare them for the real world, where everyone is free to ignore deadlines...in fact, I hear they're been renamed "alivelines" to better represent the fact they're of no importance.

This is also grossly unfair to teachers; as it is I'm always rushed by students asking if they can turn in missed/late work in the last week or two of a grading period. And those grades are DUE at a specific time and place, the teachers won't have this "deadlines don't really mean anything" fantasy-world they're putting these kids in.



There will be no way to know if that "D" was just a fluke from a good student or if it's some low-level kid who kept guessing at the answers until they got a passing grade. Grade inflation is already rampant in this country; if this is the path we're going, why even bother with grades at this point? This is going to take them from "inflated" to "meaningless" in no time.

Changes in education are proof that there's a sucker born every minute.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023622650

For most of the time I was there, our grades were based on 99% assessments, 1% practice (classwork, homework). We found that grades went down, sure, but worse, assessment scores went down. Too many students didn't see the connection between the practice and their test scores or did but didn't care enough to do the practice. Classroom management was a bit dicey at times because many refused to participate unless it counted as an assessment grade. We ended up modifying it to 88% assessment, 12% practice, and we saw grades and test scores go up because students saw a reason to do the practice.

The reality is, there's no perfect way to do grades. If you emphasize only the assessments (tests, papers, the big stuff), there can be all kinds of blowback, but if you put too much emphasis on practice, then grades are meaningless.

I had a teacher give me a weird look after I explained that I wasn't going to do any homework (25% of the grade), and I was going to still pass by getting 90%+ on every test. She gave me an even weirder look when I did it. She said " you could have gotten an A if you just did all the work". I said, "I spent all the time other students spent toiling away on your busy work having fun with my friends.".

Paraphrasing. "If doing remedial busy work is supposed to help me with topics that I have clearly mastered, why doesn't anyone above this grade level ever do them.".

I finished a class with a B test average and negative points. I don't remember the exact number but it was literally like negative 100,000 out of a possible 1,000. Oh, and to pass I would have had to copy more than 2^50 pages out of an encyclopedia.

that teachers as a whole spend a lot of time giving busy work.

I don't have time to mess with busy work.

I DID have a son who ended up on independent study to catch up his freshman year in HS, back in the 90s.

He had a burned-out teacher who'd given up. Assigned chapters to read, answer the questions at the end for HW, take the test on Friday. Half-way through the first term he was failing, even though his average on weekly tests was 92%.

Why? Because he didn't bother with the homework.

The homework was assigned to hold students accountable for actually doing the reading, because there are so many who won't. It didn't apply to my son's learning.

He got stubborn. I understood. Still, he ended up on independent study making up all that work so he could pass the class, and he did learn an important lesson. Not about health, which was the topic of that class, but about complying with orders.

We're not a compliant family. We go our own way. I was in full agreement with the principle he was trying to assert. I also know that, to keep a job and generally get along in the world, some compliance is necessary. Compliance with laws, compliance with those who hire you and pay you...it doesn't hurt to learn where to draw the line early on.

All of that said, I don't have time for busy work. I've yet to find that even my most gifted students already know what I'm teaching and don't need to process new information and practice new skills before taking a test. I don't assign busy work.

At least in my personal experience, there are some teachers who give out busy work. I've had several teachers who expected students to write down everything they wrote on the board and made it 10% of the grade. A teacher who made high school seniors color maps with colored pencils, but didn't test on the names of the countries.

The teacher whose class I had negative points in, also gave a passing grade to students with under 50% test averages because so much of her grades went to busy work.

It sounds like you are saying we should use homework as a way to teach children about submission to arbitrary exercise of authority. All those other examples there is a clear connection between the compliance laws and the quality of life of the individual and the other people in the community. If anything, he spent time he could have used to study for subjects that he wasn't doing as well or other personal enrichment. In this case compliance to authority made him worse off.

I'm starting to realize that maybe I'm one of the few people whose parents:
Took them to the library multiple times a week and made them sit around reading books for hours while they decided which books they wanted.
Sat down with them every night while they were learning to speak and read novels to them, sliding their fingers along words as they read.
Made siblings study together exposing the younger siblings to all the material they would see in later grades.


How many of the gifted students wouldn't study enough to master the material if homework wasn't graded?

And I'm the last person who easily submits to arbitrary authority. Even here at DU, where I'm the Lone Wolf whose loyalty is invested in principles, not party.

I've paid the price for that again and again, professionally and in my personal life. For the most part, it's been worth the damage done, but sometimes, you have to submit.

For example, whether or not I think the tax structure is fair, I submit my return and any taxes owed no later than April 15th.

Whether or not I think the fucking tests are a measure of learning or not, I sit in meetings and crunch the data; if I didn't, someone else would be doing it, and my students would lose a teacher that has their back in this system to the extent I'm allowed.

Whether or not I think I ought to come to a full stop at that sign on a rural road, when I'm the only vehicle for miles in any direction except for the cop who ticketed me, I'm going to pay the fine for the rolling stop.

My son COULD have spent his time more productively, although, at that age, he would have been more likely to spend it playing video games, given the choice.

