Butthurt white guys, an Asian virgin and an angry lesbian walk into a bar...

khalid_sl said:

That sounds absolutely horrible for anyone outside the average. If this is what Mist is talking about, uggh. I mean, I get the idea that by doing it this way, some poorer students would work harder. Is that worth leaving behind the worse students and boring the shit out of the better students? Dunno.

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It's not exactly what I'm talking about, no.

If we're going to have a discussion about education reform, let's all take a break and watchWaiting for 'Superman' (2010) - IMDband then come back. It's been praised by conservatives and by some on the left. It is anti-teacher union, but it also makes strong points against tracking.

But while I'm here, the problem is that most tracking systems are setup in such a way that there is very little difference in ability between their A track and their B track students, the difference being that their A tracks have always been A tracked and their B tracks have always been B tracked. Most of the kids in the A track aren't that exceptional, they can't be, that's just statistical fact. As for remedial students, there's already a mechanism for dealing with them, holding them back grades.

One serious problem with our education system is that each city and suburban town and rural community is its own little fiefdom when it comes to education. If you wanted to truly serve the most gifted students, you'd need to ship many them out of district to schools with a large population to make full gifted programs. The middle track would get a lot wider, to reflect the statistical reality of academic ability, ie that most kids are pretty close to average when looked at across the board. The better students on a per subject basis within the middle track could help the weaker students through peer tutoring and also by just being present in the same classes with them something that would especially benefit districts with less teaching resources. This could benefit those stronger students, because you gain a deeper understanding of a subject by teaching others, and if they're recognized for their effort. All students in the main track would get access to the same optional classes and extracurriculars, and could still opt into college credit/AP courses in their final years of schooling. The truly remedial would get held back or placed into proper remedial courses to get them back into the middle track, rather than just stuck in the ghetto of the C track for the rest of their academic careers. Special education programs would still exist for students with special needs.

The problem is that most tracking systems are lazy (I've seen many districts that didn't bother tracking kids by ability per subject, just basically assigning them blanket A, B or C trough across the board) and most detracking systems are lazily implemented too, because teachers and administrators are lazy.

Cad_sl said:

What does this even mean? If your A track represents 10% of your class, why wouldn't the top 10% of the class by whatever metric you choose be the A track? What does "that exceptional" mean?

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Most of the top 10% still aren't really that far from the mean in terms of actual innate ability. Top 2% are where you start getting far from the mean, that's where you start seeing kids with ability that is obviously in a different class from everyone else. The 90th percentile is just not that much different from say the 70th percentile. Both are likely going to college, both are going to perform about the same in their first year college classes, and the tracks you put them in are largely going to be meaningless in terms of end result. All you did was discourage all the ~30-89th percentile kids. Any one individual within that spectrum could have fallen anywhere in that spectrum if you gave them good teachers and access to educational opportunities.

Whereas the 90th percent kids almost look dumb in comparison to the 98th and 99th percentile kids when looking at their innate ability. Some of the 90th percentile kids might excel in one area but be discouraged by the fact that they can't ever compete with the 98th and 99th percentile kids in all the other areas.

It's kinda like WoW arena or any ladder system in any current competitive game: Top 10% means you still suck.

Only the top 0.5% of WoW arena players even got the Gladiator title, they were clearly a cut above the Duelists, which went down to 3%, and having a Duelist title meant you were bad, and 3-10% were Rivals, and you know Rivals weren't even one step above random Brazilians.

It's just the way Bell curves work. The top 10% of a Bell Curve isn't actually that far from the mean.

I'm gonna go with an all around no on that one. I've never even met my biological father, even though he lives less than 25 minutes from me.

My stepdad is a fucking asshole, with only two moods: comically mean and completely psychopathic.

And I'm really starting to hate my mother. I was clearly clinically depressed for 6-8 years, and yet she didn't bother trying to help me, because me being depressed suited her needs of me sitting around the house taking care of her rather than having a normal life of my own.

I added more info.

Not sure how flushing 1000-1400 dollars a month rent down the toilet would improve the quality of my life any. There still wouldn't be anyone around to take care of my mother, so I'd still have to show up here every day to do that. I haven't seen or talked to my stepfather in many months at this point. I'd still have to handle my mom's civil suit for her (spent 7 hours the other day sorting papers on the floor of my mom's lawyers office because he can't hire anyone worth a shit to run his office well enough to handle the case.)

I'd pretty much be fucked no matter what I did, so I might as well just stay here. I plan on killing myself as soon as all of this nonsense is over anyway (read: not anywhere close to imminently.) I am literally staying alive solely out of pure guilt over who would take care of my mother and her bullshit. Starting off decades behind in terms of establishing real relationships with other people or working seriously on a real career is not, in my mind, preferable to just being dead. My outlook might change by the time I'm clear of all of this, but I seriously doubt it.