Grade Levels in School

For John, BLUF:  Would school have been more interesting?  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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The Education System Isn’t Designed for Smart Kids

This is from half a year ago, by Blogger Daniel Lattier, on 4 November 2016.

Here are excepts:

Over the past five years I’ve looked at countless student performance numbers, and almost always, my attention goes to the large percentages of students who are performing below grade level in reading, math, history, etc.  I see these numbers as evidence of the failure of the current education system.

But a recent policy brief (titled “How Can So Many Students Be Invisible?") has brought something else to my attention—something equally, if not more, damning of the education system.  It’s the fact that large percentages of American students are performing ABOVE grade level.

After looking at data from five different, nationally-respected assessments of student performance, the researchers found that “20-40% of elementary and middle school students perform at least one grade level above their current grade in reading, with 11-30% scoring at least one grade level above in math.”

. . .

You see, because the system arbitrarily separates students by age, students of varying academic abilities get put on the same track.  The low performers remain consistently behind, in a constant struggle to play catch-up.  And they’re the ones who get the majority of the attention of today’s schools and education reformers.

But the high performers are also suffering in this system, too.  They’re forced to sit in a classroom for seven hours a day going over simple material and concepts at a snail’s pace. Eventually, intellectual atrophy sets in.

. . .

In their recommendations, the professors who wrote the brief concluded that “the U.S. K-12 context, which is organized primarily around age-based grade levels, needs serious rethinking.”

Our educational approach needs serious rethinking?  You think?  We are in the post-industrial age and we are still using a German industrial age approach to educating our youngsters.

Things to ponder.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff