Failure

[Weird Harold]

The other is about 1-to-1 teaching, and its practicability.

My own experience is at 'FE' level - post-16. At that stage, 1-to-1 is practical: I've seen it done and I've done it myself. However, I don't mean all the time. At that stage, it is perfectly possible to make the general learning experience (in at least some subjects - my own experience was with Computing, but I've also seen it work with Maths) based on paper, or hyper-text material. A single teacher can then deal, in sequence, with several students individually, picking up problems and difficulties on a 1-to-1 basis.

What you're describing isn't "one-on-one" tutoring, it's "individual attention" -- something that is already present in most classrooms and has been the practice of good teachers for decades (if not centuries) all over the world.

It's at the heart of the debate over "class sizes" tha has been a part of political discussions of school funding since Eisenhower's administration.

Honestly, this isn't pie-in-the-sky, it's within reach.

Reduced class sizes aren't something that is "within reach" until we find some way of increasing the numbers of qualified teachers.

Better pay and benefits would be a start, but there is going to be an invevitable lag between raising pay and getting enough students through college and the certification process before there are enough teachers available to hire.

It does depend on an employing authority that isn't funded purely on efficiency-based criteria. The general teaching/learning materials have to be produced - and refined - outside the pure class time. And results have to be judged upon students' aspirations, not only against exam results.

Why do people treat the idea of MINIMUM standards -- as evaluated by a standardized test -- as such a horrible evil?

How else are you going to provide evidence that a student is "educated" if you don't define some objective level of quantifiable achievement as being the minimum education required?

There is NOTHING in any proposal for standardized testing -- or testing on a pass/fail basis -- that dictates that this is the ONLY material to be taught.

I don't know any good teacher that will settle for just "teaching the test" or fail to help students who want to learn to achieve whatever they're capable of learning.

The most immediate problem with education in the US is the shortage of qualified, good teachers[/i].

The second most immedite problem with education is an even greater shortage of good administrators -- far too many schools are run by "bean-counters" who are more concerned about funding than they are about using the funding they DO have to educate students.

Why shouldn't schools that fail to educate students to some objective minimum level of achievement lose their funding -- or at least lose their jobs?

Which brings me back to the subject of accountbility:

"Social Promotion" has been a fact of life for as long as most educators (teachers and administrators) have been alive -- certainly since most of them started school themselves. The resistance of the Teachers' Unions to holding teachers accountable for not educating students is just one example of how the concept of "social promotion" and related concepts have worked to undermine education.

Most educators have never seen, let alone experienced, an educationl system where there is accountability for failng to meet goals and standards.

There are a great many techers and administrators who are actually educating their students in spite of the system. However, there are just as many thechers and administratots who are NOT educating their students and are deathly afraid they're going to have to start if a national minimum standard achievement is ever enacted and enforced.

The above is also dependent upon student motivation - so it can't be applied without thought to school pupils who attend because they have no option (though even there, there can be some application).

Good teachers find a way to motivate their students -- even without a complete arsenal of possible motivational tools.

IMHO, there is nothing that can motivate a reluctant student better than holding him accountable for meeting a minimum standard with the threat of retention or summer school to back it up.

Teachers should never apply ANY teaching principle or method "without thought" -- just as they should not be denied ANY "without thought" appropriate remedy that will help a student meet the minumum standard.

"Failure" -- or "retention," "repeating a grade," "holding a student back," or whatever name you want to apply to the opposite of "social promotion" -- is a remedial tool that is being denied teachers and administrators "without thought," yet it is a proven effective remedy for some problems.

Automatic retention for failing to meet goals is no more a pancea for the problems in the currect educational system than social promotion has been for the problems with the "Old School" system. However, it IS one way to hold students accountable for their own education once learning problems outside of the student's control have been identified and dealt with.

I'm not sure tying test results to funding is the best way to correct the general lack of accountability in the eductional system, and I'm positive that just "throwing money at the problem" is NOT going to cure the problems either.

I do know that setting and enforcing a MINIMUM standard that is objectively quantifiable is the first step in correcting the problems. Beyond that, politics should step aside and let educators figure out how to educate -- that's going to mean throwing out some cherished concepts and resurrecting some old school concpets and melding what has been proven to work into an eductional philosphy and educational system that actually works over the broad spectrum of student ability and motivation.

 

[Boxlicker101]

Many years ago when I was in school, not passing was fairly common. We didn't call it "failing" though; we called it "flunking". There was some stigma at first but it always went away eventually, and the student who flunked usually benefited from it in the long run.

Not all children mature intellectually at the same rate. Some five year olds who enter first grade might not be ready for it and will benefit from repeating the course work. With the additional maturity they will do much better. The down side is the kid who flunks repeatedly, is branded as dumb and a failure, and drops out of school at 16.

On the other side you have social promotion and that can be a disaster. If kids fail to absorb the studies in one grade, when they move on to the next, they will have nothing to build on. This could be students who were late maturing and should have been early kept back in order to let their brains catch up. The opposite side of this coin is the student who, knowing he or she will graduate at the scheduled time, goofs off and doesn't study. Either way, the result is a lot of functional illiterates with high school diplomas.

 

[fifty5]

Hi Harold,

I don't think our opinions differ significantly at all. I think the issue was just down to background, and thus phrasing. I'm from post-16 education in the UK (where funding is tied rigidly to student recruitment, retention and test results), while I gather you're from the pre-college sector in the US.

