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Alabama offers three tricks to fix poor urban schools

economist.com

31–40 of 106 posts

Re: Alabama offers three tricks to fix poor urban schools

#31

Can someone steel man the reason for not teaching phonics? Among the different trends in teaching, de-emphasizing/abandoning phonics is counterintuitive, bordering moronic. But I do not claim to be more than a pea brain myself.

When and where I was growing up, phonics was really only used remedially with kids who couldn't figure out how to read any other way.

Re: Alabama offers three tricks to fix poor urban schools

#32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does that mean, "adjusted for poverty"? Reading level is an absolute. You're either at a third grade level or not. This adjustment seems to have no purpose other than completing a narrative that does not help solve the problem.

To be fair to gruez, the chart was made by the economist and not by them. To be less fair to the economist, "adjusted by poverty level" is a heck of a spin, we've had many generations as a developed nation now, your state poverty level is caused by your state education outcomes. And that's without even speculating about what "demographic factors" means or implies.

> we've had many generations as a developed nation now, your state poverty level is caused by your state education outcomes.

Does this explain the gap between white/black poverty too?

Re: Alabama offers three tricks to fix poor urban schools

#33
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“No child left behind”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Child_Left_Behind_Act

Can you elaborate? The wiki says NCLB is "outcomes based education" which is further defined as "By the end of the educational experience, each student should have achieved the goal." You seem to be suggesting it's the opposite though?

If you redefine the goal to be "complete the educational system in a normal manner" and then pass everyone each year you have implemented outcomes based education. The outcome is that everyone is that each individual completes an education. What good it is remains to be seen.

Re: Alabama offers three tricks to fix poor urban schools

#35
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at the chart. Adjusted for "poverty rate and other demographics", the top states are red states, so it's harder to chalk it up as some sort of n=1 outlier.

What does that mean, "adjusted for poverty"? Reading level is an absolute. You're either at a third grade level or not. This adjustment seems to have no purpose other than completing a narrative that does not help solve the problem.

If you were comparing HS basketball coaches on the basis of how well their teams perform on the court, then you might find it useful to correct for how many tall kids went to the high schools they were coaching at.

Re: Alabama offers three tricks to fix poor urban schools

#36
post #6

Their solution is that you must read at a 3rd grade level in order to get promoted to 4th grade. It brought them from basically the worst State to the 30th percentile in reading for 4th graders. So, common sense? If you’re requiring proficiency in order to promote, then I’d expect to see significantly better results than this. It’s noteworthy that they’re still basically the worst in 8th grade reading and math. Might…

>Their solution is that you must read at a 3rd grade level in order to get promoted to 4th grade Can someone explain why we ever stopped doing that? It does seem like a lot of public school advocates these days push simply for graduate rate, to the exclusion of meeting common sense aptitude standards. To the point where it is having a downstream effect on universities having to tie up an unreasonable amount of resour…

From what I understand, in USA schools are accountable, and funded, locally. This puts more direct pressure on educators not to fail children.

Recently, there has also been a movement to drop standards based grading and advanced classes, under guise of equity. That I find more troubling.

Re: Alabama offers three tricks to fix poor urban schools

#37

This is less "Alabama" and instead "one blue city in a red state making policy changes while the governer takes credit for it".

Exactly. The State of Alabama loves to make things are difficult as possible for Democrat ran cities. But to be fair, the Montgomery Democrats usually aren't much better.

Re: Alabama offers three tricks to fix poor urban schools

#38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate? The wiki says NCLB is "outcomes based education" which is further defined as "By the end of the educational experience, each student should have achieved the goal." You seem to be suggesting it's the opposite though?

If you redefine the goal to be "complete the educational system in a normal manner" and then pass everyone each year you have implemented outcomes based education. The outcome is that everyone is that each individual completes an education. What good it is remains to be seen.

So the idea behind NCLB is to lower the standards until everyone passes?

Re: Alabama offers three tricks to fix poor urban schools

#39

Can someone steel man the reason for not teaching phonics? Among the different trends in teaching, de-emphasizing/abandoning phonics is counterintuitive, bordering moronic. But I do not claim to be more than a pea brain myself.

I'm here in Alabama, I'm teaching my kids reading through phonics at home about 2 years ahead of them starting in school. They're learning what they call "sight words" in class. My kids are so far ahead of the others that our specific teacher has now moved to teaching the rest of the class phonics and almost abandoning sight words altogether.

I think the rubber on the road reason for not teaching phonics is that it's _hard_ and requires genuine teaching - personal focus on a little kid's understanding. I can't imagine that scaling in a classroom but I'm no educator.

Re: Alabama offers three tricks to fix poor urban schools

#40
I read the article and would argue that it is really just two things they did. However, both things are really the same coin and are about solving poverty and almost nothing to do with education. Both are small (but positive) band aids on general food insecurity and housing insecurity. Amazing how having a known safe place to sleep at night and food to eat everyday helps kids live better lives.

All schools should have free breakfast and free lunch. Countless studies have shown that kids learn better when properly fed nutritious meals. Struggling schools near more after school and weekend programs with tutoring AND meals. These problems are fairly easy to solve and the cost is less than the status quo.

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