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Comment by samnwa | Hacker News Reader

It's funny because if you know education's history this is a debate that has gone back and forth every other decade. Before "we" were in school when mixed abilities were separated, mixed abilities were in one class. No doubt in another few years, we will go back to believing that separating based on ability is ideal. At the end of the day, the important thing is to focus on goals / outcomes rather than magic solutions to enable learning.

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Isn't the result of almost all studies that mixed ability classes HELPS the under performing and HURTS the top performing? Seems fairly obvious. In a class with 5 bad, 10 average, and 5 smart kids... the teacher will focus most effort on the 5 bad kids. They will get much more attention compared to a class with 10 bad and 10 average kids... of course the losers being the 5 smart kids who get basically ignored.

So tragedy of the commons says I want my, top performing, kid to be in a gifted only class to maximize his potential. But as a society I want all kids grouped, as bringing up the average knowledge of the country is a very good goal (and important when you realize things such as everyone gets 1 vote, no matter intelligence).

A good teacher will use the gifted students to help teach the poorer students. And teaching a subject is a great way to ensure that you have a full understanding of it.

What % of teachers are "good"? Again, we often need to optimize for the "mediocre teacher". At least in the US we pay our teachers less than we pay our garbage truck drivers, I am not sure we can count on "most" being "good". Which is not to diss teachers, but to be sad that we don't value them enough.

Garbage truck drivers is a dangerous, low status, and unpleasant profession. Which forces you to pay well.

Teaching on the other hand is a relatively high status, low risk profession.

low risk profession

It can be, for teachers in comfortable suburban schools where the students are generally well behaved.

For teachers in dangerous, urban schools with severe disciplinary and even criminal issues (gangs, violence, drugs, etc), it is not so low-risk.

I suspect there is a similar increase in risk for inner city garbage collection.

No. 9: Police and sheriff's patrol officers Fatalities per 100k: 18.0

No. 7: Refuse and recyclable material collectors Fatalities per 100k: 22.8

Feel free to look for statistics though.

It's probably more representative of the fact that the vast majority of people actively avoid dealing with LEOs for a laundry list of legitimate (for the avoidee) reasons wheras trash men are "normal people." Trash men also spend their day around equipment that can easily kill you if mis-operated.

Both spend a lot of time standing on the side of the road but far fewer people will perform absurd traffic maneuvers to pass a cop that's stopped in the right lane. IMO it's fair to infer that minute for minute standing on the side of the road behind a garbage truck with orange lights moving a trash bin is more dangerous than standing on the side of the road in front of a cruiser with blue lights harassing a motorist.

When it's the middle of summer and 95 degrees out where is the teacher? What about the garbage man?

If you start moving garbage cans around at age 20 in a brand new truck there's a pretty fair chance you'll be looking to switch careers at about the same time they retire that truck. If you manhandle garbage cans around every day from 5-2 your body isn't going to last.

Teachers (along with police, fire and other municipal employees) are usually paid very well for the qualifications their work requires the time they put in and the wear on their bodies. Since most teaching positions are union jobs they're incredibly stable.

Personal anecdote: the teachers I've known all seem to be on the same career path. The start working in less wealth areas and slowly move upward until they land a well paying job that they like and has a pension plan. On the way up to that job they build their resumes, libraries of lesson plans and gain experience. IMO this makes sense, the schools with the most money to throw at teachers can be picky in hiring teachers and more effective at retaining them.

So is moving on to the next topic that builds upon the previous one. If you are comparing against the alternative of the teacher doing literally nothing, you can justify almost any teaching methods.

There's good cause to be careful about this kind of pedagogy. This kind of thing is made possible by strong ethic in a school of "all for one and one for all," shared by the faculty and the administration, and accepted by students and parents.

If it's just a "good teacher" or two in an institution that doesn't have that ethic, using more advanced students to help less advanced ones can exploit both groups.

Now, many public school teachers have to practice "guerrilla excellence" so it's a complex problem. But a kiddo who gets algebra doesn't necessarily get teaching it.

Drafting the smarter, faster students to act as classroom aides all the time is generally a suboptimal use of the smarter students' time. I've known quite a few kids who've resented this (especially if it happens multiple times a day and you've already explained the concept four times).

It turns out to be more complicated than you're thinking. Lower- and average-performing kids get a greater benefit from mixed classes than higher performers. However, high performers with some interaction with average performers do better than high performers with no interaction outside their ability group.

Does that interaction have to occur in a highly technical subject like mathematics? Or, does mixing achievement in PE and elective courses have the same impact?

It's not clear from the articles I've read. Here's one that references some of the research:

http://educationnext.org/all-together-now/

I was a "gifted" kid placed in a mixed class in middle school. Far from bringing up the other students, I was bored and acted out. I was pretty disruptive and probably harmed my classmates ability to learn.

Luckily for me I had a great teacher who recognized my boredom and stuck me in a corner with some advanced algebra and trig books and told me to get to work. Much better for me and the other students.

I wonder how much of that really has to do with ideology and how much has to do with excuses for doing less with smaller budgets.

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