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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.
I'm still trying to pinpoint exactly why Oregon has some of the worst scores in the country (I believe it ranked dead-last this year when adjusted for socio-economic factors). When I see what's going on around me, I can only think it's somewhat related to broken family's and undisciplined kids. The stuff that my kids come home and tell me is happening in school is pretty mind blowing. I've also noticed a complete rev…
And no, it's not the lack of discipline. In fact my experience is that the peer culture around my kids is much, much safer and respectful than what I saw growing up. And I went to what at the time was the consensus-best public school system in the country!
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Why can't they extend this to their own country? Because they aren't a cohesive movement and, without someone to hate, could not manage even the rather poor pretense of unity with which they occasionally pretend to care to bother. If they were capable of taking your advice, they wouldn't need it.
You have a good point here, and I'm afraid it's a human universal: humans are tribal and have a hard time forming coalitions and movements without someone to hate. Being "universally woke" would mean not hating anyone, and that makes it hard to unite. We really need an alien invasion. Any Trisolarans listening?
I think the comments on the article are a fair critique. Notably that this single metric for educational outcome is not as important as the author is suggesting. Also, Maine has a huge drop on that chart I'm assuming from COVID. I don't think this is southern states catching up. I think it was just them outperforming during COVID potentially. Whether or not that will last, we will see.
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.
That's because the article is really about politics, not education. Education was just a hook for the author to hang a political point on.
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.
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.
There is a kind of implicit spin to it. I think it's worth a read, but it's also worth reading and thinking a bit about some of the sources it criticizes.
For example, in this piece the author admits that some of the sleight of hand can't account for increases in reading per se:
https://jabberwocking.com/mississippi-revisited-the-mississi...
However, if you think about it, the sleight of hand can still make the scores look better than they are overall. So while the improvements might still be valid, the comparisons to other states might not be — which is part of the primary substance of the essay.
I'm often disappointed in discussions about educational policy or curricula because so much of it has this cargo cult feel to it, masking political leanings with "objective" results. I say this about a lot of it, not just left or right-leaning discussions. It's almost like someone needs to make a fill-in-the-blank checklist critique of educational discussions (testing, admissions) like the old ones about email alternatives: focusing on means and not variances, attributing progress to everything in a basket of changes rather than trying to figure out which one(s) were responsible, ignoring who the students actually are, ignoring the counterfactual questions that are the elephants in the room, focusing on single outcome variables in isolation, etc. I always feel like almost everyone is cherry picking data to make a case.
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.