20 ms·

Selection bias is the most powerful force in education

385 points by gfredtech 9y ago

RhysU 9y ago
A simple thought experiment. Consider bussing kids from 'good' places to bad and from 'bad' to good. See after how long their outcomes become equivalent. Do so at different grade levels to measure the convergence time versus age of displacement. And now for the actual experiment: how do you impactfully present such results? I assume no outcome. Just the existence of an outcome. I posit that priceless data would be worthless in American society.
- Analemma_ 9y ago
  How many parents, who probably paid a lot of money and work two full-time jobs to live in the "good" place so their kids could go to the good school, are going to be OK with this experiment? Do you plan to force them, if there aren't enough volunteers to get statistically significant results?
  - nibstwo 9y ago
    All school is private. Sometimes you pay tuition, which seems better for accountability, and sometimes you pay more for housing. That people send their kids to school is unfortunate. It seems like if you took the daycare out of it, school would not be structured the way that it is at all. It is a source of daycare for children first, and an attempt at productively using that time second.
  - santaclaus 9y ago
    San Francisco, some of America's most expensive real estate, doesn't tie school assignments to geography. The system hasn't been voted out yet.
    - haihaibye 9y ago
      30 percent of children in San Francisco attend private schools — the highest rate of private-school attendance in California, and the third-highest in the nation
  - RhysU 9y ago
    The thought experiment isn't doing the bussing (effectively impossible as others have noted). The thought experiment is how would you present the resulting data.
- marcoperaza 9y ago
  Such busing was court-mandated in the US for several decades. It is widely considered to have been a failure.
  - frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
    That depends on what you classify as failure. It failed in the sense that the white and wealthy mostly fled to the suburbs and reversed any progress integration had made. It succeeded in the sense that in the places and times where schools were well integrated the racial achievement gap closed.
    - toxiccwm 9y ago
      Do you have any pointers to data showing this close? Most of what I've seen shows the gap being shockingly persistent in the face of intervention across a wide variety of systems, but I'm always looking for more.
      - boomboomsubban 9y ago
        I reccomend Malcolm Gladwell's podcast on the subject. He makes a strong argument that the failure to integrate teachers to any degree caused a large part of the failure. Some of his sources are on the page, but I haven't reviewed them well personally. http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/13-miss-buchanans-period-of-adjustment http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/13-miss-buchanans-per...
    - gmarx 9y ago
      The racial achievement gap closed? That would be a huge story and I would be surprised if I missed it...unless you mean the gap closed within the school (i.e. not relative to society at large) because the remaining whites achievements were lower than the average before they fled, i.e. selection bias :)
      - devinhelton 9y ago
        To save people from litigating busing, there was a thread on this earlier this year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13902960 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13902960 (I cited evidence saying that busing did not close the gap).
- wmil 9y ago
  Aren't you basically describing the desegregation bussing that the US has had since the 50s? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desegregation_busing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desegregation_busing
  - RhysU 9y ago
    Somewhat. I am hypthesizing more than ethnicity being used.
    - bpchaps 9y ago
      Something like a magnet school? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnet_school https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnet_school
- ChemicalWarfare 9y ago
  >> Consider bussing kids from 'good' places to bad and from 'bad' to good. there's different types of 'good' and 'bad'. for example, the whole IQ thing came into the light in the UK when poor Jewish kids from the ghetto (bad) were clearly outperforming their non-Jewish counterparts from more affluent (good) neighborhoods.
- overflowstack 9y ago
  I'm not a fan of bussing. It is unfair to the good kids. "Bad" kids know how to deal with other "bad" kids. They grow up in that environment and know the rules of the game. Good kids grow up in a different environment. The consequences of not knowing to handle oneself around "bad" kids are very high. There is no doubt that on average "bad" kids are much bigger bullies with lower empathy. The consequences of not knowing how to conduct oneself around good kids as a "bad" kid are much lower in severity. For the most part, the parents of good kids set limits to the aggression of their children. For example, the biggest social rejects at my upper middle class schools weren't ever really bullied. People pitied the complete rejects and most people thought anyone who would bully the rejects is a complete douchebag. I can't imagine how the social rejects or even the normal nerdy kids at my high school would have fared at a "bad" school. Then there is the minority immigrant issue. Segregation is good for certain minority groups that do not have the language skills and cultural knowledge to integrate into America. They segregate themselves into a separate community that can provide support for its members. Desegregating these communities and their children will have negative effects. The children of these immigrants will have the worst time dealing with the "bad" kids because they may have stunted language skills and lack cultural knowledge and context to be able to effectively navigate bad situations. And to get a better picture of the winners and losers: - > 90% of African Americans are born in America (and presumably have parents, family and connections who know English and understand American culture). - Spanish is ubiquitous in the USA and the Hispanic population is huge. Hispanic people have a much lower need to congregate into a community compared to other minorities.
bluGill 9y ago
Sending a troubled kid to a great private school probably will cause the kid to do better: because all the other students are doing well the bad students peers are working hard so the bad student sees that example and is likely to succumb to peer pressure and do better. For this to work the troubled kid needs to be kept out of the gangs and whatever else outside of school will lead to bad examples. However selection bias already does this: parents who care enough to send their kid to a private school are involved enough with their kid that they would probably do this anyway. In short these are kids that might have been troubled, but they still would have been at the top of the troubled group.
- habitue 9y ago
  You can almost postulate a sort of "memetic herd-immunity" where if a large enough proportion of the student population is inoculated against bad study habits, a few stragglers will be ok. But if the balance tips too far, the stragglers start joining up and reinforcing each others' bad study habits.
- sololipsist 9y ago
  > Sending a troubled kid to a great private school probably will cause the kid to do better ... However selection bias already does this Funny thing, though. We've done a bunch of studies on this and it doesn't actually help. The people who care about their kids more getting them into better schools, yes - but placing the kids of parents who don't care into better schools, no. This has been shown time and time again. The best results to the contrary managed this by ... drumroll ... designing selection bias into the study.
  - throwaway613834 9y ago
    > Funny thing, though. We've done a bunch of studies on this and it doesn't actually help. > This has been shown time and time again. One would think a link to at least one study would be appropriate here?
    - simonh 9y ago
leongrado 9y ago
I'm from the midwest and most people who weren't aiming for Ivy Leagues just took the ACT.
- jblumstein 9y ago
  Yah. It's weird that de Boer argues selection bias is in play in SAT participation between MS (3%) and CT (88%) when 100% of MS high schoolers take the ACT. That seems to be what's happening here: the kids in MS taking the SAT in addition to the ACT are the ones aiming for elite schools.
