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

Mississippi Can't Possibly Have Good Schools

educationdaly.us

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 230 posts

Re: Mississippi Can't Possibly Have Good Schools

#181

Post by reverendsteveii »

secstate wrote: post #151
dkarl wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At every age, there's a high attrition of students participating in competitive sports, until only a tiny elite remains. Is that what we want for reading and math?

yes, because the alternative is to have kids who can't actually read being dragged along and dragging down kids who can read. What's wrong with a tiny elite remaining if it's based on actually being able to do the work? The biggest red flag here for me is not that the tiny elite remain, it's that life circumstances will dictate that the majority of the tiny elite will continue to come from privileged families who hav…

When I was 8, in the first grade, I hummed in class. I read comic books, I napped, I generally fucked about, around, and several other prepositions. I did this to such an extent that the teacher wanted to shunt me into the shame places you want to shunt these kids into. Fortunately my mother caught wind of this and, knowing what level my intellect was at when it was allowed a little freedom and presented with a challenge, raised actual holy hell at that little Catholic school outside Pittsburgh. Thank God she did, because I ended up being tested and started along the gifted track. My brother in law, otoh, is just as smart as me and just as defiantly internal as me. He didn't have an advocate. For him, school was 12 years of no resources, no opportunities, no goals, and memorizing a copy of The Lion King on VHS. Now I make a tidy living as a software engineer and I'm pretty decent at it. He lives at home with his mom because he never graduated high school, so he stays in all day and hand-hacks NES roms literally bit by bit. He's a shitload better than me at a very valuable thing and no one can take advantage of that, not him, not some employer, not society in general, because he was disposed of by a school system that wanted to get him out of the way of all the future contributors.

This idea that school is a place where kids compete with one another, the weak are weeded out and the strong are rewarded with additional resources is a disgusting perversion of an institution we used to recognize as providing a baseline for everyone. And it simply doesn't work.

Re: Mississippi Can't Possibly Have Good Schools

#182

Post by reverendsteveii »

motorest wrote: post #157
secstate wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes, because the alternative is to have kids who can't actually read being dragged along and dragging down kids who can read. What's wrong with a tiny elite remaining if it's based on actually being able to do the work? The biggest red flag here for me is not that the tiny elite remain, it's that life circumstances will dictate that the majority of the tiny elite will continue to come from privileged families who hav…

> yes, because the alternative is to have kids who can't actually read being dragged along and dragging down kids who can read. Failing to teach kids how to read is a failure of the school system, not the kid. Dropping kids because the school system failed them is just yet another failure of a school system, and one which is at best a self-serving failure: a way to mask the extent of which the system is broken by bla…

this, absolutely. when the person you're replying to asked "What's wrong with their being a tiny elite" they seem to be purposely ignoring the fact that what we're measuring is competence in basic skills. A school isn't supposed to take in 100 kids and turn out 99 droupouts and one nuclear physicist. A school is supposed to take in 100 kids and turn out 100 kids who can read, write, do math and understand how their society works well enough to participate in it meaningfully.

Re: Mississippi Can't Possibly Have Good Schools

#183

Post by pc86 »

mrguyorama wrote: post #180
pc86 wrote: post #57

I am much less interested in why MS schools are doing so much better - which don't get me wrong, is great, and I hope studied and modeled in better-funded states - than I am in why other schools are doing worse . Taking that first chart into account, if Maine stayed around a ~225 for the last 20 years, and Mississippi went from 203 to 220, that's great for Mississippi but not necessarily an indictment of anything Mai…

I can tell you why with reasonable certainty. When my mom became a Maine teacher in 1990, the starting pay was $28k, for a part time position. By her first retirement in 2022, she was making $48k, for full time work, in a more expensive school district, with more responsibilities (including creating the entire lesson plan and running the department). What was inflation during that time frame? So basically, Maine can'…

I think you touched on a key component to this and I'm curious if you agree with me or not.

The level of effort expended by teachers in instructing their class varies wildly from teacher to teacher. I'm sure everyone remembers their best teacher and their worst teacher, and the delta between those two is often staggering.

Wouldn't schools be better off if we could easily get rid of those bad teachers? I would love to pay great high school teachers $150k/yr, and I would love for the worst teachers to be able to get fired. Unfortunately teachers' unions care more about seniority than skill, and any aspect of teacher accountability or evaluation is painted as "you just want to fire the expensive teachers."

Re: Mississippi Can't Possibly Have Good Schools

#184

Post by pc86 »

reverendsteveii wrote: post #182
motorest wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> yes, because the alternative is to have kids who can't actually read being dragged along and dragging down kids who can read. Failing to teach kids how to read is a failure of the school system, not the kid. Dropping kids because the school system failed them is just yet another failure of a school system, and one which is at best a self-serving failure: a way to mask the extent of which the system is broken by bla…

this, absolutely. when the person you're replying to asked "What's wrong with their being a tiny elite" they seem to be purposely ignoring the fact that what we're measuring is competence in basic skills. A school isn't supposed to take in 100 kids and turn out 99 droupouts and one nuclear physicist. A school is supposed to take in 100 kids and turn out 100 kids who can read, write, do math and understand how their s…

And if the kid can't do that at a 3rd grade level at the end of 3rd grade, isn't it much better to have them repeat 3rd grade than to push then into 4th grade and hope something changes?

