Friday, September 27, 2019
It's all about the delta
A rare piece of sanity in "education" "research"...
Schools serving disadvantaged and minority children teach as much to their students as those serving more advantaged kids, according to a new nationwide study. The results may seem surprising, given that student test scores are normally higher in suburban and wealthier school districts than they are in urban districts serving mostly disadvantaged and minority children. But those test scores speak more to what happens outside the classroom than how schools themselves are performing, said Douglas Downey, lead author of the new study and professor of sociology at The Ohio State University. "We found that if you look at how much students are learning during the school year, the difference between schools serving mostly advantaged students and those serving mostly disadvantaged students is essentially zero," Downey said.Yup. This should be obvious, but neither "side" accepts it. Both "sides" insist on their own particular brand of nonsense. The left says we shouldn't evaluate anything, and the right says all students should memorize the Speeches of Cicero and the Peloponnesian Wars. At best a school adds a few skills and facts. The skills are permanent improvements of the student's mind and senses, permanent ADDED VALUE. The facts are irrelevant and transient. Most of this adding happens in the first six years. After that, students should be split by type of talent, leading to different types of apprenticeship. Meanwhile, an increasing number of good teachers and good schools are DOING THE RIGHT THING, focusing on experiential learning. Common Core is all about SKILLS.
Labels: Experiential education
¶ 4:54 AM