  - boomboomsubban 9y ago
    >the kids in MS taking the SAT in addition to the ACT are the ones aiming for elite schools Which is an extreme selection bias. The ACT should have been mentioned to provide more context, but the actual argument works without it.
    - jblumstein 9y ago
      You say it better than I do. Agreed it's an extreme selection bias, just want to point out that it's slightly different than the one de Boer seemed to be pointing out.
      - boomboomsubban 9y ago
        It's still the same bias he argues, the three percent are the most motivated and prepared. Why the other 97% skip it isn't relevant in this argument, but the number is independently shocking without the context. I fell for it until the ND mention, and I took the ACT.
  - aetherson 9y ago
    That's... exactly what he said.
    - 9y ago
hyperion2010 9y ago
That tricky thing when dealing with humans: are they learning because of our efforts to teach them or in spite of them?
jgalt212 9y ago
He was wearing my Harvard tie. Can you believe it? My Harvard tie. Like oh, sure he went to Harvard. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086465/quotes http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086465/quotes
graycat 9y ago
For pure math, by far, essentially the only, "force" in education is being able to work the exercises. That's ugrad school. For more, be able to do new, correct, and significant original research in math. And that's all Folks! Nothing but nothing, nichts, nil, nada, zip, zilch, zero, not social skills, not presentation of self, not frequency of bathing, not haircut or hair style, not clothes, not politics, not race, not gender, not country of origin matters at all. Example: For positive integer n and the set of real number R, show that, on any finite intersection of closed half spaces C in R^n, any linear function that is bounded above on C achieves its least upper bound on C. Example: In a separable metric space, each closed set is the union of a perfect and a set that is at most countable. Example: Prove that there are no countably infinite sigma algebras. Example: For positive integer n and the set R of real numbers, for any closed set C in R^n, there exists a function f: R^n --> R so that f(x) = 0 for all x in C, f(x) > 0 otherwise, and f is infinitely differentiable. Examle: For positive integer n and the set of real numbers R, show that convex f: R^n --> R is continuous. Example: For triangle ABC, by Euclidean construction, find D on AB and E on BC so that the lengths AD = DE = EC.
spunker540 9y ago
I think the real problem described is that people are judging schools based on the performance of their students. There are other objective factors that won't be as affected by selection bias such as: breadth of extra-curricular options in sports and in the arts. Number of AP classes offered. Teacher to student ratio. Budget per student. Does the school have newer computers, working instruments, modern facilities?
- richdougherty 9y ago
  Are you saying that people should judge schools based on the inputs that go into the schools rather than on any effects the schools produce in their students?
  - spunker540 9y ago
    The article points out the high degree of selection bias with schools and how that can make it very difficult to make apples-to-apples comparisons between schools. I was just trying to mention ways to compare schools that won't be affected by the selection bias described in the article.
    - AstralStorm 9y ago
      A proper analysis will attempt to identify such factors and how important they are. Since the sample size is big enough it is not impossible to determine how much of the effect is those other measurable factors. Selection bias might be measured by the rejection rates on admission (esp. scores rejected)
    - AstralStorm 9y ago
      Since I cannot edit it anymore, also the self selection bias can be measured (less adequately because questionnaires bring their own problems but still).
gnicholas 9y ago
> People involved with the private high schools liked to brag about the high scores their students scored on standardized tests – without bothering to mention that you had to score well on such a test to get into them in the first place. This is, as I’ve said before, akin to having a height requirement for your school and then bragging about how tall your student body is. Not quite — kids don't get shorter over time, but they can easily get worse grades/scores. It's true that having a screening test makes it more likely that your students will score well on other tests, but it's not a guarantee (as it is with the height example).
- aidenn0 9y ago
  Yes quite; for example, kids who are in the 95th percentile of height at 9th grade might be only in the 60th percentile of height at 12th grade.
  - gnicholas 9y ago
    The example wasn't about height percentiles, which can change. it was about raw height. If his example had been about percentiles, then it wouldn't have been such a stark no-brainer. Because a high school that admits only taller students would be mostly girls, and by 12th grade they would be shorter than many/most boys. I was taking issue with the example as given. If it were framed the way you suggested, it would not have had the rhetorical power that it did (at least at first glance).
    - aidenn0 9y ago
      It is assumed that schools bragging about how tall their students are are not doing so in a vacuum, and that they aren't bragging that their 12th graders are taller than the other school's 9th graders, no?
ngrilly 9y ago
This is simply the best article I've ever read on this topic.
Nelkins 9y ago
A professor at the University of Rochester (my alma mater) has begun a project to better evaluate the value of a liberal arts education, and to try and quantify what impact it truly has on the career trajectories and future earnings of graduates[1]. [1] https://www.rochester.edu/pr/Review/V79N6/0304_lennie.html https://www.rochester.edu/pr/Review/V79N6/0304_lennie.html
- mulmen 9y ago
  The benefits of a higher education are more than just career path and earnings.
  - JSONwebtoken 9y ago
    There is no evidence of this.
    - qntty 9y ago
      This is such an absurdly HN comment.
  - mmirate 9y ago
    Perhaps they are, perhaps they aren't; I'm not a Doctor of Education, so I can't and won't claim that I know the answer to that question. My question to you, is applicable regardless: As an industry-destined BSCS student, in what ways does my future improve as a result of my education, except for career path and earnings? And if there are such (nontrivial) ways, then why should I care about them?
    - mulmen 9y ago
      I can only speak from personal experience but I grew a great deal as a person while pursuing my B.S. I had experiences and met people I never would have otherwise. I very nearly stayed in my small rural town working retail and farming jobs but my education opened doors to new people and experiences. My worldview is much different now than it was before college and my life is much more fulfilling on a personal level. While I was fortunate to select a degree that had positive economic benefits for me that is far from the only benefit. My B.S. was far from just a job training course. I studied a variety of topics and was exposed to ideas that I never considered before. I learned to think much more critically and to be more open to the world. You should care about this because money and a job are not everything in life. I know that sounds cliche but I am finally reaching a point in my life where I understand that. My education helped me reach this point. I really cannot say enough about how much my education means to me. Even if I did not leverage that education to start my career I would still consider it to be completely worth it.
grandalf 9y ago
I think a corollary of the author's point is that by the time someone is college age, selection bias is the most powerful force in education. I'd be curious to see a study of younger people to see if perhaps there are some assimilation effects.
glangdale 9y ago
This is a good article. I wish I could force everyone who pontificates on schooling in Australia to read it. We have an enormous private school system (part govt-funded, which is gross) that can get rid of students as they please. Then they go on to verbally dump shit on the public system, where they get to dump their problem students. Nice. We also have a real fetish for selective schools, which are essentially selection bias driven to a huge extent. Any suggestion that this isn't a good idea is met by an chorus of "you must hate smart people".
