I am a strong supporter of the public schools and opposed to the “reform” movement attempting to privatize education. I didn’t find your article divisive. But, I do have a question that keeps coming up for me about some of the reasons why charters gain traction.
Charters benefit from the real and perceived impact of heterogeneous grouping upon the achievement of more prepared students. Similarly, they score points because public schools are less able to address and remove disruptive children. For these reasons, a diverse district with students from all socio-economic backgrounds is at risk for charter take over.
We complain that charters are skimming the top, we have to take all comers and we can’t cherrypick; we can’t dump the least school ready students. We wear it as a badge of honor; we’re a force for egalitarian education for all. We’re a place where all children come together to learn. Well, that’s great.
BUT… a parent who wants to limit negative influences or increase challenge of instruction may not care about the general mission if the impact of that mission upon their child is negative. I’m not sure we can stem the tide of charters when we use middle class children as social equalizers and consider the annual limitation upon their achievement and growth as an acceptable loss. That’s an insufficient mission. This makes public school less desirable for parents who have prepared, able children.
I understand why these parents want to flee classrooms when the books are two or three levels below grade and their children are rarely challenged in the school day. And, I understand why they get tired of being told that every need is met with skilled teachers who can differentiate. It’s not true. Differentiation is frequently insufficient in classrooms where the range of student skill base goes from 2nd grade to post high school.
If we are going to meet the challenges posed by privatizers, we need to look at what we’re doing with a clear eye. Research shows that the positive impact of heterogeneous grouping is on the social development for lower income students. It is a benefit.
In my experience, most students in a well constructed, heterogeneous classroom, headed by a teacher who is skilled share a common positive culture that makes it possible for students who might otherwise have few positive role models to grow. It has been my experience that a middle of the pack student will make academic gains if they are in a class that is challenging, but not too challenging.
However, it is also my experience that the lowest skill level student makes no progress in a heterogeneous setting and would benefit more from a homogeneous, small class with more focused and direct instruction. It is my experience that the middle top and top does not receive academic benefit from heterogeneous instruction. I don’t know of any study of heterogeneous grouping that shows a positive academic impact on above average students.
But, I do know that a homogeneous class of top of the middle and top students will make significant progress each year. We need to look at how to really challenge all of our students if we are going to compete with charters and private schools. We need to be willing to consider the cost of chronically disruptive students upon the efficacy of the regular classroom and the lack of alternatives for students to run their own race in our schools.
I don’t know what the answer is, but 25+ kids each period wait upon our ability to figure out what to do. If we don’t come up with solutions in the traditional public school setting, parents are going to opt out.
I think that ultimately a comprehensive approach must be taken to teaching children in public schools. This means that standardized tests can no longer be the goal when creating curriculum for the classroom. When teaching to the test is all that matters; then invariably the other components of education breakdown, namely; socialization, innovation, and exploration.
As an interesting point I attended a workshop with the man that created the model for inclusion classes in NYC public schools. The workshop was in 2006 at a junior high and he mentioned how disappointed he was that his vision for inclusion had been distorted. A true inclusion class incorporates all levels of learners and when he started it in the late 70′s/early 80′s he remarked how well the process worked especially with male special ed students. Today, inclusion classes and/or CTT classes are used as a means of simply warehousing special needs students under another name.
The reality that here in NYC they are pushing to have standardized tests in EVERY grade is truly frightening.. What would be much more beneficial is attempting a Montessori style approach early on instead.
The two paragraphs about a heterogenous classroom vs a homogenous one as to the disadvantages and advantages to students of different levels is absolutely true. That is the biggest problem in public schools. Absolutely!!gylamb@hotmail.com
That’s funny NYSDOE King sends his kids to a Montessori
Maybe, just maybe, the reason is all of the legislation and policies that are passed which make it appear as though policymakers have done something about “the problem” (which they helped create).
Speaking about tiers of types of kids, I would love to see sociologist Elijah Anderson’s findings about “street” and “decent” families incorporated into discussions about education. He touches on the characteristics of those two types here:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1994/05/the-code-of-the-streets/306601/?single_page=true
Guess which type of family will seek out charter schools?
In “Code of the Street: Decency, Violence, and the Moral Life of the Inner City” Anderson describes how street-oriented kids use school as a “staging area,” a site where they campaign for respect from members of their social subgroup. Alienated by circumstance and neglect from mainstream society, theirs is a totally-to-be-expected and highly adaptive response.
http://perimeterprimate.blogspot.com/2009/08/school-as-staging-area.html
I have a hunch that the majority of non-street families (either poor or middle class) can handle a certain percentage of street-oriented kids at their children’s schools, and that there is a tipping point in that proportion where the “street” kids’ power completely dominates the school’s culture and drives teachers and other families away. Finding a way to keep a school under that tipping point or greatly reducing the negative impact of controlling blocks of “street” kids might be two things to pursue.
This is a very interesting perspective, Sharon – thanks for sharing these articles. And your hypotheseis is probably right – this is exactly what happened in my son’s elementary school. We live in the suburbs and chose to send him to an inner city public magnet school that was very successful in serving both inner city “street” kids and suburban kids. A change in administration brought an administrator who failed to listen to the suburban and the more involved inner city parents (who ran the PTA and other school clubs), and these parents soon pulled their children out of the school. Other “decent” families began to withdraw too and the balance of “street” to “decent” went from 50-50 to 80-20 in three short years. Now the school is struggling with low enrollment. teacher turnover and discipline issues.
I absolutely agree about tipping points.
The received wisdom, especially in the US, is that heterogenous grouping benefits lower achievers and harms higher achievers, but contrasting heterogenous and homogenous grouping makes little sense. If teachers who have been used to teaching homogenous groups are asked to teach heterogenous groups and given no support or professional development, then the results are likely to be pretty dismal. But that says nothing about what might be possible with effective support for teachers, and here the work of Liora Linchevski in Israel suggests that teachers can learn how to teach heterogenous groups well. Also, we know from the work of Jo Boaler that traditional math teaching in homogenous groups can be very destructive for high-achieveing female students. My own research has shown that the same teachers are generally better teachers when teaching heterogenous groups than when teaching homogenous groups (even when they dislike doing so) because they are forced in their instructional planning to recognize the differences between students. And it is also worth noting that in Finland, where heterogenous grouping is the norm, they have higher mean scores than the US AND have twice as many students achieving at the highest levels in PISA. So rather than asking whether homogenous grouping is better than heterogenous grouping is better—a question Karl Popper would have regarded as unscientific because it is not capable of being answered—I think it would be more productive to ask, “What kinds of support do our teachers need to provide high-quality instruction in heterogenous classes?”
