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Selection bias is the most powerful force in education

fredrikdeboer.com

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Re: Selection bias is the most powerful force in education

#11

Post by wmil »

RhysU wrote: post #2

A simple thought experiment. Consider bussing kids from 'good' places to bad and from 'bad' to good. See after how long their outcomes become equivalent. Do so at different grade levels to measure the convergence time versus age of displacement. And now for the actual experiment: how do you impactfully present such results? I assume no outcome. Just the existence of an outcome. I posit that priceless data would be wo…

Aren't you basically describing the desegregation bussing that the US has had since the 50s?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desegregation_busing

Re: Selection bias is the most powerful force in education

#12

Post by RhysU »

Analemma_ wrote: post #3
RhysU wrote: post #2

A simple thought experiment. Consider bussing kids from 'good' places to bad and from 'bad' to good. See after how long their outcomes become equivalent. Do so at different grade levels to measure the convergence time versus age of displacement. And now for the actual experiment: how do you impactfully present such results? I assume no outcome. Just the existence of an outcome. I posit that priceless data would be wo…

How many parents, who probably paid a lot of money and work two full-time jobs to live in the "good" place so their kids could go to the good school, are going to be OK with this experiment? Do you plan to force them, if there aren't enough volunteers to get statistically significant results?

The thought experiment isn't doing the bussing (effectively impossible as others have noted). The thought experiment is how would you present the resulting data.

Re: Selection bias is the most powerful force in education

#13

Post by RhysU »

wmil wrote: post #11
RhysU wrote: post #2

A simple thought experiment. Consider bussing kids from 'good' places to bad and from 'bad' to good. See after how long their outcomes become equivalent. Do so at different grade levels to measure the convergence time versus age of displacement. And now for the actual experiment: how do you impactfully present such results? I assume no outcome. Just the existence of an outcome. I posit that priceless data would be wo…

Aren't you basically describing the desegregation bussing that the US has had since the 50s? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desegregation_busing

Somewhat. I am hypthesizing more than ethnicity being used.

Re: Selection bias is the most powerful force in education

#14

Post by ChemicalWarfare »

RhysU wrote: post #2

A simple thought experiment. Consider bussing kids from 'good' places to bad and from 'bad' to good. See after how long their outcomes become equivalent. Do so at different grade levels to measure the convergence time versus age of displacement. And now for the actual experiment: how do you impactfully present such results? I assume no outcome. Just the existence of an outcome. I posit that priceless data would be wo…

>> Consider bussing kids from 'good' places to bad and from 'bad' to good.

there's different types of 'good' and 'bad'. for example, the whole IQ thing came into the light in the UK when poor Jewish kids from the ghetto (bad) were clearly outperforming their non-Jewish counterparts from more affluent (good) neighborhoods.

Re: Selection bias is the most powerful force in education

#16

Post by devinhelton »

gmarx wrote: post #10
frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That depends on what you classify as failure. It failed in the sense that the white and wealthy mostly fled to the suburbs and reversed any progress integration had made. It succeeded in the sense that in the places and times where schools were well integrated the racial achievement gap closed.

The racial achievement gap closed? That would be a huge story and I would be surprised if I missed it...unless you mean the gap closed within the school (i.e. not relative to society at large) because the remaining whites achievements were lower than the average before they fled, i.e. selection bias :)

To save people from litigating busing, there was a thread on this earlier this year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13902960 (I cited evidence saying that busing did not close the gap).

Re: Selection bias is the most powerful force in education

#17

Post by jblumstein »

leongrado wrote: post #15

I'm from the midwest and most people who weren't aiming for Ivy Leagues just took the ACT.

Yah. It's weird that de Boer argues selection bias is in play in SAT participation between MS (3%) and CT (88%) when 100% of MS high schoolers take the ACT. That seems to be what's happening here: the kids in MS taking the SAT in addition to the ACT are the ones aiming for elite schools.
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