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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

#91

Post by alsetmusic »

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…

> She'd really be suffering without parental intervention.

As someone who cares deeply about education, I just want to say it's awesome that you're taking an active role in your child's development.

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

#92

Post by Recurecur »

godelski wrote: post #78
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…

> I think that Oregon teacher salaries have gone up quite a bit more than the national average in the last 10 years, less so in the last couple. Also let's not forget Covid. Yeah, Covid is at the tail end of the time period but it would be an error to make assumptions about the rates of change being constant over these periods. We've all seen that El Nino graph that is used to misrepresent climate change by careful w…

Yes, COVID was a problem, along with many of the ill-considered responses to it. However, it’s now four years later, and it’s misguided to attribute the situation today to mostly being a result of COVID.

Eliminating the DOE and most of our current approach to K-12 education seems entirely prudent!

Just compare what students learned circa 1900 before graduating high school to today…

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

#93

Post by AngryData »

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #59
wffurr wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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…

The tech world is often criticized for being trend obsessed but it seems to happen in education quite often too. My high school was built in the 1970s during the wall-less open learning community fad. That flopped hard and the school ended up with several different physical hacks for dividing up those spaces into something resembling a traditional classroom. The chemistry lab was the only room to get actual masonry w…

Huh I guess that might explain my school's section of classes that had super shitty "movable" walls that never moved.

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

#94

Post by 7e »

nosuchthing wrote: post #66
wedog6 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It says this but the numbers in the article actually show flatlining after 2013 with a huge drop off after 2020. 2022 8th grader cohort missed much of 6th and 7th grade. 2024 cohort missed 4th and 5th grade. These results are extremely in line with that effect, despite what people want to say about social media, teacher pay, etc.

Most studies are showing children with neurological damage from continued exposure to covid outbreaks in schools multiple times a year. Lockdowns did not last more than a few months for the vast majority of school districts in the US.

Three-quarters of urban school districts were operating fully remote until late 2020. That may skew the results.

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

#95

Post by AngryData »

elzbardico wrote: post #35
throwaway85825 wrote: post #30

Almost no education research questions the quality of the students ability to learn. Students with an ability to learn will do so regardless of the resources expended, the ones that don't won't. Trillions wasted over the decades due to a preference to ignore reality.

No. Actually the elephant in the room is the dismal quality of most teachers. But teachers are kind of a sacred cow of discourse, and nobody can state the screaming obvious.

That is what happens when their pay is crap. People that can make 4x as much in the private sector rarely choose to live in near poverty just to teach instead.

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

#96

Post by AngryData »

sandworm101 wrote: post #12

Has anyone looked at the teacher's math scores? I have read in the past about about problems with basic numeracy amongst educators being transmitted to students. >> (2008) Primary school teachers in England are often scared of basic numeracy and should be required to study English and maths at A-level, a report suggests. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/8162803.stm >> This lack of confidence on the part o…

My highschool calculus teacher bragged that she only had to take calculus 101 and 102 three times to pass. We definitely didn't learn calculus that year.

Of course teacher options are limited when the pay is the same as a walmart cashier.

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

#97

Post by judahmeek »

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…

You talked about holding the kids accountable & the teachers accountable.

What can we do to hold the parents accountable?

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

#98

Post by bsder »

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…

> Why are big changes not arrived at by first gaining experience with them in in some reduced scale

Because the results that come back are always politically inexpedient to agendas--generally for all sides.

Examples:

1) Charter schools: As soon as you force charter schools into an actual lottery which normalizes their student body relative to the public schools, their performance relative to the public schools craters. Quelle surprise: Expensive students are expensive and take up a disproportionate amount of your smaller budget. Quelle surprise deuxième: motivated parents means better student performance.

2) Low end performance: low performers actually make up some of the gap during the school year. This creates the obvious suggestion of year round school which runs into the fact that would require an immediate 25% pay raise to every teacher.

3) Raising the average/median: Even the Gates foundation documented the solution but stopped short of suggesting it--focus most of your resource on the lowest performers as they are the easiest to improve. I don't even have to suggest the firestorm that causes.

4) Proper student:teacher ratios: Again even the Gates Foundation (whom I loathe) documented it correctly--1 classroom with 2 credentialed teachers (randos aren't enough) per 15 students (middle and elementary was the focus--high school is a bit different). Every program that followed that formula had solid documentable success. Every single program that followed that formula got closed for being "too expensive".

I can go on and on. The problem is that the US education system is at a solid local minimum and getting out of it requires significant amounts of focused resource. And when you finally ask folks to start writing checks for your education system, you suddenly find out exactly how much folks want to improve education (aka nothing for teachers or students, but they'll happily fund that new stadium).

And, I would like to point out that it was school spending that went up by 45% more than inflation (which was 35% over the same period). In addition, teacher salaries didn't go up 45% relative to inflation. So, might I suggest that perhaps the problem is what we are spending the money on?

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

#99

Post by Nevermark »

wffurr wrote: post #49
secretballot wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you want is done all the time. What happens a lot: 1) Someone (a researcher, usually) comes in and tries some radical new program in some school. 2) (sometimes) It works! It works great, in fact. 3) This new system or approach or framework gets publicized. This may include dissemination through academic channels, but also (and especially if it's really going to take off) through a kind of reform-grifting network…

>> incompetence and principal agent problems you see in any organization Principal agent problem is a huge part of it. How do you keep school leadership accountable and effective? It's super hard in any organization.

The answer to that is relatively simple to identify, difficult to acheive.

School system leadership at the very top. Instead focusing on fixes or specific initiatives at the top, needs to understand their job as creating the culture, climate and support for improvement by lower levels of leadership, with strong emphasis on everyone working to enable and support teachers support students.

That is how accountability and responsibility, and initiative get distributed together to everyone who can contribute. And power doesn't "choose" what is expedient.

But given education at the State and Federal levels is highly politicized, this necessity of enabling and supporting the organization, as apposed to controlling it, is hard to accomplish directly.

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

#100

Post by zozbot234 »

bsder wrote: post #98
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…

> Why are big changes not arrived at by first gaining experience with them in in some reduced scale Because the results that come back are always politically inexpedient to agendas--generally for all sides. Examples: 1) Charter schools: As soon as you force charter schools into an actual lottery which normalizes their student body relative to the public schools, their performance relative to the public schools crater…

> focus most of your resource on the lowest performers as they are the easiest to improve

That depends heavily on the pedagogical approach. There are approaches that are quite effective in bringing low performers up to near-par (so-called "direct instruction", in a broad sense) but teacher actively hate them because they're viewed as "demeaning" the profession, and ed schools don't teach them. Special Ed teachers actually get extensive instruction in these approaches, but obviously we cannot and should not treat every low performer as Special Ed.

> Proper student:teacher ratios

What's "proper"? Teacher-centered and direct approaches cope quite well with greater class sizes, but again they're unpopular among teachers.

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