#17 - Compensating for age

How old is too old. . .especially when you are dealing with middle school children? The dilemma I see in urban schools is children who are too old age wise for the grade level that they are intellectually placed in. Each year I see a group of kids who are left back for the 2nd or 3rd time in the 7th grade. (mainly due to excessive absences that lead to lack of 'completed' work & instruction) So now they are 14 and 15 years old in class with 11 and 12 year olds. So now you have a host of behavior issues and hormonal frustrations that NO teacher should have to deal with. What is the solution? Socially promote eventhough they are not academically ready? Estabilish alternative schools for these students so that they can get 'caught up' academically with other students who are in the same situation/age? Or push them all out at 16 to such institutions like Dallas Can Academy? How and who is to decide?

Let's look at option one, social promotion. . .well that is what has gotten education into the situation that it is in now. Passing students just because they are too old to be around the younger one's. The injustice in this is that we are setting these kids up for failure, which in most cases, lead to drop out because they are academically unfit to handle the course load in which they are placed in. Let's say we put them in remedial classes to help move them up academically. . .they still are not ready for the standardized testing, because there isn't a 'remedial' version of these test and 9 times out of 10 they don't qualify for special education because they are not in school enough to gather enough data on. Also there are not enough teachers on the secondary level who have been trained to teach the basics of reading. That is a skill that you learn if you are studying to be an early child hood or elementary teacher, not secondary. The expectation is that by the time you get to 7th grade you should be fluently reading. . .but so many times you have groves of students who do not have basic reading skills.

I read that a large urban district is building a school that caters to older students who are on 2nd through 5th grade level, you must be 14 years old to attend and must complete the program by 19. This is a good alternative, but the curriculum is set to be intense. . .no room for absences at all. The only hole that I see in this plan is that it will work for native speakers, but what will happen for those where English is their second language? This is a subgroup who will be left to fall in the cracks. Research shows that it takes 2 years to pick up conversational language, but 5 to 7 years to learn academic language. Again ELL students are at a disadvantage.

Last to push students to such campuses like Dallas Can would benefit them tremendously, but by the time they get there they are already frustrated and fed up with education as a whole. To my understanding there are legal reasons as to why programs of this magnitude cannot accept them any earlier. . .hence the previous option. Also grant funding has been cut to these programs making it harder for them to service the students and keep enough personnel on staff. Its a pitiful situation when programs like these are so needed. Sometimes it feels as though you have to go back to the drawing board all over again. Education as a whole is failing in regards to the 'age' situation and we are sending these people without a halfway decent education and they are a strain on our economic system in the long run anyway. . .so why not invest the money in their education so that can lighten,or better yet, contribute to carrying the load in the long run. . .I know, I know, too much common sense. . .