The No Child Left Behind Act, signed by President George W. Bush nearly 20 years ago, and the Race to the Top initiative, championed by President Obama, weren’t overly concerned with students who occupied the loftiest parts of the achievement spectrum. Schools were rewarded “for helping struggling kids meet proficiency standards but not for dealing with those already well beyond proficiency,” Mr. Finn said. Education policy makers respond to incentives like everyone else.
One bright spot is the Advanced Placement program, which got its start during the Eisenhower administration. Spooked by Sputnik, the government worried about the intellectual rigor of our schools. The country was trying to win a Cold War against communism, and the thinking was that a better-educated public would help ensure victory. After World War II, states made high school mandatory, and the GI Bill gave returning soldiers access to college. The goal was to locate and then nurture the nation’s best and brightest.
The AP program initially was funded by the Ford Foundation but today is run by the College Board, the same nonprofit entity that administers the SAT. Early on, fewer than a dozen AP courses existed, mainly in private schools or affluent suburban districts. By 2018, nearly 40 subjects were available to some 2.8 million students enrolled in more than 22,000 high schools. Students who complete the courses take a final exam, which is graded on a 5-point scale. Those who score 3 or higher are often eligible for college credit.
The downside of this expansion is that many low-income and minority students who complete the courses don’t score well enough on the exams to receive college credit. The College Board has been criticized for this so-called excellence gap, but Mr. Finn hopes that the outreach continues.
He said the proper response to underwhelming test scores is better preparation for disadvantaged students who enroll, and he commends the AP program for maintaining high standards.
Finn and the entire education establishment are delusional in their denial of human biodiversity and the very large effect of genetics on intelligence. The wrecking of the American school system continues unabated.
One of my kids went to US kindergarten for a few months and they told us all about NCLB and how it worked. The metric they were held to was percentage of students meeting some passing grade, so the NCLB project at that school had identified four students scoring *almost* at that level and were giving them an extra class so that maybe two of the four could earn the extra couple of points needed to pass and the school would meet its NCLB goals.
No moving the whole school up 2% or working on the entire failing cohort, just adjusting a couple of students up from 48% to 50%.
It is again reinforcing failure. THIS school does well and turns out literate and numerate students so no increase in funding. In THAT school the vast majority of students never get beyond a 7 year old level of reading and maths so we’ll pour money into the second school to make it perform like the first …
It is BOUND to work, eh?
The one thing I’ve taken from all the experiences I’ve had in training soldiers and trying to deal with the products of our educational system is that the root problem isn’t in the schools, the teachers, or even the curriculum. It is the students, and more importantly, the parents/supervisors.
Kid comes up valuing education, they’re going to get an education. Soldier wants to be a soldier, they’re going to do well in training. If the kid doesn’t value an education, there’s really no way to instill one into them, short of brute force that’s going to eventually backfire on you. Same-same with the guy you try to force into the mold of “soldier”.
Dandridge Malone had a little book out, where he broke things down into four basic groups: The able and willing, the unable and willing, the able and unwilling, and the unable who were also unwilling. With the first two, you can do something. With the last two…? Fertilizer.
Reference for those interested: Small Unit Leadership, Dandridge M. Malone, COL, USA (Ret).
Well-written, pithy as hell, and still not out of date.
“Finn and the entire education establishment are delusional in their denial of human biodiversity and the very large effect of genetics on intelligence”
Franz Boaz and the blank slate theory [paradigm?]. We all have the same ability to do whatever we want to do and learn whatever we want to learn. From over a hundred years ago. The “theory” still in use but as a concept totally discredited [or at least in measure discredited].
Again, we come to the question of just what the hell we’re talking about with regards to intelligence.
I will continue to contend that a lot of what we measure with “intelligence quotients” isn’t so much the actual spark of intelligence, but the level of adaptation to the environment.
You dump a kid who grew up as a bookish child into a classroom environment, he’s going to flourish. Dump that same kid into the savannahs of Africa, and he’s going to die in a messy and horrid manner, in very short order. Take a kid who grew up on that savannah, drop him into a classroom, and he’s not likely to do very well, at all. Meanwhile, were you to dump him into a similar environment to the one he’s physically, intellectually, and culturally adapted to? He’ll likely do very well, indeed.
The “spark” we think we’re talking about with regards to IQ is something that’s not very well-defined. We arrogantly presume that since we do well on these tests we’ve made up, that we’re measuring something profound and meaningful. Reality? We’re really testing our ability to play a game we made up ourselves, and the outside universe is going to be the final arbiter of just how “smart” we really are.
Longer I live, the more I question the proposition that intelligence is a survival trait. From what I’ve seen, it’s merely a tool to get yourself into more trouble than you would if you were rock-stupid.