How standard normal curve is used?

Question

How standard normal curve is used?

Answer 1

If you mean the standard bell curve, it is naturally and politically driven.  It is natural that the majority of a population (also referred to as the norm) fall within a large cluster of performance of about 85% the midpoint being the mean performance measurement.  While this is "natural," the whole purpose of education is to move all the individuals in the population to higher measurements of skill and performance.  Effective teaching distorts the bell curve to the right.  Other factors, such as severe disabilities or traumatic events may also distort the curve to the left.  In a educational system that is truly performance-based or truly competency-based, students would move to the next level skill, class, or grade as soon as they master the previous level.  In such a system, teachers would share credit with students for their progress, early graduates would proliferate and result in lost ADA funding, union contracts would loose their current collective approach for negotiation, and politicians would have little to promise voters in the way of improving education -- because it would already be improved.  Unfortunately, the current system is not competency-based (albeit that term was adulterated and redefined by presidential administrations and the Congresses in the US since the 1980's).  Instead, we  have an immobilized system that benefits from maintaining the status quo, preserving age promotion, and rewarding corruption in the public education system -- in the name and hope of future improvement.  We must, therefore, fail a certain percentage of students, because that is natural.  We must also, bore an equal percentage of students by providing them material that they already know to keep them with their age-group (instead of performance group).

Meanwhile, the predictable funding formulas will keep being shifted to the right, insisting that every student, being forced into age-grouped classes and age-group national tests, be able to perform ABOVE an increasing norm or average just to MAINTAIN funding.  What type of inconsistent logic lead to such a duplicitous system?

We should stop blaming teachers that have multiple degrees, multiple credentials, years of graduate training and decades of experience for our educational problems by changing the requirements of what a "highly qualified" teacher is.  We should allow students to advance up grades and out of school as fast as they can master the required skills.  We should allow unrestricted parental choice of which schools to place their kids into.  Instead of comparing one student's performance versus another student;s performance, we should compare one student's performance verses that student's prior performance and compare that to the state skill standards.