From: James Rogers (jamesr@best.com)
Date: Mon Sep 03 2001 - 11:05:22 MDT
On 8/24/01 3:04 PM, "Mike Lorrey" <mlorrey@datamann.com> wrote:
>
> Most of the countries that score higher than US kids on tests do so
> specifically because they have a multi-tiered school system that weeds
> kids out around the 6th or 7th grade, sending the achievers to
> university prep high schools, and those that don't to vocational high
> schools. The kids that take these comparison tests are only from the
> university prep high schools, not the vocational ones, which is why they
> score so high.
While they don't exactly advertise it, most of the top public school
districts in the U.S. do this too, with the predictable results that they
look very, very good academically. People who either cause trouble or
aren't making the grade are diverted to a second-tier school (nobody goes
there unless they are sent there by the school district) that attempts to
turn them into productive members of society rather than academic
superstars. Having spent a few years in one of these school districts (in
the good school :^), I can say that it really does make a noticeable
difference, both in the quality of the students AND in the quality of the
teachers. Even though it was a public high school, we had numerous PhDs
teaching in their fields of expertise while living in a large metropolitan
area (San Diego). The difference between the senior year in that high
school and the freshman year at the university was surprisingly narrow,
largely because the standards in high school were uncharacteristically high.
Most other schools I attended were not like this at all.
Most school districts in the U.S. do *not* separate the sheep from the goats
as it were, but it is how most of the "top" public schools became "top". It
has more to do with parental involvement in the school district than
anything, as they are the ones that insist things be run this way.
-James Rogers
jamesr@best.com
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