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346 points obscurette | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0.409s | source
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donatj ◴[] No.42116365[source]

I work in EdTech, I have for a very long time now, and the problem I have seen is no one in education is willing to ACTUALLY let kids learn at their own level.

The promise of EdTech was that kids could learn where they are. A kid who's behind can actually continue to learn rather than being left behind. A kid who's ahead can be nurtured.

We had this. It worked well, in my opinion at least, and the number of complaints and straight up threats because kids would learn things "they shouldn't be" was just… insanely frustrating.

Now in order to keep schools paying for our services, every kid is banded into a range based on their grade. They are scored/graded based on their grade level rather than their growth. It's such a crying shame.

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bitcurious ◴[] No.42116597[source]

> We had this. It worked well, in my opinion at least, and the number of complaints and straight up threats because kids would learn things "they shouldn't be" was just… insanely frustrating.

Can you give examples? Are we talking evolution or addition?

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shortrounddev2 ◴[] No.42116677[source]

My guess is that the kids were learning ahead of the rest of the class and it made the teacher's life harder to keep track of where each kid is, or had to field questions outside of her expertise since often elementary school teachers only know enough to teach elementary school

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1. Projectiboga ◴[] No.42117307[source]

On top of that the teacher has to juggle two tracks, the normal one and a special needs one. There has been a push for awhile to put mentally disabled kids in with their age peers and the teacher has to handle it, maybe with a low pay assistant.

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2. miningape ◴[] No.42118099[source]

Denmark did this about 10 years ago, the results pretty much speak for themselves: Everyone is frustrated with it, teachers, parents, students, as well as their special-needs counterparts.

Grades have been steadily decreasing across the board, while enrolment in private education has skyrocketed (private schools do not have to accept difficult students). The private education is particularly surprising as Denmark has a very strong tradition of public education, where private education was viewed as something for the "elites" of society (e.g. royalty), now it's becoming more and more common.