Disaster of the delusion that all children are the same: blaming the teachers

[ApostateAbe]

The basic premise of the OP is wrong, excuse me for pointing out. The teachers aren't paid bonuses based on how high their students score, they are paid bonuses based on how much improvement their students make from year to year.

Arguably the worse for teachers would be to have a classroom of highly intelligent over achievers who would be less likely to gain much from year to year. And the best would be to have a classroom of under achievers. It is easier to take a class that averages 35% to say 38% (percentile) than it is to take a class that averages 95% to 97%.

The real point that these convictions raise is not the use of standardized tests, we have had them for more than sixty years without these problems, or the effectiveness of IQ tests, once again they measure the relative ability between individuals to learn quite well to benefit all.

What these convictions point out is the unintended consequences of incentive payments.

It wouldn't be too much of an overstatement to say that we suffered the consequences of the 2008 financial crisis because about 10,000 people on Wall Street cheated, committed fraud, to earn their incentive bonuses. They knew that they were trading high long term risks for high short term gains. But those short term gains guaranteed them their personal bonuses, in many cases enough in a few short years to retire in luxury.

And dare we compare the treatment to these teachers who cheated to the kid glove treatment given to the bankers who committed fraud and nearly destroyed the world's economy?

No, there is more to the NCLB Act, per the line from the law I quoted. It is not just failure to IMPROVE that brings punishment on a school, but a failure to live up to "the same academic assessments used to measure the achievement of all children." If an existing high-scoring school does not improve, they won't get extra rewards, but they won't get extra punishments, either. Schools that persistently score below the assessments are subject to "corrective action," per the other line I quoted from the law.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I understand that evaluating teachers based on student performance can be a problem, but what is the better practical solution?

Compare them only against teachers facing a similar student body.


The problem is that this requires admitting that the real problem is the students (mostly this means parenting) and not the teachers--and thus has no simple solution. It also undermines the rationale behind affirmative action.

Thus the left hates it. The right would like to see the public school system destroyed so they are going to be in favor of things which destroy it--they're not going to want to see this fixed.

Thus we have a situation where both sides are acting to destroy the public school system.

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Instead of hammering the poorly performing schools by cutting their funding, how about making additional resources available? Kids who aren't doing well need tutors, after-school study sessions, maybe even a different teaching method, not brand new teachers who don't know them and have no idea what might help them learn the material. The way the system is rigged right now, persistently underperforming schools get funding cuts, even if they are underfunded to begin with.

It's been tried--no benefit. (A judge threw a bunch of money at the problem--and the students got no better.)

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Black students have the greatest academic underperformance (genetic or not), which means their teachers and their schools are punished by the federal government for failing to fix the apparently unfixable.

Not here in Britain. The lowest academic performers are white working class males (i.e. the average black lad in the same demographic does better). This is usually attributed to many UK black people being from Caribbean cultures where education is highly valued - certainly more so than in the average pit village and mill town. It could be that UK black people have different genetic heritage from US black people, but the facile relation of "black" and "genetic" assumed from the US experience by 'scientific racists' doesn't appear to hold.

Similarly, the worst performing immigrant group is Bangladeshis. It's unlikely that Bangladeshis have significantly different genetic heritage to immigrants from neighbouring Asian countries (Bangladesh didn't exist until partitioned by the British in the 1940s) who do significantly better. Even if they did, the difference would fly in the face of the race categories touted by 'scientific racists' (for want of a better expression).

Now it's certainly unfair to blame teachers for schools in inner cities and former pit villages doing worse than schools in leafy suburbs. Let's not conflate that with what is anything but a settled scientific issue.

Yeah--it's a cultural issue, not a genetic one. In different areas it's going to be different cultures that are good and bad.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Oh, really?

The IQ test is unscientific as well, having a cultural component built into the the language used in the test.

While it is bad that the teachers cheated, I feel the punishments being handed out are way out of line.

In the past that was true but they've fixed that sort of thing.

With computers you can easily find any biased question so long as you have the information on what group someone falls into. (Plot how well people do on <x> vs their overall score. If there is too much of a difference between <y> and !<y> then you have a bad question. You need to do the test anyway to ensure the score on <x> correlates with their overall score--if this isn't true you have a confusing question that should be removed.)

 

[ApostateAbe]

Black students have the greatest academic underperformance (genetic or not), which means their teachers and their schools are punished by the federal government for failing to fix the apparently unfixable.

Not here in Britain. The lowest academic performers are white working class males (i.e. the average black lad in the same demographic does better). This is usually attributed to many UK black people being from Caribbean cultures where education is highly valued - certainly more so than in the average pit village and mill town. It could be that UK black people have different genetic heritage from US black people, but the facile relation of "black" and "genetic" assumed from the US experience by 'scientific racists' doesn't appear to hold.

