2017 California school test scores: Why are they flatlining? • Hacker News Board

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

#181

Post by TheAdamAndChe » Tue, Oct 10, 2017, 2:20 PM UTC

bllguo wrote: post #124

csa wrote: post #117

When are we going to come out and admit that our schools are not providing our society with what it needs or wants? For a large chunk of HN, schools served us relatively well. But for a huge chunk of the US, school is just a waste of time. At best, it's free childcare for parents. Preparing everyone to college is overkill (n.b. having a way for everyone who wants to go to college an affordable way to go to a good sch…

I agree with the general sentiment that education needs to be overhauled but I feel that you undervalue literature and history. Hopefully someone comes along that is more qualified than I am to speak about this. There must be better ways to teach algebra and higher math, science, history, literature, etc. But to say they are useless is bonkers to me. Especially at a time where menial jobs are at great risk due to out…

> Especially at a time where menial jobs are at great risk due to outsourcing and automation.

This is what is so frustrating to me. Tons of people on this site say "more people should be going to college because the lower class is getting screwed," but fail to acknowledge that an enormous chunk of the population is mentally unable to obtain a degree, and that higher degree attainment rates doesn't help the issue because it devalues the degree and makes it where young people basically must get a degree to get a good job, forcing an entire generation into massive amounts of debt before even starting their career.

Instead of expecting the half of the population with IQs lower than 100 to suddenly get an advanced degree and move to a large city, we need to do something about the negative effects that globalization and capital concentration have had on our nation. We need to make it so that quality of life for our lower class goes up as time goes on, not down.

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

#182

Post by eweise » Tue, Oct 10, 2017, 2:24 PM UTC

adpirz wrote: post #79

swivelmaster wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's some passing information about charter schools in the article.

Heads up that many charter schools are public. Rocketship (mentioned in the article) is a network of public charter schools that serves primarily low income students, and that's true of many charter schools in the state and across the country.

Taking public funds does not make you a public school. Charter schools do not have the same public accountability as the public schools system.

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

#183

Post by omginternets » Tue, Oct 10, 2017, 2:24 PM UTC

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…

>It points to a problem in the test itself

Please forgive what might be construed as quibbling, but I'm increasingly dismayed by the doxa that poor scores on tests reflect poor testing practices.

To be clear, testing practices in the U.S. are crappy, but so is the secondary education system in general (at least, compared to much of Western Europe).

More to the point: these results point to a problem either with the test or with the educational system, or with the cultural values surrounding education in the U.S.

My bet, having lived on both continents, is on the latter. I invite the reader to read Assimov's 1980 essay A Cult of Ignorance, as it provides a good description of what I believe to be the fundamental problem.

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

#184

Post by ed312 » Tue, Oct 10, 2017, 2:24 PM UTC

ThomPete wrote: post #146

adpirz wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heads up that many charter schools are public. Rocketship (mentioned in the article) is a network of public charter schools that serves primarily low income students, and that's true of many charter schools in the state and across the country.

Success Academy is public, my son is there they are in the absolute top when it comes to math score. SA was started in Harlem and specialize in taking kids out of bad environments (their homes) and influence them to make an effort. It's a pretty hardcore school (7.45am - 4.0pm ish) but it definitely works well.

7:45 to 4 is hardcore? I thought that was normal?! What are non-hardcore school hours?

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

#185

Post by saint_fiasco » Tue, Oct 10, 2017, 2:28 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #178

saint_fiasco wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The comment is not "not even wrong". In fact you are not even really disagreeing. People with high SES have children with high IQ, then those children's children also have high SES and IQ. Does it really matter if the high IQ was because of inherited genes vs inherited wealth? You both already believe that it is hereditary.

It matters very much, because the subtext of saying that school performance is effectively hereditary is that no intervention we can come up with will improve test scores, because the problem is intrinsic to the student. That's false.

