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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Our entire educational system has been dumbing things down over the past few decades. Lucy Calkins, an overreaction against homework (sure, extra work for it's own sake is not the same as rigor, but you can't have rigor without practice), and other pedagogical errors are showing their impacts at older grades.

In addition there are simply more kids with IEPs, 504s, behavioral issues, who are ESOL, and the like. This isn't a bad thing in and of itself, but all of it takes [b]time[/b] from teachers that could otherwise be used on educating.

But overall - think back 70 years. No one, and I do mean no one, was taking Calculus in your average public high school. In FCPS it's quite normal for many kids to take college level calculus. For decades our bar for what advanced looks like has gone up. Maybe it was always just due for a little regression?[/quote]

Generally agree, though we are headed for far more than a "little regression."

Also, NYC and Seattle public schools' decisions to entirely eliminate their gifted and talented (accelerated) programs are not a coincidence.  California previously imposed a ban on any public school student taking Algebra prior to 9th grade in a similar vein.  All of these initiatives (along with those here in FCPS) were done in the name of racial equity.

The desperation to close the racial achievement gap is so great that educators are willing to "close the gap from the top down" by taking away advancement and acceleration opportunities from the brightest learners.  It works:  if you intentionally make the top-scoring students dumber, by slowing / diminishing their learning opportunities, the gap between lowest scoring students and the top students, decreases.

But its a horrible thing to do to our most capable students (most of whom are racial minorities themselves).[/quote]

Nobody cares about that particular racial minority.  
You've heard the comments saying "they'll be fine"
They don't deserve the fruits of their efforts, they just deserve "enough" so that no one should feel bad for them.[/quote]

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