Challenging Everyone in School

Patrick Welsh is a teacher of English in the Alexandria (or is it Arlington) high school who writes periodic pieces on the state of the public schools. He had one yesterday, discussing the problems kids have who are caught between the very gifted and the ones being targeted to meet the Virgina Standards of Learning (No Child Left Behind), as in:

"...TAG as in Talented and Gifted. And who is and who isn't -- or at least who's designated such and who isn't -- has been one of the most contentious issues in Alexandria since the school system raised the bar for the TAG program two years ago. The new rules have cut out about two-thirds of the students who once qualified: At George Mason, the size of the fourth-grade program went from 17 to six last year."

He closes thus:

"Shep Walker, a T.C. graduate about to enter the College of William and Mary, says the problem is that "gifted-and-talented programs get filled with white kids who have pushy parents, leaving a lot of black and Hispanic kids out in the cold and creating de facto segregation in the classes."

In its defense, Alexandria's school administration was probably trying to fix that situation. But the solution isn't to mark fewer students as gifted and talented. It's to challenge all our kids, all the time."

While that's a laudable sentiment, I don't think it works in the real world or the real classroom. I think the reality is that any teacher faced with 25 students, or even any manager faced with 12 employees, is going to find that teaching (managing) some of them is more rewarding than the others. (I think the reward is a matter of personalities hitting it off, not necessarily of bias.) So some are going to think Mr. Welsh is a great teacher, some are going to say he's okay.

A great school system will manage to provide everyone with great teaching once or twice in their 12 years of schooling, as different teachers connect with different students. For the rest, we'll muddle through.