The Lowest Common Denominator

The phrase “lowest common denominator” is commonly used by the public, but what people actually mean is — the smallest integer greater than one that divides evenly into all members of a set. In everyday language, it describes reducing anything to the lowest level shared by the group.

Education is all about the LCD

Public education now operates on exactly this principle. In any classroom, resources are disproportionately poured into the single lowest-performing student, dwarfing the attention and instruction given to everyone else.

Unfortunately, “lowest common denominator” describes how the educational industry treats educating students. In any classroom, there is one student lower than all the rest, who receives the bulk of the educational resources.

The amount of resources that goes into supporting that one student will dwarf the resources that go into the rest of the classroom.

We Cut Off the Right Hand Tail

When my children were in first grade, they were part of the gifted and talented program. Students were selected by the G&T teacher to be part of the program. They were proud to be part of it.

While it was only a few hours per week, they were stretched in ways that they did not see in the normal classroom.

My son was part of the G&T program, even though he had communication issues. The teacher recognized his abilities. He shone in the program.

Within a year of my children becoming part of the G&T program, they had renamed it because “other children felt excluded” and it “had lowered their self-esteem.”

The teacher was moved to teaching something else and the new program accepted anybody who was “gifted” or “talented,” where those terms were very inclusive.

The kid in the second grade that couldn’t read CVC words but drew “pretty pictures” was a gifted artist and if he wanted, he was part of the gifted and talented program.

Over the time my children were in elementary school, the resources allocated by the school system to smart children were reduced to near zero. All gifted programs were funded and run by volunteers.

The resources that went to the “low achievers” continued to grow.

Diluting Resources for the Many

When “No Child Left Behind” was in the spotlight, I knew what it meant. It meant that every child would get the resources needed to assist that child in getting the best education possible for that child.

That is what I believed until a teacher explained how it was being implemented.

The requirements were that the schools “pass” as many students as possible. This translated, at the lowest levels, to teachers being told they couldn’t give low grades to students, that they couldn’t fail students, or in the education industry vocabulary, hold back a child.

Since the schools were being graded on how many students graduated, the standards to graduate fell.

At some point, we started the integration process. Whereas before, we had classrooms for those needing special education, now we have integrated classrooms.

This is a boon for many students. There were bad things happening to students that were labeled “Special Ed.” before this happened. The stories of smart kids with speech or reading disabilities being treated as if they were stupid.

Integrated classrooms solved this. In a Special Ed. classroom there was nothing to stretch the boundaries of smart kids, so they all looked equally disabled.

They told my son not to take math

My oldest son has a learning disability. At an Individual Education Plan (IEP) meeting we were discussing his classes for the next year.

Every female “educator” at that table suggested that he not take math classes, because math was “hard.” Math was easy for my son. His disability was in communications. Still is.

He was smart enough to convince his teachers he was reading 3 grade levels below his actual grade level because he liked to read The Magic Tree House books. And they wouldn’t let him read those if he was reading at grade level.

His teachers never noticed him become less skilled until he was where he wanted to be.

The point being that these educators didn’t know their student and they didn’t know what he was capable of accomplishing, even though they were the experts in the room.

My son took resources from the rest of that classroom, until they stopped treating him as disabled and started treating him as capable.

Today’s education industry is built around servicing, their term, “special needs” students. The rest of the students can fend for themselves.

A Million for Special Ed., None for Gifted

I’ve been told it costs over $200,000 to send a student out of district. Our local district spends more than a million dollars a year on sending “special needs” students out of district to schools that can handle them.

That’s less than 10 students who consume 5% or more of the school budget. That does not include the overhead of all the administrative stuff that goes into servicing them.

In some ways, I prefer that they be sent to a real special education school. It improves the educational perspective of the students that are still here.

Now, the school system could group those kids by needs and abilities. They don’t. Instead, they spread them across all the classrooms. Every class has one or more special needs students in it.

The worst school I attended had 30 students per class. There were 6 classes at my grade level, labeled “A” through “F”. Classes moved as a group from classroom to classroom.

This is a poor way to get the best outcomes. Not all “smart” kids are smart in all things. But it is the way the school system had set it up. Which was good news for me.

That’s because I was in class A. And in class A we were taking the hardest math, science, English, French, and history in the school.

While our math class was preparing us for higher math, class F was also attending math classes, where they were learning to do money math. That’s right, they were learning to add, subtract, and have a clue as to how much they spent.

The saddest thing? Class F students were still failing at a higher rate than Class A.

But for one class a day, our teachers were able to teach. I believe they lived for that small joy.

No Child Left Behind was meant to provide reasonable services to those with learning needs outside the norm. Instead it has become a nightmare of teaching to the lowest in the classroom and not caring about the highest; they’ll do alright on their own.