Mastery for all students

This is a guest editorial on the topic that was published in The Ithaca Journal on June 9, 2010.

In Ithaca, a child who is eager to learn and who takes advantage of all the available educational opportunities can receive a first-rate education that will prepare him or her to go to the very best colleges. But many children do not benefit from these opportunities. At best, they drift through school, hoping not to bring attention to themselves, learning just enough to pass to the next course.

I believe that we are doing a tremendous disservice to these children. Superficial knowledge that gets a passing grade on a test and is quickly forgotten thereafter has no power to inspire anyone to greater things. It cannot provide a firm foundation for learning more difficult material. Whatever a child learns, he or she should learn well.

The letter grades that are given to children based on their performance contribute to the superficiality, rather than address it. They are inadequate to assess a child's strengths and weaknesses, or the child's readiness for more advanced material. Grades also fail as motivation. Giving a child a "C" simply tells the child that he is a "C" student and that he should accept mediocrity as his lot in life.

A child gets a poor grade in a subject because there is some topic, or skill, that he should have mastered but did not.

But if he hasn't actually failed, he will be sent along to the next more advanced subject, where it's hoped that he will learn the new material, in addition to whatever material he should have learned earlier.

Keeping up gets more difficult with each new semester. At some point, the child who is having academic trouble gives up on himself, and the school system gives up on him, as well. I consider that a tragedy, and a preventable one.

How can we do better?

An antidote to superficiality is to insist on the mastery of smaller topics, instead of mere exposure to larger topics. If a child fails to master a subject such as algebra, then it means the subject is too big a chunk for that child.

It should be broken down into smaller topics and skills that he or she can realistically be expected to master, and we should give children the time it takes to master them.

It makes no sense to put a child into more advanced classes, say trigonometry or calculus, if he hasn't really understood the topics in algebra. A child's confidence in himself and his commitment to doing well is boosted tremendously by having high standards set for him and making sure that he achieves those high standards.

Not every child will master every topic, but what the child does learn, he or she can learn well.