Room for Debate

We all know Sundays are days for:
a) Lesson Planning
b) Catching up on the blogosphere
c) Reading all interesting articles on the NYTimes

and this week it has been also time to sit on my butt and make sure that I do not feel any sicker than I do now.

So of course I have been following this one a little bit during the week, and now they have a Room for Debate section on the issue.

This situation is wrought with debate. I feel like high school cannot fix educational ills in two years. Students who are not ready for college are probably lacking skills that are not usually gained in high school: they are the skills they should have been developing since, oh, birth.

What we need to realize is that the higher educational system was constructed and has been used by middle class, upper middle class, and higher class citizens since it was created. Colleges were for people who wanted more education, and whose families could pay for this education.

This is clearly not good, or right, but it is how it happened. There needs to be systemic change within the educational system (not a quick fix within the first two years of high school) for the struggling students to be successful.

Learning advanced algebra, for example, is not hard if students have a grasp on everything up until advanced algebra. Its basically patterns and number sense.

Oh WAIT. When kids don't build a foundation of patterns and number sense in the early years (read: kindergarten and first grade) they will struggle their WHOLE LIVES learning math.

Legit. Their whole lives. I teach some of them. And do you know what I've found?

My students with IEP's (you know, have been identified as having learning challenges) can learn all the NEW material I teach them. (You go, Angry Kid, for getting in the TOP TEN of seventh graders for this benchmark!) They struggle with the number sense and patterns they (should have) mastered earlier in life.

So no, 2 years of high school is not going to fix it. It will help lower income students who do not struggle in school but do not have the external forces guiding them towards a 4 year college. Those kiddos would benefit wholeheartedly from the extra, early support in getting into college. But fixing kids who are struggling? I think not.