Similarly, the worst performing immigrant group is Bangladeshis. It's unlikely that Bangladeshis have significantly different genetic heritage to immigrants from neighbouring Asian countries (Bangladesh didn't exist until partitioned by the British in the 1940s) who do significantly better. Even if they did, the difference would fly in the face of the race categories touted by 'scientific racists' (for want of a better expression).

Now it's certainly unfair to blame teachers for schools in inner cities and former pit villages doing worse than schools in leafy suburbs. Let's not conflate that with what is anything but a settled scientific issue.

I don't know for sure about black academic accomplishment in Britain, but you may need to be skeptical. The stories that are popularly reported are the stories that appeal to popular prejudices, and the popular prejudice of the UK (as in the USA) is that all races have equal intelligence. Richard Lynn (in his book The Global Bell Curve) compiled 22 intelligence testing studies of blacks in Britain, among all age groups (mostly children), and together they have a median IQ of 86. There is one study that reports an IQ of 104 (with N=9). That is the kind of study more likely to be popularly reported. The educational attainment of blacks in Britain is similarly reported to be lacking. At age 14, only 51% of black students pass the standardized science test, compared to 70% of whites and 82% of Chinese. Similar gaps exist for English and math.

 

[laughing dog]

The OP seems to misunderstand the purpose of education. Education cannot nor should it purport to raise IQ (or innate ability). Education is about helping the student get the most out of his/her abilities and interests.

 

[ApostateAbe]

The OP seems to misunderstand the purpose of education. Education cannot nor should it purport to raise IQ (or innate ability). Education is about helping the student get the most out of his/her abilities and interests.

I don't disagree in the least. The problem with No Child Left Behind is that it depends on the ability for teachers to significantly raise student's test scores, and that would be plausible only if they could significantly raise IQ. That is an anti-scientific ideological delusion, completely out of touch with established facts and theories of psychometrics.

 

[fromderinside]

The OP seems to misunderstand the purpose of education. Education cannot nor should it purport to raise IQ (or innate ability). Education is about helping the student get the most out of his/her abilities and interests.

Uh, nope. Education is about cranking out citizens who are ready to contribute to our society whatever that means. Individually the hope is to get each student to realize her fullest potential for participating in our society.

another set of definitions come from ASCD (Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development)

Yeah, it may be a quibble, but, education systems are constructed and executed within the confines of society. Their goals cannot be about the individual in the abstract. Education's goals must be about the individual as a member of society.

How this relates to the OP is through the lens of how our society views citizens. Currently we are parts of groups ad groups are characterized as stereotypes. We've reduced the minds of children to norms and those norms are characterized as native potentials (IQ). How far have we abandoned the ideal if the individual becomes apparent. Full Stop.

 

[laughing dog]

Uh, nope. Education is about cranking out citizens who are ready to contribute to our society whatever that means. Individually the hope is to get each student to realize her fullest potential for participating in our society.

That conflates "education" with "education system". The two are not the same.

 

[RavenSky]

The basic premise of the OP is wrong, excuse me for pointing out. The teachers aren't paid bonuses based on how high their students score, they are paid bonuses based on how much improvement their students make from year to year.

Arguably the worse for teachers would be to have a classroom of highly intelligent over achievers who would be less likely to gain much from year to year. And the best would be to have a classroom of under achievers. It is easier to take a class that averages 35% to say 38% (percentile) than it is to take a class that averages 95% to 97%.

The real point that these convictions raise is not the use of standardized tests, we have had them for more than sixty years without these problems, or the effectiveness of IQ tests, once again they measure the relative ability between individuals to learn quite well to benefit all.

What these convictions point out are the unintended consequences of incentive payments.

It wouldn't be too much of an overstatement to say that we suffered the consequences of the 2008 financial crisis because about 10,000 people on Wall Street cheated, committed fraud, to earn their incentive bonuses. They knew that they were trading high long term risks for high short term gains. But those short term gains guaranteed them their personal bonuses, in many cases enough in a few short years to retire in luxury.

And dare we compare the treatment to these teachers who cheated to the kid glove treatment given to the bankers who committed fraud and nearly destroyed the world's economy?

The teachers will, of course, be convicted and go to prison.

 

[untermensche]

Where in any of this is the idea that all children are thought to be the same by anyone?

Of course no two individual children are the same, but group averages of random children should be close to the same.

 

[barbos]

but group averages of random children should be close to the same.

Unfortunately (for some teachers) schools are not random sets of children.

 

[spikepipsqueak]

Tangentially related local story.

A school here is in huge trouble for keeping an autistic boy in a cage in the classroom.

Please understand that I am not in favour of that sort of restraint of children, but I am sympathetic to the plight of teachers who are trying to serve the needs of a classroom of individuals and doing it in the face of wildly disruptive behaviour and without adequate, or any, support.

