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Writer's pictureJoanne Jacobs

Why it's hard to close learning gaps


Student behavioral issues are a major barrier to closing learning gaps, say 67 percent teachers in a Khan Academy survey, reports Lauraine Langreo on Ed Week. Another 57 percent chose "student mental health."

Khan Academy's blog stresses teachers' support for mastery learning to help address learning loss. Most teachers would like to let students advance at their own pace and retake tests until they can show competency in a subject. However, many say rigid pacing guides make it hard to spend more time on a concept if it's needed.

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Guest
Aug 01, 2022

Direct Instruction (in the largest educational research project conducted in the US) was the most effective curriculum in Head Start Programs across the nation. The Head Start students were followed until college and not only were more of them successful, but they had higher self esteem than the other students who were in the Head Start curriculum that was only focused on play. Colleges of education teach prospective teacher that "Students learn best through play" and "Students teach other students more effectively than teachers do. But the US government decided not to use Direct Instruction in Head Start and instead stop all the academic teaching (how to count to 100, what letter sounds sound like, how to print one's name, etc…

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Guest
Jul 31, 2022

You will never close learning gaps in public school if students (and administration and politicos) are never held accountable...a class full of 5th graders reading, writing, and math at 1st grade level is a joke...these students will NEVER catch up and will be doomed to the lowest level of economic opportunity during their whole lives.


They will unable to learn a skilled trade, due to the fact that those jobs require people who actually have an education...


IMO, this is a problem which simply may solve itself through statistics as the school enrollment rate continues to decline in many areas due to a decline in the birth rate, and with COVID-19 many students simply left public school (and the dollars…


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Guest
Jul 31, 2022

Behavior would be much less of a problem if we were willing to teach children based on what they are actually ready to learn, rather than what they should be ready to learn. This is particularly important after the Covid interregnum.

Example: Most of my incoming 5th graders read at the K-1st grade level. They have a very bad reputation, but I believe part of the problem is that last year teachers were ordered NOT to ”teach the gaps” and to stick to grade level material alone. Frustration must have been extreme for the students, and they made little progress in learning any of the foundational skills they had missed when their 2nd grade shut down and online …

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Mary Damer
Mary Damer
Aug 03, 2022
Replying to

So do you approve of the new CA curriculum which discusses vaginas and penises and the Portland kindergarten curriculum mentioned in this link? Is this age appropriate? here.https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/aug/1/portland-public-schools-defends-teaching-transgend/ I'm so glad my own children went through 6th grade in a structured Montessori School (not one of the wild ones) where they learned to work independently on their rug work and in groups when appropriate. Monterssori starts teachnig phonics when the students are ready, but by 4 at the latest. My daughter learned to fluently read starting when she was 3 1/2, my son started at 4. All the MOntessori young kids also started spelling when they learned their phonics. So when they could sound out mat or math, the…

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Guest
Jul 30, 2022

I think it's odd that people try to tie this to equity issues, as if having some students finish years of college before the age of 18 and other kids still not demonstrating mastery of the first couple of years of high school won't produces outcomes worse than our present system.


I also don't think schools sincerely mean to allow advanced students to demonstrate mastery and move on. If it affects their funding, they are going to get interested in honors and advanced high school content again.


What teachers want is liberation from pacing guides that don't match students' present level of competency and more time to teach. What administrators want is the ability to pretend more students are makin…


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Guest
Jul 30, 2022

ucladavid516: my kids all took Karate. "Mastery" at any given level ( yellow belt, green belt, etc) in the program required some minimum "time in grade" AND

1) regular demonstration of skills mastered at all prior levels (the yellow belts had to show the "katas" of both yellow and the prior white belt form. Black belts had to demonstrate (and teach) a dozen prior level katas.)

2) progress on acquisition of the skills expected at the next higher level.


The class might have a 9-year-old brown belt teaching the forms to a teenaged green belt. More respect for actual mastery, not default deference to age (and size).


I see no reason a classroom can't organize itself similarly.


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ucladavid516
Jul 30, 2022
Replying to

But that would never happen in a real world classroom. Everyone has to be the same age roughly in the classroom. Plus kids chose to be in karate and can quit; not going to happen in a real world regular school

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