From: stephen@sprunk.org
On 31-Mar-15 12:19, Adam H. Kerman wrote:
> Stephen Sprunk wrote:
>> On 30-Mar-15 19:13, Adam H. Kerman wrote:
>>> Well, no, what you can't afford is NOT to improve schools!
>>> That's what keeps your land values to very low.
>
>> The "performance" of the schools is almost entirely driven by the
>> income of the students' parents. Spending more (or less) on
>> schools has no effect, so the entire discussion is moot.
>
> That's a whole different discussion. I have strong objections to
> school performance measures, and I think they harm more than they
> help.
Well, that's because what we're evaluating is not really schools'
performance, yet we pretend it is, and we take all sorts of actions
based on that pretense that are completely inappropriate.
If we actually _could_ measure school performance, that could be of
enormous benefit; unfortunately, nobody has really figured out how.
> In fact, I think standardized testing has no ability to help
> students.
It does, actually. By far, the single most important thing that
improves student (and school) performance is ending "social promotion",
and since most schools have proven unwilling to do so on their own, a
regime that forces it on them is quite beneficial.
The core problem is that you have to catch students when they first
start to fall behind, so they have a chance to catch up; Texas's
experience is that it can't be any later than 3rd grade (hence where
NCLB starts). That means it takes 10+ years to see the benefits,
though, and as we know, politicians rarely care about anything that pays
off beyond their next election.
Everyone rants about NCLB, and it certainly has its problems, but it was
based on decades of experience--and proven results--in Texas. It's just
too soon to see the payoff elsewhere, especially when so many places are
busy sabotaging the system rather than learning how to make it work.
> I just think kids from wealthier families have a better chance of
> avoiding certain aspects of education that are harmful. I don't
> believe that poor kids can't be educated to the best of their
> ability, despite that many of them have serious family problems.
> School can't overcome the latter, but better schools should help.
That's not what the evidence says, unfortunately.
Yes, there are kids who overcome their parents' poverty and are
successful, but there are just as many kids who overcome their parents'
wealth and are unsuccessful, so it's a wash.
If you take a poor kid and drop them in a rich school, he'll do a lot
better, but the rich kids will all do slightly worse. Once you hit a
critical mass, the rich kids all leave, and now you have just another
failed school full of poor kids--and more busing.
>> (The percentage of students in a particular school failing the
>> state standardized exams tracks almost perfectly the percentage of
>> students who are eligible for the federal free lunch program. It's
>> all just an elaborate system to measure parents' income, not
>> students' or schools' performance.)
>
> I guess.
If you have any interest in school performance, that is the most
important insight you'll get this _decade_. Once you truly get it, it
will change your entire perspective on the topic--similar to when you
introduced me to land value taxation.
S
--
Stephen Sprunk "God does not play dice." --Albert Einstein
CCIE #3723 "God is an inveterate gambler, and He throws the
K5SSS dice at every possible opportunity." --Stephen Hawking
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