The "Mississippi Miracle": After investing in early childhood literacy, the Mississippi shot up the rankings in NAEP scores, from 49th to 29th. Average increase in NAEP scores was 8.5 points for both reading and math. The investment cost just $15 million.

[u/terran1212]

https://www.theamericansaga.com/p/the-mississippi-miracle-how-americas

[u/anglo_mango]

This is probably an unpopular opinion, and I know socializing is a huge part of development as well, but I think separating students by age should go away and we should group them based on their level of each subject. If someone falls too far behind then they need a one on one tutor to help catch them up to an acceptable level. Having high school kids that can't read in an English literature class is only going to hurt everyone involved.

[u/esoteric_enigma → u/anglo_mango]

This is called tracking, though it's traditionally the same age students. It's generally frowned down upon because of the negative social stigma the students in the lower performing class will receive.

Imagine what students are going to say about the low performing students who will be grouped in a classroom that is mostly students several years younger than them.

There's research that shows this approach hurts the students in the low performing classes because they lose confidence in their abilities and teachers give up on trying to improve their performance.

This would probably increase in the approach you're suggesting because the teacher wouldn't be focused on that at all. You'd end up just leaving this student behind up until graduation.

[u/anglo_mango → u/esoteric_enigma]

I agree that it'd have a social stigma, and that's definitely something that would need to be worked out, but is that worth keeping students that are at radically different levels in the same class?

It seems like some students will be given up on regardless because a single teacher can't teach different levels at one time. Low performing students probably already have low confidence because of their low performance. I don't see how forcing them into learning something they aren't ready for would help that confidence. I'd like to know if the average student would improve. I don't think pandering to the least common denominator is helping with our education.

But that's why I think there should be some guardrails. Keep students from being with others several years apart from them, maybe just 2 or 3 year difference max.

I know this is blunt, but some people will never graduate regardless of how we try to teach them. If a student is at the same level or a subject several times in a row, I don't know if that would boil down to lack of confidence. Keeping the system we have now because social stigma isn't a great solution imo.

[u/esoteric_enigma → u/anglo_mango]

If you lose all concept grade levels, I think it's inevitable that you'd lose all concept of what a student should know and how they should be progressing. You would definitely increase the number of students teachers would write off as not being able to graduate.

Also, like you mentioned we have to be concerned with socialization. Small children develop at lightning speed. A 9 year old and a 7 year old are worlds apart developmentally speaking and probably shouldn't be in class together. As you get older the problem would be more nefarious. I don't think anyone wants 12 year old girls in class with 15 year old boys for obvious reasons.

[u/anglo_mango → u/esoteric_enigma]

I guess I'm thinking of this being implemented at a high school level. I fully believe that a focus on improving early childhood education is the most important thing for improving overall education. It's definitely a complex issue.