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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (51514)	6/19/2002 5:54:15 AM
From: one_less	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 82486

"Also, I cannot understand how the bell curve can apply to a roughly homogeneous group, which is the result of tracking." The bell curve applies to population studies where the individual is a member of the population. It depends where you derive your normative standard from. If the norm standard is the general population of students who are eleven years old, then a class of students who are tracked into a gifted program compared to the norm should be very high achieving students. This would show up in a standardized national achievement test or even a school wide test that the gifted students are grouped way out on the extreme edge of the curve between the 95Th and 97Th%. It doesn't make sense to give people A's on their classroom work for being born gifted. Still the standardized test scores mean something in relation to how the student is fairing in the population, and how he is prepared for the future. If your norm standard (the population of students competing for grades)is only the students in the gifted program, then you would see the normal bell curve and students within the program would be found in the usual bell curve. "If it is organized properly, it seems to me that the difference between an A student and a C student should be the amount of effort put in to master the material....... All it takes is a little common sense...rare commodity unfortunately. We likely need a committee to look into it; at least one per department, per program, per school. And we should probably bring in some outside experts and run some seminars so that we can get to the bottom of it. Well get to the bottom anyway....