----- Original Message ----- From: Eric Bohlman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Monday, April 26, 2004 4:29 pm Subject: Re: [edstat] Educating the bright: was (Why do we transform data????) > [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote in news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]: > > > The resistance is real. I am blessed to live in a relatively small > > college community and we have this problem, at least in the K-8 > > grades. It is amazing, to me, to see otherwise intelligent people > > arguing that it is somehow immoral to improve low ability students' > > performace if the upper level kids will improve more. > > One has to wonder if that's their real intention. I suspect a lot > of the > opposition is really to the notion of teaching kids to think > independently, > out of fear that this will result in a loss of control. I suppose that is possible, but locally I saw folks genuinely concerned about the mental health of the lower ability kids. They sincerly believe that by allowing the brighter kids to move ahead at a faster rate than the lower ability kids, the lower ability kids will suffer some sort of an irrerversable emotional trauma. > > You do have to remember that in the US, the low voter turnout in > school- > board elections means that groups with quite peculiar agendas can > very > easily take over school boards. If only 5% of the eligible voters > actually > vote, a faction that's only supported by 2.6% of the population > can easily > win. > . A truely sad situation. Again I can speak only of my local school board which is fairly reasonable with respect to their expectations regarding eduation. Michael **************************************************** Michael Granaas [EMAIL PROTECTED] Assoc. Prof. Phone: 605 677 5295 Dept. of Psychology FAX: 605 677 3195 University of South Dakota 414 E. Clark St. Vermillion, SD 57069 ***************************************************** . . ================================================================= Instructions for joining and leaving this list, remarks about the problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES, and archives are available at: . http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ . =================================================================
