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2017 California school test scores: Why are they flatlining?

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Re: 2017 California school test scores: Why are they flatlining?

#41

Post by swivelmaster »

ransom1538 wrote: post #36
swivelmaster wrote: post #7

"California isn’t alone in its stagnating scores and in fact compares favorably with the 12 other states, plus the U.S. Virgin Islands, that administered the same tests last spring from the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium. Scores decreased in every state, and California’s decline was about the smallest, retired educational testing specialist Douglas McRae said." This is the most important sentence in the artic…

"This is the most important sentence in the article. It points to a problem in the test itself - California's students didn't just get magically stupider." Yes. Having gone through public education in California the tests were treated as a total joke. They had no weight to your grades and there was zero incentive to do well. Often you wouldn't even get the results. In elementary school it was common for a teacher to…

When was this? I graduated high school in 2002 and felt like the tests were taken fairly seriously.

I went to school in Marin, though, so I don't know how that compares to anywhere else.

Re: 2017 California school test scores: Why are they flatlining?

#43

Post by zanny »

firefoxd wrote: post #21

The kids go to school to get homework from professionals trained in the art of teaching then the unqualified parent is the one that has to help the child do these homeworks. Now what is recommended is to sign up for the after school program where for a fee someone can help them with their homework. How about they teach and do the work during school hours?

A large portion of students do not get parental help with homework. Their parents aren't around, or don't actively participate in their lives. And that certainly means they won't pay for after school tutoring. Those are the kids most in need of systemic reform, not those who have parents that value education, where their only problem is just the schools themselves sucking. They will almost always succeed as long as their parents support them (and given enough income more likely than not move them into charter school or some other option).

Re: 2017 California school test scores: Why are they flatlining?

#44

Post by dragonwriter »

swivelmaster wrote: post #31
dragonwriter wrote: post #26

HN title is editorialized inappropriately from source (and focus shifted to absolute results rather than trends and discussion of the reasons behind the trends, which include questions about the validity of the tests.) The source title is “2017 California school test scores: Why are they flatlining?”

Agree that the title should be edited. Still, the question of "why are the schools in and around Silicon Valley doing so poorly?" is worth discussing. We [residents of supposedly the most innovative region on the planet] should be able to solve these problems, and yet we either are unable to or haven't tried very hard.

> Still, the question of "why are the schools in and around Silicon Valley doing so poorly?" is worth discussing.

It probably is but California is, by population or number of schools, mostly “in and around Los Angeles”, not “in and around Silicon Valley.”

Re: 2017 California school test scores: Why are they flatlining?

#45

Post by paxy »

lloyddobbler wrote: post #34
paxy wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can assure you there are no computers in classrooms where these failing students are from. You want to improve scores? Pay for school lunches. Pay for stationery and other basic supplies. Pay teachers more. It is ridiculous that costs of living and property values are skyrocketing across the state, but rather than more taxes going towards education there are budget cuts year after year.

And yet... https://calmatters.org/articles/how-much-has-californias-edu... (Seems that per student spending is up almost 50% over the past 5 years.) ETA - Not to mention that (with the exception of 1 year in the past 50 years), K-12 education receives a larger portion of the CA general fund than it ever has (currently 42% of the state budget goes to K-12 education - and rising). As state tax revenues go up (as anothe…

From the same article –

> According to Education Week’s annual state rankings on K-12 education spending, California was last in per-pupil when adjusted for regional cost differences in 2011. It moved up to 41st for 2013.

Re: 2017 California school test scores: Why are they flatlining?

#46

Post by mulmen »

swivelmaster wrote: post #38
lr4444lr wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what's your recommended alternative metric? I don't doubt there is a good case to improve certain standardized tests, but that doesn't mean there isn't a valuable correlation even in a flawed one, nor that it's better to keep moving the goal posts into more subjective territory to explain away bad outcomes.

They're mentioned in the article. Graduation rates, college acceptance, stuff like that. Some of the countries with the best education systems in the world don't have these kinds of standardized tests. Also, nobody's suggesting moving the goal posts to explain away bad outcomes. If every school suddenly loses three points on average from one year to another on what is supposed to be the same test, the only common var…

Graduation rate strikes me as a dangerous metric because it could easily be maximized by lowering the bar. We want to graduate as many students as possible but we should not compromise quality to do so. It seems to me we need metrics on both.