The author makes a number of cogent points we must address. Parents that have left my school in Clark County, Nevada, have done so for just the reasons cited. They specifically did not want to put up with their children being harassed by students that had been doing so for years. Administrative response was weak, so the good students left, and the poorly behaved ones remain. I do not claim to have the answers, but parents think in terms of their children, not society as a whole. We have to be able to enact the practices cited by Dr. Burris and others. I humbly submit that having vocational opportunities available would also help. I remember my district’s successful carpentry and plumbing programs that were discontinued due to the reformy push for college for all.
That’s interesting, because I thought one of the major apologies for charters was that they would help close the “achievement gap” by taking our neediest students and making them “competitive” with the most well-performing students.
The apologia in this post basically states as a matter of fact a criticism that charter school advocates have long-denied. At first it was “We don’t get to cherry pick. We’re subject to the same rules as public schools.” Now it is “Yeah, we cherry pick but someone has to serve the gifted students in poor communities.”
It is moving back of the goal post if you ask me. I went to Bronx Science and then to Brooklyn Tech, two of the “best” public high schools in NYC. The public schools and many others like it do a fine job of educating our brightest students.
An argument against what the teacher in this article posits is to expand the opportunities for our brightest students to go to those “specialized” public high schools. As of now, one test determines whether or not a students makes it in. The application process should be diversified with exams only being part of the measuring stick. GPA, recommendations, interviews and essays should also be part of the process, sort of like college.
We have the tools to educate the type of students described in this article. We just lack the will to make better use of them.
In order to get to those “best” high schools students have to survive elementary and middle school. There are times at the elementary level where classrooms are held hostage by students who have been identified, have IEPs etc and who are receiving services. They are very disruptive and also very protected by their “identified” status.
I am 100% for public schools but if I were a parent with a child in one of the classrooms I described, I would take some type of action. All students need to beserved in a safe and orderly setting.
Similar public environments exist at the elementary and middle school level, at least in New York. Consider Mark Twain Intermediate School for the Gifted and Talented, and feeder programs like Delta.
There are many who don’t have IEPs that have the worst behavior problems. I would rather say that the students are being held hostage by the education system which is why they have disruptive behaviors. Many students have IEPs, because they do not meet outrageous expectations mandated by our government. Additionally, many are retained because of it. They drop out before getting to high school.
The lawsuit should be against the DOE and their coporate lobbyist.
IME many of the unidentified kids who are behavior problems COULD (should?) be identified as needing some kind of services. I know of a number of kids whose parents refused to have their kids tested, or whose teachers or schools refused to believe there was a learning problem, and when the child finally got services in 4th or 5th grade was irretrievably behind the class AND had an entrenched pattern of behavior problems to go along with it.
Many students with IEPs are tremendously bright, motivated, well-behaved, etc., more so than certain so-called “mainstream” students. There is a great deal of mislabeling in the public schools where many students with IEPs should not have them while many students without IEPs should. I’ve taught CTT classes for the past few years where mainstream and IEP students share the same classroom and I have never had a problem with them. Many students with IEPs outperform most of the students in the class. Same goes for ESL students, another group I have taught over the past few years.
There are gifted schools and programs at the elementary and middle school level which should be expanded. I went to NYC public schools in the last days of tracking where the gifted were separated by maybe the 3rd grade or so and educated accordingly.
Like I said, the public schools have the tools to educate the city’s brightest students, We lack the will to do so now more than ever because the privatizers have an interest in allowing public schools to underserve those students as an excuse to make more charters,
Assailed Teacher,
I am well aware of gifted, creative, wonderful students with IEPs. I have had the pleasure of working with them. IEPs are there for a reason and I am glad our students are fortunate enough to live in a country where there are opportunities for all students. My point was that some students with IEPs and BIPs who are disruptive to the level of sometimes being violent, is a reality. We do not all teach in the vast public school system of major cities. Some of us are in small school districts in rural areas where resources (think alternative classroom placements) are not available within the district at all levels.
This is why I am sympathetic to the parent who wrote the post. As parents (those of us who are informed and have the wherewithal to address the the problem) we know what is best for our children, the situation they are in, and how to modify the circumstances to best serve our child’s educatiional, social, and emotional needs.
“One size fits none.”
I was a special ed classroom teacher for 15 years, working with children labeled as severely emotionally disturbed. Some of them were quite bright. Very, very few of them would have been well served in a heterogeneous general education setting. They just didn’t have the necessary coping and cooperation skills that are required in a large class. Much of my job was to teach the kids these skills. We were trained to do this.
I, personally, haven’t found the “magic bullet” for achievement in a classroom. Some of my classes did better when, working with other teachers, the kids were separated by functional level during ELA and Math blocks. It helped minimize feelings of inferiority that some of the lower functioning kids had when they saw how far behind they were in comparison to their peers. Less acting out. And, most importantly; all the groups were able to focus at their functional level, and, thus, progress at a rate that was within their range.
Then there are other classes I’ve taught where the group dynamic fostered a sense of community and acceptance. The mini-lesson/small group and independent workstation/share-out model flowed smoothly.
There are no hard and fast rules when it comes to class dynamics, in my experience. You have to know your kids and what makes them tick in order to make decisions that will have positive impacts.
Yes, yes, yes … I have had similar experience teaching math in tough schools although for not as long as “gitapik”… when will those who make policy listen to those on the ground or even better, when will the managers “evaporate” to allow us in the classroom to do our jobs … after of course the state legislature gives us real authority to establish proper learning environments in our schools and our classrooms …
This teacher knows what they are talking about. More should listen to this methodology of having students in classes at their level. As at the school I went to each subject had different classes with students at the same knowledge and ability level in each class depending on their ability in that subject. This has always made sense for the reasons pointed out by this great teacher who is obviously interested in each student doing the best in each subject without humiliation.
