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

Test Scores Cast Doubt on U.S. Education Reform

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 64 posts

Re: Test Scores Cast Doubt on U.S. Education Reform

#31

Post by wrinklytidbits »

mumblemumble wrote: post #26
ansible wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. This is all crazy what we've been doing to the educational system for the last 30 years, and if we can produce functioning adults from it, it will occur despite the emphasis on test scores, rather than because of it. We had one of the finest education systems in the world, and we're taking all the wrong lessons from other developed nations on how to "improve" it. And in the mean time, we're causing severe bur…

Specific anecdote: I've been acquiring a new language over the past year or so. I went from beginner to a decent (for my purposes) level of fluency in about a year. The other day we had a friend we hadn't seen in a while over for dinner. She's a school teacher in the very language I had been learning, so, naturally, the bulk of the dinner conversation between us proceeded in that language. And, naturally, she comment…

do you have any articles that summarized the research or that you thought supported your learning style the best. I'm curious and I would like to know more about what you did versus mainstream grading/gamification please.

Re: Test Scores Cast Doubt on U.S. Education Reform

#32

Post by hereme888 »

Coffeewine wrote: post #23
ansible wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. This is all crazy what we've been doing to the educational system for the last 30 years, and if we can produce functioning adults from it, it will occur despite the emphasis on test scores, rather than because of it. We had one of the finest education systems in the world, and we're taking all the wrong lessons from other developed nations on how to "improve" it. And in the mean time, we're causing severe bur…

So this may be a dumb question, but by which metrics did the united states have one of the finest education systems in the world?

The one by which all the best students in the world tend to want to get into our universities.

Our Ivy leagues are still generally the most resourceful, best equipped, and best staffed in the world.

It's changing though.

Re: Test Scores Cast Doubt on U.S. Education Reform

#34

Post by shantly »

hereme888 wrote: post #27
shantly wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making better use the huge amount of time we stick kids in school would probably require a whole lot more money (mostly for more and better teachers) and, to bring the costs anywhere near the realm of feasibility and achieve maximum benefit, "tracking" (grouping by ability) for at least much of the day, if not all of it. I don't think either of those are likely to happen.

I'm not sure how it would cost a lot more. I would think it would cost way less, unless you're referring to "tracking" them in everything they do. I believe older children and teenagers have the ability to choose material that comfortably challenges their own ability better than any software or person. Students aren't lazy by default. They're just lazy and unmotivated when forced to focus on what their brains conside…

Higher cost mostly because you need better teachers, and probably more of them (20+ kids per teacher makes it hard to give all of them what they need). Tracking would help contain the costs because it's easier to teach 20 kids roughly on the same "level" in a topic than 20 kids some of whom are operating about three grade levels behind, and others three grade levels ahead.

Re: Test Scores Cast Doubt on U.S. Education Reform

#35

Post by datashow »

The problem with (the title of) this article is that it suggests there is one single united "U.S. Education Reform", when in reality there are two approaches to U.S. education reform efforts.

One approach is the big government approach: nationalized education standard and accountability system, which includes NCLB / ESSA and common core. This approach is heavily pushed by the Bush and Obama administrations, and some left-wing organizations (mainly Bill Gates Foundation). It is the one addressed in the article.

On the other hand, there is another approach is the decentralized approach: school choices. It was suppressed by the federal government and the education establishment (the teachers union and their allies), but has been pushed in some states and cities.

Re: Test Scores Cast Doubt on U.S. Education Reform

#36

Post by nopinsight »

mumblemumble wrote: post #15

This hyper-focus on test scores worries me. The most important things for kids to be learning are not necessarily things that lend themselves well to multiple choice questions. And it's distorting the ways that kids are being taught in ways that, at least according to the small amount of research I've looked into on how people learn, may very well be actively harmful. The single biggest problem in the US educational…

As a long-time educator, I would say that this depends very much on the test and most tests do have fatal flaws that they reward rote memorization of facts, formula, or process. (Needless to say, I am also against that kind of tests.) I have looked at some PISA questions and they seem to be well-designed. In addition, some questions require written answers.