- deleted 9y ago
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- schoen 9y ago
  As I read this article, it didn't suggest that selective schools are bad or improper, but that they may greatly mislead us about causality or what particular institutions and methods are or aren't accomplishing.
- uiwldiowd 9y ago
  Very similar in the US, actually, although maybe not with quite as large of a private system (although some would like to change this). Very similar problems. I've had friends who work in the US school system who complain about this same issue--that private schools are immune to many problems because they can just pass the buck onto someone else. The linked piece is very nice, and illustrates the selection bias problem extremely well. One additional comment I might have is about variance. That is, in the figure with red and blue plots, those means are hiding within-school variance. In data I've seen, what often happens is that the lower-status schools often have more variance in them. So in some ways the problem with selection bias is maybe even worse than what the author suggests, because people not only tend to attribute to schools what was pre-existing, but they also tend to stereotype. E.g., you went to a school on the left side of that figure, so you're lower in ability and/or learning than on the right, even though you might be at the upper end of the distribution of the whole figure. This pertains to vocation too: people tend to assume certain vocations are signals of lower cognitive ability than others, when the reality is that uncertainly only increases for some. The other thing I might mention is some social benefits to attending selective schools. The author at times seems to imply that "talented people will end up doing well regardless of where they go" somewhat dismissively. I think this was probably unintentional, but I think that's not exactly true in the way that people care about, because the studies that are done are kind of coarse. That is, if you study outcomes, they tend to be things like general income, or terminal degree attained (undergrad, master's, doctoral), or whatever. In that sense, things are fine. But because of social connections, people might not get into the particular job they want, whereas another person is given a free pass, or might be at a state-level position rather than a federal-level position, or whatever. That is, there are real consequences to overlooking selection bias, that have real importance for people, but tend to get fuzzed over in studies because it's difficult to study.
deleted 9y ago
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jstewartmobile 9y ago
Parents, teachers, and students are so focused on "education" as a pedigree and job pipeline that if they don't see an immediate connection between a topic and a paycheck they're like "Who cares?! Why are you wasting my kid's time on that?" When the whole thing is an exercise in competitive pedigreeing, of course it's going to be gamed. If it were more about human development, we'd be focusing on the deltas instead, and they'd be harder to fudge.
- gnaritas 9y ago
  They're not wrong to worry about that, it's a rough world out there and getting a good job is vastly more important to most people than "human development". Parents don't send their kids to college to become better people, they do it to make sure they have a skill that can lead to a career so they can survive on their own. Only the rich have the luxury of being concerned about something other than a job.
  - convolvatron 9y ago
    some people get to work in a creative job (I think being successful in STEM is more creative than people generally account for). in which case all that human development is pretty important.
  - oDot 9y ago
    They are wrong to worry about that. The world is dynamic, and human development, the way I interpret it, will help the students deal with the world they go out to. Better people will deal with what comes their way. Maybe today it's a job, but tomorrow it'll be something else. Students who were only thought how to build software, will have a hard time dealing with life when robots starts building software instead of them. First have better people, then let better people be better and bring themselves to prosperity.
    - gnaritas 9y ago
      Again, all easy things to worry about when you're not trying to just survive as most people are. Most people are worried about far more practical things that being "better people".
mbillie1 9y ago
Nothing of substance to contribute but I'm immensely pleased to see Freddie DeBoer writing again.
guyzero 9y ago
This has long been my assertion about elite undergraduate engineering schools. The teaching is usually just OK but their main advantage is that they get to "skim the cream" from the applicant pool.
terrahutte 9y ago
My school has a large Chinese international student body. The school is marketed as being diverse, but really those students are from wealthy families and can easily afford the 40k+ tuition. In the end, the campus isn't diverse, it is segregated. But at least the uni has more money for research.
- sabujp 9y ago
  majority of that mooney doesn't go to research, it goes to admin
LiweiZ 9y ago
Education is about doing things at scale. Learning is about individual gain on delta. I believe better personal tools for learning could do a better job for individuals on average.
thisrod 9y ago
I'm amazed by the range of completion rates in that first scatter plot. Here are the Australian figures, for contrast. Note that living in the NT is strongly correlated with being Indigenous. (Indigenous Australians are the people formerly known as Aborigines.) http://www.mitchellinstitute.org.au/fact-sheets/senior-school-years-school-completion-uneven-across-australia/ http://www.mitchellinstitute.org.au/fact-sheets/senior-schoo...
- bwanab 9y ago
  I assume your amazement is because some states have such low rates. If so, this is very misleading since there are two competing tests in the US (ACT and SAT). The states that have low rates for SAT almost all have very high rates for ACT and vice-versa. In fact, looking at the chart you can see that it is a split distribution.
neves 9y ago
I like the way the best public schools in Brazil select: randomly. In the first years is just a draw, in the advanced ones they have just a proficiency test, and then draw among who not failed.
graycat 9y ago
Uh, look, guys who didn't like my post: If you read carefully and think a little, just a little, not much at all, just a very little, you will see that my post is about the only item, ray of light, for the concerns of the OP. Look, guys: How the heck to get the students with native ability, but otherwise disadvantaged, doing well? Well, as in the OP, that's tough. But, but, but, but, but, but, if we think a little, just a little, and actually read my post, just a little, guys, not much, we will see that I offered a solution. And the solution is, and may I have the envelope please? Here it is: Go for math and learn to work the exercises. By that, let me clarify -- work the exercises and learn to do that. Now to be more clear, in the relevant math books, there are exercises, lots of them, and the good news for students is to learn to work them, not the students, the exercises, the exercises in the books. Did mention the exercises? Look, guys, it's the exercises. Let me spell it out for you -- e.x.e.r.c.i.s.e.s. Clear enough? No tutors, charter schools, special schools, YouTube, courses, credits, grades, teachers. Q. How to do that? A. First, get a book. Second read the book. Third, and may I have the envelope, please? Here it is: Amazing. Work the exercises. Q. How is a disadvantaged student to know this? A. Uh, I posted it here, and maybe they read it here. Q. But, but, but, how is a disadvantaged student to be able to work the exercises? A. Uh, did I mention (1) get a book and (2) read the book? Sorry, I intended to mention those two. Q. But, but, ..., how can they do anything in a poor school with a disadvantaged background? A. Uh, did I mention work the exercises? I thought I mentioned the exercises. Q. But, how can the disadvantaged students do that in a poor school with poor other students, with poor or no good teachers in math, and poor or no good math courses? A. Gee, I thought I covered that here: (1) Get a book. (2) Read the book. (3) Work the exercises. I guess I've been just too brief; I needed to write