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Oregon raised spending by 80%, math scores dropped

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Re: Oregon raised spending by 80%, math scores dropped

#81

Post by toomuchtodo »

pixelready wrote: post #70
scrubs wrote: post #18

Good grief! The bush admin tried to getting better scores by standard testing ... as a scheme in some ways by-pass local control by trading improvement for cash or removing cash. Mixed results. There's whining about standard testing .. . There's whining without it too. But states brought that on themselves. I raised two boys one a plain-joe kid, one with special needs. The older, regular kid got into and out of unive…

I think there’s a lot of poor incentives at play here. Having to mash everything down into a handful of top line success metrics (annual test scores, attendance rate) is certainly one, alongside this obsession with one-size-fits-all age-cohort based schooling. It is clear that public schooling in the US was originally designed to build obedient citizens and efficient factory workers. Horace Mann’s love of the Prussia…

Attendance awards as well.

Re: Oregon raised spending by 80%, math scores dropped

#82

Post by icegreentea2 »

tzs wrote: post #80
icegreentea2 wrote: post #75

You can go to the "nations report card" and play around with the NAEP score stats: https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/ltt/mathematics/scores-per... For me, two things pop out in particular. Firstly, in math, if you look at how the percentiles break down, it seems clear that while there an overall drop in performance from 2020-2023, it also seems clear to that the top end of doing relatively ok. For example, at the 75t…

The thing that popped out to me playing around with that is that when you look at most of these things from the late '70s through now, many show some modest growth or flatness through the '90s, then grew a little more up through the 2010s or so, and have pulled back a little in the last few years to roughly 2008ish levels. This is for both math and reading and for both 9 year olds and 13 year olds. Depending on what…

If we were spending the same effort and resources to stay flat, I'd agree with you.

I think the "crisis" is that we've been spending more and more resources just to stay "flat".

Re: Oregon raised spending by 80%, math scores dropped

#83

Post by grantpitt »

godelski wrote: post #73
amanaplanacanal wrote: post #3

Why was the headline changed? The story isn't about Oregon.

As a reminder to everyone, here's what the guidelines say[0] > Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize. There are reasons to edit the title other than this quote, but this article is not one of such cases. The original title " Hard Lessons from the New NAEP Results " is meaningful enough. Changing it has made it clickbait. I'm also a little surprised that more…

Sorry, my mistake. Thanks for the reminder. I don't think I can change it after 2 hrs.

Re: Oregon raised spending by 80%, math scores dropped

#84

Post by godelski »

grantpitt wrote: post #83
godelski wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a reminder to everyone, here's what the guidelines say[0] > Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize. There are reasons to edit the title other than this quote, but this article is not one of such cases. The original title " Hard Lessons from the New NAEP Results " is meaningful enough. Changing it has made it clickbait. I'm also a little surprised that more…

Sorry, my mistake. Thanks for the reminder. I don't think I can change it after 2 hrs.

I'm curious, why did you make this change? The article isn't about Oregon. Plus, the claim itself is pretty disingenuous since it is including covid data, vastly exaggerating the effect[0]

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46919890

Re: Oregon raised spending by 80%, math scores dropped

#85

Post by grantpitt »

godelski wrote: post #84
grantpitt wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, my mistake. Thanks for the reminder. I don't think I can change it after 2 hrs.

I'm curious, why did you make this change? The article isn't about Oregon. Plus, the claim itself is pretty disingenuous since it is including covid data, vastly exaggerating the effect[0] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46919890

I quoted from the middle of the article what I found interesting. I don't submit on here much and I just put that in the title field without thinking. I'm glad that comment provides proper context on this.

Re: Oregon raised spending by 80%, math scores dropped

#86

Post by fallingfrog »

Have we looked at nutrition? Economic crises lead to sharp spikes in poor nutrition especially when social safety nets have been stripped back. A generation whose growth is stunted by malnutrition is a plausible outcome of "tough love" welfare reform. A lot of people either lost their jobs or had to quit to take care of their children during the crisis. And there was a much degraded safety net to catch them.

Re: Oregon raised spending by 80%, math scores dropped

#87

Post by Nevermark »

servo_sausage wrote: post #27
Nevermark wrote: post #4

All the fiascos in education raise a simple question. Why are big changes not arrived at by first gaining experience with them in in some reduced scale, then spreading the improvements incrementally as they continue to be validated. And why isn't this experimentation being done all the time, not randomly but competitively/cooperatively between school districts and individual schools? Each making small changes toward…

If you make a change in only one school, you end up with selection effects where interested parents move their children into (or away from) catchment areas based on vibes. Then you can't really measure outcomes, because the strongest predictor of student performance is parents interest and resources. You also run into issues with teaching skills and standards, you need a high level of planning and adherence to the su…

Big studies have an important role. Especially for dramatically different approaches, such as the different approaches to teaching reading. The differences are so acute, that careful A/B, or A/B/Control studies are the best approach.

But most improvements in any complex system happen iteratively, and benefit from clusters of subtle changes found to work well together. At some point enough experience is gained to characterize the change, and give others a chance to consider it.

I suggested incremental adoption, and organic adoption, of successful changes, precisely because of this need for significant bottom up testing before spreading something widely. Success at one scale, and location, doesn't always translate directly to another context, or might not work in another context at all.

> You also run into issues with teaching skills and standards, you need a high level of planning and adherence to the supplied plan in order to measure outcomes; otherwise it's just vibes based on individual teachers.

You point out a very important concern. Good measurement doesn't make bottom-up improvement impossible, unnecessary, or any less important. The point of measurement is to make improvements easier to see, and not get in there way.

This is what I was referring to when I said at the top, the job is to create a context where improvements can happen.

One of the simplest ways to balance top-level and bottom-up concerns, is to communicate the actual top-level needs (not just current practices) clearly, then let front line educators propose changes to measurement practices, where they feel the current practice is holding them back. That gets both scales working together to enable improvements to happen, and to be seen. There is no (competent) conflict here, the opposite.

Re: Oregon raised spending by 80%, math scores dropped

#88

Post by nosuchthing »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #81
pixelready wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there’s a lot of poor incentives at play here. Having to mash everything down into a handful of top line success metrics (annual test scores, attendance rate) is certainly one, alongside this obsession with one-size-fits-all age-cohort based schooling. It is clear that public schooling in the US was originally designed to build obedient citizens and efficient factory workers. Horace Mann’s love of the Prussia…

Attendance awards as well.

Funding for schools is often based on Average Daily Attendance.

Re: Oregon raised spending by 80%, math scores dropped

#89

Post by indemnity »

wffurr wrote: post #43
kbelder wrote: post #19

Oregon is mentioned as an example of the general decline through the US. The article isn't really about Oregon specifically: Consider Oregon. Had it merely kept pace with inflation, it would have increased school spending by about 35 percent from 2013 to 2023. In actuality, it raised spending by 80 percent. Over the same period, math and reading performance tanked, with math posting a remarkable 16-point decline—the…

>> much of math education seems to have been farmed out to really crappy software and short video clips running on chromebooks Our local school committee is debating this currently. There was a book mentioned "Ditch That Textbook" about using EdTech to reimagine curriculums. I have a hard time imagining actual high quality math education not using a textbook, and I don't really see how crappy software (and I do not f…

We’re thinking of sending our son to a highly ranked local private school who has a policy of not doing anything like this with tech.

Students are also not allowed personal devices while school is in session, and social media ban for under 16s is hopefully coming here too (New Zealand).

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