[Ohiogift] "Especially deserving poor"

[Margaret DeLacy]

Friends:

Mike Petrilli has a column on the Bridging Differences Blog (maintained by Diane Ravich)

Below is a link and an excerpt.  The comments are of interest also.

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/Bridging-Differences/2013/10/the_especially_deserving_poor.html

"High achievers must be challenged and rewarded. As Tom Loveless has shown, the anti-tracking craze that swept through our schools in the 80s and 90s left many suburban schools untouched but wreaked havoc in our poorest urban communities. While the impulse might have stemmed from concerns over "equity," the result was that high-achieving poor kids forfeited the opportunity to be in "gifted-and-talented" classes, honors tracks, or fast-moving Advanced Placement courses. As all of these programs were democratized or washed away, needy high achievers were forced into classrooms with lower-performing peers, which almost surely slowed their achievement and immersed them in a culture in which being smart wasn't cool. These policies, too, need to be reversed, particularly in high-poverty schools." 

One of the comments is from Carol Burris.  
She writes: "Mike Petrilli's elitist impulses to sort and separate children flies in the face of decades of research on tracking....." 

I commented on her research a few weeks ago.