Some people feel that putting older teens with tweens can be harmful to the younger set. Some parents don't want their 10 year olds exposed to things that they don't think they need to know at that age (but usually, these kids already know about it!), such as sex, drugs, etc...

what she is saying is...I believe...what does it matter unless they are taking classes with upperclassmen and vice versa?

If they are all housed in the same facility... and still separate...it doesn't mean much.

Exactly.

When my parents were little, country schools had one or two rooms where all the children learned basic reading, writing, and arithmetic. I don't know how they separated the different ages from that point on but they didn't have many resources. Now that our society has changed and there are more resources (and all schools are "supposed to" have access to the resources), there's no research-based justification for overcrowding our schools like that.

Here's my take on what's going on.

When I was in HS (private, Catholic), I was on the honors track. The honors kids were required to take a language for 2 years, PLUS Latin for 2 years. We also took one semester of a class called "Study Skills".

Everything I ever needed to know about note taking, reading comprehension, daily studying for material, studying for test taking, and paper preparation/writing, I learned in this class. We also learned about time management, balancing activities (which were required of honors students), etc.

The amount and depth of academic work I did in HS prepared me for the level of personal time and effort of work expected of me in my college courses. What did not help me, however, was the complete lack of non-academic electives (with the exeption of "choose one" - Art (painting or drawing), Choir, or Typing).

An example of our electives (only in Junior or Senior year):
European Lit, Physics, Analysis, Advanced Calc, 3rd & 4th year language, AP classes.

The honors classes also provided opportunity/required thinking out of the box. We had different types of projects we worked on, as opposed to just papers or tests. We had also academic field trips, which included Shakespearean plays, trips to the Museum, etc., after which a project/test based on the content of the trip was usually required.

Lastly, the school REQUIRED parental participation, at 2 parent-teacher conferences, at least one fundraiser per year, signing off on any paper/test below a 70, or any detention.

Why were only the honors kids taking Study Skills class? Why didn't they have the opportunity to take advanced academic classes, work on creative projects, or see Literature come alive or stand face-to-face with a Degas or Monet?

In my book, my school did a great disservice to those other students, espcially because our school was a (college) prep school, where 97% of all graduating classes went straight to a 4-year college?

In most public schools, kids don't have any of those opportunites (and if so, they are rare).

I agree that there have always been levels and tiers, but I think that more kids are performing at the low tier level and the gap between tiers has grown. In the olden days when I went to school, I think the average graduate, even from the dumber tracks, was basically employable in a non-intellectual job upon graduation (at least in part because kids would quit school when they couldn't hack the work so the "worst" students never graduated).

Now, we've lowered the expectations for graduation to such a low level that a low tier students might not even understand that he or she needs to show up to work daily and complete the tasks assigned if they want to stay employed. (I'm not saying all low level kids are this way, but school certainly doesn't require many lower level kids to be responsible for much.)

But weirdly, in contrast to what some of you have said, I think I'd go the other direction and encourage students to track themselves more as a method of fixing it. What I see happening when we try to push everyone through the same material is that the standards get lowered to the lowest group. If we allowed student and parents to select classes for kids, but held the standards in those classes pretty rigid, I think we'd end up with better education overall because no one would be kidding themselves about what the present level of performance meant or what it would allow kids to do next.

At the school where I teach, kids are either in resource special education, college prep, or AP by the time they are juniors. College prep can't really be college prep if it's the lowest level class offered to any kids who doesn't qualify to be in a special education class, can it? (Do you imagine that our school is prepared to flunk anyone who can't really do the work? The answer from the administration is no. Teachers are expected to "differentiate instruction" for low and high level learners. )

And yet, there's no indication to the kid or the parents that they aren't really getting truly college prep level classes and that if they really want that, they need to be in AP.

So, if we made college prep really college prep, but offered general level or vocational level as an option for the kids who serious couldn't or wouldn't do college prep work, they we could have some true standards for performance.

And if the kids change their minds about the track later, let them stay longer taking the new classes or offer more junior college or vocation school training for kids after they finish one track.

But pretending to be all things to all people when we're really focused on getting the low end through does a disservice to everyone.

Yes.

You nicely described a possible solution for the problem(s) I presented in my email. Great analytical skills and ideas!

At my school, you either passed or were flunked/expelled, but there was no alternative for those who may not be suited for four+ years of academia, and who would excel and grow at a practical learning/training institution.

The only problem with offering vocational programs is that they can cost a lot of money. College prep and remedial programs (other than computer courses) generally require a regular classroom or lab setting only. Vocational programs may require studios, workshops, etc...and thanks to budget cuts, not all public schools can offer these things. Of course, there are always seperate schools or apprenticeship/co-op programs...

I know this may be off the subject, but I'm scared what our language is going to be in 50 years with text speak ruling the message baords. It's fine to do that on phones, but when someone text speak their post on message boards it's annoying and it gives me a headache. I'm scared that people will start writing text speak language on their papers.

Let's learn proper English, people!

