6 ms·

Do Educational Standards Work?

15 points by mkempe 11y ago

yummyfajitas 11y ago
This article doesn't make a lot of sense. The author has discovered that there are multiple ways of meeting a minimum standard. She then observes that one way is to exactly meet the standard, and another way is to drastically exceed it. Somehow this means they are flawed and can't work. Are math standards also fundamentally flawed because while the standard may specify only multiplication of 4 digit numbers, some students can also do calculus?
kaitai 11y ago
My takeaway: - no standards can work, because - all standards rely on implementation. That's a bit disingenuous, but also substantially correct. People game the system in many ways in response to "standards" (really just requirements/rules). There's also a sad problem that when minimums are implemented, many people race to the minimum instead of continuing to perform at a higher level, because the minimums are what are written down. Students try to game my assignments too. I try to do two things: make them "ungameable" or make them so that trying to game them actually gets the student to do the thing that I think is useful in the first place. But I have to have the freedom to say, "No, this is a crappy attempt. You can do better. Go redo this and improve in the following ways," rather than following a course schedule mandated by the school board. We don't trust teachers to have professional judgement in the US, so we take away their ability to think. "So scripted even a janitor could teach it!" http://www.brightlightsmallcity.com/reading-horizons-a-curriculum-even-a-janitor-could-teach/ http://www.brightlightsmallcity.com/reading-horizons-a-curri...
mjevans 11y ago
Even for physical products this is the wrong goal for success. For physical products https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continual_improvement_process#Kaizen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continual_improvement_process#... is a good place to start. For intelligent creatures, instilling the ability to choose and learn about new topics at will, to filter bad information from results, and to think critically about the application of topics is a bare minimum set of tools. With that background, and a rich library of documentation, it should be possible to interweave the classical educational aspects in to a cohesive narrative that teaches history, engineering, math, general science, language and reports. School should be a lot more like an expanded version of Connections with James Burke.

15 points by mkempe 11y ago

This article doesn't make a lot of sense. The author has discovered that there are multiple ways of meeting a minimum standard. She then observes that one way is to exactly meet the standard, and another way is to drastically exceed it. Somehow this means they are flawed and can't work. Are math standards also fundamentally flawed because while the standard may specify only multiplication of 4 digit numbers, some students can also do calculus?

kaitai 11y ago

My takeaway: - no standards can work, because - all standards rely on implementation. That's a bit disingenuous, but also substantially correct. People game the system in many ways in response to "standards" (really just requirements/rules). There's also a sad problem that when minimums are implemented, many people race to the minimum instead of continuing to perform at a higher level, because the minimums are what are written down. Students try to game my assignments too. I try to do two things: make them "ungameable" or make them so that trying to game them actually gets the student to do the thing that I think is useful in the first place. But I have to have the freedom to say, "No, this is a crappy attempt. You can do better. Go redo this and improve in the following ways," rather than following a course schedule mandated by the school board. We don't trust teachers to have professional judgement in the US, so we take away their ability to think. "So scripted even a janitor could teach it!" http://www.brightlightsmallcity.com/reading-horizons-a-curriculum-even-a-janitor-could-teach/ http://www.brightlightsmallcity.com/reading-horizons-a-curri...

mjevans 11y ago

Even for physical products this is the wrong goal for success. For physical products https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continual_improvement_process#Kaizen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continual_improvement_process#... is a good place to start. For intelligent creatures, instilling the ability to choose and learn about new topics at will, to filter bad information from results, and to think critically about the application of topics is a bare minimum set of tools. With that background, and a rich library of documentation, it should be possible to interweave the classical educational aspects in to a cohesive narrative that teaches history, engineering, math, general science, language and reports. School should be a lot more like an expanded version of Connections with James Burke.