In my sector, there used to be lots of evening classes that offered the opportunity to learn a new skill (from welding and car maintenance, through basket weaving and flower arranging, to word processing and programming). Students came to learn what they wanted to learn, and the teachers catered to that. Some students came back year after year to the same class, progressing at their own rate, some of them to extremely high levels.

Classes like that do still exist, but the balance has shifted predominantly to 'exam' courses, since only when there is an end test does the class attract the funds tied to test results. There is still some freedom, because there are lots of qualifications available at lots of levels, but decisions are made by managers on the basis of statistics, not by teachers on the basis of individual student's needs.

The other problem is the shift to criterion-based assessment. In theory, that sounds a good thing, but when put into practice, it has degenerated into an immensely long tick chart - and 'teaching' has all too frequently become a sterile process of getting the students to do anything that will get ticks into enough boxes. Each individual item is now assessed on a binary scale: "has done this" vs "has not done this" - and "has done this by accident, with no understanding whatsoever" gets the mark, while "understands pretty well, but made a minor slip that prevented the specified outcome" shouldn't get the mark (according to the rule book). Often though, both cases get the mark, simply because of time pressure generated by the other boxes remaining to be ticked.

The optimum strategy to get those boxes ticked - and thus generate the income that means the class will run again next year, or semester - and thusthat the teacher will still have a job - is to teach to the test. And the pressure to achieve that "success" is enormous.

The result is that while statistics show an upward trend, levels of genuine understanding have, in my experience, fallen.

Fewer students now 'fail' the assessment, but more are failing to achieve what they could.

f6

 

[rgraham666]

When I was in school, there was no way I could meet the 'minimum standards'. These standards were all based on the student's ability to write, and as I pointed out, I couldn't write. Still can't.

Under a 'minimum standards' method of teaching I would never have left Grade 1.

And I was 'properly socialized' by the standards of the day. The standards were that there were only two types of kids in the system, normal and stupid. I wasn't normal.

Forty years later, I'm still struggling with the socialization I received.

If you don't know why a kid isn't doing well in school, failing them is unlikely to accomplish anything positive.

 

[Weird Harold]

I don't think our opinions differ significantly at all. I think the issue was just down to background, and thus phrasing. I'm from post-16 education in the UK (where funding is tied rigidly to student recruitment, retention and test results), while I gather you're from the pre-college sector in the US.

Actually, my experience as a "teacher" is as an OJT (On The Job Training) supervisor in the USAF, and is vry similar to your exprience.

My experience with Public Schooling in the US is as a student from 1955 to 1968 and as a parent and grandparent from 1978 to the present.

One of my daughters suffered through the "Special Ed" curriculim because she "has an analog mind in a digital world" like her mother. I'm not impressed with the Special Ed program and feel that it's one of the areas that needs the most improvement -- although it's worlds better than the "remedial classes" available when I was a student.

Classes like that do still exist, but the balance has shifted predominantly to 'exam' courses, since only when there is an end test does the class attract the funds tied to test results. There is still some freedom, because there are lots of qualifications available at lots of levels, but decisions are made by managers on the basis of statistics, not by teachers on the basis of individual student's needs.

A sad example of politics and bean-counters taking over the educational system.

There needs to be some balance between objective assessments and accountbilty and individual goals and assessment.

The other problem is the shift to criterion-based assessment. In theory, that sounds a good thing, but when put into practice, it has degenerated into an immensely long tick chart - and 'teaching' has all too frequently become a sterile process of getting the students to do anything that will get ticks into enough boxes.

This sounds like a corruption of the system the USAF uses to track qualifications; a document that lists all of the tasks in a given carreer field with the requisite "knowledge levels" required for certification in that task.

Where the system you describe differs from the USAF system is that every task has to be checked off in your example while the USAF system is "duty oriented" and only the tasks required by the current duty position have to be checked off to raise a trainee from the apprentice to journeyman or "master" skill levels.

There are certain tasks that are required for anyone before awarding the next higher skill level -- the "minimum standards" -- but they're a small percentage of the total number of possible tasks in any given career field.

The result is that while statistics show an upward trend, levels of genuine understanding have, in my experience, fallen.

Fewer students now 'fail' the assessment, but more are failing to achieve what they could.

Again, I have to point out that properly identified criteria should be minimum standards. Politicians and bean-counting administrators don't seem to understand concept of minimum standards.

I once questioned a teacher why we never got all the way through a textbook. I didnt' understand the answer until much later because the teacher I asked didn't explain it very well.

In essence it's because textbooks are designed to meet the minimum learning goals by about two-thrids of the way through the book; the last third or so is "extra credit" stuff to fill the class time when the learning goals are met early.

Politicians seem to think that the "whole textbook" should be covered in every class.

rgraham666:
When I was in school, there was no way I could meet the 'minimum standards'. These standards were all based on the student's ability to write, and as I pointed out, I couldn't write. Still can't.

One thing I learned with a daughter in "Special Ed" is that there is a clause in the ADA (Americans with Disbilities Act) that requires that any student must be given the option of a verbal assessment if they have a disability that inhibits the taking of written tests. A similar clause in one of the Education acts permits ANY student to request a verbal assessment in place of a written test whether they have a documented disability or not.

Those laws came far too late to help you, but they do provide an alternative for children with your disability so they don't repeat your experience.

Education is NOT what you and I experienced and is extremely unlikely to return to what it was no matter what happens in the future.