Here’s an acid test for the proponents of homogenous grouping. Would you still want homogenous grouping if the district’s policy was to assign the best teachers to the lowest achievers and the worst teachers to the highest achievers? This would actually maximize average student achievement, because the students who benefit most from high quality instruction (the lowest achievers) would get more of it. But of course, what this question usually reveals is that the use of homogenous grouping is just one more mechanism by which the already advantaged seek to gain further advantage…
I personally want both homogeneous and heterogeneous grouping because both have value and purpose. But, your acid test would not be a problem for me. Done. Peer group is way more important than who the teacher is. It always amazes me when people imagine that the teacher does the most teaching in the classroom or that the magic of a good class is her invention rather than the chemistry of a whole class. In fact, a good class brings up the level of the teacher every time. But anyway… If public school exists solely for the purpose of leveling playing fields, then it isn’t the elitism of the public school student you need to worry about, but the private school student running your world and mine. They will always get a far superior education with their priority on themselves as they sprint well out in front of all the public school students whose job it is from kindergarten through 12th grade to make sure that their academic needs aren’t a mechanism for their further advantage.
Richard
January 20, 2013 at 8:48 pm
Maybe, just maybe, the reason is all of the legislation and policies that are passed which make it appear as though policymakers have done something about “the problem” (which they helped create).
Agree with this point of view
An excellent discussion here. I wrote about this last week:
http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2013/01/segregation-by-behavior-chartery-secret.html
The sad fact is that we already do segregate the students in our public schools: we segregate them by the ability and willingness of their families to pay high prices for housing. If you can afford to pay in the high six-digits for a house in the leafy ‘burbs, then you can send your kid to a fabulous school that will not segregate her from high-achieving children, even if she’s struggling academically or behaviorally. That school will be well-resourced and have a broad and rich curriculum; you’ll also have much more influence on its administration through democratically elected school boards that will be far more responsive to your concerns than autocratic urban school leaders.
These are rights and privileges that come from wealth. They are not available to parents living in urban areas where school resources are being drained by both regressive tax structures and the proliferation of charters, and where citizens are increasingly disenfranchised from having a say in how their schools are run. We currently have a two-tiered system of eduction in this country, and it has nothing to do with how “gifted” the students are in each tier.
Again, I give Petrilli credit for finally addressing all of this. But let’s take it to its logical conclusion:
If we are really saying the issue in urban education is that the “disruptors” need to be separated out, then charters are a terrible way to do so. Folks like Petrilli who want to segregate the children this way have an obligation to propose a fair, transparent, and broad-based system of evaluation at the developmentally appropriate time to track children not just by ability, but by classroom behavior. That system needs to be free of racial, ethnic, gender, and socio-economic bias.
But, perhaps most importantly, it needs to be applied uniformly across our society. There should be no more recourse for wealthy parents to buy their way into a public school district that mainstreams their disruptive, underachieving child with the high-flyers, while poor children in cities are separated into castes.
Good luck trying to sell that one to the PTO, Mike.
Until Petrilli is ready to roll out his system, let’s at least all agree on his premise: the secret to “successful” charters is that they serve different students than neighboring public schools. That’s a big step forward in the debate, and one I’d be happy to see many others take.
Yes, Mr.Jersey Jazzman! True democracy and equitable outcomes and expectations in education are increasingly reserved for the well off, and the rest of the struggling population gets to view democracy like a spectator but not really participate in it.
The answer is individualualized project based learning with every student having a computer.
If the question is, “How do you create a chaotic, unmanageable classroom that can only be taught by superteachers while spending as much money as possible on classroom supplies?” then, yes. The answer is individualized PBL with 1-1 computing. Absolutely.
Today, our education system is structured for only a selected group of kids (those who are college bound), so how can we even have a discussion on what setting works best between homogeneous & heterogeneous groups of students. The arugment should be about making education equitable for ALL students.
Why do we have special programs for the “gifted and talented” at an early age? Why don’t we have special technical programs for kids at an early age? Many of the behaviors in the classroom are because of boredom–kids are either over or under challenged. It works both ways. ALL kids have gifts and talents, but our system only identifies those with “high cognition”, as if to say they are special.
We need to face reality and focus on kids who are mentally ill, have autism, low IQs, ELLs, learning disabilities, and other medical diagnosis. (By the way, these conditions do not discriminate among SES.) We know how to develop a curriculum for high achievers (CCSS), but we fail to acknowledge others who have varying strenghts and talent. This is why we are where we are in education. We have a discriminate system that only promotes one group of students. And yet we tolerate it–what an oxymoron.
“Why do we have special programs for the “gifted and talented” at an early age? Why don’t we have special technical programs for kids at an early age? Many of the behaviors in the classroom are because of boredom–kids are either over or under challenged. It works both ways. ALL kids have gifts and talents, but our system only identifies those with “high cognition”, as if to say they are special.”
Agree. And I don’t think it can identify high cognition with accuracy at the early ages.
I’m sorry, this reads like parody to me. Are you saying that the system only recognizes kids with high cognition, and that it isn’t going far enough to help those with the various issues you list?
There are systems in place in every school district in America to identify children who are suffering from a learning disability, those who have language deficits, and those who are dealing with the effects of poverty. All layers of government and local districts are required to spend a considerable amount of money on targeted instruction/measures to help these students catch up.
Contrast this to the piecemeal and patchwork systems in place to identify and educate kids capable of learning above grade level, and the minuscule funding such programs receive, and perhaps you can see how I’m unclear whether you’re being serious.
I mean, alternatively, I could buy it if you said that the system was failing all kids, but to say that overattention to the college-bound and so-called gifted kids is the root of the problem? That seems like a stretch to me.
Education is expensive. Especially now, with all the technology we’re putting into the classroom. Special Ed adds heavily to that expense. People don’t like to pay taxes and the politicians feed on this (which is a story within itself) and yet we shake our heads at the state of our education system.
NYC has lowered the bar for what qualifies a kid for gifted and talented status. The tests are being used more for placement within classes, now, than for specialized instruction. Getting a teacher with the training (and it does take training…it’s not just giving them added work) to teach the truly gifted and talented kids is an added expense. And it’s not just one teacher for all. There are different manifestations of gifted and talented. Math, writing, reading, the arts. You’re not going to get people volunteering to do this. It’s very hard work. Rewarding…but hard.
