Colorado school district drops grade levels

WESTMINSTER, Colo. a ' School districts across the U.S. are trying to improve student performance and low test scores.

[Milt]

It's about time! These ideas have been around for a long time but everyone seems tied to graded schools, one of the sillier ideas in education. Even the most traditional one-room schools used an ungraded system. The biggest problem to be addressed is that in this system parents must take a greater responsibility in their child's education or it, like the present system, will yield mediocre results.

[Buglmin]

Los Alamos Elementaries have been using this system for a few years now.

[P_Katz]

These reforms are long overdue. Grouping students by age, and insisting that the whole group move in lockstep to the next grade, is absurd. As anyone who's ever taught knows, students learn a subject at different rates; but if a teacher is supposed to keep the group together, he/she spends an inordinate amount of time trying to bring the slower students up to speed, while neglecting the needs of the average students and wasting the time of the above-average ones. That's a disservice to everyone, including the teacher.

Grouping students by "ability" doesn't work either because everyone is better at some subjects than others. Throughout school, I was placed in "fast track" classes, and did well in most of them, but I got continual static from my teachers because "You should be doing better in math!" Uh, not necessarily: I would have learned more in the "average" math classes because my ability level in that subject is average, so when I was placed with the math whiz kids I couldn't keep up.

And don't get me started on grades! In elementary school, everyone has to learn the basics in order to progress. So the focus should be not on whether Anna did "better" work compared to Bruce's, but on whether *both* of them have demonstrated sufficient mastery of the subject. We've all known students who failed to learn some basic skill in (say) second grade, but were passed into third because their overall performance was satisfactory -- but they struggle with that subject for the rest of their school career.

I think this approach is the way to go, and I hope the Westminster school district becomes a model for many more.

[elchicano]

As an elementary school teacher, advisor and currently graduate student; I appreciate the effort to re-invent the system that runs backwards at times. We are humans that should be developing novel ideas to everything and the educational system is a vital force in our lives. Time to become a learner centered system rather than an administrative or even teacher centered endeavor. Si Se Puede.