a 1 million byte PDF with 90 chapters with the first 30 on "Get a book", with the next 30 on "Read the book", and the last 30 on "Work the exercises". Q. But, but, but, how, how, how, again, again, again, without a teacher? A. Uh, I thought I covered that: (1) Book. (2) Read. (3) Exercises. Q. Impossible. A. BS. Instead, that's not impossible. Indeed, it is a good way. But no sense in my insulting a good idea -- it's the best way. I'm still insulting a good idea -- for my second step, research, it's the only way. Or, for this last, how many full profs do you see in classes trying to learn? None. They teach themselves, alone, no courses, credits, grades, teachers, books, or exercises. So, in fact, learning math is possible even without a good book and exercises. Look, guys, that's how I learned math. Yup, there were some courses. But in grades 9-12, I mostly ignored the teachers. Instead I did (1)-(3) -- we remember those. Indeed in grade 10, plane geometry, the teacher was really ugly and offensive. So, in class I ignored her and had my head down sleeping. She thought I was a bad student. BS. On the objective state exam, I was 1-2 in the class. At my high school, of 1-2-3 on the Math SATs, I was 2. In plane geometry, why? I worked the exercises, not the trivial ones she assigned, not the easy ones in the main part of the book, but the more difficult supplementary ones in the back of the book, 100% of them, about 10 a day. All of them. One took me from Friday afternoon to late Sunday. In class on Monday the teacher couldn't work that one; neither could anyone else. Calculus? I went to a college I could walk too. They wouldn't let me take calculus. So, I (1) got the book, (2) read the book, (3) worked the exercises. Alone. No teacher involved. The next summer I was taking a course in German at a good college with a good math department I was to transfer to. There was one exercise in the calculus book where I did want to ask a prof. So, I walked to the math department and asked the first math prof I'd seen. He was willing to help. Fine, one exercise. I explained I wanted to start as a sophomore that fall with their sophomore calculus, and he gave me a fast oral exam and concluded I was well prepared. Then he said that he couldn't give me credit for the freshman course without my taking it. I told him I wasn't asking for credit and just wanted to start on their sophomore calculus. I did. Made As. So, actually, I never took freshman calculus. Taught it, learned advanced calculus, applied it (once saved FedEx with it), published peer-review original research in it, but never took it. It went on that way: Sometimes the courses helped a little, but the secret was (1)-(3). As a college senior I got a copy of the challenging Kelley, General Topology, got a reading course, used (1)-(3), gave a lecture a week to a prof, one week the material, the next the exercises, through the book. The prof helped me with NOTHING. I did fine. Later I did much more using (1)-(3). Then I went for a Ph.D. at one of the world's best research universities. On the qualifying exams, I did the best on three of the exams, the three where I'd taught myself. Look, guys, if a student in high school uses (1)-(3), does well with that material, wanders into the math department of a college or university, picks the first math prof they see with some gray hair, asks a few questions, shows that they can work the exercises I listed together with others in relevant books, then, dollars to donuts, they, presto, bingo, just got a scholarship as a math major at that college. No damn joke. Look, guys, that was all 99% fully clear from just my first post. Look, guys, some students with disadvantaged backgrounds, with no books or teachers, do really, really well at basketball. Somehow they do. If such a student wanders into the gym at a university, stands at the three point line, and tosses in, nothing but net, 9 out of 10, can dribble, can run, can run the basic plays, then guess how they get through college? Sure, presto, bingo, they just got an athletic scholarship. Are we learning yet? The OP was struggling with such issues, and I just explained that for math there is a solution, (1) get a book, (2) read the book, (3) work the exercises. What books? Okay. In high school, five books: First year algebra. Plane geometry. Second year algebra. Trigonometry. Solid geometry. There are plenty of good books, old, used, cheap. Still in high school, plus one more: Calculus. College calculus. IMHO AP Calculus is junk, written by people who didn't understand calculus. So, do college calculus. The book should have some analytic geometry in the beginning -- that's fun material so learn that, too. There are plenty of highly polished calculus books, old, used, dirt cheap. Learn calculus from such a text. To do still better, also work about half the exercises from two other such books. Do that while still in high school, as soon as get through trig and solid. Then take the SAT that tests knowledge in math. Get at least 700. Walk to a college, walk into the math department, with the SAT paper showing that SAT math knowledge score, with the rest I mentioned, and get a scholarship as a math major. How to pay for the SAT tests? Write up very neatly the solutions to the exercises I posted in this thread, mail them to James Simons at Renaissance Technologies, East Setauket, New York, and ask him to pay the Math SAT fee for you. Dollars to donuts, you will get the fee. For some of those exercises, even Simons may not have seen them or even know where to find them -- no joke, trust me! Then in college, and no law against doing these in high school, books abstract algebra, linear algebra, advanced calculus, measure theory and functional analysis, high level probability based on measure theory, intermediate statistics and then high level statistics. Will then know the statistics in the OP much better than the author of the OP. Maybe also do optimization, linear programming, network linear programming, non-linear programming and the Kuhn-Tucker conditions. For more, read anything by D. Bertsekas at MIT and D. Luenberger at Stanford. For linear algebra, start with, say, Hoffman and Kunze (free as a PDF on the Internet) and, then, by all means, Halmos, Finite Dimensional Vector Spaces (written at the knee of von Neumann). Take the Math GRE, get 800 (I did), and apply to math grad school. Expect to go for free. I did. For some of the exercises I posted, will have to cover much of this college material first. Do some research, publish it, see if you can call it your Ph.D. dissertation. I did that, independently, but used something else I'd done, alone, independently, before grad school for my dissertation.
calebl 9y ago
Loved this article. It presents a compelling case that most colleges are providing near-equivalent education, and that the variance is mostly in selection bias. My only objection: at the end, the author takes issue with the fact that it's nearly impossible to get people to take selection bias into account when choosing where to send their kids. However, there's another possible factor that I think parents might be considering: the network of connections that I build when I go to school X. Even if Harvard gives my daughter the same educational quality that, say, Florida State gives her... if she's likely to form a network of friends that are all approximately 100x higher in net worth, then if I care about her long-term economic outcomes, I'd still try hard to send her to Harvard, no? I'm not saying that's ideal, and it's most certainly an outcome of the exact selection bias you're talking about... just that it's a semi-rational choice for the parents, because school choices can often be about non-educational effects. Just my two cents, though... I could be way off. And regardless, thanks for the article.. definitely made me think about the topic more than I had.
- fragsworth 9y ago
  I think the network is overrated. Everyone I've known has had the same experience - immediately after graduating, everyone gets a job, moves far away from one another, and slowly drifts apart from the friends they met in college. You'll get a similar network working at your first job. And then your second job. The group you met in college is of little consequence in the end.
  - taneq 9y ago
    To give an opposing anecdote, I've landed more than half of my full time permanent positions through personal recommendations or references from people I know from university. And these jobs have by far been more interesting and/or better for my career than ones I found through recruiters or vacancy ads.
