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Mississippi Can't Possibly Have Good Schools

educationdaly.us

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Re: Mississippi Can't Possibly Have Good Schools

#71

Post by epidemiology »

jobs_throwaway wrote: post #32

BIG caveat that these scores are adjusted for gender, age, and race or ethnicity, free and reduced-price lunch receipt status, special education status, and English language learner status. In terms of raw scores, Mississippi is still in the bottom 10. Not really that impressive IMO.

Wow this is an excellent point and really undermines the article conclusions. We should always be looking at unadjusted scores as well as a whole series of adjusted scores with a variety of methods.

Just grabbing one highly adjusted score and drawing conclusions solely off of that is not enough. It's really only giving you one piece of a very complex puzzle in the case of something like education scores.

Observational stats in social sciences turns out to be a lot like epidemiology and strongly held conclusions are hard won.

Re: Mississippi Can't Possibly Have Good Schools

#72

Post by jasonlotito »

api wrote: post #4

"Painting the Deep South as an embarrassing cultural backwater is one of the last socially acceptable forms of prejudice among elites. It’s not just tolerated - it’s venerated." Warning: possible flame bait, though I do not intend it this way. I am serious. I've had this thought for quite a while: the (social) left could pivot and win by being more woke. WTF? What I mean by this is: expand diversity and inclusion to…

Two important caveats.

1) DEI does include rural American white culture, Christian conservative culture, and all the rest...

2) ...except for people who want to eliminate people. Sorry, but you can't make room for someone that wants to end your existence. And there is a non-insignificant number of MAGA that want, support, and promote doing just that.

> Why can't they extend this to their own country?

We do. We literally do. We literally think our country can be better than it is. If you don't see this, you are blinding yourself.

> You don't win friends or change peoples' minds by mocking and bashing people. That just makes them double down out of spite.

> They know they are mocked as dumb, in-bred, ignorant, bigoted, small minded, etc.

The irony.

Edit: I also find it interesting that as much as the is opposed to DEI, they still support it. They just pretend they don't. Heck, even now the government is still supporting DEI initiatives with Trump's approval. It's crazy.

Re: Mississippi Can't Possibly Have Good Schools

#73

Post by cyberlurker »

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…

What if the reason is external to the school? Hmm, what has changed between 2004 and 2024?

We have devices and experiences that are medically classified as addictive. It can also be home life stuff, it’s kind of a difficult time for a lot of people.

We could have the best trained and supported teachers in the world, but they are up against completely different challenges.

I’m not saying we can never fire anyone. But you suggesting that if we don’t like an outcome we get rid of someone without understanding the entire problem is plain dumb.

Re: Mississippi Can't Possibly Have Good Schools

#74

Post by armchairhacker »

ascondabout wrote: post #18
api wrote: post #4

"Painting the Deep South as an embarrassing cultural backwater is one of the last socially acceptable forms of prejudice among elites. It’s not just tolerated - it’s venerated." Warning: possible flame bait, though I do not intend it this way. I am serious. I've had this thought for quite a while: the (social) left could pivot and win by being more woke. WTF? What I mean by this is: expand diversity and inclusion to…

I’ll explain it clearly: it is impossible to accommodate someone who wants you dead.

But it's unfair to believe someone wants you dead just because of their origin.

There are millions (probably tens of millions) of rural Southerners. Many don't want you dead, but vote red because they don't feel accommodated. Many vote blue.

Moreover, when somebody grows up around people who hate a certain group, it's human nature that they'll also develop hatred. What do you do with those people?

I believe the best you can do if pacify them, and convert those whose hatred isn't ingrained. Acknowledging people and accepting the non-hatred parts of their culture is an easy way to reduce the motivation to kill you, and convert those on the fence, without giving leverage. Funding is another way, and while it can give leverage (because adversarial groups shift their own funding towards aggression), I believe if done carefully, the decrease in hatred will outweigh the increase in power, making aggressive efforts overall less effective.

Re: Mississippi Can't Possibly Have Good Schools

#75

Post by NegativeK »

api wrote: post #4

"Painting the Deep South as an embarrassing cultural backwater is one of the last socially acceptable forms of prejudice among elites. It’s not just tolerated - it’s venerated." Warning: possible flame bait, though I do not intend it this way. I am serious. I've had this thought for quite a while: the (social) left could pivot and win by being more woke. WTF? What I mean by this is: expand diversity and inclusion to…

I'm going to paint with a fairly broad brush here, for which I apologize. But it lines up with the majority of the politically outspoken people I'm referring to. For context, I grew up in the south. I also regularly disagree with my liberal friends when they categorize Southern conservatives as brainwashed idiots.