While he was growing up, I WAS a librarian, lol. He spent a few hours a day in my library, and is better read than most of his generation, with the exception of his brother. Who did his homework in a separate spot, because the paperwork was done quickly, and most of his "homework" time was spent practicing on his trumpet.

Gifted students come in all types. Some of them are driven, type "A" personalities who are going to be learning something no matter what. Some of them are not. Gifted kids come with the same social issues that drive the rest of the population of adolescents, often exacerbated by their typically asynchronous development.

That's why I don't give busy work; every student has to dig deep to accomplish most of my assignments, and those assignments are usually customized to need. When it comes to something that needs to be memorized, I teach them ways to study that will accomplish that goal in the least time possible.

I really don't think I'm an anomaly. Teachers, like people, are all different; but, in 30 years across 2 states and large and small districts, the vast majority I've worked with don't assign things without a good reason. The era of one-size-fits all in instruction that I grew up with has been gone for a long time. Even having been educated through it, I got a great education.

There are great teachers. At least in my personal experience, teachers like your Son's had a negative effect that couldn't be overcome by the teachers who actually cared. Numerous other people have expressed the same sentiment to me. Negative experiences with teachers made school practically intolerable until I got to college.


I never thought of myself as very gifted because I was constantly in trouble at school. Looking back.... Some of the things that happened to me didn't happen to other people. Did they?
I was the only one I knew who solved all the math problems in my head and wrote down a list of answers on the tests.
I was first chair for two instruments, but I never practiced them outside of school.
I took math courses up to Diff Eq without doing any homework.
I learned how to do stoichiometry in a dream the night before a test.
My sixth grade teacher made me divide fractions (2 digit numbers) in my head in front of the class to prove that I didn't cheat on a test. Long story... but she stood me up in front of the class, yelled at me, said no one could do it (total lie), and called me a cheater.
I got 75% on an exam to get credit for high school chemistry without taking the class, seeing the textbook, or getting any time to prepare. I told them I wanted to do it and a week later they took me out of class and made me take all the tests from chemistry back-to-back.
I passed the an exam in a class that I wasn't taking. I slipped in to get a friend to skip and I had to take the test to avoid getting caught skipping. The teacher said something about it to the class when he discovered an extra test when he was grading.
At the beginning of first grade (4), I sat down with a calculator and figured out how to perform all the operations (Multiplication, division, percentages) in my head.

You might not like paying taxes, but they actually benefit both the individual and the community. I agree that it is important to know when to submit to authority. I pay my taxes too. It is also important to know when to push back. I planned to go to community college after high school anyway. Which meant I wouldn't have to send high school transcripts, so none of their grades mattered.

Maybe I just have some weird undiscovered form of high functioning autism. Doing homework emotionally hurts me and I learn nothing, but I could spend 10 minutes looking over solved homework problems and remember it for the rest of my life.

We can study brain development and learn something about how the brain functions and learns. We can look at a myriad of factors that influence how people learn and respond to their environment.

We can do so much, but the one thing we can't do, the one thing we will always fail at, is trying to standardize people. We're all different. When it comes to learning, we can identify things that work for most, but there is no one way that works for all. You don't have to learn like other people for your way of learning to be valid.

That's what brings the joy into every new year: new young people to get to know, to get to love, in all their glory, brilliance, dysfunction, strength, and need.

The current authoritarian standardization of our public school system is, in my opinion, abusive. For teachers as well as students. It benefits no one but the folks that need large cheap labor pools, cannon fodder, and obedient bubblers/voters.

Our public education system, our public school teachers, and our students need voters to give the current powers that be, those that are instituting abusive "reforms," the boot. We need a complete shift in priorities. I don't know how many more years I've got in me, but those years will be spent fighting for just that, and fighting to make something positive happen in my classroom amidst all the rest.

have been wrestling with "proficiency-based" instruction for quite awhile now.

It's not new. It's a recycling of the old, failed, "Mastery Learning/Outcome Based Education" reforms from the 1980s. Some of us are old enough to remember, lol.

Before SB2200, we were already dealing with this; the law just put more teeth into it.

Here's a consequence I've dealt with the last several years:

Students who do nothing all term long and try to give me an entire term's worth of "evidence" the day before report cards are due...whole bunches of them, which means that the end of the term is a nightmare.

We're adjusting to the demands of a "proficiency-based" system. We recognize that students are also supposed to be learning non-academic skills before we send them out into the world as adults:

responsibility; organization; work/study habits...

I never did include those in an academic grade. They go in the "citizenship" grade. That still appears on the report card, so we aren't grading "exclusively on academic mastery." At least, on our report card. I can't speak for the whole state.

Homework? Everything I assign, including homework, has at least one required standard attached. They have to demonstrate mastery of that standard. When they don't do the assignment, it doesn't demonstrate mastery. It shows up as an "incomplete."

We send home regular progress reports that show what we are working on, what is "proficient," what is "incomplete," etc.. No student is going to reach the end of the term without having done the work to learn and demonstrate that learning unless parents are compliant in their slacking.