    - wott 9y ago
      So, recommendations and references from people who never saw you at work. There's something wrong about that. I am not saying it doesn't happen, it does, but it still makes very little sense.
lifeisstillgood 9y ago
""" You believe that making your state’s high school graduates more competitive in college admissions is a key aspect of improving the economy of the state. """ Well there's your problem. The link between educational attainment of a country and productivity is weak at best. (Switzerland being a good example of low university attendance and outrageously good economy) Ha Joon Chang was quite persuasive on this - and suggests that the imaginary governor of the article should look to fix his states economy with focusing on improving the eco system of the economy - longer term more patient capital, regulatory regiemes that force longer term investment and behaviour, picking winners and protecting nascent growth industries. All the bad things.
alejohausner 9y ago
A while ago I read a review of a book called "The trouble with diversity" by Walter Benn Michaels. I was struck by his claim that universities serve to "launder privilege into qualifications". To me, this helps to emphasize the importance of class in America. Rich kids go to Harvard, after graduating from wonderful high schools, helped by private tutors, and, most importantly, knowing that their wealth and their parents' connections will guarantee them success. But since America is supposedly the land of equal opportunity, those kids must put on a facade to the world, which tells other people a lie: I succeeded because I'm smart, not because I'm rich.
- PeanutCurry 9y ago
  I think this depends on what you frame what an opportunity is. Giving everyone the opportunity to try and meet a certain criteria in order for you to accept them into whatever job/institution you represent is a binary opportunity in theory. They'll either meet the criteria or they won't. If you frame being able to cultivate the skills to meet your criteria as being an opportunity in itself then that negates your offering as being an 'opportunity'.
- vostok 9y ago
  > I succeeded because I'm smart, not because I'm rich. This is a fair point, but in many cases you need to be rich, hard working, and smart. This is a major improvement over the old system where you just need to be rich. This is not a uniquely American phenomenon. Top universities in the UK and top grandes ecoles in France are also dominated by the middle class. I'm sure other countries are like that too if not worse. I think any system with inequality will have this issue. Parents want to help their children and some parents will have a greater ability to do so. This is not unique to capitalism either. I'm sure those of us from the Soviet Union will be intimately familiar with the concept of блат, which is significantly more pernicious than wealthy children doing better because they have tutors.
  - frubar 9y ago
    >This is a fair point, but in many cases you need to be rich, hard working, and smart. Like Paris Hilton, Kim Kardasian, etc.? No, rich is still the only requirement. Those other things just give you more options.
ajuc 9y ago
> People involved with the private high schools liked to brag about the high scores their students scored on standardized tests – without bothering to mention that you had to score well on such a test to get into them in the first place. This is, as I’ve said before, akin to having a height requirement for your school and then bragging about how tall your student body is. Of course, that's a bad analogy, because average height isn't correlated with the amount of time teachers have to spend on OTHER kids, but average grades of the kids - is (inversely), so parents still prefer schools where other kids are as "smart" as possible, because that indirectly benefits their kids (more attention of teachers for their kid, higher expectations, peer pressure to perform, etc). So - selection bias is one of the reasons kids do better, but that doesn't mean it doesn't also make teachers do better. By the way, in my country (Poland) public universities are considered better, than the private ones (because of historical reasons, and the way free university education works). There's still selection bias (best students go to public universities and don't have to pay for education, so these universities have the best students and teachers, and the best results), but it's mostly unrelated to students' wealth (apart from extremes where kids don't have food or time to do homework in primary school, etc). Do you still consider selection bias in education a bad thing, if it's only about results, not about your family, connections, wealth, etc.? It's easier to teach a group of people on similar skill level, than a group of people where a third is bored, a third is learning, and the rest don't get what's going on.
- AstralStorm 9y ago
  Selection bias makes it also easier to implement special measures. You know where the hot spots are and they are not diffuse. (FWIW I live in Poland and had a short run with our private education system on both ends.) What has to be fought is discrimination in employment based on the origin of degrees. All too common. There is enough of this based on connections already.
novaleaf 9y ago
The article's hypothetical gubernatorial scenario is a big turn off. It states that Mississippi has higher SAT scores than Connecticut so Connecticut's Teacher Unions are bad. As the article doesn't at all remark on the suspicious causality of that, it makes me more skeptical of the rest of the article.
- cefstat 9y ago
  That’s not at all what the article claims. It presents a hypothetical scenario, based on real SAT average scores, where somebody can reach a very wrong conclusion (teacher unions are bad) based on this data. Then the article proceeds to explain how the difference in the average scores can be attributed to self-selection among students who take the SAT rather than unions. So, the article not only remarks on the suspicious causality but the suspicious causality is the article’s main point.
  - novaleaf 9y ago
    I understand what you are saying, but really don't think that suspicious causality is what the article is about at all. It's about selection bias. (not the same as causality) Indeed after reading the article I feel it is generally well written and compelling. However the contrived teacher union scenario is a big distraction for me as I was reading the article hoping that issue would be addressed and it wasn't. It would have been much stronger without this gaping logic hole introduced in the beginning.
WalterBright 9y ago
"People involved with the private high schools liked to brag about the high scores their students scored on standardized tests – without bothering to mention that you had to score well on such a test to get into them in the first place." Few private schools have entrance exams. Most only care if the tuition check doesn't bounce.
dalbasal 9y ago
In education this is particularly bad. Students and parents also steer into selection bias under the assumption that peer groups are important. But, to generalize the point into public discourse broadly: "Statistics are a problem." A lot of public discourse revolve around quantitative arguments like this. Police shootings, women's 83 cents on the dollar, British Muslims' on Sharia, unemployment rates... Even in the more intellectual branches of public discourse, bad arguments with a similar flavour can be the dominant ones.
programminggeek 9y ago
Someday, people will wise up to the fact that success has more to do with psychological programming than resources. Actually they won't because they won't ever get enough of the programming themselves to realize it.
nichtich 9y ago
I've read the research about Stuyvesant, and several other articles with similar theme. The data and reasoning seems quite convincing. It's just I can't reconcile it with my personal experience. All these studies seems to suggest it doesn't matter much where you go to school, everything is already decided. But I know I've learned things in school, things that I can't expect to learn quite systematically should I just teach myself. And I also know there are schools that don't teach much, where teachers are exhausted for just maintaining order and keep violence to an acceptable level. It seems pretty obvious that I wouldn't learn much in this kind of environment. Maybe I can still get to a similar level as I am today but it be would much much harder.

