- Chester E. Finn Jr. has three very bright granddaughters. He thinks they "have considerable academic potential and are not always being challenged by their schools." Finn is not just a proud grandpa; he's a long-established expert on education policy with the Fordham Institute and Hoover Institution.
So it's not surprising that his grandkids got him wondering about — and researching — a big question: How well is the U.S. educating its top performers?
There are some really interesting ethnographic studies on reading practices in homes of varying SES and how this affects the early stages of education. Typically, white affluent parents encourage their children to read from a very young age, starting with the building blocks of words and slowly moving up, etc. But children from lower-income households usually don't read as much and thus don't get those "building blocks". But they tend to have much better high-level reasoning and structuring skills than the affluent kids because they're used to orally telling stories with their parents and other kids. The "building blocks" skills the affluent kids have benefit them a lot in the early years, but the poor kids' high-level story structuring skills don't come up in school until later. (A good way to think about this is that affluent kids are very good at answering what, but poorer kids are very good at answering why). But, the poorer kids are classified right off the bat as being low-performing, which leads to a vicious cycle of not being interested in school, and by the time they get to the point where their reasoning/structuring skills become relevant they've fallen pretty far behind. It's really a shame since these kids aren't low-performing, they just have different skills.Meanwhile, screening for gifted programs usually happens in kindergarten, which creates a heavy bias toward those who come from more affluent homes.
I'm curious about the studies you mention. I grew up poor, drug abuse, gangs, violence, etc, but I was also encouraged to go to the library, which inspired my love of reading and self-education. Other low income students, broken homes, etc I became friends with in the private schools I got put into later in childhood, they were the same. Do you have an idea of specifics about these studies, in this regard? Does it take into account the people from broken homes and poverty who still managed to excel in school? I'd be interested in data about that specific phenomenon.
Yeah, this varies widely of course -- my parents didn't go to college and we were lower middle class but I was an obsessive reader. These are just trends noticed by various ethnographers. The particular study I based my comment off of is a fairly old piece (1982) by Shirley Heath, "What no bedtime story means: Narrative skills at home and school". This is by no means a quantitative, or recent, or widespread, study, but it gets at these issues very well and frames the problem much more eloquently than in my comment for sure! There are a few other studies like this, but this is just a memory from a course I took a couple years ago so I don't have sources immediately available. There's also the fact that you ended up going to private school, which probably has something to do with your observations; families who stress education enough to send their child to a private school probably also encourage behaviors like reading that play a role in how schools defines success.
I'm curious. I grew up dirt poor, severe poverty, etc, and still got into gifted programs with no problem when I was a kid. Have things changed so drastically in the time since (let's say a decade or two)? On another note: my time in public schools was challenging, exciting, interesting, never felt stifled, because of the gifted programs. Once I got put into private schools, everything changed: no more gifted programs, stuck with students I was light years beyond, bored out of my mind, never challenged. edit: for more background info--the public schools I went to were in the worst part of the county, nearly the entire population was on welfare, from broken homes, gang violence, and so forth.
My guess is that there are anomalies but that the aggregate data is clear. I also went to both public and private school. I went to a highly regarded public school system. Whe I went to private school in eighth grade I was WAY behind. Smaller classrooms, more dedicated students etc. Even the "bad kids," we're smart.
I'm a fan of the the multiple intelligences school of thought, that test scores aren't everything, and everyone has things they're good at, as well as things they're not so good at. You can't judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree. I have no doubt about your intelligence. =)Even the "bad kids," we're smart.
Eh. At least where I went to high school, there was always one or two kids who graduated with a few years of college under their belts every year. I myself started college as a sophomore, mostly from taking city college classes and AP tests. Keep in mind that this was a pretty big public school, and it wasn't a "magnet" school.
I've been in a couple districts where this is practiced, and my mom is an intervention reading teacher. Growth policies are good for low-performing and average students, because they have an obvious place to grow to. High-performing students have less places to grow. It's a learning curve. It takes a lot more effort and resources for the students who are ahead to make the same amount of growth, and if that isn't accurately reflected in the policies, they end up hurting their school's testing performance and losing those resources. Another policy change that could help: accountability targets that emphasize growth for all students.
Yep. Once I got placed into private schools, no more gifted programs, I was disliked by many of the other students, because most of the tests, I'd score 100%, while everyone else performed 75% or under. On one hand, it was frustrating for me, because then the test scores in aggregate would be graded on a curve, lifting the other students' scores up, and devaluing my higher score. On the other hand, I can somewhat understand (though I can't quite understand the details of) why the lower scoring students would get frustrated with me.
Curves are great when just a few people are doing really exceptionally, and then everyone else is in about a 20% range. They break down and lead to tension between students when they are spread different. I had one class where I pretty much always set the curve (the top student was given a 100%, and then every one else got as any points as they got). So, I felt pressures to either be really sure I got a 100 (then the second top set the curve), or to miss 8-10 on purpose to help everyone else the class, which wouldn't change my score at all. You are completely right about multiple intelligences. On one level, there are some teachers who can work different ones into tests, but they can never test all of them. And that is only the good teachers. Some make tests that don't work for anyone.