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Study says standardized testing is overwhelming nation’s public schools

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Study says standardized testing is overwhelming nation’s public schools

#11

Post by douche »

logicchains wrote: post #10
japhyr wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing "rich kid schools" do is filter out many students who are difficult to teach. Teaching and running a school is a lot easier if your goal does not involve teaching everyone who walks through your doors.

If that's the case, it seems like it would be a pretty easy problem to fix: allow schools to suspend/expel students who are repeatedly disruptive or violent in class. From a utilitarian perspective this would probably be a net win, in that whatever the disruptive students lost from being expelled would be more than made up for by what the students who actually wanted to learn gained from not having the disruptive stu…

It's not just the disruptive students - you've got the special-ed students, and all the students that are what my mother (an elementary special-ed teacher) refers to as "dull-normals" - those who don't really have learning disabilities that would get them labeled, but are just not very smart (80-100 IQ). Then there are the ESL students, and all the other categories I can't think of at 3AM...

Public schools have to service all of these students, until they graduate, drop out, or age out.

Re: Study says standardized testing is overwhelming nation’s public schools

#12

Post by tsotha »

japhyr wrote: post #5
forrestthewoods wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This made me pause and think for a moment. What do rich kid schools do? I have no idea. I went to a dumb kid rural high school. But for some reason through the endless education discussion I've never heard brought up what rich kid schools do differently. Even if the answer is "but we can't do that because we're poor". Man. Now you've got me all curious...

One thing "rich kid schools" do is filter out many students who are difficult to teach. Teaching and running a school is a lot easier if your goal does not involve teaching everyone who walks through your doors.

If by "difficult to teach" you mean kids who cause problems for the other kids, then yeah. I went to a Catholic high school, and they did not tolerate disruptions. That allowed them to have classes with almost 50 kids and still have better than 95% of the graduating class going on to a four year college.

Re: Study says standardized testing is overwhelming nation’s public schools

#13

Post by lm______ »

I worked for a year as a tutor in an elementary school. Even the first graders are doing six or seven standardized tests every year, plus random additional tests (including those given by me and my fellow reading tutors, testing every student in the school three times yearly to see if they qualified to be tutored).

The kids would even get their scores back too, so would be distraught when they didn't match up to other classmates who would brag about doing better. I tutored kids who were behind a bit in reading, so of course my students were consistently stressed out before the tests and afterwards, they would tell me how this bullshit test meant that they're "stupid". I had many kids use that exact word.

The teachers universally hated it too, since they constantly had administrators breathing down their necks and it severely restricted their freedom to teach creative, engaging material.

Re: Study says standardized testing is overwhelming nation’s public schools

#14

Post by littletimmy »

forrestthewoods wrote: post #4
littletimmy wrote: post #3

The rich send their kids to private schools. Therefore, this problem does not apply to the rich. Therefore, this problem will not be solved.

This made me pause and think for a moment. What do rich kid schools do? I have no idea. I went to a dumb kid rural high school. But for some reason through the endless education discussion I've never heard brought up what rich kid schools do differently. Even if the answer is "but we can't do that because we're poor". Man. Now you've got me all curious...

Less standardized testing. More socratic learning method in small-sized classes, taught by highly paid teachers. That results in better prepared less stressed students who get admissions to better universities. They then get better jobs, beget richer kids, who then get admissions into private schools, and so on it goes.

Re: Study says standardized testing is overwhelming nation’s public schools

#15

Post by littletimmy »

icelancer wrote: post #7
japhyr wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing "rich kid schools" do is filter out many students who are difficult to teach. Teaching and running a school is a lot easier if your goal does not involve teaching everyone who walks through your doors.

This is by far the biggest difference between the two.

Well, no. There's also the small matter that private school teachers tend to be amazingly more qualified. I've heard of PhDs teaching at some of the very top private schools. By contrast, state school teachers are poorly trained and poorly paid.

Re: Study says standardized testing is overwhelming nation’s public schools

#16

Post by logicchains »

douche wrote: post #11
logicchains wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's the case, it seems like it would be a pretty easy problem to fix: allow schools to suspend/expel students who are repeatedly disruptive or violent in class. From a utilitarian perspective this would probably be a net win, in that whatever the disruptive students lost from being expelled would be more than made up for by what the students who actually wanted to learn gained from not having the disruptive stu…

It's not just the disruptive students - you've got the special-ed students, and all the students that are what my mother (an elementary special-ed teacher) refers to as "dull-normals" - those who don't really have learning disabilities that would get them labeled, but are just not very smart (80-100 IQ). Then there are the ESL students, and all the other categories I can't think of at 3AM... Public schools have to se…

Why don't private schools have to deal with these "dull-normals" too? Having rich parents doesn't disqualify one from having below-average IQ.