IQ tests measure only what they can see on the day. They are also not a good predictor of success in the world, but policies that strip funding from the already disadvantaged seem designed to support the status quo. Surprise, surprise.

I see it as a species of desperation. Faced with a further loss of funding, those 11 teachers tried to rort the system to get some money where it was needed.

 

[untermensche]

but group averages of random children should be close to the same.

Unfortunately (for some teachers) schools are not random sets of children.

They are random in some ways and not random in others.

They are random in genetic potential but not random in real world circumstances that effect it's expression.

 

[barbos]

Unfortunately (for some teachers) schools are not random sets of children.

They are random in some ways and not random in others.

They are random in genetic potential but not random in real world circumstances that effect it's expression.

They are not genetically random.

 

[barbos]

Tangentially related local story.

A school here is in huge trouble for keeping an autistic boy in a cage in the classroom.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...boy-locked-small-cage-Canberra-Australia.html
Is this it?
Wow!

Please understand that I am not in favour of that sort of restraint of children, but I am sympathetic to the plight of teachers who are trying to serve the needs of a classroom of individuals and doing it in the face of wildly disruptive behaviour and without adequate, or any, support.

IQ tests measure only what they can see on the day.
They are also not a good predictor of success in the world,

True, just look at Donald Trump or Tony Abbott

but policies that strip funding from the already disadvantaged seem designed to support the status quo. Surprise, surprise.

I see it as a species of desperation. Faced with a further loss of funding, those 11 teachers tried to rort the system to get some money where it was needed.

 

[Canard DuJour]

Not here in Britain. The lowest academic performers are white working class males (i.e. the average black lad in the same demographic does better). This is usually attributed to many UK black people being from Caribbean cultures where education is highly valued - certainly more so than in the average pit village and mill town. It could be that UK black people have different genetic heritage from US black people, but the facile relation of "black" and "genetic" assumed from the US experience by 'scientific racists' doesn't appear to hold.

Similarly, the worst performing immigrant group is Bangladeshis. It's unlikely that Bangladeshis have significantly different genetic heritage to immigrants from neighbouring Asian countries (Bangladesh didn't exist until partitioned by the British in the 1940s) who do significantly better. Even if they did, the difference would fly in the face of the race categories touted by 'scientific racists' (for want of a better expression).

Now it's certainly unfair to blame teachers for schools in inner cities and former pit villages doing worse than schools in leafy suburbs. Let's not conflate that with what is anything but a settled scientific issue.

I don't know for sure about black academic accomplishment in Britain, but you may need to be skeptical. The stories that are popularly reported are the stories that appeal to popular prejudices, and the popular prejudice of the UK (as in the USA) is that all races have equal intelligence. Richard Lynn (in his book The Global Bell Curve) compiled 22 intelligence testing studies of blacks in Britain, among all age groups (mostly children), and together they have a median IQ of 86. There is one study that reports an IQ of 104 (with N=9). That is the kind of study more likely to be popularly reported. The educational attainment of blacks in Britain is similarly reported to be lacking. At age 14, only 51% of black students pass the standardized science test, compared to 70% of whites and 82% of Chinese. Similar gaps exist for English and math.

It isn't "popularly reported" and that isn't even what the UK data suggests. I doubt that's even the "popular prejudice". Of course one should be skeptical, not least of anything from Lynn, Rushton et al.

 

[untermensche]

They are random in some ways and not random in others.

They are random in genetic potential but not random in real world circumstances that effect it's expression.

They are not genetically random.

What do you mean?

What genes create "intelligence" and how are they unevenly distributed?

 

[Juma]

I don't know for sure about black academic accomplishment in Britain, but you may need to be skeptical. The stories that are popularly reported are the stories that appeal to popular prejudices, and the popular prejudice of the UK (as in the USA) is that all races have equal intelligence. Richard Lynn (in his book The Global Bell Curve) compiled 22 intelligence testing studies of blacks in Britain, among all age groups (mostly children), and together they have a median IQ of 86. There is one study that reports an IQ of 104 (with N=9). That is the kind of study more likely to be popularly reported. The educational attainment of blacks in Britain is similarly reported to be lacking. At age 14, only 51% of black students pass the standardized science test, compared to 70% of whites and 82% of Chinese. Similar gaps exist for English and math.

It isn't "popularly reported" and that isn't even what the UK data suggests. I doubt that's even the "popular prejudice". Of course one should be skeptical, not least of anything from Lynn, Rushton et al.

Interesting how fast the topic we t from "IQ is genetic" to "blacks have lower IQ"....

 

[barbos]

They are not genetically random.

What do you mean?

What genes create "intelligence" and how are they unevenly distributed?

Some genes, and why would they be evenly distributed?

 

[untermensche]

What do you mean?

What genes create "intelligence" and how are they unevenly distributed?

Some genes, and why would they be evenly distributed?

What genes are they? Without that knowledge we can't say anything about them.