It’s Time to Ditch the Archaic Idea of Age Based Grade Levels
Back in 1837, there were no telephones, electric lights were not commercialized yet, and the big technology of the day was the telegraph, with its ability to transmit very little amounts of information in a very tedious way.
It also was the year that Horace Mann came up with the revolutionary idea of putting students in groups according to their age, and promoting them yearly, independent of ability.
We have moved far past the basic telephones of the 1800s, have improved on electric lights, and can transmit monumental amounts of information easily and quickly through our phones- which are also minicomputers.
Our classrooms are filled with technology, Chromebooks, projectors and in so many ways we are rushing to modernize the classroom- except in the most basic, key area- age based grade levels.
The idea of grouping students based on nothing more than their age is an archaic idea, clung to for no good reason than the fact that it is difficult to change. But if we could eliminate age based grade levels, it could streamline the educational experience and allow all students to benefit.
Horace Mann was never focused on making sure that students mastered the academic content.
Before Mann started his push for public schooling, schools were not attended by many children except for the wealthy. This meant that only a small fraction of the population of children in the United States were even attending school at all.
there are at the present time upwards of 24,000 children [in New York City] between the ages of 5 and 15 years, who attend no schools whatsoever….
His vision was to create something that would allow all students, even in low income families, to learn something before facing the world as adults.
He saw that between the need to pay for school, and the need to help families with work at home, or on the farm, there were countless adults growing up without some of the most basic educational skills.
So he pushed for education reform, and was successful.
As a state legislator, in 1837 Mann took the lead in establishing a state board of education and his efforts resulted in a doubling of state expenditures on education. He also won state support for teacher training, an improved curriculum in schools, the grading of pupils by age and ability, and a lengthened school year. He was also partially successful in curtailing the use of corporal punishment. In 1852, three years after Mann left office to take a seat in the U.S. Congress, Massachusetts adopted the first compulsory school attendance law in American history.
To be clear- these are all good things. It is good that kids can go to school, irregardless of their family’s income. It is good that teachers were starting to be trained, that there was consistency in what was taught, and that by making school compulsory, parents couldn’t keep kids from learning due to struggles on the farm.
Just as it was good that Morse developed his telegraph, paving the way for telephones, and ultimately the internet. All are linked in their ability to transmit information over long distances, yet we don’t stubbornly hold on to the need to keep the telegraph alive. There are no cries of #learnmorsecode, no movement to toss our smartphones to bring back the classic technology of the telegraph.
We can acknowledge the foundations of the past without the need to continue to use them in our daily lives, and I think that Mann’s idea of putting kids in grades based on their age has to be updated.
If our hope is to allow all children to master the content, and reach their full potential, we are hurting them on both ends with grades based on birth year.
When I was going through my teaching credential, we were taught to teach to the middle. In a diverse class of learners, no lesson could possibly be perfect in its ability to be simple enough for the struggling students while also complex enough to be challenging for my high achievers.
So… I taught to the middle. I did what I could to go back and support those who couldn’t keep up with the lesson, and then have extension activities for the kids ready for more of a challenge, but you can’t argue that it was the best situation for either of those groups.
I have seen it in every school, every classroom, and every age level that I have been a part of since 2006 when I started teaching. The span between the high and low learners is so great, there is no way for even the best teacher to give every student the lesson at the right level for them.
Schools know this, and spend countless hours and dollars trying to make up for these gaps with staff pulling out the students who are behind, giving them time with a resource teacher, or finding other ways to give these kids extra support. On the other end we have GATE programs and extra activities for the kids that need more of a challenge.
All of this time and effort and human resources spent to get the kids “where they should be” for their grade. But the grade is just based on age, and on these archaic standards of what kids are supposed to know by the end of this year in their lives. Who says?
Think about when kids learn to walk. There is a huge range between when some kids first start to walk, and when doctors are concerned and start recommending therapy. Yet, once kids hit kindergarten, suddenly it is a narrow, arbitrary window of what the students are supposed to know by the end of the year, and if they don’t they are considered “behind.”
With my two kids, I have one on each end. My daughter struggles, and is one of the ones getting pulled out for extra support. She misses another subject as she gets pulled out for the one she struggles with more, and consequently misses out on instruction there too. My son excels in school, loves school, and loves to be challenged. He is in 1st grade, and is constantly asking the teacher if she will let him multiply and divide (which he understands). She wishes she could allow him to expand his math knowledge but she has to keep within the confines of what common core expects for his age.
While I appreciate the efforts of the school, neither of my kids is truly being educated at their level. My daughter is having to be pushed to help her keep up, and my son is being tied back to his age level peers.
What if there was a better way?
School is a place where students go to learn.
That should be obvious, but sometimes I think that schools get so wrapped up in the social side that they forget this baseline fact.
What if instead of age, students were grouped according to their academic level? They learn through their level, and then, when they are ready, they go to the next level.
Every student has academic content at their perfect spot for learning, while being slightly challenged. Every lesson is taught at the level the students need. Staff are used to teach each level, instead of trying to push or pull them to a place they aren’t ready for yet.
The need for resource teachers, gate teachers, etc. goes by the wayside as every student moves through school not frustrated and behind or unchallenged, but having their academic experience match their ability.
This is not a crazy utopian idea.
Some schools have already put this idea into place.
In a suburb just outside of Denver, Principal Sarah Gould stands outside a fifth-grade classroom at Hodgkins Elementary School watching students work. This classroom, she explains, is for students working roughly at grade level. Down the hall, there are two other fifth-grade classrooms. One is labeled “Level 2 and 3,” for students who are working at the second and third-grade levels. The other is for students who are working at a middle-school level.
But some of these students won’t necessarily stay in these classrooms for the whole school year. The students will move to new classrooms when they’ve mastered everything they were asked to learn in their first class. This can happen at any time during the year.
“We have kids move every day. It’s just based on when they’re ready,” Gould said.
It’s called competency based education, and more schools are trying this way of teaching to maximize learning, even though it goes against what most people are used to.
Just because it used to be done a certain way, doesn’t mean that we have to keep that model going forever.
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