<p>Whether this is meaningful depends on the minimum GPA requirement. I know for a fact that at many schools…including some private Northeast ones…the minimum GPA requirements are ludicrously low(We’re talking 2.0 and Go). Ridiculous when it was commonly known among non-ed majors that taking education courses was one way to get “East As” and a reason why some private sector employers are skeptical about prospective employees with undergrad Ed courses on their transcripts…especially if they’re non-majors.</p>
<p>…back when I was certified as a School Psychologist (1985) I had to take the National Teachers Exam. Although I never took one undergrad class in education, I found the test to be so easy that I couldn’t believe anyone could not achieve the cut off score for certification. It was all reading comprehension & common sense!!</p>
I loved my older son’s calc teacher. He told students to do as many homework problems as they needed to to be convinced that they understood the material. For the first time ds was stuck with extra hours of busy work in math.</p>
<p>I would never expect my kids to spend 6 hours a day studying on top of a 6 hour school day.</p>
<p>I had a good friend in Germany who got shoved into a lower track at 12 where she didn’t belong. She tried to go back and get her Abitur (the diploma you need for attending university), but it’s very hard to do when you also have to work full time at a job that doesn’t pay very well because you were put in the lower track.</p>
And I would add that a kid who does this is probably not going to be successful in gaining admission to the most selective colleges, because he won’t have time to do the other things those schools are looking for. What’s more, unless he’s in some very unusual school, any kid who needs to study for six hours a day in order to get top grades is not likely to be one of the brightest kids in the school anyway. Of course, the top students will often be very busy, and may spend more than 6 hours a day outside of class when you add studying, practicing, and working on ECs.</p>
<p>I think there is some cultural confusion over the term “studying,” as well. The top students “do their homework,” but do not spend a great deal of additional time “studying” the material (except before a test), because they don’t need to do so. This isn’t the same across all disciplines, but certainly in the humanities and social studies, rote knowledge is not valued all that much in the U.S. system (right or wrong). Analytical abilities are more valued. Math and science may be a bit different, and practice on problem sets may be helpful. But I think making kids “study” for hours after completion of assigned homework is probably somewhat self-defeating if the goal is success in the U.S. educational system.</p>
<p>mom2and,
My experience with tracking for me, and then early in my D’s primary education, was suprisingly effective.
It was more like some kids were accelerated and the rest were in the normal path, ie no stigma.
There were also very fluid/often re-arranged groupings of small numbers of kids during the early reading years and early math years, whereby the kids were ofter re-assigned based on how they were doing and what the topic was. The fluidity definitely removed any sense of being labelled slower or kept behind. Instead, each student flourished and actually learned the majority of the material!!
My personal quibble was that, being totally PC and the teachers perhaps a bit lazy, the school refused to segregate or teach to their individual maximum the top kids, thinking that was demoralizing to the others. Nor were there any grades for more than achieving competence in a given task- nothing for more excellence, more advancement. We are paying for that today- my younger D was never challenged till the 7th grade (well into puberty), too late to easily develop a lot of those important skills of focus, self-discipline, deferred gratification. And the avoidance of such “non-PC” stuff was bogus: everyone knew she was super-smart! It was up to her to handle that and she did garner the respect of her classmates, so it was not divisive.</p>
<p>Look at it this way: the way things work (or do not work!) now, parents and families are to some extent/depending on their finances and the options available to them (incl home-schooling), choosing whole SCHOOLS based on their educational values and goals, and on their children’s learning styles and interests.
Maybe self-selection is more “American” than offering a variety of tracks. Perhaps, the student and his family should be able to contractually OPT for a track that they hope will work for the student with guidance and respect for learning differences, and live up to it!</p>
<p>Point is, how can we make it easier fro teachers to teach effectively with such a diverse population?</p>
<p>IP- you are so unconstructive! Why ask the questions if you believe that solutions are impossible? This issue is HARD to solve, and very very complex, but we HAVE to figure something out…</p>