As far as flerper’s point: the VAST majority of IEPs that I’ve seen through the years have had one common point: the child likes to use his hands. What do we do? Give him manipulatives. But this doesn’t necessarily address the point. Many of these kids aren’t stupid…they just want to see a reason for what they’re doing. “How is this going to help me to be a plumber?”. “Will this help me learn how to solder better?”. There’s an immediacy to many of these kids that the system doesn’t address. That’s why a lot of them act out. They see no purpose for the institution. They don’t see how it relates to their lives.
The system is based around preparing kids for college or trades which require high cognitive functioning. There are fewer and fewer manual trade schools, which I think is a crime. Is this because of all the outsourcing. Our decimation of the blue collar job industry? I don’t know…but I do know that there are a LOT of people out there who are not academically oriented and shouldn’t be looked down upon for the fact. I’ve privately consoled crying 10 year olds who are “…tired of people thinking I’m stupid. You guys don’t know shit about me.” Very tough kids. Crying and at the end of their rope at age 10.
Einstein: “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”
Tim,
You need to understand how our government and corporations are segregating students and setting up non-college students to fail. They mandated CCSS for the sake of preparing kids for college. My argument is that not all kids are college material or want to be. They are not given choices at an early age compared to those high achievers in the gifted programs who get bused for several hours out of the week to receive “gifted” instruction.
Although there are programs in place for students with disabilities, they are still being exploited by mandates (NCLB, RttT, CCSS) that do not empower them to be successful after HS if they don’t drop out before then. Before we talk about funding, the discussion should be about equity and how to serve ALL students appropriately. I’m afraid that students w/IEPs are not receiving an appropriate education as the law states: “students must be provided a Free Appropriate Public Education (FAPE) that prepares them for further education, employment and independent living.”
ELLs are treated as unfairly if not worse. How is it possible to not understand English and yet be subjected to take high stakes testing? Yes, all of this is a parody.
Reformers have tunnel vision–only being concerned with test scores, teacher eval., college readiness, etc., and losing sight of the impact of their agenda. Accusing me by saying “…but to say that overattention to the college-bound and so-called gifted kids is the root of the problem? That seems like a stretch to me,” is not a stretch; I’m being realistic.
I have put two students through public high schools (so far). One had an IEP due to a wide variety of learning issues, the other had an IEP because of high achievement. Only the student with the high achievement IEP had to go outside the public schools to get an appropriate education.
Okay, so which is it?
Are charters entirely about “helping poor kids who are failing and falling behind, with no hope in the current system” OR “separating the students with the greatest academic potential from those who are holding them back’?
I’ve been told by every single charter enthusiast that “it’s all about meeting the needs of kids that the public schools have given up on.” And that, “Sure, public schools work well for kids going to schools in middle class suburbs and the like, but they don’t work for the kids who are normally just tossed aside in our urban public schools.”
So, here is someone admitting that the reason some parents are strongly in favor of charters is the belief that “only charters” can separate their “smart” kids from the “losers”—the ones that the public schools have supposedly “given up on.”
Which of these “Charter Justifications” is true? Which one should I believe?
I nave always said that the major advantage of allowing students to choose a school is a better match between student and school resources. I think that is the one to believe.
“I nave (SIC) always said that the major advantage of allowing students to choose a school is a better match between student and school resources.”
Perhaps you can explain what this means. This isn’t written very clearly. (Maybe you ARE an economist?)
Traditional geographically zoned schools will, at best, try to be all things to all students. Given any imaginable budget, this will require compromises within a building and uniformity across buildings. The new chemistry teacher must also be the cross country coach. The math teacher must inspire students in remedial and advanced math. Successful programs must be offered in all schools or none, too often resulting in no schools being allowed to offer it. The school becomes like the food served in the cafeteria, somewhat nutritious, sometimes tasty, but reliably bland.
At their worst, traditional geographically zoned schools will ignore the interests of students outside of the mainstream and shift resources to the education and activities that the majority of local parents believe to be important. Football stadiums are built while music or drama budgets are slashed. Some students now have the protection of the courts, forcing school districts to pay attention to some of the students outside the main stream. The students out of the mainstream who do not have this court protection are left out in the cold as the school district slowly shifts resources away from them.
Choice of schools allows the possibility of some specialization, some diversification between schools. A school where athletics is not an emphasis can hire the best chemistry teacher, not the best chemistry teacher who is also a good or great cross country coach. School A and school B can offer different programs because no student is excluded from either school. All students become closer to mainstream in the school because, in their school, the stream has moved closer to them.
So, do we go back to tracking?
I think whether to pursue homogeneous, heterogeneous or a mixed approach depends on multiple factors including how wide the disparity of skill level is in a particular district, the available percentages of students at the different levels and the nature of the instruction.
I think the notion that homogeneity is, by definition, unethical is simply wrong. Some kinds of instruction are best suited for ability grouping. Saying that it is NEVER okay to group by ability is dogmatic and unresponsive. Why take such a hard line position? Why handicap teachers and students by chaining them to the false ideal that we should always learn together (except in afterschool when we are allowed to homogenize with no apologies). Why turn a blind eye to the evidence that heterogeneity does not benefit all comers in all situations. We do our children and our public school system no service when we ignore it’s pitfalls because we love its rhetoric. To have a thriving, healthy system we have to remain flexible and responsive to new information (even as it relates to our own sacred cows).
Carol Burris writes that her students (the ones going to Princeton and the ones going to community college) learn side by side and she points to a 16% free and reduced population. I would submit that my school’s circumstances are different than hers. In my district, children at a second grade reading level… children who are unable to conceptualize adding two single digit numbers… learn side by side post high school readers. We have a 34% free and reduce lunch population and a large ESL population. My lowest skill students aren’t going to community college. They will be unable to pass out of high school with a diploma, and I’m worried that they will be functionally illiterate out in the world, in part because well meaning academics deny them access to school day instruction in basic skills. I worry for the top, even though it is apparently unnecessary since I am told that “the top will always be okay”. I don’t feel that okay is okay enough. As an example, my niece who is the unfortunate recipient of homogeneous math instruction through middle school just got the second highest score on the regents in her magnet school. The highest score was an 89. Little wonder, when the only algebra instruction was a part time after school enrichment club. I worry that she is being excluded from the top colleges by her principal who thinks nothing of leaving the top students unprepared for advanced instruction. I worried for my husband who has since left the profession when he was expected teach physics successfully to students who could not read or do basic math (because everyone should always learn together).
