Why do we expect middle school students get everything knowledgewise and then be able to apply it all to choose a career in high school? Making kids accountable requires actually giving them some responsibility and allowing them to deal with the consequences. We tend to load bright kids with more work, work bringing lesser kids up to speed rather than teaching to the bright kids potential. God forbid a kid be sharper than the teacher she's been given. Then it becomes an adult vs child battle, which psychologically destroys the kid and really destroys the potential. This patently unfair abuse is pervasive in schools, yet the adults either don't see it or take advantage of it. Either way, the kid gets put down and made to feel bad about questioning anything.
Most marginalized kids hook up with other marginalized kids to be overtly underproductive. Instead of having schools let kids develop and run with their interests, we have 50 minute boredom sessions of intolentant gobblety-gook for 25 of the 30 participants. This is what we have with one size fits all, outcome based no child left behind education. Time to forget the school system - get rid of both state and federal departments of education and have the local school-boards choose the knowledge content that befits their community. And if you have to bus people around - bus the teachers from school to school and let the kids learn in smaller volume settings closer to home. Use knowledge content and use as the matric for grade passage, rather than age.
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