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Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM

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Re: Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM

#851

Post by tedd4u »

thot_experiment wrote: post #511
borski wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that just like students, teachers are not all created equal. My 3rd grade teacher wanted to fail me for “discipline” problems. In reality, she simply didn’t like me; I had no discipline complaints in other years. I had undiagnosed ADHD and was gifted. She did not know how to deal with that, and actively disliked me. Activist teachers are also a thing.

Crazy that such a load bearing job isn't better funded and more respected. Arguably the most important job in society and the level of respect, pay and to some extent training (at least a lot of places require a masters for what that's worth) is absolutely not commensurate with it's importance. I dropped out of high school for the same reason, I had a teacher that failed me for writing an essay in three different sty…

It is very respected in Finland. Having not many natural resources (trees / lumber aside) they made education their national resource. Teachers there are highly respected and have authority in the classroom. Masters degrees are required as well as multi-year in-classroom apprenticeships. Admission to education masters programs are highly competitive.

Re: Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM

#852

Post by conartist6 »

brailsafe wrote: post #734
conartist6 wrote: post #731

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not certain I have either, but I'm also skeptical of blanket statements. Nothing, really, nothing? Do they have no imagination then? No value, no curiosity? ...or are these just difficult kids to manage in a room full of kids...?

> Do they have no imagination then? No value, no curiosity? The opposite, but it doesn't mean the attention is held. > ...or are these just difficult kids to manage in a room full of kids...? If you remove "just", "to", and "of kids" then yes. People—kids and adults—with severe ADHD struggle to manage in all sorts of rooms that others struggle dramatically less in, if they're undiagnosed and have no resources for dea…

To me part of it is also that each generation intentionally seeks out what the last generation can't or won't fully adopt and adapt to. For the current generation it is AI. For my generation it was Wikipedia and online dating. It must certainly have seemed to our elders like we had little to no attention for the things they wished that we would devote our attention to.

If you look back through history, you don't suppose you might find a pattern of people saying, "Kids these days," do you?

Re: Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM

#853

Post by tptacek »

slowking2 wrote: post #803
tptacek wrote: post #736

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't even have to argue with your cite (and I'm not a Plomin fan), since the numbers he's giving drastically slash heritability estimates from just a few years prior. If we were having this discussion 5 years ago, the claim would be that intelligence is 80% heritable. Now the foremost academic proponent of hereditarianism arguably concedes it could be as low as 20%. Molecular genetics numbers put it lower, in the…

Where are you getting 20% from? That's not what Plomin is saying in what you are replying to. Are you confusing the fraction of GWAS estimate heritability out of total heritability (10/50 = 20%) with a top or bottom bound?

That's a good question. As I understand this paper (it's come up on HN before), Plomin takes the consensus of the literature† as establishing 50% heritability via twin studies (accounting for "half the variance in intelligence").

The project then is to use modern genetics to replicate that number and, as importantly, to identify the genes that contribute to that variance. Of course, he's unable to do so: this is the famous "Missing Heritability Problem", that large-scale genetic surveys, as methods have improved and deconfounding is applied, have only managed to associate specific genes with something like 15% of the variance.

In this paper (again, as I understand it) Plomin takes 10% of the total variance as established by GWAS, and then expects much of the rest of the "missing" heritability to be accounted for by rare variants that current GWAS methods can't pick up. But the math for that probably can't work (this paper is from 2018, though, and everything I've read about rare variant stuff has been in the last few years).

† I don't think he believes this, though; I think he's an 80%-er.

Re: Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM

#854

Post by bmm6o »

znpy wrote: post #838
whateverboat wrote: post #815

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the problems are deeper. The problems are at school level. The variance in the level of schooling in US is huge compared to Italy in my experience. This factor means that school exams are not a good indicator of competitiveness. Furthermore, the social systems in Italy mean that the failure is not that problematic especially for kids from poor backgrounds. And therefore, risk of depression etc was much lower.…

> The problems are at school level. Imho the problems are even deeper: they’re at culture level. But that’s where things get controversial, so i’ll hint at the problems and stop here.