I would say that heterogeneity in these cases needs to be more well crafted. There is a such thing as too wide a disparity of level. Similarly, you cant call a class truly heterogeneous if you don’t have a sufficient number of students to round out it out. A class that has only two high level students in it is a class that is damaging to the high level student who learns early and often to hide their intelligence. A class that has a 2nd grade reader sitting next to a post high school reader teaches one child shame and another arrogance, in some cases reinforcing racial sterotypes while paying homage to appearances. It is a case of teaching no one well and serving nothing up.
Heterogeneity is valuable, I’m an advocate, even if it seems that I am not, but it is not a sacred cow. How and where it is implemented is key to its value. If there are insufficient numbers of high achievers in one class, it has no value to place the few of them there. If the difference in abilities is so dramatic that there is no common academic need, why put them together? If the flaw of homogeneity is lowered expectations and dumbed down curriculum, then teach your teachers how to teach. Don’t assume that a one third, one third, one third mix by scores (speaking of rating and ranking children) will solve it merely because of the inherent goodness of being together in happy differentiation. I vote for less loaded rhetoric about equity and advantage and more stark, uncensored discussion of the flaws in both models.
A wonderfully reasonable argument; I agree with you, concerned teacher. I look to own experience in learning things. When I took ballet, I would have quit if I had been put in a class with advanced dancers whom I couldn’t even hope to imitate or dance with and not look silly. I couldn’t possibly keep up with choreography that would be exciting for them. Ballet teachers, note, never arrange their classes heterogeneously for that reason.
That is not to say we are not all inspired by the greatest dancers and enjoy watching them in other contexts. I would enjoy having one as my teacher but not as a student alongside myself.
“My lowest skill students aren’t going to community college. They will be unable to pass out of high school with a diploma, and I’m worried that they will be functionally illiterate out in the world, in part because well meaning academics deny them access to school day instruction in basic skills.”
I had students who tested as nonreaders, which wasn’t far from the truth. In high school! Thank goodness I was teaching a self contained reading class.
Ever wonder why reformers do what they do? Believe it or not, its not about the $$ for most of them. Reform opponents can choose to believe otherwise but if you make erroneous assumptions about reformers’ motivations, inevitably you will fail to anticipate their future political strategies and the opposition will be at a disadvantage.
Two core beliefs held by many in the high-poverty, high-achievement urban charter school movement are that:
1. Acquisition of skills-based knowledge through public education (including charter schools) is the most impactful way to move us towards a more equal society;
2. A college degree is a time-tested proxy of sorts for the acqusition of that knowledge. A college degree is also a reliable passport to access economic opportunity and prosperity in our society.
So armed with those beliefs, many urban charter schools are trying to do two things:
1. Close the achievement gap to eliminate predictive racial and socio-economic factors in student academic outcomes;
2. Put competitive pressure on the current government-run public education system in order to catalyze dramatic improvement in K-12 academic outcomes for all. “Improvement” is largely defined by a college-readiness standard(s).
Not so. Some corporate reformers feel that poor kids need stern discipline, so they support militaristic “no excuses” charters. Some hate government and want to destroy public education. Some are in it for the money, seeing public education as an untapped market. Some are genuinely idealistic but have no idea what problems face children and families today. Naïveté, ignorance, idealism, greed.
The courts are responsible for the present method of grouping They forced what is called inclusion on the public schools. When I started teaching our school had three levels of instruction for each grade. 35 years later there was one level.Most school boards and administrators supported inclusion because it was a money saver. You needed fewer teachers.The one size fits all model was probably the most destructive policy ever instituted in education. That’s saying a lot because in 35 years of teaching I saw a lot of bad policy.
Diane,
Diane –
I certainly don’t speak for all reformers (even those in my own family or so I am told!) but I think those who favor “no excuses” schools don’t believe that poor kids need stern discipline so much as that ALL children benefit from a learning atmosphere that is calm, safe, and orderly.
Many charter opponents see hypocrisy in those who call for a “boot camp” environment in urban schools and then conveniently alter their philosophy when it comes to their own children who might attend soft-setting suburban schools. But its not hypocritical at all. Walking through the hallways of affluent suburban schools while peering into quiet (for the most part) focused classrooms, I am actually reminded of the atmosphere at so-called “No Excuses” charters. And neither resemble the often chaotic insecure environments of the worst traditional public schools that I find in our cities.
As an aside, while I find that too often you reduce ed arguments to ad hominem attacks, I must commend you in your response to me for using the term “some” as it relates to reformers motives for their various beliefs. Allow me to reciprocate and say sometimes you are right.
don’t believe believe that wrong when you say that
While “Jeff Klaus” and I disagree on some major points, I actually agree with his analysis on others. I suppose what I want to say here is that I miss his viewpoint in these forums and hope that he will post with more frequency. We need all hands on deck for this one.
One can want a calm, safe, orderly school without requiring students who come in out of dress code to get up in front of an entire school and have their dress pointed out to them as a means of shaming into compliance. One can have student attention without requiring them to nod when listening even when they disagree (!) What a scary school culture that is. I would agree that a no excuses charter does not resemble the worst inner city school, but it does not resemble an affluent suburban school or any healthy public school. It is not the calm of reasonable and consistent expectations and routines. It’s not appropriate consequences for bad behavior. It is the calm of rigid compliance to a battering ram of small rules. It’s the safety of knowing that humiliation can be avoided through unquestioning obedience. It’s the order of last resort… the kind you can achieve when you’re stepping on someone’s neck. Bravo.
Fear and obedience are obviously a good learning environment. We should do more of that and then we will have very competent critical thinkers.
I’m not a super sensitive children should never hear the unvarnished truth sort of person, but there are some very real and serious flaws in the step on the neck approach even if it is successful in the short term. It is an unhealthy model of authority and negatively impacts long term attitudes toward authority and self. It undermines capacity for all sorts of inconvenient for teachers but useful skills for adult interaction. If it were the only way to achieve literacy and discipline, I would say perhaps it is a necessary evil, but it isn’t the only way or the best. It’s a thugish, lazy man’s approach to getting an immediate outcome. There are plenty of less extreme ways of building self discipline in children.