Re: Study says standardized testing is overwhelming nation’s public schools

#17

Post by gareim »

logicchains wrote: post #10
japhyr wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing "rich kid schools" do is filter out many students who are difficult to teach. Teaching and running a school is a lot easier if your goal does not involve teaching everyone who walks through your doors.

If that's the case, it seems like it would be a pretty easy problem to fix: allow schools to suspend/expel students who are repeatedly disruptive or violent in class. From a utilitarian perspective this would probably be a net win, in that whatever the disruptive students lost from being expelled would be more than made up for by what the students who actually wanted to learn gained from not having the disruptive stu…

As a nation, we've decided that every child should be educated. I think that's a good goal to have, although there may be a more efficient way to do it. We kind of have a system in place with magnet schools and selective enrollment, but that's for high school.

>allow schools to suspend/expel students who are repeatedly disruptive or violent in class

I think education and patience are helpful in teaching kids to vent their frustrations in more productive ways, so depriving them of those things seems likely to make it a vicious cycle.

Re: Study says standardized testing is overwhelming nation’s public schools

#18

Post by timpattinson »

logicchains wrote: post #16
douche wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just the disruptive students - you've got the special-ed students, and all the students that are what my mother (an elementary special-ed teacher) refers to as "dull-normals" - those who don't really have learning disabilities that would get them labeled, but are just not very smart (80-100 IQ). Then there are the ESL students, and all the other categories I can't think of at 3AM... Public schools have to se…

Why don't private schools have to deal with these "dull-normals" too? Having rich parents doesn't disqualify one from having below-average IQ.

Private schools can choose who they want to admit

Re: Study says standardized testing is overwhelming nation’s public schools

#19

Post by logicchains »

gareim wrote: post #17
logicchains wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's the case, it seems like it would be a pretty easy problem to fix: allow schools to suspend/expel students who are repeatedly disruptive or violent in class. From a utilitarian perspective this would probably be a net win, in that whatever the disruptive students lost from being expelled would be more than made up for by what the students who actually wanted to learn gained from not having the disruptive stu…

As a nation, we've decided that every child should be educated. I think that's a good goal to have, although there may be a more efficient way to do it. We kind of have a system in place with magnet schools and selective enrollment, but that's for high school. >allow schools to suspend/expel students who are repeatedly disruptive or violent in class I think education and patience are helpful in teaching kids to vent…

>As a nation, we've decided that every child should be educated.

The key point is that the current approach is failing at this. It's possible that by giving up on the really hard cases and focusing more on the average cases, it would be possible to educate more children than the current approach achieves. Better to reach for a good outcome and succeed than to reach for a perfect outcome and fail, so to speak.

>I think education and patience are helpful in teaching kids to vent their frustrations in more productive ways, so depriving them of those things seems likely to make it a vicious cycle.

The problem is that spending time in school doesn't necessarily equal education, especially for the most difficult students. As a hypothetical, if it could be known that a particular student is 99% likely not to gain anything from being forced to spend the next 3 years in a classroom, and it's also known that this student harasses other students, reducing their ability to benefit from learning, would the benefit of keeping this student in class on the 1% chance they'd gain something outweigh the downsides?

Re: Study says standardized testing is overwhelming nation’s public schools

#20

Post by jfoutz »

littletimmy wrote: post #15
icelancer wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is by far the biggest difference between the two.

Well, no. There's also the small matter that private school teachers tend to be amazingly more qualified. I've heard of PhDs teaching at some of the very top private schools. By contrast, state school teachers are poorly trained and poorly paid.

Maybe in later grades it's helpful, I don't think it requires a phd to teach 8 year olds multiplication tables. Private school, as far as i can tell, have 18 kids with an aide per classroom. Public school will have 30-40 kids per class.

I dunno. if it was easy it wouldn't be a problem. There are lots of dials to turn. As you say, qualification levels of teachers is is one, frequency of testing is another. I think the least effort improvement is just smaller classes.

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