{"id":299,"date":"2007-05-07T21:25:16","date_gmt":"2007-05-08T04:25:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.toddseal.com\/rodin\/2007\/05\/the-shrinking-educational-middle-class\/"},"modified":"2007-05-07T21:25:16","modified_gmt":"2007-05-08T04:25:16","slug":"the-shrinking-educational-middle-class","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.toddseal.com\/rodin\/2007\/05\/the-shrinking-educational-middle-class\/","title":{"rendered":"The Shrinking Educational Middle Class"},"content":{"rendered":"

After a conversation with a colleague today, I breathed a sigh of relief as I realized that I’m not the only one. I wonder if you’re like me too, reader.<\/p>\n

Several tangents later, our conversation veered onto the subject of grades. This colleague visits different schools as a mentor. Because of this, he sees a lot of different grades. He mentioned that the bell curve of grades (large numbers of students will earn Cs and fewer students will earn anything below or above that, forming a slight bell when graphed) is going away. What he’s seeing all across the schools he visits are grade reports that show high distributions of As and Fs, very few Bs or Cs. It’s the bell inverted.<\/p>\n

He’s seeing this in all subject areas. As soon as he pointed this out, that sigh came out. You see, I’ve been noticing this same thing over the last 4 or 5 years and always thought it was just my crappy teaching to blame. While there is still my crappy teaching to contend with, at least I know I’m not alone. But what the heck is going on?<\/p>\n

I worry that public school still tracks kids, that our classes are becoming those that only instruct the kids who get it, without lifting up those that don’t. I certainly worry that’s my case. Seeing the middle ground shrink away each year makes me feel that way.<\/p>\n

Are your classes becoming more and more filled with educational “have”s and “have not”s? Are you seeing a decrease in the number of Cs? An increase in the number of Fs? What would you do if your average grades included far more As and Fs than Cs? As a profession, what does this tell us? How should this impact the instruction we deliver? Does this say anything about the structure of the public education system or just about individual teachers?<\/p>\n

Next: Frightening news about what my district is taking away from the class of 2011<\/a> because of missing our API mark.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After a conversation with a colleague today, I breathed a sigh of relief as I realized that I’m not the only one. I wonder if you’re like me too, reader. Several tangents later, our conversation veered onto the subject of grades. This colleague visits different schools as a mentor. Because of this, he sees a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[25,19],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.toddseal.com\/rodin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.toddseal.com\/rodin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.toddseal.com\/rodin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.toddseal.com\/rodin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.toddseal.com\/rodin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=299"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.toddseal.com\/rodin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.toddseal.com\/rodin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.toddseal.com\/rodin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.toddseal.com\/rodin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}