This thread is a gem. I’ve been reading and rereading. Such critical thinkers that bring about some excellent points. Will we have such thinkers in 20 years? I pray and hope so.
Yikes! The charter school that you must have visited personally seems to be one part Dickens and one part Orwell! What was it called? “Bleak Academy”?
I’m happy to say that I’ve never been to a school like that.
But you bring up fear. And it does remind me that i was once a student at a public high school where violence was rampant, weapons of all sorts were frequently carried by students, and a wonderful teacher was shot and killed after 5th period tending the school store. What’s scarier than that?
Scary things happen. The existence of the worst case does not justify the wrong solution.
I agree, but I have yet to see any post on this blog about outstanding charter schools.
There are some but why do you think no one writes about them? Maybe they do not exist except in someones fantasy world. When you cannot excell when you have a big edge that means you are not doing the proper thing. What is so hard to understand?
There are many blogs where you can find stories about charters with high test scores. Can you not tolerate a dissenting view?
This is your living room, and I learn from many perspectives. Many of the posts here is a dissenting point of view from my perspective, and some not well thought out. I read and comment here for the same reason I watch FOX news, to expose myself to other ways of thinking.
I found your posting about How Do You Answer This Teacher’s Question?” very interesting. It brought out many new posters, and many of those posters seemed to think there was not much of an answer. Perhaps you could post something about a high quality charter and allow the posters to present the arguments that this charter should be closed. If there is a valid argument to close the best performing charter, clearly all charter schools should be closed. If there is not a valid argument to close the best charters, the only question is to decide where to draw the line.
I have no doubt that some write about outstanding charter schools, just not Dr. Ravitch. She concentrates on poor charter schools, just as others concentrate on poor performing public schools.
Do you think none exist? I have often posted about the Community Roots Charter School as concrete charter school that might be discussed here. It has many features that posters here would criticize, as the co director is both a TFA alum and claims the charter school is a public school, but no one has taken it up.
Perhaps you might explain why this school should be closed. I would be interested in hearing the argument.
If I am correct we are talking about national numbers or the larger game not the individual school. This is how it was addressed in the Stanford Study. There are always exceptions to the rule. The fact still remains that overall charter schools do not outperform regular public schools in spite of their extra favors and discrimination. Facts are what they are and charter schools have had long enough to prove that they are a solution to the problem and all they have really done is make the situation worse and that was the original intent after all.
Why do averages matter? A student does not have a choice between the average charter school and the average public school. Students must choose between the public school they have been assigned to and a charter school they have the opportunity to attend. What does it matter to a student in Detroit that New Trier and Thomas Jefferson students all now get perfect score on all standardized tests and get the very best educations in the world? If your not in the school district, those schools are no different from Phillips Exeter or Sidwell Friends.
TE, we still need to come back to how alternative schools are funded. I believe you yourself indicated that one of your children received his advanced math education through a university program; that it would have been prohibitively expensive to educate him within the public school. I think the point is that it is prohibitively expensive for many districts to have charters siphoning off their education dollars from tax money intended for the education of all. We don’t get to carve off bits and pieces and say that’s our share; it’s a community pot. I know there are plenty of examples of how this model is not followed equitably. Those are discussions we still need to have but within the system. A charter school should either operate under the same rules as a public school or go their own way without public funding. Right now the concept is being used to rape the public schools in too many places. If it is the aim of those with deep pockets, who call themselves reformers, to improve education then they should be willing to fund these endeavors without draining the public system of its resources.
I am an advocate of choice, not necessarily privatization, in schools, so I do not think money need leave the public school system. Students may well leave individual public schools and the money the community pays to educate them must follow, no matter if it is another public school, a charter school, or perhaps even a private school.
So, teaching economist, is it your belief that capitalism and the free market is the magic bullet that will solve all education’s problems almost as a form of natural selection. If you let people choose all things and allow public money to flow into private hands which will endeavor to meet those needs, eventually the needs of all the people (who can articulate and define those needs) will be met while providing profit and opportunity to a socially conscious entrepreneurial class who have bet your farm on their ability to do so. You likely also believe that in calling the resulting chaos “disruptive innovation. Destruction sounds almost creative when you put it like that.
It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there, in the view of free-market economists. Survival of the fittest. Too bad for the rest.
Actually incorrect, at least for this economist.
Concerned Teacher,
You are not quite correct about my beliefs.
I do believe that choice plays an important role in education, but I suspect you believe that as well. The difference is that you would restrict a student’s choices to classes available in the school building the district has assigned the student to attend, while I would allow the student to chose among classes inside and outside of that building.
Student behavior in the classroom is a major problem in the urban public school where I teach. If there are 30 12 year olds expected to listen and learn in the classroom, the supports from families and the extended social network need to be incredibly strong. Not only might there be disparate types of learners in the group, widely varying cultural backgrounds, stress from all sorts of causes in our children’s worlds, there are various unaddressed mental and emotional disorders there. Where did we get the idea that students of today “should” be able to learn in classes of 30?
Where did we ever get the notion that students “should” come to school ready to sit and listen to adults or behave as directed by adults who are not cultural role models for them, who do not even speak the same language as their families do? What kind of parental input and constant guidance is needed when students are exposed to adult content on screen and interact beyond our purview on social media websites every day for hours with people who may or may not be positive influences on them? Parents of today need to spend much more time with their children as they grow up – helping them navigate through the toughest obstacles. Parents have even less time for all this if they need to work several jobs to make ends meet, if they haven’t had much education themselves, if they do not speak English or if they do not have a large support system themselves. How can they provide what is really necessary for their children to be in that classroom ready to learn, listening and participating, doing their homework? Where are they supposed to even get the knowledge and training in how to do this level of parenting if they do have the time and speak the language? Some of us who have raised children know first hand what it takes. We know how we worked with our kids on homework, helped with projects, helped them get ready for standardized tests and college applications, helped them navigate the “friends” issues and discussed the books they were reading with them. We feel proud of our work, our know-how with it all. But we have to see that raising kids is not a competitive game –other people’s children are citizens of our democracy – our vital responsibility as well.
