Re Seventh grader, far ahead of her class, punished for taking too many courses

["Dave Farber" <dave () farber net>]

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Craig Partridge <craig () tereschau net>
Date: Sun, Jun 4, 2017 at 9:04 PM
Subject: Re: [IP] Seventh grader, far ahead of her class, punished for
taking too many courses
To: <dave () farber net>
Cc: <dewayne () warpspeed com>


Not a surprise that a Michigan school district would react poorly.  Once
students exhaust their school's offerings,
in many cases they are entitled to start taking college courses at a local
university, and the school district
has to pay.  (See
https://www.michigan.gov/documents/mde/Early_College_Credit_3.2.07_188778_7.pdf
).
Given tight budgets, the school district has an incentive to discourage
students from getting too far ahead.
I'm not claiming that's what Grand Blanc did -- I have heard it alleged to
be a motivation in
other Michigan school districts.

Craig

On Sun, Jun 4, 2017 at 5:20 PM, Dave Farber <farber () gmail com> wrote:

> Begin forwarded message:
>
> *From:* Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>
> *Date:* June 4, 2017 at 2:46:54 PM EDT
> *To:* Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net <dewayne-net () warpspeed com>
> *Subject:* *[Dewayne-Net] Seventh grader, far ahead of her class,
> punished for taking too many courses*
> *Reply-To:* dewayne-net () warpspeed com
>
> Seventh grader, far ahead of her class, punished for taking too many
> courses
> By Jay Mathews
> Jun 2 2017
> <
> https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/seventh-grader-far-ahead-of-her-class-punished-for-taking-too-many-courses/2017/06/02/d020099e-4705-11e7-a196-a1bb629f64cb_story.html
> >
>
> In a compelling piece for the Washington City Paper, D.C. high school
> teacher Rob Barnett has confessed his anguish at passing students who
> haven’t mastered the content of his math courses, and described his radical
> solution.
>
> It’s called mastery learning. Barnett recorded all of his lessons, put
> them online and let each student move through them at his or her own pace.
> “They must show they understand one topic before advancing to the next,” he
> said. “I think of myself not so much as a teacher but as a facilitator of
> inquiry.”
>
> This method is not new. I remember a Virginia high school that tried it 20
> years ago. Barnett identified charter schools in Yuma, Ariz., and Chicago
> that are having success with it. It is a logical way to deepen the
> education of our children and, as Barnett discovered in his classes,
> inspire initiative. “They learn to assess their own understanding, to ask
> for help when they need it, and to teach themselves and their peers without
> my guidance,” he said.
>
> But mastery learning is almost completely at odds with American school
> traditions. Barnett had difficulty, for instance, dealing with the required
> annual D.C. tests that assume everyone learns at the same pace.
>
> A parent I know in Michigan found his public school system, after first
> being helpful, eventually reacted to his daughter’s fast pace under a
> makeshift mastery program as if the child had violated the dress code.
>
> As Vipul Gupta tells the story, his daughter’s experience with mastery
> began innocently at the Grand Blanc school district. When the girl entered
> fifth grade a test showed she was a year ahead of her class in math. She
> could take sixth grade at the school or under Michigan law could do an
> online course.
>
> She chose online. When she completed sixth grade math in a few months she
> went ahead and did seventh grade math too. She asked to do the same in
> science. The school resisted at first but eventually she was taking ninth
> grade science as a sixth grader. She is now five years ahead of her grade
> in math and three years ahead in science. Her school also let her take an
> entrepreneurship course full of 11th and 12th graders at the district’s
> Career Institute.
>
> Now, in seventh grade, she has been made to pay for the crime of getting
> too far ahead of her classmates. Almost everyone in her middle school takes
> six courses. This school year she was only allowed to take five. Gupta said
> “they refused to allow my daughter to take her second year Spanish foreign
> language class—a subject she adored and a fun break in her day while we had
> a joy of speaking this at home—and instead make her sit in the library for
> one hour doing homework.”
>
> [snip]
>
> Dewayne-Net RSS Feed: <http://dewaynenet.wordpress.com/feed/>
>
>
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*****
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