Well, it is good to know you can teach grammar/usage. Too bad YOU’RE not that great at reading comprehension.

This post was mentioned on Twitter by JoanneLeeJacobs: Detracking may hurt high achievers http://www.joannejacobs.com/2009/12/untracked/...

I worry that the amendments to the IDEA in 1997 to promote mainstreaming and access to the general curriculum became an excuse to water down and change the essential nature of math, science, and language arts instruction. Research into 1998 practices show just such recommendations and changes.

In a detracked, mainstreamed classroom, don’t the limitations of some students become a barrier for all?

Can we obtain equity and create justice by insisting classrooms must provide equal treatment of students who are academically very dissimilar?

You nailed it. There is no greater motivator for teachers than having students who want to learn. My favorite classes are high school general math students who want to win. The same subject attracts a fair share of disciplinary problems, recalcitrants and sociopaths of superior ability; but lower achievement. Give me ten special ed kids who try, over one apathetic genius any day.

They’re called special ed teachers and I thank god for many of them. But even they can fall into what Stacy calls “magical thinking.”

Your last three paragraphs are really spot on. When everyone here says “slow learner” it looks like they mean different things.

I’ve watched grade schools hand off the slow learners (some special ed, some just a little slower) to the newest and most inexperienced teachers. The veterans at my school often got the gifted. Right off the bat it gives the impression that teaching slower kids isn’t rewarding and will simply be a drag. Often it is when kid has a behavioral disorder, but the school offers no support.

At the middle school, my special ed son was taught math lessons on many days by an aide who had not attended college. Across the hall, my gifted son was in math class with a teacher whose doctorate was in math. I wonder who got the better teaching.

I’ve had veteran teacher friends tell me that they would lose their minds if they had to only teach the slower ones. As the parent of one such kid I can’t tell you had sad that makes me feel. But I would have felt the same, I suppose, if I hadn’t walked the walk as a parent.

It can be rewarding to get a slacker motivated, but the child with the borderline IQ needs teachers to get excited about them and where they’re at academically, as well. These kids are facing frightening prospects since the government is resistant to help anyone who isn’t considered mentally retarded (70 and below).

Yet most kids who reside in the murky 70 to 85 IQ range cannot compete in the labor market against people with higher IQs. Without a great deal of help from the family, they are extremely vulnerable in the world.