| The students I most need to help, are the students whose parents are not involved (or who actively work against their kids' schooling- which would be some of our Hispanic parents, who just want their kids to work at jobs, despite the fact that school should really be the number one job- but it doesn't pay the rent.) I work really hard to reach those kids- and at the same time, I don't want to "deincentivize" the kids who are already doing well, so even though they really don't "need" the same deal, they get it, mostly because of the kids at the lower end. We have an interesting mix of poor (migrant and low end Hispanic), and upper end, at my school, and the job of our academy is to mix (50/50) those students "in need" with those students who are superior- the resulting mix does not appear to drag down the high achievers, and we are raising up the low achievers- but we are a small, very committed, group of teachers who will have the same kids for all of high school. I'm not sure you can replicate that on a large scale. I'd like to think you could, but I'm not sure. |
