2016 USA Presidential election thread II: And. Here. We. Go!

[Krandor]

Which is funny (sad?) in retrospect with how a decent number of people were assuming Trump was a DNC plant to assure Hillary won.

[Day]

tbf he actually was, it just didn't go as planned

[Dimmauk]

LOL where is that from?

[Krandor]

It was either the Podesta or DNC leaks

[dasva]

One of the multitude of reasons you see so many suburban middle/upper-middle class folks trying to dismantle the public school system is because many educational professionals will intentionally mix students with both strong and weak backgrounds together.

From a research perspective, it's been shown that student mixing of this nature results in stronger performances from both the weak and the strong students. Weak students get peers who can support them and strong students reinforce their own understanding by teaching others.

Good luck explaining that to Tommy Twelve Year Old, though. More likely, Tommy will come home every day and complain to mommy about how all the kids in his class are stupid and he's constantly having to teach them basic stuff. Mommy would rather get a voucher to send Tommy to a charter/private school where he can be with "other smart kids."

The problem is when there is a huge enough disparity you are also hindering each as well. Definitely been asked to stop helping/answering in class once even with a phone call home because apparently discouraged the other students... in an honors/AP/IB class. That was pretty funny. Already played games and read books during the vast majority of the class and only participated if called on and getting told to just goof off the whole time instead lol.

But what if we had the "class" be the same but broke up the pacing and course work somewhat in groups by ability of each subject? Would still have said mixing but could teach at more appropriate pace. Maybe even some free work. And yes it can be done. A couple of teachers in the poorest school I've ever been to did it. Don't think I've ever seen a more motivated class or one that actually made it thru the whole years curriculum/text books including the slower groups

Meanwhile the next year we move to the rich part of town that even had it's own school district separate from the rest of the city full of kids from educated and well off families the school itself clearly got more money but taught by the same one size fits all way and we didn't even catch up to where I had left off the previous year let alone make a full years progress. And that kind of thing continued. Which is extra fun in California because we had various iteration of assessment tests at the end of the year that inevitably had questions on parts of the curriculum we'd never get to.

[Greatguardian]

Stories like that aren't uncommon among people our age. I'm assuming you're in your 30's, so your educational experiences are at best with teachers whose pedagogy and practice were up to date for the Clinton era. At worst, they were running with a rulebook 30+ years old themselves and refusing to change. Best practices have been changing rapidly for the past couple decades. There's little point defending what a teacher chose to do so long ago because so much of what practices they were using when we were in school have already been shown to be demonstrably worse than what we're using in schools right now.

I don't let any of my students goof off or read books in class. I intentionally give them more work than they can possibly finish in a class period and require that they do the overflow as homework (not busy work, I just cover a lot of material). If some student(s) eventually do start completing my assignments before class ends, I just give them new material from my trim bin (topics I want to cover but don't have time to). The only student I've ever eventually come to terms with letting read or do other things during class was a clinically diagnosed autistic kid (like, full blown Asperger's) who honestly couldn't participate in discussions without making everyone in the room want to punch him in the face. That was a safety issue at that point.

[dasva]

Part of the problem was I think there was some students who clearly didn't belong in the class/grade and some that were probably milking the whole go at the slowest student which led to it's own problems.

Worst extreme was trig/precalc. The teacher tried doing something similar with making assignments that took some awhile and if finished early go to next if didn't finish would be homework. The problems arose with the sheer difference between the students which it doesn't sound like you have as bad. It's no exaggeration to say making enough that even a slim majority would barely finish during class would've left some with hours of homework a night and would've left others ridiculously far ahead. I say this with confidence because the official class progress was approximately 1 chapter of 6-9 assignments a quarter which I know some people at least claimed took them all class and some homework time. While some of the smarter ones easily finished the weeks assignments during 1 class and I personally finished each quarter casually in a week (would've been faster except our wonderful brand new text books that cost so much we didn't have enough for everyone and were using photocopies were extremely full of errors to the point I'd say around 60% of the selected answers in the back were flat out wrong and examples in the chapters were also often wrong which makes working ahead a tad slower) and then I'd spend the rest of the quarter getting yelled at because he was stubborn and wouldn't let me go even farther ahead because "I've known some smart kids and none could finish the book in a year" ya know the one designed for a year

