There's a great commentary over at 'Hot Air' with the title of "Working paper on school tracking finds it helps high-achievers without harming anyone." Written by John Sexton, and I'd highly recommend a read.
So the focus? Well....there's idea in California....that in math classes, you ought to unbundle kids who are on some track for the high-end classes and 'force' them to rebundle into groups of lesser interested kids on math education.
Yeah.....taking the kids who already grasp a subject and hope that mixing them....delaying by a year or two....will somehow help the lesser kids advance. Proof that this works? Basically, it's marginal or limited.
The general problem here....if you took a hundred kids, I think around ten of them would have some great fascination with math and calculating solutions. After that group....probably twenty-five kids would grasp the stuff but have a lesser interest. At the bottom of this group.....there's probably forty kids who have zero interest in some square root drama, or wondering why only 75 apples will fit into the box at your local grocery.
Lets also be honest and admit if you'd just let kids 'test-out'....probably ten-percent of kids would be finished with high school by the end of the tenth grade, and would be capable of handling community college or university work.
Parents agreeing to the California logic? No, that's another part of the story. They don't want 'Junior' lingering in a group with marginal interest in the class.
In simple terms, the state system is resolving the future by making it appear that home-schooling or private schools....are the better way to go.
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