North Carolina teacher's resignation letter • Hacker News Board

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#311

Post by smsm42 » Thu, Nov 01, 2012, 10:30 PM UTC

milesskorpen wrote: post #308

smsm42 wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weak students may benefit, but strong students don't. Some of them are strong enough to work through a class of couple dozens of peers not interested in learning and disrupting the class out of boredom, but some of them just give up. I'd like to see some data about this "net negative" claim. I think forcing bright kids that want to learn and advance to suffer through substandard school and disruptive environment that…

If charter schools consistently out-performed public schools, you might be right. But they don't! It really seems to be a myth that charter schools provide a better education — if anything, it is worse, since they have a number of advantages.

Any data to back up that claim? I see the observable behavior that people pay money for private schools suggests private schools are usually providing better value - otherwise why pay the money? Charter schools are voluntary too, so there must be something that attracts consumers there.

However, I agree that people can be stupid and pay money for products that aren't nearly as good as they are advertised. So given some data I'd be inclined to update my opinion on private and charter schools quality. Where could I see the data that your opinion is based on?

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#312

Post by yummyfajitas » Fri, Nov 02, 2012, 4:04 PM UTC

dsanderson wrote: post #309

yummyfajitas wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is an actual CA standardized test: http://www.cde.ca.gov/ta/tg/sr/documents/cstrtqmath7.pdf Please explain why you feel it doesn't adequately measure the ability of students to "read, write, and compare rational numbers in scientific notation (positive and negative powers of 10) with approximate numbers using scientific notation" (as well as the other topics listed). Or, similarly, can you explain specifically w…

Sorry for the delay, I didn't realize you had replied (is there some global notification UI element I should look for?) I don't know if you'll see this, but I'll reply anyway. I'm not from California, nor have I studied their tests, nor did I claim that standardized tests themselves are flawed, so your first demand is misleading, at best. I will grant that, having done further research, my first examples of teaching…

Thanks for responding. I appreciate you taking the time to explain what you mean. I didn't mean to imply you criticized a specific test, I'm just trying to understand what critics of testing actually mean by "teaching to the test".

I suppose our probable point of disagreement is fundamentally that I don't think classes will ever impart a "general understanding". I consider the purpose of a class to be imparting a specific skillset, and most of the skillsets taught in school are quite amenable to testing.

You are also correct that my arguments in favor of testing implicitly assume teacher quality matters in a significant enough way to measure - if it doesn't, measuring them is pointless. (Then again, so is trying to use teacher quality as a lever to improve outcomes.)

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#313

Post by intended » Sat, Nov 03, 2012, 10:29 AM UTC

dkarl wrote: post #292

ZachPruckowski wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AP Calculus isn't a good example of the "teach to the test" problem. Most elementary/middle and even high school tests aren't nearly as good as AP tests, and most subjects aren't best taught through rote - the best way to learn US history is NOT to be quizzed repeatedly on which year the Missouri Compromise was passed or how many men died at Sharpsburg. The problem that "teach to the test" introduces is that students…

most subjects aren't best taught through rote - the best way to learn US history is NOT to be quizzed repeatedly on which year the Missouri Compromise was passed or how many men died at Sharpsburg As far as I know, there aren't any subjects that are best taught through rote. (The confusion between rote learning and practicing skills is a pet peeve of mine.) Learning and testing don't need to resemble each other, not…

> In other words, standardized tests are capable of reflecting and encouraging progressive teaching ideals OR regressive fact-regurgitation models of learning.

You are putting the cart before the horse. Standardized tests in America circa 2004 allowed for that flexibility. You had an education system that allowed for progressive thought precisely because you weren't forced to standardize.

as I have argued before. Your standardized test earlier, and your teaching system, was NOT comparable in ANY way to what Korea/Japan/India have.

You are now recreating those systems with Standardized COMPULSORY tests. Your comparisons are superficial and invalid.

> . If you assume competent, progressive teachers and incompetent, benighted test-writers, it's easy to conclude that tests will drag down educational standards. That isn't fair, though. There's no reason to assume that the test designers are any less enlightened and competent than the teachers manning the classrooms.

You are painting a far too rosy picture of test taking limits. And part of that reason is because you aren't straying into the details.

Tests can be only varied on a few axes - if you are testing about the revolt of 1857 or the various ways to calculate capacitance there is only a small subset of problems that you can come up with.

Don't forget - These are STANDARDIZED tests - they have to be graded either through an answer key, or through grader judgement - if you allow too much on grader judgement then results aren't standardized. SO it ALWAYS skews to answer keys.

This results in all tests becoming predictable. You do not have that many degrees of freedom when standardizing.

> I have to disagree with you there. That NEVER happens in the real world.

Studying/testing is never about real life. IT can't be. No one knows what sort of life a student is going to lead, so you can only hope to give everyone a similar base of information which should help them find their own paths eventually.

As a result, data has to be produced in long form story format, and tested to see that key pieces of information were retained.

Real life doesn't come into it.

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#314

Post by milesskorpen » Mon, Nov 05, 2012, 5:27 PM UTC

smsm42 wrote: post #311

milesskorpen wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If charter schools consistently out-performed public schools, you might be right. But they don't! It really seems to be a myth that charter schools provide a better education — if anything, it is worse, since they have a number of advantages.

Any data to back up that claim? I see the observable behavior that people pay money for private schools suggests private schools are usually providing better value - otherwise why pay the money? Charter schools are voluntary too, so there must be something that attracts consumers there. However, I agree that people can be stupid and pay money for products that aren't nearly as good as they are advertised. So given so…

Here's a good summary: http://www.centerforpubliceducation.org/Main-Menu/Organizing...

Their overview: "Some charters do better; the majority do the same or worse. CREDO also moved beyond individual student performance to examine the overall performance of charter schools across multiple subject areas. They found that while some charter schools do better than the traditional public schools that fed them, the majority do the same or worse. Almost one-fifth of charters (17 percent) performed significantly better (at the 95 percent confidence level) than the traditional public school. However, an even larger group of charters (37 percent) performed significantly worse in terms of reading and math. The remainder (46 percent) did not do significantly better or worse."

Education is very hard to judge, particularly for a new institution. I'm not at all surprised people pay for private schools or apply to charter schools — exclusivity might seem to provide additional value.

Also, charter schools != private schools. I don't know the data there, but if you have lots more money than a public school, different things are possible.