385 points by gfredtech 9y ago

A simple thought experiment. Consider bussing kids from 'good' places to bad and from 'bad' to good. See after how long their outcomes become equivalent. Do so at different grade levels to measure the convergence time versus age of displacement. And now for the actual experiment: how do you impactfully present such results? I assume no outcome. Just the existence of an outcome. I posit that priceless data would be worthless in American society.

Analemma_ 9y ago
How many parents, who probably paid a lot of money and work two full-time jobs to live in the "good" place so their kids could go to the good school, are going to be OK with this experiment? Do you plan to force them, if there aren't enough volunteers to get statistically significant results?
- nibstwo 9y ago
  All school is private. Sometimes you pay tuition, which seems better for accountability, and sometimes you pay more for housing. That people send their kids to school is unfortunate. It seems like if you took the daycare out of it, school would not be structured the way that it is at all. It is a source of daycare for children first, and an attempt at productively using that time second.
- santaclaus 9y ago
  San Francisco, some of America's most expensive real estate, doesn't tie school assignments to geography. The system hasn't been voted out yet.
  - haihaibye 9y ago
    30 percent of children in San Francisco attend private schools — the highest rate of private-school attendance in California, and the third-highest in the nation
- RhysU 9y ago
  The thought experiment isn't doing the bussing (effectively impossible as others have noted). The thought experiment is how would you present the resulting data.
marcoperaza 9y ago
Such busing was court-mandated in the US for several decades. It is widely considered to have been a failure.
- frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
  That depends on what you classify as failure. It failed in the sense that the white and wealthy mostly fled to the suburbs and reversed any progress integration had made. It succeeded in the sense that in the places and times where schools were well integrated the racial achievement gap closed.
  - toxiccwm 9y ago
    Do you have any pointers to data showing this close? Most of what I've seen shows the gap being shockingly persistent in the face of intervention across a wide variety of systems, but I'm always looking for more.
    - boomboomsubban 9y ago
      I reccomend Malcolm Gladwell's podcast on the subject. He makes a strong argument that the failure to integrate teachers to any degree caused a large part of the failure. Some of his sources are on the page, but I haven't reviewed them well personally. http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/13-miss-buchanans-period-of-adjustment http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/13-miss-buchanans-per...
  - gmarx 9y ago
    The racial achievement gap closed? That would be a huge story and I would be surprised if I missed it...unless you mean the gap closed within the school (i.e. not relative to society at large) because the remaining whites achievements were lower than the average before they fled, i.e. selection bias :)
    - devinhelton 9y ago
      To save people from litigating busing, there was a thread on this earlier this year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13902960 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13902960 (I cited evidence saying that busing did not close the gap).
wmil 9y ago
Aren't you basically describing the desegregation bussing that the US has had since the 50s? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desegregation_busing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desegregation_busing
- RhysU 9y ago
  Somewhat. I am hypthesizing more than ethnicity being used.
  - bpchaps 9y ago
    Something like a magnet school? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnet_school https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnet_school
ChemicalWarfare 9y ago
>> Consider bussing kids from 'good' places to bad and from 'bad' to good. there's different types of 'good' and 'bad'. for example, the whole IQ thing came into the light in the UK when poor Jewish kids from the ghetto (bad) were clearly outperforming their non-Jewish counterparts from more affluent (good) neighborhoods.
overflowstack 9y ago
I'm not a fan of bussing. It is unfair to the good kids. "Bad" kids know how to deal with other "bad" kids. They grow up in that environment and know the rules of the game. Good kids grow up in a different environment. The consequences of not knowing to handle oneself around "bad" kids are very high. There is no doubt that on average "bad" kids are much bigger bullies with lower empathy. The consequences of not knowing how to conduct oneself around good kids as a "bad" kid are much lower in severity. For the most part, the parents of good kids set limits to the aggression of their children. For example, the biggest social rejects at my upper middle class schools weren't ever really bullied. People pitied the complete rejects and most people thought anyone who would bully the rejects is a complete douchebag. I can't imagine how the social rejects or even the normal nerdy kids at my high school would have fared at a "bad" school. Then there is the minority immigrant issue. Segregation is good for certain minority groups that do not have the language skills and cultural knowledge to integrate into America. They segregate themselves into a separate community that can provide support for its members. Desegregating these communities and their children will have negative effects. The children of these immigrants will have the worst time dealing with the "bad" kids because they may have stunted language skills and lack cultural knowledge and context to be able to effectively navigate bad situations. And to get a better picture of the winners and losers: - > 90% of African Americans are born in America (and presumably have parents, family and connections who know English and understand American culture). - Spanish is ubiquitous in the USA and the Hispanic population is huge. Hispanic people have a much lower need to congregate into a community compared to other minorities.

bluGill 9y ago

Sending a troubled kid to a great private school probably will cause the kid to do better: because all the other students are doing well the bad students peers are working hard so the bad student sees that example and is likely to succumb to peer pressure and do better. For this to work the troubled kid needs to be kept out of the gangs and whatever else outside of school will lead to bad examples. However selection bias already does this: parents who care enough to send their kid to a private school are involved enough with their kid that they would probably do this anyway. In short these are kids that might have been troubled, but they still would have been at the top of the troubled group.

