And what is your policy for gifted students ? The below is un-acceptable.
"A key sticking point in the approval process has been the framework’s recommendation that teachers refrain from labeling students as “naturally talented” in math."
I'd recommend that we try in elementary to make the current math curriculum reach a broader set of students through games, puzzles, and in-classroom competition that doesn't absolutely favor the strongest students. Maybe Tom is farthest in math and wins a lot, and maybe Amy has a natural talent for computation that makes her strong, but there's also some randomness and the ability for gambits in the game to let others have a chance of winning. The result is that everyone tries hard. Sorting students by level prematurely has been shown to be bad, so I think having levels before late upper elementary or early middle school is bad.
I think the link's recommendation of not sorting students based on level in middle school is bad-- my 7th grader is doing precalc now. But he was on the normal math path through elementary with some enrichment and diversions.
Gifted kids are hard to deal with in math in elementary, because they may have a good intuitive understanding of math, but they generally are not so developmentally ahead in focus, accuracy, etc. So while you may have some 9 year olds that can understand work intended for 14 year old students, they generally cannot do difficult problems with any degree of accuracy. They make too many mistakes, swapping coefficients and signs.
> The below is un-acceptable.
> "A key sticking point in the approval process has been the framework’s recommendation that teachers refrain from labeling students as “naturally talented” in math."
Gotta disagree with you on this one point. Labelling someone as having a natural talent helps no one. Label them as ahead, or having worked hard.
"Natural talent" may be the truth, but as a label is toxic for everyone. It's toxic for everyone else, because it's not something they can hope to have: why try? And it's toxic for the labelled-- anything that is hard can be threatening that this label of natural talent could be stripped away if they try and don't do well-- so why try.
Studies show that praising kids for "talent" or "intelligence" is actually demotivating.
Let's not rush to apply labels, but instead try to create environments where everyone can be motivated to try hard, excel, and grow. In middle school and up this can be through tracks. In late elementary this can be through differentiated instruction. And throughout elementary, we need to just focus on keeping it engaging and interesting and speaking to curiosity of everyone in the room, instead of drilling the poor kid who's struggling on arithmetic facts incessantly.
Another issue is that the labels are not overwhelmingly predictive. The students who are considered weakest in elementary school can improve a lot. And many of those who continue struggling may do so because they've internalized a message of being weak at math-- or internalized short term coping strategies imposed by teachers (e.g. given up on understanding and instead are trying to learn the correct sequence of juggling symbols by rote to pass this next class).
"A key sticking point in the approval process has been the framework’s recommendation that teachers refrain from labeling students as “naturally talented” in math."