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Mississippi Can't Possibly Have Good Schools

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Re: Mississippi Can't Possibly Have Good Schools

#131

Post by yogurt-male »

throwanem wrote: post #113
yogurt-male wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, let me be more clear. The contempt I display is not "ignorant contempt". It's rooted in years of experience. How could my comments possibly be interpreted as me thinking I'm being magnanimous? I very clearly expressed my sympathy with the liberal attitude toward the people in these states. You're making quite a lot of assumptions about my experience, none of which is really correct. I wasn't openly hostile to t…

'My segment of society.' "Spoken like a rich white liberal." If we had the language to discuss class in this country, you would not find that such a mystifying statement, nor one that would cause you the shame that it does. You have no incentive to understand it, alas, because you are a member of the class which benefits from the lack. Thank goodness that's not my problem. Prior experience over many iterations of thi…

Unfortunately for you, that is not my MO (and if you re-read the conversation you'll see it's you who has been defensive, feeling shame, and imagining/projecting things onto me the entire time). I've (mostly) addressed what you've written, not who I assume you are or what your attitudes are.

Also, I feel no shame for being called a "rich white liberal," which really shows how little you understand my psychology (or me, period).

All this vitriol even after I singled out rich southerners in my OP. Something isn't adding up here, but unlike you, I'm not going to assume what it is. Have a good one.

Re: Mississippi Can't Possibly Have Good Schools

#132

Post by kogus »

kardianos wrote: post #36
kogus wrote: post #3

This was very interesting to read, and news to me. It's gratifying to see Mississippi prove that it's possible to break out of a pattern of failure. I would love to see a discussion around the specific policies and practices that MS has put in place to actually achieve these results. The article doesn't really discuss that.

They teach using proven methods, like phonics. They actually teach math. They test and use that as real information. They focus on results not on ideology. They do NOT encurage using Paulo Freire's "methods".

The article suggests that someone from Maine would be reluctant to ask Mississippi for advice, given the stereotypes and biases that all Americans have absorbed over the years.

If the Maine Secretary of Education overcame his or her reluctance and did in fact ask Mississippi for advice, imagine their disappointment if the response was "we actually teach math".

Do you have a source for your response? I'm genuinely curious about what they changed to achieve this level of success. I'd be interested first for the actual educational methods, and secondarily I'd be interested in relating it to the idea of organizational changes that can produce relatively rapid reversals of a long term trend.

Re: Mississippi Can't Possibly Have Good Schools

#133

Post by throwanem »

yogurt-male wrote: post #131
throwanem wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'My segment of society.' "Spoken like a rich white liberal." If we had the language to discuss class in this country, you would not find that such a mystifying statement, nor one that would cause you the shame that it does. You have no incentive to understand it, alas, because you are a member of the class which benefits from the lack. Thank goodness that's not my problem. Prior experience over many iterations of thi…

Unfortunately for you, that is not my MO (and if you re-read the conversation you'll see it's you who has been defensive, feeling shame, and imagining/projecting things onto me the entire time). I've (mostly) addressed what you've written, not who I assume you are or what your attitudes are. Also, I feel no shame for being called a "rich white liberal," which really shows how little you understand my psychology (or m…

I'm here to demonstrate your prejudices, but not especially to you. So long.

Re: Mississippi Can't Possibly Have Good Schools

#134

Post by pc86 »

motorest wrote: post #123
pc86 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So explain to me what "eliminating bad data points" in this context means. Should MS schools not hold back failing 3rd graders?

> So explain to me what "eliminating bad data points" in this context means. Should MS schools not hold back failing 3rd graders The data point is the number of 3rd graders failing. If you insist in filtering out those 3rd graders, limiting your analysis to the subset of kids who didn't failed does not represent a success story. It represents an attempt to arbitrarily remove inconvenient data points to portray a fals…

I disagree, I think it points to a core educational policy difference between states. Some states will not fail a 3rd grader, and Mississippi will. This has an obvious impact on 4th grade scores, yes, but I'm willing to bet if you followed those "failed" 3rd graders in MS and compared to other states where they were pushed ahead, holding under-achieving students back is a net positive.

Re: Mississippi Can't Possibly Have Good Schools

#135

Post by lolinder »

margalabargala wrote: post #105
lolinder wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you clarify what exactly you mean by the idea that adjusting for gender, age, race, and ethnicity makes this less impressive? Generally speaking in order to evaluate the success of a school system you really do want to adjust for the demographics that that school has to deal with, so you don't attribute the effects of, say, private tutors to the public school system. It would be really unfair to judge teachers in…

"Well, Mississippi has lower scores, but when you account for the fact that the people having those scores are black people the Mississippi comes out ahead!" You don't see the issue?

Not if it's applied evenly across the country, no.