Many PISA questions contextualize academic knowledge in real-world scenarios such as questions about purchasing apartment or intravenous drip rate in medical infusions.

https://www.oecd.org/pisa/pisaproducts/pisa2012-2006-rel-ite...

A question in reading test is about the effect of the word 'free' in making purchasing decisions:

http://www.oecd.org/pisa/aboutpisa/PISA%20for%20Schools%20sa...

A question on bee colony collapse disorder in Science test:

https://www.oecd.org/pisa/pisaproducts/PISA2015-Released-FT-...

No test can substitute for one-on-one evaluation, but one-on-one evaluation is also subject to (different) biases. As far as standardized tests go, these are pretty good ones.

More importantly, I believe the results would likely correlate relatively well with how well the students apply knowledge in real-world settings.

Re: Test Scores Cast Doubt on U.S. Education Reform

#37

Post by rossdavidh »

shantly wrote: post #4

> Because the United States lacks a centralized system for teacher training or distributing quality instructional materials to schools, Professor Koretz said, states and districts did not always effectively carry out the Common Core or other reforms. I’ve only got a decent sample for one state, but here the state decides what its common core standards and teaching methods will be (rewriting the national standards, I…

My first thought on this was, "our reform efforts haven't worked well in most places they were tried, and you think the problem is we didn't have a centralized enough system?"

Centralization and standardization is generally only useful when you know what needs to be done, it just needs to be done everywhere. There is considerable evidence that we _don't_ know what needs to be done differently, so centralization is the last thing we need.

Re: Test Scores Cast Doubt on U.S. Education Reform

#38

Post by ryaniscool »

As a parent, I find there is a lot of armchair quarterbacking and opinions from people who don't have school age children or have never had children. The obsession over competing with other countries' test scores seems to assume that first, these other countries are reporting test scores accurately and second, these test scores represent an accurate measurement of the quality of education.

I would call into question both assumptions. The USA isn't perfect by any means but we have one of the most transparent bureacracies in the world. You can't say the same for a country like China. You have to wonder if the test scores are accurate and represent a comparable cross section of society.

Also, common core sucks. When my son was in 3rd grade, the teacher and parents felt like the math textbook was terrible. Mainly because it was all word problems. I have a master's degree in engineering and I found some of those word problems to be ambiguous. The result is that if you were struggling with reading in 3rd grade, you were also struggling with math. Because it was common core, it couldn't be changed at the class or school level. Common core's goal seems to be to remove teachers and parents from the equation of how best to educate your child.

Re: Test Scores Cast Doubt on U.S. Education Reform

#39

Post by reubenswartz »

mumblemumble wrote: post #26
ansible wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. This is all crazy what we've been doing to the educational system for the last 30 years, and if we can produce functioning adults from it, it will occur despite the emphasis on test scores, rather than because of it. We had one of the finest education systems in the world, and we're taking all the wrong lessons from other developed nations on how to "improve" it. And in the mean time, we're causing severe bur…

Specific anecdote: I've been acquiring a new language over the past year or so. I went from beginner to a decent (for my purposes) level of fluency in about a year. The other day we had a friend we hadn't seen in a while over for dinner. She's a school teacher in the very language I had been learning, so, naturally, the bulk of the dinner conversation between us proceeded in that language. And, naturally, she comment…

Well don't leave us hanging-- what's the secret sauce? ;-)

Re: Test Scores Cast Doubt on U.S. Education Reform

#40

Post by mumblemumble »

wrinklytidbits wrote: post #31
mumblemumble wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Specific anecdote: I've been acquiring a new language over the past year or so. I went from beginner to a decent (for my purposes) level of fluency in about a year. The other day we had a friend we hadn't seen in a while over for dinner. She's a school teacher in the very language I had been learning, so, naturally, the bulk of the dinner conversation between us proceeded in that language. And, naturally, she comment…

do you have any articles that summarized the research or that you thought supported your learning style the best. I'm curious and I would like to know more about what you did versus mainstream grading/gamification please.

I don't know of any good summaries offhand, but you can probably find something good if you google "comprehensible input".
Post reply on HN