habitue 9y ago
You can almost postulate a sort of "memetic herd-immunity" where if a large enough proportion of the student population is inoculated against bad study habits, a few stragglers will be ok. But if the balance tips too far, the stragglers start joining up and reinforcing each others' bad study habits.
sololipsist 9y ago
> Sending a troubled kid to a great private school probably will cause the kid to do better ... However selection bias already does this Funny thing, though. We've done a bunch of studies on this and it doesn't actually help. The people who care about their kids more getting them into better schools, yes - but placing the kids of parents who don't care into better schools, no. This has been shown time and time again. The best results to the contrary managed this by ... drumroll ... designing selection bias into the study.
- throwaway613834 9y ago
  > Funny thing, though. We've done a bunch of studies on this and it doesn't actually help. > This has been shown time and time again. One would think a link to at least one study would be appropriate here?
  - simonh 9y ago

leongrado 9y ago

I'm from the midwest and most people who weren't aiming for Ivy Leagues just took the ACT.

jblumstein 9y ago
Yah. It's weird that de Boer argues selection bias is in play in SAT participation between MS (3%) and CT (88%) when 100% of MS high schoolers take the ACT. That seems to be what's happening here: the kids in MS taking the SAT in addition to the ACT are the ones aiming for elite schools.
- boomboomsubban 9y ago
  >the kids in MS taking the SAT in addition to the ACT are the ones aiming for elite schools Which is an extreme selection bias. The ACT should have been mentioned to provide more context, but the actual argument works without it.
  - jblumstein 9y ago
    You say it better than I do. Agreed it's an extreme selection bias, just want to point out that it's slightly different than the one de Boer seemed to be pointing out.
    - boomboomsubban 9y ago
      It's still the same bias he argues, the three percent are the most motivated and prepared. Why the other 97% skip it isn't relevant in this argument, but the number is independently shocking without the context. I fell for it until the ND mention, and I took the ACT.
- aetherson 9y ago
  That's... exactly what he said.
  - 9y ago

hyperion2010 9y ago

That tricky thing when dealing with humans: are they learning because of our efforts to teach them or in spite of them?

jgalt212 9y ago

He was wearing my Harvard tie. Can you believe it? My Harvard tie. Like oh, sure he went to Harvard. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086465/quotes http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086465/quotes

graycat 9y ago

For pure math, by far, essentially the only, "force" in education is being able to work the exercises. That's ugrad school. For more, be able to do new, correct, and significant original research in math. And that's all Folks! Nothing but nothing, nichts, nil, nada, zip, zilch, zero, not social skills, not presentation of self, not frequency of bathing, not haircut or hair style, not clothes, not politics, not race, not gender, not country of origin matters at all. Example: For positive integer n and the set of real number R, show that, on any finite intersection of closed half spaces C in R^n, any linear function that is bounded above on C achieves its least upper bound on C. Example: In a separable metric space, each closed set is the union of a perfect and a set that is at most countable. Example: Prove that there are no countably infinite sigma algebras. Example: For positive integer n and the set R of real numbers, for any closed set C in R^n, there exists a function f: R^n --> R so that f(x) = 0 for all x in C, f(x) > 0 otherwise, and f is infinitely differentiable. Examle: For positive integer n and the set of real numbers R, show that convex f: R^n --> R is continuous. Example: For triangle ABC, by Euclidean construction, find D on AB and E on BC so that the lengths AD = DE = EC.

spunker540 9y ago

I think the real problem described is that people are judging schools based on the performance of their students. There are other objective factors that won't be as affected by selection bias such as: breadth of extra-curricular options in sports and in the arts. Number of AP classes offered. Teacher to student ratio. Budget per student. Does the school have newer computers, working instruments, modern facilities?

richdougherty 9y ago
Are you saying that people should judge schools based on the inputs that go into the schools rather than on any effects the schools produce in their students?
- spunker540 9y ago
  The article points out the high degree of selection bias with schools and how that can make it very difficult to make apples-to-apples comparisons between schools. I was just trying to mention ways to compare schools that won't be affected by the selection bias described in the article.
  - AstralStorm 9y ago
    A proper analysis will attempt to identify such factors and how important they are. Since the sample size is big enough it is not impossible to determine how much of the effect is those other measurable factors. Selection bias might be measured by the rejection rates on admission (esp. scores rejected)
  - AstralStorm 9y ago
    Since I cannot edit it anymore, also the self selection bias can be measured (less adequately because questionnaires bring their own problems but still).

gnicholas 9y ago

aidenn0 9y ago
Yes quite; for example, kids who are in the 95th percentile of height at 9th grade might be only in the 60th percentile of height at 12th grade.
- gnicholas 9y ago
  The example wasn't about height percentiles, which can change. it was about raw height. If his example had been about percentiles, then it wouldn't have been such a stark no-brainer. Because a high school that admits only taller students would be mostly girls, and by 12th grade they would be shorter than many/most boys. I was taking issue with the example as given. If it were framed the way you suggested, it would not have had the rhetorical power that it did (at least at first glance).
  - aidenn0 9y ago
    It is assumed that schools bragging about how tall their students are are not doing so in a vacuum, and that they aren't bragging that their 12th graders are taller than the other school's 9th graders, no?

ngrilly 9y ago

This is simply the best article I've ever read on this topic.

Nelkins 9y ago

A professor at the University of Rochester (my alma mater) has begun a project to better evaluate the value of a liberal arts education, and to try and quantify what impact it truly has on the career trajectories and future earnings of graduates[1]. [1] https://www.rochester.edu/pr/Review/V79N6/0304_lennie.html https://www.rochester.edu/pr/Review/V79N6/0304_lennie.html

mulmen 9y ago
The benefits of a higher education are more than just career path and earnings.
- JSONwebtoken 9y ago
  There is no evidence of this.
  - qntty 9y ago
    This is such an absurdly HN comment.
- mmirate 9y ago
  Perhaps they are, perhaps they aren't; I'm not a Doctor of Education, so I can't and won't claim that I know the answer to that question. My question to you, is applicable regardless: As an industry-destined BSCS student, in what ways does my future improve as a result of my education, except for career path and earnings? And if there are such (nontrivial) ways, then why should I care about them?
  - mulmen 9y ago
    I can only speak from personal experience but I grew a great deal as a person while pursuing my B.S. I had experiences and met people I never would have otherwise. I very nearly stayed in my small rural town working retail and farming jobs but my education opened doors to new people and experiences. My worldview is much different now than it was before college and my life is much more fulfilling on a personal level. While I was fortunate to select a degree that had positive economic benefits for me that is far from the only benefit. My B.S. was far from just a job training course. I studied a variety of topics and was exposed to ideas that I never considered before. I learned to think much more critically and to be more open to the world. You should care about this because money and a job are not everything in life. I know that sounds cliche but I am finally reaching a point in my life where I understand that. My education helped me reach this point. I really cannot say enough about how much my education means to me. Even if I did not leverage that education to start my career I would still consider it to be completely worth it.

