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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/disadvantaged-children-can-hurt-achievement-of-others-in-their-classrooms-study-finds/2014/02/13/9f3fa068-94df-11e3-83b9-1f024193bb84_story.html]according to a new study[/url].

In other news, the sun will rise in the East tomorrow.[/quote]Actually the abstract for the study refers to "[b]high concentrations [/b]of children."  Since I don't have access to the study I don't know how high we are talking but certainly that is no surprise.  What's irritating, though, is that OP titled this thread "Disadvantaged children can hurt achievement" as if the mere presence of a few disadvantaged children can "hurt" other kids.  Seriously, OP, you probably consider yourself educated but you don't know how to write a thread title which accurately reflects what this research actually showed.  [/quote]

Actually, there are studies that show there are diminishing returns and an increasing drag on higher performing students when disadvantaged student percentage exceeds 20%.  It's all about critical mass - a critical mass of 80% or greater of higher-performing, non-disadvantaged students is needed to "lift the boats" of the disadvantaged students.  If that critical mass isn't there, the performance of ALL students begins to decline more and more, as the percentage of disadvantaged students increases.

This is why the proposals floating around of high quotas for disadvantaged students and wholescale boundary shifts or citywide lotteries don't make sense because they don't consider creating and maintaining an adequate critical mass for it to work.  If you were to take the JKLMs and kick all of the current students out and replace them with the most disadvantaged students from the city, their performance would be no better than it was in the "failing" schools they came from.  The JKLMs would then be the "failing" schools.  However, if you accommodate not-to-exceed 20% disadvantaged in the successful schools, and structure non-disadvantaged and higher performing overflow by putting them into other schools, managing the numbers so that there's enough critical mass, and go school by school by the demographics and numbers, it would have far better chance of working.[/quote]

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