Do we think that testing those 30 city kids more often in subject areas or “evaluating” their teachers more often or intently is going to get them on an equal footing with those children who have been raised to succeed? Who is kidding who? Does giving tests help us shield ourselves from the truth? Does scapegoating teachers or unions provide a more comfortable type of “action” than rolling up our sleeves and solving the problems of parenting and educating in our country?
Put this in your pipe and smoke it!
All children need love and time with their parents and caring adults.
All children need early education from families and resource-rich, loving early education settings.
All children need medical care including mental health care and emotional support.
All children need to be shielded from too much stress in their daily lives while they grow.
All children need those fresh vegetables.
All children need safe vigorous play and physical activity most days of the week.
All children need to learn in educational settings that meet them exactly where they are, free of disruptive behavior problems, safe and attractive buildings, wholesome food, good playgrounds and gyms and credentialed, experienced teachers who themselves work in supportive working teams of professionals.
All children deserve the chance to play an instrument, sing in a chorus, make a mural and go on field trips.
Now let’s get to work. It’s going to take lots of money. It’s going to take lots of time. But lets stop distracting ourselves and do what needs to be done for all of our children.
And for leaders choose experienced, loving parents and experienced caring teachers.
bravo. 1001 times bravo, Caroline.
Charter schools by definition are not to be lumped together. Any pronouncement that charters taken as a whole fare only 20% better than traditional public schools misses the point entirely.
If you were in charge of energy policy and you commissioned a study that determined that only 20% of U.S. solar panel manufacturers could compete globally with the Chinese solar panel industry, on that basis, would you conclude that the U.S. should abandon any and all investment in this key strategic industry? Of course not. You would recommend focusing resources on the successful 20% and defunding the least promising experiments.
If in fact charters were originally constructed to be labs of innovation as no doubt many readers of this blog believe then why not invest
and scale up the 20% which have made a real difference for children
and their families?
By definition and for some people, the charter schools are a blessing. As with many fine concepts, however, there can and will be abuses.
Take, for instance, the closing of an “underachieving” school in an urban area. It’s disbanded and replaced by a charter school. The local students who are not accepted into this charter school end up going to the other nearby school, which has been doing well, in terms of the city’s mandates.
The sudden influx of uprooted students, many of whom were not achieving at a mid to high level, creates overcrowded classrooms and, consequently, lower test scores in what was once a sought after public school.
Two years later, this school is deemed ineffective and is slated for closure. To be replaced by a charter school. Etc, etc…
You probably know that this is not a fictional narrative. But how does this best serve that local community, as a whole? I believe the charter schools could be better utilized in partnership with the public schools. Not in competition.
“…charters taken as a whole fare only 20% better than traditional public schools…”
I see what you did there…
20% of charter schools doing better than public schools does not mean that charter schools are 20% better than public schools. Lies, damn lies, and statistics…
Ron,
This is a distortion of the CREDO study of 2009, which found that 17% of charters got higher test scores than public schools. 37% got worse results, and the others got no different results.
Diane,
I was operating under the assumption that Jeff’s “20% better” statistic was a corruption of the CREDO study, which I have a familiarity with but could not remember the name of. Thank you for clarifying.
When only 17% of charter schools nationwide have even marginally better performance than regular public schools even with all their exemptions and cherry picking this is total lack of performance and after all these years they cannot do better than that get rid of the failed model as was done with small schools. Remember that for 10 years Gates and Broad pushed small schools and they did not work and then suddenly shifted to teacher evaluation under Deasy for the short time he was there until they placed this superintendent of LAUSD who has a phony PHD. How can anyone who has any sense of fairness and consideration back up the failed charter school movement. Recently, Sept. 2012, The DOE OIG released their report on the total lack of oversight of charter schools in Florida, Arizona and California. How does anyone defend this and why am I the only one talking about this report when there is all this discussion about the failure of charter schools and this is one of the most important documents showing how bad they are?
It’s as silly to lump charter public schools together as it is to lump district public schools together. We could be learning from the most effective of each…in some places including Mpls and St. Paul, that is what many educators are doing. The continued trashing of charters (or district) public schools does not help students.
It does go so much further than the classroom. This was well said.
I’m ambivalent about heterogenous grouping. I’ve witnessed its benefits for some low and mid-level students, but I’ve also seen how it can detract from high-level students’ experience.
I teach the three levels of 11th grade English our high school offers–standard, honors, and AP Language and Composition. Even within the honors and AP classes, there is a great deal of variation in ability and maturity. In one of the honors classes, half the students read and behave at a junior high level. We have grade requirements for enrolling in an honors or AP class. If a student doesn’t meet the grade standards but wants in the class, a teacher may recommend the student; the teacher may deny a recommendation as well. However, our school has a “parent override” that allows parents to have their kids enrolled in the class regardless of grades or a teacher recommendation.
I’m sure our administration would find a parent override for extracurricular activities patently absurd. And it would be: “I know my boy is 5-4, slow, and unathletic, but I want him on the varsity basketball team. Not only that, he needs to play at least 20 minutes a game.” Why is it not equally absurd to permit parents to enroll their son in an honors class when he had a C average the previous year, reads several years below grade level, has little academic discipline, and is notoriously disruptive?
I think whether to pursue homogeneous, heterogeneous or a mixed approach depends on multiple factors including how wide the disparity of skill level is in a particular district, the available percentages of students at the different levels and the nature of the instruction.
I think the notion that homogeneity is, by definition, unethical is simply wrong. Some kinds of instruction are best suited for ability grouping. Saying that it is NEVER okay to group by ability is dogmatic and unresponsive. Why take such a hard line position? Why handicap teachers and students by chaining them to the false ideal that we should always learn together (except in afterschool when we are allowed to homogenize with no apologies). Why turn a blind eye to the evidence that heterogeneity does not benefit all comers in all situations. We do our children and our public school system no service when we ignore it’s pitfalls because we love its rhetoric. To have a thriving, healthy system we have to remain flexible and responsive to new information (even as it relates to our own sacred cows).
