Here's how they're supposed to work: since it's not "equitable" to expect some students to come before or after school for extra assistance, we're supposed to cut instructional time in order to carve out time during the school day for students who need extra assistance ("interventions" or "remediation", in the new educational parlance).
If you're asking how having less time to teach and learn is supposed to help all students, you're not alone. If you think that cutting teaching and learning time risks creating even more students who don't do well in class, you're not alone.
Not everyone has drunk this particular flavor of Kool-Aid, though. Just like the "magic of summer school", whereby students can somehow master in 6 weeks all the material they couldn't learn even minimally in 37 weeks, or remedial classes that promise to catch students up (especially) in the math that they're so far behind in, some wonder what magic takes place during remediation/interventions:
Let’s define “remediation” as any process which promises to teach a topic in a short time to an older student to an achievement level comparable to that of a peer student, who started younger and spent a longer time, being taught the same topic via a more traditional process.That snip is a comment on a post about remediation. Read the post itself and let me know what you think.
If the remediation process or method worked, why would we NOT use it with ALL the other, younger, students for the shorter time? Why would we teach most students years worth of algebra or critical thinking skills or whatever, starting in middle school, when we could (via the magical remedial methods) teach them just as much in a single year? If “remedial” methods work, why do we NOT replace replace “traditional” methods entirely and use ONLY remedial methods with all students?
2 comments:
My feeling has always been that there should be 2 tracks: college and career routes. Many other countries do it this way.
If we told kids at 13-14 that they are not college material, education would be so much easier and better for everyone involved. But NOOOOOOOO; all kids must go to college and they have to take remediation. No kid likes remediation.
It's been my observation that public schools are so eager to give the impression that everyone can succeed, that they will indulge in just about anything to make that diverse success ideal reality. I've already told you of our adventure in block lunch-which was designed much in the same way as intervention. The results have been less than stellar. Kids don't do homework at home, instead they opt to copy each others' wrong answers during block lunch. Oh, and that admonishment that kids who were failing would go to tutorials? I have one half hour a week, and regardless of the importance of the material or test missed, these kids are always unavailable. The classes are less challenging because it's like herding chickens to get the students to focus. Teachers have no choice but to water down courses or eliminate units entirely. While lip service is given to the concept of rigor in the classroom, the truth is most administrators just want parents to stop threatening to sue.
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