School performance is in fact hereditary, possibly because rich people go to fancy schools and their parents can afford to help them with homework and so on. A good intervention might be to improve the schools that poor people go to.

But if poor students are just intrinsically more stupid for some biological reason, a good intervention might be to improve the schools that stupid people go to.

Since it turns out the bad students are poor students, the interventions end up looking mostly the same. For example, hire more teachers to reduce class size, provide more nutritious food, or remove lead from the paint and the pipes.

Just because something is "biological" doesn't mean it is immutable. In fact, as technology advances, we might end up wishing bad school performance was due to genetics so we can fix it with gene therapy instead of complicated finicky societal interventions.

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

#186

Post by ThomPete » Tue, Oct 10, 2017, 2:32 PM UTC

ed312 wrote: post #184

ThomPete wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Success Academy is public, my son is there they are in the absolute top when it comes to math score. SA was started in Harlem and specialize in taking kids out of bad environments (their homes) and influence them to make an effort. It's a pretty hardcore school (7.45am - 4.0pm ish) but it definitely works well.

7:45 to 4 is hardcore? I thought that was normal?! What are non-hardcore school hours?

8.20 to 2-3ish then homework and sometimes they have soccer practice, chess, art etc. So they have long days in school.

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

#187

Post by humanrebar » Tue, Oct 10, 2017, 2:35 PM UTC

mulmen wrote: post #54

swivelmaster wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Should income really be the final metric? What about less tangible (measurable?) factors like happiness? If we program all of our students to maximize income do we really make the world a better place?

> What about less tangible (measurable?) factors like happiness?

A primary goal of school is making kids smarter and ultimately a functioning adult. Including being employable.

I don't think "happiness" is the job of an educator. The parents, absolutely. The local government? Maybe.

But if "good citizen" is a desired goal, we might be able to measure that. With surveys of alumni about current events, employment rates, financial principles, etc. To measure whether well-equipped, life-long learners are produced.

But I'd rather schools stay out of holistic goals better reserved for families.

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

#188

Post by gjem97 » Tue, Oct 10, 2017, 2:38 PM UTC

Q: Why are they flatlining? A: Random variation.

But seriously, you shouldn't be allowed to announce a trend without giving some measure of historical volatility. Show me that this "flatline" is actually a major deviation from expected results (based on historical data).

Even a chart would demonstrate this visually. This is clearly just axe-grinding.

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

#189

Post by rtkwe » Tue, Oct 10, 2017, 2:52 PM UTC

mulmen wrote: post #54

swivelmaster wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Should income really be the final metric? What about less tangible (measurable?) factors like happiness? If we program all of our students to maximize income do we really make the world a better place?

Ignoring all that the timeline for that is so long it's not really useful for evaluating any changes because it'll be 10+ years before you have any new data, depending on where the change happens. On top of that it's so broad that it can only really measure the whole system from elementary up through college/trade-schools so even once you get data you can only really evaluate the system as a whole.

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

#190

Post by FiveSquared » Tue, Oct 10, 2017, 2:59 PM UTC

colechristensen wrote: post #128

csa wrote: post #117

When are we going to come out and admit that our schools are not providing our society with what it needs or wants? For a large chunk of HN, schools served us relatively well. But for a huge chunk of the US, school is just a waste of time. At best, it's free childcare for parents. Preparing everyone to college is overkill (n.b. having a way for everyone who wants to go to college an affordable way to go to a good sch…

I'm not going to say that education is great as it is, but the worst attitude you can come across from a student or a person in general is the question "When am I ever going to need this?" The most important point of school isn't accumulating facts or skills but teaching students _how to think_. How to reason, how to solve problems, the absorption of a diversity of ideas and topics. To expose everyone to the knowledg…

I would like to provide a counterpoint. I had absolutely no interest in Digital Arts until my high school forced me to take it. Now I do digital arts on the side. So, yeah, school can open new doors to career paths that you never thought of.