This is the same argument I landed on after years of arguing online with anti-tracking people. I think it's a good one, because it is really hard to argue that a student that has taken Algebra should be forced to take it again because everyone of the same age needs to take the same class. (And one that resonates strongly with me, because it actually happened to me when I moved to a fixed course school district, after being in an essentially self-paced program).
I think there are a couple of corollaries to this. One, is that students need to be assessed to see where they are. Two, is that the assessment can take place more than once per year.
When you combine those, you end up realizing that "where they are at" over time can indicate how fast they are moving. The Algebra = 1 year fixed time assumption falls flat, not just the opportunity to take that course when you are 10 vs 14 years old. Some students can learn it better across 2 years. Some can learn it in 6 weeks.
"To teach advanced material to advanced students who are ready for it requires reaching a critical mass of advanced students. When only a couple of students in a school would be ready, it’s unlikely to devote the resources for offering it."
This is the primary argument for magnet schools I landed on. I attended Thomas Jefferson in Fairfax County, and was very disappointed in their recent changes to backdoor racial preferences through geographic discrimination in attendance. It was an interesting contradiction talking to the people arguing in favor of sending fewer Asians there, because they were simultaneously denigrating the need for the school to exist while demanding access for less capable students to gain access to its particular benefits.
If I am being totally honest though, the real advantage of a school like that is not just the course availability. Because TJ was just a fixed pace school, they were just able to teach at a faster pace, but it still wasn't fast enough for many of us. But you can still cover a lot more material in a course with the same name.
This is why I come back to the basic point of "where they're at". This opportunity shouldn't be limited only to the top n students. Everyone should have the opportunity to move at the pace they are capable of, no matter where they are on the distribution.
Unfortunately, the situation is far worse than the author suggests. Historically, Montgomery County had another magnet-type program (an IB-qualified one at Richard Montgomery HS) that drew from around the county and competed, to a degree, with Blair for the best students. This program is ALSO (theoretically) being replicated 4 more times. And, MCPS is creating 5 magnets that will be focused on medicine/health, 5 on arts, and 5 public service.
At that point every single high school will have a "special" program, and the pool of applicants to each will be limited to 20% of the county. The dilution effect, on both students and teachers, will be massive.
But it is pretty clear that this is the point. This year, MCPS also did away with the last vestige of separated elementary-level acceleration (a faster 4th-5th-6th math track) and faster learning is heavily disfavored. Every elementary teacher is now expected to teach to 5 different "in-class groupings" of math level, an obviously impossible task. See https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/curriculum/math/.
MCPS has had the (not-publicly-admitted) goal of dismantling gifted education for quite some time, and implemented it slowly to avoid backlash (thus boiling the frog). For example, admissions for the elementary programs changed to a much lower lottery standard back in 2021.
How do we make more of these programs? For instance, consider Charlotte-Mecklenberg's Horizons Program (https://www.cmsk12.org/learning-teaching/advanced-studies/horizons), which takes 3rd graders who score at-or-above the 96th percentile on the CogAT and i-Ready tests, and gathers them in an accelerated program in one elementary school (the Charles H. Parker Academic Center). I would love something like that in my kids' school district (Wake County, which has the population to support this). How do we go from articles to policy?
"teach students where they’re at"
This is the same argument I landed on after years of arguing online with anti-tracking people. I think it's a good one, because it is really hard to argue that a student that has taken Algebra should be forced to take it again because everyone of the same age needs to take the same class. (And one that resonates strongly with me, because it actually happened to me when I moved to a fixed course school district, after being in an essentially self-paced program).
I think there are a couple of corollaries to this. One, is that students need to be assessed to see where they are. Two, is that the assessment can take place more than once per year.
When you combine those, you end up realizing that "where they are at" over time can indicate how fast they are moving. The Algebra = 1 year fixed time assumption falls flat, not just the opportunity to take that course when you are 10 vs 14 years old. Some students can learn it better across 2 years. Some can learn it in 6 weeks.
"To teach advanced material to advanced students who are ready for it requires reaching a critical mass of advanced students. When only a couple of students in a school would be ready, it’s unlikely to devote the resources for offering it."
This is the primary argument for magnet schools I landed on. I attended Thomas Jefferson in Fairfax County, and was very disappointed in their recent changes to backdoor racial preferences through geographic discrimination in attendance. It was an interesting contradiction talking to the people arguing in favor of sending fewer Asians there, because they were simultaneously denigrating the need for the school to exist while demanding access for less capable students to gain access to its particular benefits.
If I am being totally honest though, the real advantage of a school like that is not just the course availability. Because TJ was just a fixed pace school, they were just able to teach at a faster pace, but it still wasn't fast enough for many of us. But you can still cover a lot more material in a course with the same name.
This is why I come back to the basic point of "where they're at". This opportunity shouldn't be limited only to the top n students. Everyone should have the opportunity to move at the pace they are capable of, no matter where they are on the distribution.
Unfortunately, the situation is far worse than the author suggests. Historically, Montgomery County had another magnet-type program (an IB-qualified one at Richard Montgomery HS) that drew from around the county and competed, to a degree, with Blair for the best students. This program is ALSO (theoretically) being replicated 4 more times. And, MCPS is creating 5 magnets that will be focused on medicine/health, 5 on arts, and 5 public service.
At that point every single high school will have a "special" program, and the pool of applicants to each will be limited to 20% of the county. The dilution effect, on both students and teachers, will be massive.
But it is pretty clear that this is the point. This year, MCPS also did away with the last vestige of separated elementary-level acceleration (a faster 4th-5th-6th math track) and faster learning is heavily disfavored. Every elementary teacher is now expected to teach to 5 different "in-class groupings" of math level, an obviously impossible task. See https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/curriculum/math/.
MCPS has had the (not-publicly-admitted) goal of dismantling gifted education for quite some time, and implemented it slowly to avoid backlash (thus boiling the frog). For example, admissions for the elementary programs changed to a much lower lottery standard back in 2021.
Dumb down the natives, import brains as needed. What could possibly go wrong?
How do we make more of these programs? For instance, consider Charlotte-Mecklenberg's Horizons Program (https://www.cmsk12.org/learning-teaching/advanced-studies/horizons), which takes 3rd graders who score at-or-above the 96th percentile on the CogAT and i-Ready tests, and gathers them in an accelerated program in one elementary school (the Charles H. Parker Academic Center). I would love something like that in my kids' school district (Wake County, which has the population to support this). How do we go from articles to policy?