Source: The Denver Post 12/21/2008
http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_11280071
Educators and Administrators are watching intently how this next experiement upon learning methods will effect graduation rates and the meeting of standards. This experiment by the Adams 50 district will remove age-based, developmental-based, grade levels and exchanged them for academic, achievement-based levels. At first glance this could be a “small step, giant leap” scenario, the reality is that this could be nothing more than “rearranging deck chairs on a sinking ship.” Why might I say this, well let’s examine how the old system was supposed to work.
The old system, a.k.a. our current system, is supposed to work in a way that students will only progress through either achievement or developmental. The later only tends to arrive at early ages when a student may be inteligent, but developmentally far behind their peers. The former condition is based upon the assumption that students are only granted progression if the pass satisfactorily in all of their required areas. What has occured though is that over the years, the bell curve–which dictates that the bulk of the population should form an average, and that their will be outliers (over & under achievers) at both sides of the curve–has skewed, so that the main bulk of the population has now fallen not in the middle of the grade selections (“C”); rather it has skewed into what should be the upper quartile (“B-B+”). What can be the guarantee in this new system that the skewing of the curve will still not occur?
Answer: There is no guarantee. The same teachers responsible for the skew, are continuing the skew. While the curriculum may prevent the further movement of the curve, it will not cause the skew to return to a “normal” bell. Therefore, it is this educators best guess that this new “standards-based” level format will still advance students unnecessarily. Remember, the teacher’s best friend is “extra-credit”, that powerful secret weapon, used to boost a student’s grade who vows to “never do such-and-such, or take such-and-such again.”
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