the problem with the US public school system

[kadiera]

 Been working on this one for a while now - there's probably more to say, but this is a good start.

So, let’s start at the beginning.

I don’t think most elementary or high school teachers are underpaid [1]. I think they’re simply asked to do much more than one should reasonably expect with much fewer resources than are really needed to do what’s

Comments

[andelku]

this has been declared illegal, because it means children are treated differently

Uh, I believe tracking was removed from the system because it was demonstrated that kids labeled the "regular" and "slow" kids tended to lower their performance to the class' expectations ... and that their performance actually improved once they were given the message that achievement was expected of them.

To say nothing of how mysteriously the "accelerated" and "gifted" kids were predominantly white or Asian and upper class economically while all the "regular" and "moderated" kids were black and Hispanic and poor whites.

[kadiera]

Right or wrong, in Missouri, tracking was declared illegal. Then again, in our mostly rural (and mostly lower middle class or lower) school, the gifted program was relatively diverse compared to the school as a whole

[jaxontarl]

Ya know, for years my grandparents commented on how much more they learned in their schools than we were learning in ours. I didn't really pay much attention to it at the time, until I realized they all went to school in one room. All ages from 5-7 on up to 19 and in some cases even older taking classes from one teacher. And at the most there were 20 kids in the room. One grandparent graduated that school at 14 another at 16 and yet another at nearly 20. They actually got the help they needed and they were expected to help other students who didn't "get" a certain subject if it was something that they understood. Course in the case of about 4 of my six grandparents, they were in school and lived in a very rural area when the assembly line idea was taking hold, so they were some of the last areas to change school systems. But it's amazing at how many adults from that era transistioned so easily when technology changed. They had learned how to function and learn because of how they had been taught as kids.