You mean the culture of cutting funding from under performing schools to enforce a downward spiral and divert money to private schools? If not you should be more specific.

Re: Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM

#855

Post by dnautics »

Danox wrote: post #756
dnautics wrote: post #714

Earlier quoted context omitted.

education is highly funded. teachers are not paid well because there is a perception that "anyone can be a teacher" (which is true in the sense that there is no particular enumerable qualification or credential that makes you a good teacher) so the market is full of people who decide that they should be a teacher (many should not, but there is no a priori way of knowing). supply high. a lot of education funding goes…

Education United States is not necessarily highly funded nor are all teachers necessarily good. Can you identify a good teacher? Yes you can. Will you get rid of the ones that are bad well not really. I still remember all of the teachers that were really good and I remember some of the ones that were bad, the ones that were good. I wish that many of them could have lived long enough for me to say thank you.

across all spending education in the us is higher than most oecd countries.

Re: Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM

#856

Post by [deleted] »

zahlman wrote: post #674
TimorousBestie wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The person I was replying to quoted the article saying "conditions should not interfere", my point was that they do interfere, and will continue to interfere, in spite of all the efforts and hands on the scale and discrimination that equity proponents try to implement. So? Name a social intervention that did achieve all its goals. > Equity fundamentally arises from a more or less "blank-slatist" view of humans Digg…

> So? Name a social intervention that did achieve all its goals. This is a complete non-sequitur. > Digging up a straw man from the 17th century is not particularly persuasive. It makes no sense whatsoever to refer to a strawman. Locke's conception (presumably this is what you mean if you say "from the 17th century") is obviously not what's being argued against here, since in fact the opposition to these "equity" pol…

[deleted]

Re: Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM

#857

Post by fsckboy »

tptacek wrote: post #782
fsckboy wrote: post #778

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I don't see where any of these things you're talking about appear on this thread. I see you claiming a "strong genetic correlation" for IQ, and then presenting as your citation Richard Plomin --- look him up --- presenting a not-strong correlation. I point that out, and then you demand a citation for me. My citation is the post you provided. This doesn't seem complicated.

>I don't see where any of these things you're talking about appear on this thread.

yes! including you providing citations to your beloved science

Re: Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM

#858

Post by tptacek »

fsckboy wrote: post #857
tptacek wrote: post #782

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see where any of these things you're talking about appear on this thread. I see you claiming a "strong genetic correlation" for IQ, and then presenting as your citation Richard Plomin --- look him up --- presenting a not-strong correlation. I point that out, and then you demand a citation for me. My citation is the post you provided. This doesn't seem complicated.

> I don't see where any of these things you're talking about appear on this thread. yes! including you providing citations to your beloved science

Why are you talking like the Wicked Witch of the West?

Re: Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM

#859

Post by drnick1 »

consp wrote: post #791
try-working wrote: post #787

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I studied engineering in Sweden. One of our courses had an 80% failure rate. A world of difference from Harvard where the average grade is A.

I'm glad one of my old profs in the Netherlands refused to bend and was fine with arguing his 40 percent first pass numbers (the target was 60 for some reason, hint: money). If everyone is exceptional, nobody is.

The point is that Harvard kids are all more or less exceptional. Harvard and other Ivy Leagues attract the best students in the world, not only mostly local talent like European schools. European universities are most similar to state school systems in many regards.

Re: Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM

#860

Post by drnick1 »

ziofill wrote: post #708

I can’t help comparing this to the system I grew up in (Italy), which is vastly different and it seemingly produces very good graduates. University was free and there was no test for enrolling in STEM degrees, and you could retry exams every semester as much as you wanted to. But goddamit exams were HARD and if you weren’t prepared enough you would keep failing until you gave up. We weren’t entitled because we weren’…

> I can’t help comparing this to the system I grew up in (Italy), which is vastly different and it seemingly produces very good graduates.

That's funny because Italians seem to seize every opportunity available to study abroad, particularly in the USA, and especially at the graduate level.

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