Another thing, in the beginning of the 1980s, we were ranked 3rd in math and sciences (behing China and I believe Japan). Now we are almost out of the top 20 when it comes to that, and Mexico is right behind us. If we don't shape up, then Mexico will pass us.

OMG ur soOoOoOo rite! LWTFOMG whut would we do if Mxco wuz ahed of us? LMFAO wOw!

As someone who's currently teaching first year students in a well-known UK university, I can assure you that standards have fallen. I don't want to attack US students, as I came from the US system, but the difference between the preparedness for the level of work they expect and that which we expect is astonishing. British students tend to be more prepared for the work, as they've done their A-levels or Advanced Highers, and have gotten used to independent study. There is a similar debate here about A-levels getting easier (more people getting A grades and such), but it's not the same as what's going on in the States.

I've been teaching this course now for three years, and have noticed a significant decline in the basic abilities of students. Yes, there will always be some who are just lazy and don't listen, and on the other hand there will always be exceptionally good students. But the fact is that this year, I have been appalled by students who don't know how to footnote, can't write an 8-page paper (2,000 words), don't listen when I tell them they must have x number of sources in their bibliography, and then come back citing wikipedia, an exceedingly dodgy website with a busy background and tinny music, or the lecturer, instead of the reading list we provide for the paper topics. Overwhelmingly, these students have been American. I actually had one student ask to change the set topic for the paper because it hadn't been covered in-depth in lecture. Of course it's not going to be covered in-depth: that's why we're giving it to you to research on your own!

There's definitely a trend to spoon-feed information to students in high school, and then they come to us at a world-class university and expect the same. It's not my job to prepare you for the exam, it's my job to teach you the subject matter (which of course comprises the entirety of the exam), and it's up to you to revise it. I'll happily assist you in understanding the format of the exam, answer any questions you may have from lecture, tutorial, or your reading, and give you examples, but it ends there. The things they're having trouble with now are things that were addressed in my education when I was about 13 (so about 12 years ago). Because education is now geared more to testing, as opposed to actual learning and retention, students have lost a lot of the skills related to essay-writing, revising and presenting that many of us who went through the system before or during the 90s take for granted.

I must say that while the article is anecdotal and a bit too sensationalist, the underlying theme is correct. Students might not be getting dumber, but they aren't getting the same level of education they once did (because of budget cuts and all this no-child-left-behind rubbish) and this is leaving them ill-prepared for vocational training, university or the job market.

ShyViolet --

I can't tell from your post whether the students you are describing are American students or British students.

You seem to be describing American students (what with references to NCLB), and given the subject of this thread I would expect these to be descriptions of American students. But given that your experience, recently at least, is in the UK and that you say you've noticed a decline in the three years you've been teaching the course you currently teach, are you describing the students you teach in Scotland?

Agreed - this seems like a very specific rant, with some passing effort to relate it to the subject of the thread? I don't know - anecdotal evidence just sits incredibly poorly with me in this particular arena, especially since there is absolutely no effort made toward finding causation or anything like that.

There are a couple of key issues here, mostly related to confirmation bias/selection bias, and the difficulty of using small-sample anecdotes where our own eyes likely lie to us. Without a systematic way to compare, it sounds like complaining about students' differing interest levels or unwillingness to conform to existing standards - both of which should indicate at least the potential for teachers or the educational system itself to be part of the problem. How are teachers changing their methods to cope with a generation that learns increasingly through visual media, and has a much wider array of existing knowledge (although without much in the way of depth in any particular area), etc etc etc?

In some ways, it suggests cognitive dissonance regarding the whole situation, which is where it becomes difficult for someone outside the situation to really know where to begin. Each one of these articles and posts just raises more questions for me, rather than defining the problem in any meaningful way.

As an aside, I wouldn't be shocked to find that Wikipedia becomes eligible for (near-)primary-source citation in the near future, if it isn't already - most of the articles, even on esoterica, are well cited, and while I'd guess the students should just go to the citations, as a reference material that kind of onus perhaps should go to the teachers as well.

I remember hearing story a year or two ago where a study/survey had been done comparing the accuracy of the Wiki to the Encyclopedia Britannica. It compared favorably.

[/sidetrack]

And I agree with the remainder of your post.

I also find it mildly ironic than in a post where the poster seems to lament the falling standards of students, two of us at least can't even tell what students the poster is talking about.

I agree there's too much emphasis placed on standardized testing. I'd like to see more balance: the best part of standardized testing is that it does hold schools and teachers accountable for producing results. The worst part is spending so much time "teaching to the test" and not really instructing students to think or learn how to learn.

At the HS level, the students pretty much blow off the standardized tests because they know it's not important to them personally in the way that their GPA or SAT/ACT scores are. So while the elem and middle schools in my area have very high test scores, the HS is pretty dismal by comparison. Our HS principal recently propsed bumping up borderline grades in English or math (i.e. changing a B to an A) if a student had a very high score on the standardized test. THat did not go over well with teachers at all!