Why is dumbing down science teaching the fault of extreme progressive left and not, say, reduced education funding, favouring religious teaching, or even more likely, nuanced policy difficulties that don't fit nicely into a left/right divide?
Inclusive classrooms raise scores of the lower performing students. That's probably true.
It glosses over what it does to people on the other end of the spectrum.
As someone from the other end of the spectrum, growing up never having to put any effort, having few or no peers close to my level, and being constantly encouraged by the people around me to do poorly for curves etc... I can say I developed life long development/psychological problems as a result, and the idea that I or anyone in the future like me should be slowed down so everyone is more equal is deeply offensive.
And as a certified smart guy I now ask myself and others questions like: Why is it deeply offensive to hold you back when you are literally suggesting to hold them back instead?
It's very hard to disentangle though.
I have a smart, popular nephew from a good home, who also got extra acconodations on exams for dyslexia.
You could spin that either way:
Priviliged people taking advantage of accomodations for those with problems.
Or smart people who previously got written off as disruptive troublemakers being better catered for (though maybe we'll have less entrepreneurs if we keep all the smart people in the standard education track).
In particular, the benefits of living in a society with a basic level of mathmatical (etc.) understanding seems powerful but hard to trace through.
But if we can't even talk about the trade-offs calmly and factually then its just a pointless sgouting match. The people with the academic skills should be leading the way on that.
I started in an average class in my year. Don't remember doing anything extra at home, or much at all, but still had an equivalent of all A's. At some point my parents realised something was wrong and moved me to the strongest class... Only then I started doing something. This is when I realised that some kids were already impossibly far ahead (we had world-level olympiad goers there).
Can't say I become world-class at anything but this helped to concentrate and work through the rest of school and uni without any problems.
But these days, integrated classrooms (as mentioned in your article) tend to be staffed with two teachers: one with a general education background and one with special education. They work as a team and can provide differentiated learning paths. The lower teacher/student ratio can help both the gen ed and special ed students.
But Albania can finance rigorous teaching of science ... ?
USA spends a lot more money per pupil than any former Eastern Bloc nation. But you can spend a lot of money on inefficient solutions.
For a less politically charged example: compare expenses of the Falcon rocket family to those of the Space Launch System.
When I managed to attend teacher parent meetings I could see the deference people had for their children’s teachers. And children also deeply respected them for the most part.
The scenes from the beginning of Breaking Bad for example are rather alien to me - I can understand them, but I’ve never encountered such things when I was a kid.
> USA spends a lot more money per pupil than any former Eastern Bloc nation. But you can spend a lot of money on inefficient solutions.
You're not wrong. Financialization of education continuing down from secondar to primary education, commodification of students—I think those are a bit better descriptions of the issue beyond "funding cuts" personally. Its incredibly easy to make things inefficient (or efficient at something else [0]) when quality/efficiency slowly fades from the conciousness of those in charge.
I'd say the more important thing is that there are large failures here, they were building before "Extreme progressive Liberals" (which depending on how I read that I can agree with, from the left even). Saying this as someone who was a STEM kid in high school, took AP Calc at 15, etc.—I'm more mixed on the more static curriculum as described earlier, its not as important here tho
[0] Like cranking out Amazon employees
<https://www.jacobinmag.com/2021/07/amazon-warehouse-communit...>
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Writer Erika Hayasaki visited Cajon High. Here’s what she found:
A dozen students sat clustered at work tables inside an air-conditioned classroom, which was designed to emulate the inside of an Amazon facility. On one wall, Amazon’s giant logo grinned across a yellow and green banner. The words “CUSTOMER OBSESSION” and “DELIVER RESULTS” were painted against a corporate-style yellow backdrop. On a whiteboard, a teacher had written the words “Logistics Final Project,” and the lesson of the day was on Amazon’s “14 Leadership Principles.” Each teenager wore a company golf shirt emblazoned with the Amazon logo.
...
A public high-school classroom designed to resemble an Amazon facility, with students wearing Amazon logos on their clothing as they memorize Amazon’s leadership principles (which, it is worth noting, also include “Ownership” and “Think Big,” injunctions that hold merit for readers of this magazine when imagining how we might solve the problems exemplified by Amazon). Such a relationship between the company and public goods like a high school is part of what it means to consider Amazon as “the major working-class space of suburban and exurban socialization.”
"""
Take Baltimore for example. The public schools are very well-funded by any standard. And yet they have several high schools that didn’t produce a single student proficient in math.
https://www.k12dive.com/news/several-baltimore-schools-repor...
IMO the prosperity of the US has made people entitled and it's easier to complain than to put in the work.
- each public school has the same budget per student. There is no "reduced education funding" for schools in district X vs district Y, or for any school, because the budget per student is equal. Each school's budget is public, and published on the web.
- favoring religious teaching: at least at the school my kids go to there's absolutely no religious teaching. I suspect this is the case for all the public schools in NYC
- nuanced policy difficulties? Not sure what you mean by this
Ok, now to answer your original question: why the fault of progressive left. As you see I skipped the word "extreme", as this is a loaded word; people who vote that way certainly do not perceive themselves as extreme.
At the recent mayoral primaries, the top candidates were the moderates Eric Adams and Kathryn Garcia (1st and 2nd place), and the progressive Maya Wiley (3rd place). As far as the education was concerned, the hot topic was the selective "specialized high schools" [1], where the admission is test-based, according to a state law passed about 50 years ago. The current mayor (Bill de Blasio, progressive) has worked tirelessly for the last 4 years or so to lobby the State legislature to get the law repealed. The progressive candidate, Maya Wiley, promised to work towards the same goal. Here's the relevant extract from her platform [2]
>> To remove barriers that separate and label children, we will: [...] Eliminate discriminatory admissions “screens.”
In other words, kill the specialized high schools program.
Eric Adams (the winner, moderate) promised to keep the program as it currently is.
In case you wonder what the admission entrance exam is like, it's just two separate tests, one for ELA and one for math. Both tests are fairly challenging. The progressives think that these tests (and especially the math one) are discriminatory in nature.
Here's a sample math question [3, p.78] "In Centerville, 45% of the population is female, and 60% of the population commutes to work daily. Of the total Centerville population, 21% are females who commute to work daily. What percentage of the total Centerville population are males who do not commute to work daily?"
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specialized_high_schools_in_Ne...
[2] https://www.mayawileyformayor.com/maya-wileys-plan-for-creat...
[3] https://cdn-blob-prd.azureedge.net/prd-pws/docs/default-sour...
"What percentage of the total Centerville population are males who do not commute to work daily?"
Otherwise you do need that first bit.
This is supposed to be a "challenging" problem? It seems quite obvious to me: we simply cannot answer the question as given, because we aren't told how many in the Centerville population are classed as 'both male and female', or 'neither male nor female'.
I'm very against the idea that struggling students should just be "sacrificed" for the advanced student, however, which some of the other comments seem to be implying.