[cortesoft]

Can't we agree that both extremes are wrong? While I agree that it is wrong to assume there is no such thing as innate human ability, and it is wrong to assume everyone can achieve equally, you seem to be arguing the opposite; that there is nothing that can be done to improve achievement for those who are struggling.

This simply isn't true. There are things that can be done to improve the outcome for students, and we should continue to work to try to improve the success of all students. This doesn't mean that you expect everyone to achieve equally, just that you can help people achieve more than they would have without the help.

I also find this argument a bit paradoxical; if you truly believe that innate ability is the only determining factor for how well students do, then why do you worry about handicapping those who are capable? It shouldn't matter if we force them into classes they are too advanced for, since how we educate them doesn't matter and only natural talent matters.

It seems that you believe schooling does affect achievement, since you want to make sure we aren't holding back the high achievers, yet you are saying at the same time we shouldn't worry about how we educate the low achievers because they are stuck where they are no matter what. You can't argue that it matters for high achievers but not for low achievers, that doesn't make any sense.

[dahfizz]

> There are things that can be done to improve the outcome for students, and we should continue to work to try to improve the success of all students.

How would you suggest we do this?

Without a dramatic reinvention of our education system, you have to fill a room with N students and 1 teacher. If you want that teacher to be maximally effective at "improving outcomes" - how do we do that?

The proposal here is to group the kids strictly by age. Every kid in grade X gets the same math class. This will inevitably lead to the math class being irrelevant to some portion of the class. Some kids will be so far behind the teacher may as well be speaking a foreign language, and some kids will be bored out of their mind because the material is moving too slow.

By being a little more intelligent in choosing our groups of N student, we can maximize the relevance of what the teacher is teaching and therefore better improve the success of all students.

[cortesoft]

I don’t know how we do it, I am not an education expert. I am simply saying we should keep trying new ways to try to help lower performing student improve until we find one that works. We shouldn’t just give up and write them off as being unable to improve.