But (here's the but): When I lived in the South, I heard a _lot_ of abject vitriol toward liberal elites, ivory tower academics (Piled Higher and Deeper, ho ho ho), and antisemitism occasionally dog whistled (but often just blunt racism) as anti-banker or anti-world order. You can throw in more things, like Civil War denialism and using racial slurs at the workplace in front of people of the target race with no recourse.

I currently live in a metropolitan area of a swing state. When I hang out with a group of friends that's politically outspoken and conservative, I'll hear what I think lines up with liberal shit talking. Comments that would be outright insulting in the presence of the other party, refusal to actually consider the opposition's site, etc. I do think that rhetoric is harmful to democracy, and I am so very tired of liberals I agree with and conservatives I disagree with echoing jabs and talking points.

But it doesn't compare with the vitriol I heard when living in the deep south. I refuse to live in a place where it's okay for the stranger cutting your hair to drop a nasty racial slur during inane chit-chat. I don't know how the hell you woke embrace a group that has so much hate toward your party and your politicians.

Re: Mississippi Can't Possibly Have Good Schools

#76

Post by lolinder »

jobs_throwaway wrote: post #32

BIG caveat that these scores are adjusted for gender, age, and race or ethnicity, free and reduced-price lunch receipt status, special education status, and English language learner status. In terms of raw scores, Mississippi is still in the bottom 10. Not really that impressive IMO.

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 the Bronx for their inability to compete on raw scores with teachers in upper Manhattan.

Re: Mississippi Can't Possibly Have Good Schools

#77

Post by jasonlotito »

voxic11 wrote: post #63
ascondabout wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ll explain it clearly: it is impossible to accommodate someone who wants you dead.

Yet they are able to support Hamas and other similar groups so I don't think this really explains it fully.

I do not know of any leader on the left that supports Hamas. Please share.

Note, Palestinian people are not Hamas.

Re: Mississippi Can't Possibly Have Good Schools

#78

Post by dentemple »

pc86 wrote: post #62
jobs_throwaway wrote: post #32

BIG caveat that these scores are adjusted for gender, age, and race or ethnicity, free and reduced-price lunch receipt status, special education status, and English language learner status. In terms of raw scores, Mississippi is still in the bottom 10. Not really that impressive IMO.

It's not impressive if you don't understand statistics I guess. You want to measure the impact of educational policies on students. So you control for other factors that influence educational outcomes, and you try to eliminate those effects. Girls do better than boys on most testing. Asians do better than other races. Free & reduced lunch kids do worse. Special education and ESL students obviously do worse. So of cou…

Statistics can also be gamed, and this article reeks of it.

As other commenters are saying, Mississippi children's actual achievement rates are still bottom of the barrel. So while they might be statistically doing better, they're not actually doing better at the moment.

That's not to say that things can't turn around, or that this newfound investment into education might not bear fruit very soon.

But the OP made the choice not to address any of these issues; therefore, the article doesn't seem to have been made in good faith relative to the HN community's expectations.

Re: Mississippi Can't Possibly Have Good Schools

#79

Post by pc86 »

bombcar wrote: post #70
pc86 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not impressive if you don't understand statistics I guess. You want to measure the impact of educational policies on students. So you control for other factors that influence educational outcomes, and you try to eliminate those effects. Girls do better than boys on most testing. Asians do better than other races. Free & reduced lunch kids do worse. Special education and ESL students obviously do worse. So of cou…

But unless you control for it very, very carefully, you end up with results like "free and reduced lunch programs cause kids to do worse" - which isn't supported by the evidence, because there may be other factors that coincide with those who are eligible for them. You'd have to do something like take the high-performing SF district and give half the students, randomly selected, free lunches.

Reduced-price lunches are a proxy for socioeconomic status. That it's a proxy means it isn't perfect but we're talking about the entire country you can absolutely draw conclusions from it based on the mountains of data we have available.

Re: Mississippi Can't Possibly Have Good Schools

#80

Post by bombcar »

pc86 wrote: post #67
aredox wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who would have thought that statistics could be improved by eliminating bad data points?

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 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 will greatly improve 8th grade reading scores.

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