When you're measuring schools you're trying to measure the impact of the actual school, not all the other factors, and to do that you have to separate out socioeconomics. Higher income parents are more involved in their children's education and can make up for a bad school in ways that lower income parents can't. It's pointless to compare schools to each other unless you adjust for demographics.

Re: Mississippi Can't Possibly Have Good Schools

#136

Post by WaitWaitWha »

keenmaster wrote: post #48
kogus wrote: post #3

This was very interesting to read, and news to me. It's gratifying to see Mississippi prove that it's possible to break out of a pattern of failure. I would love to see a discussion around the specific policies and practices that MS has put in place to actually achieve these results. The article doesn't really discuss that.

Mississippi's average ACT scores are tied for last (edit: tied for second to last). I’m sure some of their educational outcomes are improving, but the demographic-adjusted stats from elementary school students are misleading. Holding kids back for poor performance can really pump their numbers inadvertently. Even if that’s not a very prevalent practice, performance in high school is more important and far more predic…

https://www.act.org/content/act/en/products-and-services/the...

Indeed they are towards the bottom, but not "tied for last".

Talking about statistics, take a look at the "Estimated % of Grads Tested" column. the top 20 do not break 20%, while the bottom is near 100% with the exception of Hawa'ii.

Re: Mississippi Can't Possibly Have Good Schools

#137

Post by lolinder »

dentemple wrote: post #103
lolinder wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to clarify to those reading the comments first, the political point he's making is not to ignore Mississippi just because it's Mississippi. He has warnings for both Democrats and Republicans at the end and is pretty clearly not a fan of the way either party is approaching education at the national level right now. He is drawing attention to the fact that some red states with historically bad schools have started…

> "He has warnings for both Democrats and Republicans" You left out the fact these warnings essentially boil down to: "Democrats need to stop being bad, and Republicans need to continue being good." The political bias is clear as day in the article.

That's not what he says. He dedicates most of the section that's directed at Republicans critiquing the administration's wholesale dismantling of the Department of Education and warning that they could run on education in the future if they, you know, didn't do that.

I think people just have an idea of what his political slant must be because he's defending the indefensible state of Mississippi.

Re: Mississippi Can't Possibly Have Good Schools

#138

Post by MattSteelblade »

dataengineer56 wrote: post #10
kogus wrote: post #3

This was very interesting to read, and news to me. It's gratifying to see Mississippi prove that it's possible to break out of a pattern of failure. I would love to see a discussion around the specific policies and practices that MS has put in place to actually achieve these results. The article doesn't really discuss that.

They hold students back if they don't pass a basic reading literacy test in third grade.

The author posted a link to an article[1] showing that Mississippi's retention policies were not responsible for the increase in scores.

> But I've gotten some plausible pushback from researchers who say that Mississippi has always held back lots of kids. In practice, the 2013 law didn't change anything.

> ...

> In 2017, the average age of a fourth grade class is a minuscule 0.01 higher than the 1998-2013 average. That's no difference at all. This proxy is strong evidence that Mississippi's retention policies never changed in practice, which means it's entirely kosher to just compare their scores normally before and after reform.

[1] https://jabberwocking.com/mississippi-revisited-the-mississi...

Re: Mississippi Can't Possibly Have Good Schools

#139

Post by sollewitt »

There is a similar effect in parts of SFUSD where some of the schools with more poor students are bucking trends: https://sfparents.org/sfkidscantwait/

(SFUSD overall has something like a 10% poverty rate and a 3% marginally housed population, so I think the comparison is fair)

In our school, we saw a lot of outdated teaching materials - we got our kids hooked on Alphablocks - a BBC funded children’s education program that teaches phonics, because it seemed like there were no explicit classes in phonics. The debate over phonics is settled, they work - I understand the situation here is improving.

The math curriculum has improved too, they are adopting techniques from Japan, but I suspect the limiting factor there is teachers’ math discomfort.

In the end it’s been the parents holding the school system and elected officials accountable that has spurred change. I bet behind the great numbers in Mississippi is a sea of under-appreciated moms.

Re: Mississippi Can't Possibly Have Good Schools

#140

Post by DangitBobby »

throwanem wrote: post #61
yogurt-male wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, there are good people there. But the people at the highest rungs of society there (doctors, lawyers, etc.) did perpetuate 1950s-level racism. Our family was told in no uncertain terms that they would not stand for us selling our house to a black family for example. I heard white kids saying slurs constantly, and not in a "rapping along to a song" kind of way. Denying my personal experience and calling it ignora…

Oh, please. I denied nothing. If you object to my characterization of that experience, do so overtly. But I knew at least a dozen like you. You were friends with the young rich asshole kids of the old rich asshole antebellum planter families, because they were your family's social peers even if you yourself didn't respect them - your family owned real estate worth redlining! - and now you think you're being magnanimo…

Care to address the slurs and redlining?
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