Question:
For those old enough(and if you're posting to this group you should
be!) to remember the 70s you should remember a TV show called "Welcome
Back Kotter." It was a show about a man,a former gang member, who came
back to teach at his old school. He was assigned to a remedial class
which, suprise, suprise, was made up of the newer members of his old
gang, the Sweathogs.
Now, in order to catch the drift of my point & agenda, you have to
acknowledge the difference between a special education class and a
remedial one. The members of Kotter's class were low acheivers but did
not have anyn learning disability or suffer from mental retardation.
Was Gabe, a good teacher? The answer to that is yes & no! Yes by
virture of his being able to reach his students and no by virture that
the Sweathogs never disappeared from his remedial class.
Of course "Welcome Back Kotter" was merely A TV show and not reality
but the outcome of his class is repeated everyday in the real world of
remedial education. Thsese thoughts occured to me when I opened up
"Becoming A Teacher" 5th edition to page 204. This section dealt with
one teacher's (Lisa Stern) experiences with tracking, I quote:"To
Stern,this was clear evidence that the school was just perpetuating a
class system:the children of people who had acess to higher education
also got prepared for highrt education, and the children of people who
have not had highrt eduation don't get prepared for highrt education."
The authors of the book are Parjker and Stanford and the book's
publisher isAllyn and Bacon.
The above quote, to be honest, doesn't deal directly with the subject
of remedial education nor does it gives us enough evidence to assume a
cause andn effect relationship between tracking and remedial
education. However, it does show that such tracking furnishes at least
a portion of those in remedial education classes. For those who think
I'm making to much of a leap let me argue that in high school or
college the presense of remedial education students is prima facia
evidence that there was a failure to perform on a lower level of the
educational pipeline.
I'd like to ask evey teacher who teaches remedial classes or every
parentwho has a child in a remdeial class the following question:
What are the chances of your nonretarded,nondyslexic child of being
mainstreamed? I say this without predjudice to any or all students
with the aforementioned disabilities. Remedial classes, with the
eception of a few students are misplaced are indeed made up of those
students who suffer only from a less than competant educational system
or a disadvantged or dysfuncationl fanily system.
Answer:
My problem with your questions, as I have mentioned before, is that you
are assuming that all students, in every school system, in every state,
follow the practices in your school district and your state. In my high
school, we have students in remediation classes who are not disabled. They
are not resource students, they do not have learning disabilities and they
are of normal intelligence. The remediation classes available are only in
Math. Students who are General Math have failed to learn basic arithmetic
skills such as understanding decimals and fractions. We have no remediation
classes in English, Social Science or Science. In English and Social
Science, all of our classes meet the requirements for entrance to the
University of California and CSU institutions. In Science, we do have two
classes which do not meet university requirements, designed for students who
do not plan to attend a four year college
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