Now things might be different now and there might not be such a huge disparity but mommy hears her kid talking about class she isn't necessarily thinking just somewhat weaker mixed with stronger students but might be remembering when she was in school and seeing kids that clearly were (or acted like they were) years apart being mixed together. So it's not necessarily I want my kid around smart kids as just ones that are somewhat close. That said while I can take your word for it that in some ways teaching may have improved my area has made it clear it's also taken some major steps backwards with a grading policy they made up I think a year ago or so that literally made 20% passing and 80% an A. Granted several teachers came out against it but several were for it and the administrators were definitely all for it

[Day]

LOL where is that from?

It was either the Podesta or DNC leaks

Yeah Podesta emails haha, I took that screencap from this article if you want to read the full thing:
http://www.politico.com/magazine/sto...d-trump-214428

[Dotsudoku]

who wasn't aware of that

everyone thought Trump was going to be a dumpsterfire, the strategy was sound before realizing how easily he was about to charm half the country

[Ragnus]

LOL where is that from?

http://www.politico.com/magazine/sto...d-trump-214428

[Andalusian girls]

who wasn't aware of that

everyone thought Trump was going to be a dumpsterfire, the strategy was sound before realizing how easily he was about to charm half the country

i think a conventional candidate in the mold of Rubio or Romney or Dubya would have soundly beaten Hillary in the popular vote and smashed her in the EC. people didn't realize just how unpopular she was and how that unpopularity would grow during both the primaries and the general, how damaging the FBI investigation that was supposed to go away but never went away would prove, and how many Rust Belt voters were alienated from the Democratic Party during the Obama administration. and structurally speaking the American system is designed around equilibrium; it is very difficult for any party to win 3 presidential elections in a row, none the less one putting forward such a damaged candidate. Trump / Cruz were probably the only major candidates she actually could have beaten.

[archibaldcrane]

But what if it's her vs. Rubio, but there's no DNC or Podesta leaks or Comey October surprise?

It would have been a very different campaign without Trump on both sides. Maybe an issue or two would have been discussed!

[Andalusian girls]

It would have been a very different campaign without Trump on both sides.

yes, if Donald had not emerged victorious from the Republican primaries Hillary would have had the honor of having the lowest favorability rating of any general election candidate in history.

[archibaldcrane]

But clearly having the lowest favorability isn't a death sentence.

[Gredival]

Part of the problem was I think there was some students who clearly didn't belong in the class/grade and some that were probably milking the whole go at the slowest student which led to it's own problems.

I've been out of education advocacy for a while, but this was always one of the strongest selling points imo for online/blended learning models. Classrooms just aren't efficient when the students aren't on the same page but no one wants their kid to be in the remedial class. The best solution is for the kids not to be stuck with each other learning the same thing in the first place. If everyone is allowed to be on their own pace, you can also teach for the point of mastery not to finish the course syllabus.

However teachers' groups are against that because they perceive it as them being replaced.

[Dotsudoku]

i think a conventional candidate in the mold of Rubio or Romney or Dubya would have soundly beaten Hillary in the popular vote and smashed her in the EC. people didn't realize just how unpopular she was and how that unpopularity would grow during both the primaries and the general, how damaging the FBI investigation that was supposed to go away but never went away would prove, and how many Rust Belt voters were alienated from the Democratic Party during the Obama administration. and structurally speaking the American system is designed around equilibrium; it is very difficult for any party to win 3 presidential elections in a row, none the less one putting forward such a damaged candidate. Trump / Cruz were probably the only major candidates she actually could have beaten.

agreed. A considerably more naive me was happier than was prudent about Trump's victory some months ago, but I feel as if this was the case for most Hill supporters- herself included

[Gryffes]

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/...n-hack-n696146

Wheeeee.

[Ezek]

The entire last week has been a repeat of MUH RUSSIANS.

[Niiro]

I feel like the entire Russian involvement in the election is a grand scale "many people are saying" bit.

Are we ever going to see actual evidence?

[Gryffes]

No, plus the 80s want their foreign policy back.