Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

2017 California school test scores: Why are they flatlining?

mercurynews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 236 posts

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

#101

Post by maskedSlacker »

dogruck wrote: post #93
tptacek wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're referring in this case to the wealth of parents, not of students. Students have very little control over which parents they're assigned.

Most students have the combined genetic material of their parents. Genetics are a key influence on aptitude. To be transparent, I personally benefited from public schools, and my parents were not wealthy (but they were graduates of public colleges). I'm not arguing that only wealthy people should have access to quality education. I'm just saying that it's a weak argument to point out that success in school is linked…

>I'm just saying that it's a weak argument to point out that success in school is linked with wealth.

Would you like to say that the Earth is flat, disease is caused by an imbalance of humors, and Adam and Eve tamed dinosaurs for use in ancient rodeos while you're at it?

Because those would have more chance of being correct than what you're saying. Socioeconomic security correlates more strongly to educational outcomes than ANY other variable, including IQ.

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

#102

Post by toast0 »

I would really like to see results from testing that indicated progression. Since they test students in third through eighth grades and 11th grade, I think it would be more interesting to know of the students who scored in some range in 3rd grade last year, how did they do in 4th grade this year, and so on. You can sort of infer by looking at reports by grade level over time, but a lot of students don't stay at the same school, so it's hard to tell.

For students who test below proficient in one year, it's not necessarily reasonable to expect one year of schooling to enable them to test proficient in the next, even if the instruction is amazing. If the majority of the students are coming in unprepared, the overall proficiency % is going to be low, and it doesn't reflect on the quality if the school.

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

#103

Post by npunt »

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…

The lack of incentive to do well is precisely the point of these tests, and they are designed with this context in mind. The testing regimen relies on the same level of apathy in both students and teachers being present year after year, which provides a nice baseline for statistical analysis/comparison. Incentives mess everything up. See also: NAEP [1]

Source: worked in ed covering this subject, studied assessment in ed school with one of the creators of the standards.

[1] https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/

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

#104

Post by npunt »

labster wrote: post #61
ransom1538 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

Easy solution: make the tests count for a significant chunk of the students' grades. Or at certain years, require a passing grade on the standardized tests to be promoted to the next grade.

As is typical, easy solutions are often bad solutions. Teaching to the test would be the first-order effect, and that is a terrible use of class time.

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

#105

Post by dogruck »

maskedSlacker wrote: post #101
dogruck wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most students have the combined genetic material of their parents. Genetics are a key influence on aptitude. To be transparent, I personally benefited from public schools, and my parents were not wealthy (but they were graduates of public colleges). I'm not arguing that only wealthy people should have access to quality education. I'm just saying that it's a weak argument to point out that success in school is linked…

>I'm just saying that it's a weak argument to point out that success in school is linked with wealth. Would you like to say that the Earth is flat, disease is caused by an imbalance of humors, and Adam and Eve tamed dinosaurs for use in ancient rodeos while you're at it? Because those would have more chance of being correct than what you're saying. Socioeconomic security correlates more strongly to educational outcom…

Ah, the straw man technique. Well played.

In a perfect system, what correlation would you expect between wealth and success in school?

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

#106

Post by ashark »

labster wrote: post #61
ransom1538 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

Easy solution: make the tests count for a significant chunk of the students' grades. Or at certain years, require a passing grade on the standardized tests to be promoted to the next grade.

Holding kids back a grade isn't really a thing they do anymore.

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

#107

Post by fern12 »

chroem- wrote: post #32
carlisle_ wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the kind of comment that truly derails education. It's reactionary and doesn't have a real objective.

The wealthiest members of our society are on one hand sending their children to expensive private schools, specifically to avoid exposing them to computers in the classroom, while on the other hand lobbying for increased usage of computing in public education to support their businesses. This is a completely valid concern, and you are dismissing it without reason.

Agreed. I don't have kids, but speaking for myself, the internet has shot my attention span to the single digit range. And I grew up in the 80s.

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

#108

Post by EdSharkey »

peterwwillis wrote: post #58

One of the reasons - probably one of the biggest reasons - for continuously lower test scores in America is the quality of the care these children receive. Over 40% of children in the US are born to unwed mothers, compared to 5% at the beginning of last century. About 70% of unwed childbirth is by black mothers, versus just 24% in 1965. The last two peaks of teenage pregnancy were 1991 and 2007 - so the children of t…

I see the same things you are describing in my city.

Are there other countries with high numbers of kids born to unwed, poor mothers that have been successful in educating those kids and getting them out of poverty though? What works?

It seems like we have a cultural challenge with poor families to surmount before we can get a meaningful return on investment by increasing social programs for them.

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

#109

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

maskedSlacker wrote: post #99
mcny wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This doesn't seem like that bad of an idea. One of the bigger problems with tests is that they tend to become a terrible metric once people start preparing for them specifically (and test-prep can suck the oxegyn out of real education). If the students and teachers don't care about the test, it is much easier (but still difficult) to make a test that gives useful feedback to the school system. Of course, you want s…

>I don't like how you need so many licenses to be a teacher. Most college lecturers do not have a background in education and definitely don't have a license and we do just fine. The licenses just feel like a way to limit supply. Teaching adults who pay for the privilege of being in your class is VERY VERY different from teaching children who are forced to be in your class. The latter requires a very special skill se…

> The latter requires a very special skill set

I'm going to argue against that idea.

1. The bar to become a teacher is quite low.

2. Most of the teachers I've met certainly didn't not have the necessary skills, but they, and the students endured.

Being an outstanding teacher required a very special skill set.

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

#110

Post by dragonwriter »

home_boi wrote: post #84
labster wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Most of the hispanics whose families arrived in California before the English speakers arrived have long since become native English speakers. As with most second-generation or later immigrants. Though I have heard tales of Californians being native speakers of Lisp, this is probably just a rumor.

Even if they are immigrants, knowing Spanish makes them half-way native English speakers because of the similarities between English and Spanish.

English is a Germanic language, with vocab borrowed from lots of other sources but mostly French, Spanish is a Romance language (with, especially in it's Latin American form) a bunch of vocabulary borrowed from Nahuatl and Quechua. They are extremely dissimilar grammatically, and though they have some overlap and similarities in vocabulary, it's nowhere close to making fluency with either making you even minimally functional (much less halfway native) in the other.
Post reply on HN