Leaving No Child Behind: Teamwork Models Fosters Students to Excel beyond Academics

President Bush’s, No Child Left Behind Act, is continuing to be a prominent debate in educational policy, principally, because several schools, urban districts in particular, are not generating the results of, nor reaping benefits from, the Act. Rather, most schools in the disadvantaged areas are still faltering on the standardized tests. Furthermore, students classified as gifted are suffering from the downward trajectory of NCLB. Parents, likewise are contending that public schools fail their high-achieving children owing to No Child, expressed in the corresponding photograph of a current article. These disappointing results seem to stem from the schools’ tendencies to segregate the classrooms based on achievement levels, coupled with disproportionate focus on the State Content Standards. Across the globe, recent studies indicate that students who learn in mixed or integrated classroom settings perform significantly higher than those grouped solely based on ability. As shown below, teachers incorporate collaborative English methods in the School District of Monticello. Conjointly, the European researchers discovered that collaborative methods of learning further fostered academic success along with improved social behaviors. Hence, mirroring the models of other continents may be a favorable route in fostering greater student success.

Working to have the entire class at the proficient level by spring’s standardized testing, teachers disregard talented students’ innovations, focusing surpassingly on low-achieving students. This method has worked for some schools particularly in the Rhode Island District. However, many gifted students in less advantaged areas have been steered in a downward track. They are set up for failure it seems, as expressed in a recent article by Catherine Gewertz. Her study finds that kids from disadvantaged backgrounds “start school with weaker academic skills and are less likely to flourish over the years in school than their peers from better-off families.” Consequently, gifted students are neither observed nor challenged from the start. Likewise in Europe, teachers often discredit student’s capabilities by prejudging them solely on prior test scores and socioeconomic statuses. According to Gewertz' study, “higher achieving students” in less advantaged areas “are more likely to lose ground. For instance, 44 percent fall out of top quartile in reading between the 1st and 5th grades, compared with 31 percent of high achievers whose family income is above the national median.” Furthermore, the high school drop-out rates synchronize in a homogenous pattern; compared to better-off families, they are more likely to not graduate on time or fail to graduate altogether. Similarly, in Europe, students “who are put into low caliber in school quickly learn to perceive themselves as unsuccessful and develop anti-school values that lead into general anti-social behavior”.

Furthermore, teachers’ excessive instruction on rudimentary standards causes high-achieving students to refute assignments. “Recently, a noted children’s author recounted her dismay when fifth-graders attending one of her workshops balked at a creative writing exercise”. She was startled to discover that the reluctant writers were deemed highly gifted. High-achieving students across the nation are refuting the mundane worksheets and drills handed out to them each day, because the assignments are frankly too abecedarian for their capabilities. Even math students note that the ‘one-way or the high-way’ drills are often tedious, causing them to become lackadaisical towards a once relished subject. Teachers religiously “emphasize incessant drilling of fundamental facts and teach that there is one right way to solve even higher-order problems”. Despite the most dexterous mathematician’s creativity in using shortcuts to problem solving, which makes the subject more interesting and fun for him/her, teachers continuously drill the gifted student with fundamental exercises, which tend to dull instead of sharpening their faculties.

One route to handling this dilemma is to use the model of European countries who are dealing with a similar educational crisis. Researcher, Professor Boaler remarked, “In England we use more ability grouping than possibly any other country in the world, and children are put into groups at a very young age. It is no coincidence that our society also has high levels of anti-social behavior and indiscipline.” Likewise, in the United States we not only classify kids based on prior test scores and presumed
capabilities, but we also educate every student at the basic level year round leaving out capacity for advancement. Boaler’s study found that by integrating the classrooms irrespective of students’ abilities was more advantageous than segregating high-achieving students from their lower scoring peers. The mixed grouping fostered collaborative efforts that allowed them to “learn work in greater depth,” she says. Additionally, the picture to the right displays a group of Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy students whose teachers' emphasized “group learning, team work and student classroom participation because that's how the best decisions and outcomes are achieved.” Hence, there were favorable results to support their innovative technique; students attained several trophies from state academic competitions, furthermore, international displayed along the walls of their school building.“The results of Professor Boaler’s study, which followed 700 teenagers in the US over four years, were all the more remarkable because the mixed ability group came from disadvantaged backgrounds and were initially less able at maths.” The highly gifted students had the opportunity to peer-teach the low achieving ones thereby gaining more wisdom and knowledge. As the Chinese saying goes, “The best way to learn a subject is to teach it.”Complementary, ISTE National Technology Standards incorporated this method. “As any educator quickly discovers, the surest way to truly learn something is to teach it to others.”

Rather than grouping students in classrooms based on abilities or even teaching rudimentary knowledge throughout the entire school year, teachers should begin to strike a balance between fundamental and innovative teaching, by using various modalities. This method has proven to create favorable effects beyond excelling grades. Students in Europe have generated a shared responsibility that makes each student more active in class assignments. Better work ethics and zeal have also been products of this new system of grouping and adequately leaves no child, whether gifted or average behind.