Re: Mississippi Can't Possibly Have Good Schools

#185

Post by pc86 »

motorest wrote: post #118
pc86 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to strawman your argument but it sounds like you're saying that if you're in 3rd grade one year you should be in 4th grade the next year no matter what. That there's nothing you actually need to learn in 3rd grade in order to be advanced to 4th grade. Is that what you're saying?

> I don't want to strawman your argument but it sounds like you're saying that if you're in 3rd grade one year you should be in 4th grade the next year no matter what. If a school system is designed so that the average kid in 3rd grade is expected to be in 4th grade the following year, the fact that a statistically significant subset of kids is not able to meet that bar is a sign that the system is failing those kids…

How do you know its statistically significant? Nothing in the article (or anywhere else I looked) suggests a "statistically significant" portion of 3rd graders, whatever that means, are being held back.

Re: Mississippi Can't Possibly Have Good Schools

#186

Post by aaronbaugher »

pc86 wrote: post #184
reverendsteveii wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this, absolutely. when the person you're replying to asked "What's wrong with their being a tiny elite" they seem to be purposely ignoring the fact that what we're measuring is competence in basic skills. A school isn't supposed to take in 100 kids and turn out 99 droupouts and one nuclear physicist. A school is supposed to take in 100 kids and turn out 100 kids who can read, write, do math and understand how their s…

And if the kid can't do that at a 3rd grade level at the end of 3rd grade, isn't it much better to have them repeat 3rd grade than to push then into 4th grade and hope something changes?

That's how it used to work. But people noticed that some groups got held back at higher rates than others, and there were accusations of isms, and so most schools decided it would be better for everyone involved to stop doing that. Also, holding a kid back came to be seen as cruel since the other kids would make fun of him, which was probably true.

For the same reason, they mostly got rid of "tracks," where an age group would be divided into different classrooms according to test scores and previous grades rather than random chance, so the 'A' fourth grade room could go at a different pace from the 'B' fourth grade room. All that's left of that is gifted programs, which people somehow accept even though they're just the mirror image of holding kids back.

There's really not a good answer, because like it or not, learning ability varies, so if you put 25 kids in the same classroom for no reason other than their being the same age and living in the same neighborhood, some are going to struggle and fail and some are going to cruise and be bored.

Re: Mississippi Can't Possibly Have Good Schools

#187

Post by directevolve »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #146
bombcar wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say that the point is that you can't just look at one datapoint, especially if there are other things affecting it. The most obvious case of this is comparing private vs public schools, where the private schools can be selective and kick out anyone who doesn't perform or they don't like, but the public schools have to accept everyone by law. Obviously failing anyone who cannot read from getting to 4th grade w…

Those failing kids eventually make it to the 8th grade, however, and affect statistics. Still, having lived there and attending one of the better middle and high schools near Vicksburg, I wouldn’t be surprised if they were gaming the system in some way (I hope they aren’t and these gains are real, though).

If a kid achieves a great 8th grade test score at age 18, is that a success or a failure of the system?

What we care about is the level of achievement by a given age. To determine that, we need to be comparing states using standardized tests given to age groups, not grade levels. It is fine to hold students back, if we think that will do them more good than advancing them. But they still need to be tested the same way as their age group if we want to do a meaningful comparison between states.

Re: Mississippi Can't Possibly Have Good Schools

#188

Post by bitshiftfaced »

bee_rider wrote: post #65
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.

The scores are adjusted for some demographic factors, so one explanation could be that they use exactly the same strategies as everybody else but the “demographic factors” adjustment works out for them.

Children of similar demographics are getting better absolute reading scores in Mississippi. How would it "work out" for them in a way that isn't explained by performance?

Re: Mississippi Can't Possibly Have Good Schools

#189

Post by bitshiftfaced »

xadhominemx wrote: post #12
duxup wrote: post #2

I wish this story dove into the "why" or what these test results even are / validate them rather than finger wag at everyone within shouting distance.

I think it was because the demographic adjustments move scores for black students higher and scores for white students lower. If unadjusted scores for white students and black students are converging over time, that would explain why Mississippi looks so strong compared to states like Maine, Vermont, and Oregon in the time series.

If I'm not mistaken, they compare children of similar demographics. This controls for how different states have different percentages of varying demographics. Based on this, I don't see how the convergence of performance over time could explain why Mississippi would be doing well.

Re: Mississippi Can't Possibly Have Good Schools

#190

Post by bitshiftfaced »

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?

You could make the argument that not adjusting for demographics obscures the fact that some states are for some reason failing to teach certain demographics as well as Mississippi.
Post reply on HN