Source The New York Times · Published · Open the original ↗
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Turning an Academic Slump Around
Readers offer their suggestions for improving our schools. Also: College’s real payoff; A.I. is not human.
This is the second of two rounds of letters in response to an Upshot article about fixing schools. The first round was published on Saturday.
Re “ Top Ideas for Fixing Schools, Ranked by the Experts ” (The Upshot, Oct. 7):
Your expert survey rests on a premise that has undermined school improvement for decades: that better results come from choosing the right programs, rather than fixing the faulty machinery that public education rests on.
Walk into any classroom in the United States and you will see a familiar sight: a teacher, working alone in the classroom, delivering a single lesson to a group of 20 to 30 students in the same grade whose readiness to learn varies dramatically. This system wasn’t designed to bridge differences between students who enter the classroom as much as three or more grade levels below standard. Expecting it to do so is a recipe for frustration and disappointment.
The opening of the report, quoted unchanged from The New York Times. The full text continues at the source.