Herman van de WerfhorstThis is a great paper on learning growth curves, with astonishing results. Children learn at a very similar rate; what differs is the starting position. This finding supports my view that students can do a lot more than we (in the Netherlands at least) expect from a large group. Timing, and time, is everything, and forcing an early decision on kids like early-tracking systems do harms a serious fraction of students.
< When I say that (almost) everybody in NL should be able to finish MBO3 or MBO4, the upper secondary full vocational programme that provides good access to the labour market unlike MBO2 or less, people glare at me. But I’d think similar oppositions must have been found in the US when the high school movement made high school accessible for all, in the 1930s.
Although this paper is about primary schools, and adolescence creates all kinds of new challenges in secondary education, but neither those are benefitting from separation of students as early as the Netherlands does. <