Carol Burris writes that her students (the ones going to Princeton and the ones going to community college) learn side by side and she points to a 16% free and reduced population. I would submit that my school’s circumstances are different than hers. In my district, children at a second grade reading level… children who are unable to conceptualize adding two single digit numbers… learn side by side post high school readers. We have a 34% free and reduce lunch population and a large ESL population. My lowest skill students aren’t going to community college. They will be unable to pass out of high school with a diploma, and I’m worried that they will be functionally illiterate out in the world, in part because well meaning academics deny them access to school day instruction in basic skills. I worry for the top, even though it is apparently unnecessary since I am told that “the top will always be okay”. I don’t feel that okay is okay enough. As an example, my niece who is the unfortunate recipient of homogeneous math instruction through middle school just got the second highest score on the regents in her magnet school. The highest score was an 89. Little wonder, when the only algebra instruction was a part time after school enrichment club. I worry that she is being excluded from the top colleges by her principal who thinks nothing of leaving the top students unprepared for advanced instruction. I worried for my husband who has since left the profession when he was expected teach physics successfully to students who could not read or do basic math (because everyone should always learn together).
I would say that heterogeneity in these cases needs to be more well crafted. There is a such thing as too wide a disparity of level. Similarly, you cant call a class truly heterogeneous if you don’t have a sufficient number of students to round out it out. A class that has only two high level students in it is a class that is damaging to the high level student who learns early and often to hide their intelligence. A class that has a 2nd grade reader sitting next to a post high school reader teaches one child shame and another arrogance, in some cases reinforcing racial sterotypes while paying homage to appearances. It is a case of teaching no one well and serving nothing up.
Heterogeneity is valuable, I’m an advocate, even if it seems that I am not, but it is not a sacred cow. How and where it is implemented is key to its value. If there are insufficient numbers of high achievers in one class, it has no value to place the few of them there. If the difference in abilities is so dramatic that there is no common academic need, why put them together? If the flaw of homogeneity is lowered expectations and dumbed down curriculum, then teach your teachers how to teach. Don’t assume that a one third, one third, one third mix by scores (speaking of rating and ranking children) will solve it merely because of the inherent goodness of being together in happy differentiation. I vote for less loaded rhetoric about equity and advantage and more stark, uncensored discussion of the flaws in both models.
Amen and hallelujah! Thank you. I have always felt the same way.
A few of the prior posts mentioned Montessori. Montessori is, in fact, a wonderful approach to successfully working with heterogeneous classes. The Montessori classroom does not ask that 25 – 30 students be doing the same thing at the same time. Students proceed at their own pace and work on the materials that present the correct level of challenge at the appropriate time. Yet, there is enough structure in the system and the materials, their sequence and the manner in which instruction is given, that implementation requires only strong training, not superhuman powers.
Montessori classrooms work with heterogeneous groups of students because of this freedom for each student to set his/her own pace within a structured and peaceful classroom.
There are over 450 public Montessori programs in the country (including district, charter and magnet) quietly doing good work. They are only beginning to get their fair due and coverage.
For more on public Montessori programs, check out http://www.public-montessori.org.
I mentioned the Montessori system but it is exactly what the deformer predators would not incorporate into the public school system. I am sure that most of the hypocrites who advocate for even larger class sizes and a reduction in funding send their children to Montessori schools.
When you want to create future generations of sheep who are incapable of analysis, introspection and critical thinking you don’t advocate for true change.
I’m late to this party, but here are a few thoughts:
1) Public schools also have a public purpose – that is, to help create thoughtful and productive citizens. It’s not all about the benefits received by current students. Public dollars should not be going to subsidize what are essentially private schools, which are able to control their student bodies so as to make teaching easier.
2) As far as I know, this is still the law of the land: “In the field of public education, the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” Applies to race, economic background, and more. Separate educational facilities ARE inherently unequal.
3) Much of this discussion is masking some of the real causes: reduced investment in public schools (especially community-governed local public districts). Would “heterogeneous” classrooms be easier to manage with class sizes of 15-18? Would more support staff, more aides, and so on help? Many charters square the circle by paying their teachers much less and then relying on constant turnover to reduce pressure to increase pay. This can allow them to reduce class sizes, among other things.
The conventional wisdom is that we have been “throwing money” at the problem. What I would like to see, but have not yet seen, is an analysis of K-12 education spending once the rising costs of health care for current and retired employees is removed from the figures. Right now, districts in Michigan must pay almost 25% of their payroll on top of pay to support the state school employee retirement system. About half of that is needed to fund the “pay-as-you-go” health coverage of retirees. Benefits have not increased, but the cost of health care has gone up many times as fast as inflation for a couple of decades. (Charters, which nearly always employ their staff via independent management companies, do not participate in the pension system as a result.) Even including health care expenses, school spending here barely kept up with inflation for the first decade of this century, and has fallen precipitously in the last couple of years.
So how much of this dilemma is of our own making?
Sjnorton4mipfs. All of it! When was the Michigan public pension and healthcare system EVER pay as you go? In my view the last decade has represented an analysis of K-12 education spending. Years of horrible fiscal policy and poor management have contributed to the hole we are in today. Every stakeholder is to blame.
One of the unspoken assumptions I’ve noticed through many of the replies is the idea that “high-flying” students will be high-flying in all subject matters. For example, a good friend of mine is tremendously gifted in languages and verbal ability in general. Indeed, she reads multiple languages and has a Ph.D. Yet, she is terrible at even basic math. For a student like her, she needed a high-flying class for highly verbal subjects, but for math needed very basic instruction.However, it is rare to see those kinds of distinctions made. Indeed, one sees the push for “college-ready” requirements like Algebra I in 8th grade for all students, regardless of the relative strengths of the student. I often wonder what would have happened to my friend if she had been forced into high-flying classes in all subjects and learned to hate school and learning as a result of the frustrations she encountered in math. Indeed, she would most likely be stuck in extra math instruction due to high stakes testing. Moreover, even within content areas, there are things that are more or less challenging, even for a high flyer. For example, I was great at Algebra but less good at Geometry, for I am good at logical problem solving, but spatial reasoning and visual elements are far more difficult for me. One can differentiate, true, but one can only differentiate to a certain degree within a classroom. How does tracking work for that situation? There isn’t really usually a slow-down/speed up track available.
I am 65 and went to private schools. Where I went to high school they did exactly that. You were in the class for each different subject at the level you were at for that subject. Made sense then and now. Why is this not being used. Who say everyone is equal at all things. This is not real as just described by the friend who was a wizard at languages but not very good at math. Not everyone has every skill.