Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re:  decline in SAT scores very little genetic
From: lynx@surrey.amigans.gen.nz (Lynsey Gedye)
Date: 28 Dec 92 12:00:12 GMT-12
Distribution: world
Organization: Prime Line, Wanganui, New Zealand

In article <1992Dec21.184606.68997@ns1.cc.lehigh.edu> jahb@ns1.cc.lehigh.edu (JENNIFER A. HEISE) writes:
>In article <1992Dec17.125818.29756@ms.uky.edu>, fehr@ms.uky.edu (Jeff Davis) writes:
>>6) Don't track younger kids. Let the smart ones go off in
>>   a corner to help the slower ones. Knowing a subject well
>>   enough to teach it to a peer increases mastery waaaay
>>   beyond the usual level needed to pass a test, so putting a
>>   smart kid in with a slower one doesn't have to hold back the
>>   smarter one.
>
>I can only write for myself. Personally, I think peer tutoring is a good
>idea-- but.  I still have a scar on one calf where the young man I was
>supposed to "peer tutor" in math in second grade kicked me until I bled.
>I was NOT tracked in elementary school, and was miserable.  (Non-tracking
>does NOT mean anti-homogeneous grouping, but grouping however the cards
>fall.) It's difficult to make friends if no child in your class 
>understands more than one word in three that you speak. I literally spent 
>one entire year with my head inside the flip-top of the desk, reading.  

>I tell all this not because I want people to feel sorry, but to notice 
>that non-tracking punishes the better students: instead of being rewarded 
>for knowing the subject, they are asked to work harder to teach learners 
>the teacher can't reach-- or simply ignored.

>The ideal classroom wouldn't work this way, but the classrooms of this 
>country are far from ideal.
>

  Hmmm, I'm not too sure what the ideal classroom might be like, but
  I guess like most ideals, exists in the head rather in reality.

  A group of my student buddies and myself were "punished" by being set
  written work instead of reading because we could read already.  
  The teacher could then spend time with those who couldn't read so well.
  We went on "strike", demanded reading rights, and ended up with a visit
  to the principal. =:(  Sometimes being 10 years old isn't what it's
  cracked up to be.  We continued to do time analysing excerpts.

  Years later I saw a graffito in Nigel Rees book, "The Graffiti File",
  along the lines of "Who put anal in analysis?", and I figured that
  the artist must've been one of my classmates.  Sometimes the graffito
  springs to mind when I read r.a.b., but that's another story. =;)

  Maybe the best method to increase the SAT scores (IMHO) will be for
  individual parents to insist that a reading recovery programme be
  introduced to the junior school attended by your child.

  The Reading Recovery Programme is perhaps New Zealand's most influential
  and valuable export - valuable to others, I doubt if it's earned NZ
  a cent.  It's a programme where six year olds are tested for reading
  ability and then action taken immediately if standards are low.

  The success rate is spectacular.  I believe that some schools/states
  have picked up on the programme in the USA, and also in Australia and
  the UK.  The UK has been somewhat slow because they (politicians), 
  although they freely acknowledge the merit and success of the RRP,
  figure it's cheaper to have adults who can't read than it is to have
  children who can.

  I do volunteer work helping teach adults to read.  The RRP is so
  successful here in NZ that I'd expect many of us involved in teaching
  adults to read will be redundant in the next decade.  I hope so.
  
--
           lynx@surrey.amigans.gen.nz    lynx@amigans.gen.nz
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books