I do admit to not knowing what I am talking about so maybe there is no danger in using the graduation rate metric.

Re: 2017 California school test scores: Why are they flatlining?

#47

Post by TheAdamAndChe »

bitxbitxbitcoin wrote: post #12
navigator01 wrote: post #10

It has everything to do with home life and environment. No classroom within the expected margins of quality can overcome a negative home life that does not value education and encourage student achievement. Wealth and cultural/familial values are the major culprits.

Lack of wealth and lack of cultural/familial values more so than their overwhelming presence - though some might argue against the cultural part. When will American culture praise and reward academic acheivement in the way that some other cultures do?

I would argue that cultural influences do play a major role. Asian Americans on average make nearly $20k/yr more than whites. Almost 20% of billionaires are Jewish[1]. Those kinds of discrepancies don't come from nowhere, and absolutely show that upbringing and culture have a massive effect on future growth and goal attainment.

Now look at popular US culture nowadays. People are told they can be whatever they want to be, and losers are given participation trophies. Comfort and inclusion is seen as more important than competition and self-control. Our culture is changing massively, and it's showing in our test scores.

[1] https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/36760/were-48-o...

Re: 2017 California school test scores: Why are they flatlining?

#48

Post by lloyddobbler »

paxy wrote: post #45
lloyddobbler wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet... https://calmatters.org/articles/how-much-has-californias-edu... (Seems that per student spending is up almost 50% over the past 5 years.) ETA - Not to mention that (with the exception of 1 year in the past 50 years), K-12 education receives a larger portion of the CA general fund than it ever has (currently 42% of the state budget goes to K-12 education - and rising). As state tax revenues go up (as anothe…

From the same article – > According to Education Week’s annual state rankings on K-12 education spending, California was last in per-pupil when adjusted for regional cost differences in 2011. It moved up to 41st for 2013.

Sure. That was 2011, at the bottom of the recession - at which point CA's school funding was at the bottom of a dip. As the article also showed (& as you pointed out), its ranking improved dramatically in 2013. Since then, the per pupil spending has risen ~25%.

Regardless,

  rather than more taxes going towards education there are budget cuts year after year.
...I just thought it important to point out that this statement is demonstrably false. Let's operate in the world of facts, not in the world of what "feels right." Only by doing that can we actually come to a solution that might work.

Re: 2017 California school test scores: Why are they flatlining?

#49

Post by lr4444lr »

swivelmaster wrote: post #38
lr4444lr wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what's your recommended alternative metric? I don't doubt there is a good case to improve certain standardized tests, but that doesn't mean there isn't a valuable correlation even in a flawed one, nor that it's better to keep moving the goal posts into more subjective territory to explain away bad outcomes.

They're mentioned in the article. Graduation rates, college acceptance, stuff like that. Some of the countries with the best education systems in the world don't have these kinds of standardized tests. Also, nobody's suggesting moving the goal posts to explain away bad outcomes. If every school suddenly loses three points on average from one year to another on what is supposed to be the same test, the only common var…

Graduation rates and college acceptance were tinkered with in New York to dismal results. Educational administrators were perversely incentivized, and it has showed up in atrociously high failure of local students to test out of remedial courses in public colleges.

Just because the test mean drops does not mean the test is flawed. The educational inputs could simply have worsened, which is exactly what a reliable indicator should show.

Re: 2017 California school test scores: Why are they flatlining?

#50

Post by swivelmaster »

mulmen wrote: post #46
swivelmaster wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're mentioned in the article. Graduation rates, college acceptance, stuff like that. Some of the countries with the best education systems in the world don't have these kinds of standardized tests. Also, nobody's suggesting moving the goal posts to explain away bad outcomes. If every school suddenly loses three points on average from one year to another on what is supposed to be the same test, the only common var…

Graduation rate strikes me as a dangerous metric because it could easily be maximized by lowering the bar. We want to graduate as many students as possible but we should not compromise quality to do so. It seems to me we need metrics on both. I do admit to not knowing what I am talking about so maybe there is no danger in using the graduation rate metric.

Well the best metric is going to be something like annual pre-tax income a decade after graduation but that will never happen so we'll just need to figure out some kind of composite metric that avoids perverse incentives.

edit: This is not an entirely serious suggestion. See later comment below.

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