grandalf 9y ago

I think a corollary of the author's point is that by the time someone is college age, selection bias is the most powerful force in education. I'd be curious to see a study of younger people to see if perhaps there are some assimilation effects.

glangdale 9y ago

This is a good article. I wish I could force everyone who pontificates on schooling in Australia to read it. We have an enormous private school system (part govt-funded, which is gross) that can get rid of students as they please. Then they go on to verbally dump shit on the public system, where they get to dump their problem students. Nice. We also have a real fetish for selective schools, which are essentially selection bias driven to a huge extent. Any suggestion that this isn't a good idea is met by an chorus of "you must hate smart people".

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schoen 9y ago
As I read this article, it didn't suggest that selective schools are bad or improper, but that they may greatly mislead us about causality or what particular institutions and methods are or aren't accomplishing.
uiwldiowd 9y ago
Very similar in the US, actually, although maybe not with quite as large of a private system (although some would like to change this). Very similar problems. I've had friends who work in the US school system who complain about this same issue--that private schools are immune to many problems because they can just pass the buck onto someone else. The linked piece is very nice, and illustrates the selection bias problem extremely well. One additional comment I might have is about variance. That is, in the figure with red and blue plots, those means are hiding within-school variance. In data I've seen, what often happens is that the lower-status schools often have more variance in them. So in some ways the problem with selection bias is maybe even worse than what the author suggests, because people not only tend to attribute to schools what was pre-existing, but they also tend to stereotype. E.g., you went to a school on the left side of that figure, so you're lower in ability and/or learning than on the right, even though you might be at the upper end of the distribution of the whole figure. This pertains to vocation too: people tend to assume certain vocations are signals of lower cognitive ability than others, when the reality is that uncertainly only increases for some. The other thing I might mention is some social benefits to attending selective schools. The author at times seems to imply that "talented people will end up doing well regardless of where they go" somewhat dismissively. I think this was probably unintentional, but I think that's not exactly true in the way that people care about, because the studies that are done are kind of coarse. That is, if you study outcomes, they tend to be things like general income, or terminal degree attained (undergrad, master's, doctoral), or whatever. In that sense, things are fine. But because of social connections, people might not get into the particular job they want, whereas another person is given a free pass, or might be at a state-level position rather than a federal-level position, or whatever. That is, there are real consequences to overlooking selection bias, that have real importance for people, but tend to get fuzzed over in studies because it's difficult to study.

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jstewartmobile 9y ago

Parents, teachers, and students are so focused on "education" as a pedigree and job pipeline that if they don't see an immediate connection between a topic and a paycheck they're like "Who cares?! Why are you wasting my kid's time on that?" When the whole thing is an exercise in competitive pedigreeing, of course it's going to be gamed. If it were more about human development, we'd be focusing on the deltas instead, and they'd be harder to fudge.

gnaritas 9y ago
They're not wrong to worry about that, it's a rough world out there and getting a good job is vastly more important to most people than "human development". Parents don't send their kids to college to become better people, they do it to make sure they have a skill that can lead to a career so they can survive on their own. Only the rich have the luxury of being concerned about something other than a job.
- convolvatron 9y ago
  some people get to work in a creative job (I think being successful in STEM is more creative than people generally account for). in which case all that human development is pretty important.
- oDot 9y ago
  They are wrong to worry about that. The world is dynamic, and human development, the way I interpret it, will help the students deal with the world they go out to. Better people will deal with what comes their way. Maybe today it's a job, but tomorrow it'll be something else. Students who were only thought how to build software, will have a hard time dealing with life when robots starts building software instead of them. First have better people, then let better people be better and bring themselves to prosperity.
  - gnaritas 9y ago
    Again, all easy things to worry about when you're not trying to just survive as most people are. Most people are worried about far more practical things that being "better people".

mbillie1 9y ago

Nothing of substance to contribute but I'm immensely pleased to see Freddie DeBoer writing again.

guyzero 9y ago

This has long been my assertion about elite undergraduate engineering schools. The teaching is usually just OK but their main advantage is that they get to "skim the cream" from the applicant pool.

terrahutte 9y ago

My school has a large Chinese international student body. The school is marketed as being diverse, but really those students are from wealthy families and can easily afford the 40k+ tuition. In the end, the campus isn't diverse, it is segregated. But at least the uni has more money for research.

sabujp 9y ago
majority of that mooney doesn't go to research, it goes to admin

LiweiZ 9y ago

Education is about doing things at scale. Learning is about individual gain on delta. I believe better personal tools for learning could do a better job for individuals on average.

thisrod 9y ago

I'm amazed by the range of completion rates in that first scatter plot. Here are the Australian figures, for contrast. Note that living in the NT is strongly correlated with being Indigenous. (Indigenous Australians are the people formerly known as Aborigines.) http://www.mitchellinstitute.org.au/fact-sheets/senior-school-years-school-completion-uneven-across-australia/ http://www.mitchellinstitute.org.au/fact-sheets/senior-schoo...

bwanab 9y ago
I assume your amazement is because some states have such low rates. If so, this is very misleading since there are two competing tests in the US (ACT and SAT). The states that have low rates for SAT almost all have very high rates for ACT and vice-versa. In fact, looking at the chart you can see that it is a split distribution.

neves 9y ago

I like the way the best public schools in Brazil select: randomly. In the first years is just a draw, in the advanced ones they have just a proficiency test, and then draw among who not failed.

graycat 9y ago

Uh, look, guys who didn't like my post: If you read carefully and think a little, just a little, not much at all, just a very little, you will see that my post is about the only item, ray of light, for the concerns of the OP. Look, guys: How the heck to get the students with native ability, but otherwise disadvantaged, doing well? Well, as in the OP, that's tough. But, but, but, but, but, but, if we think a little, just a little, and actually read my post, just a little, guys, not much, we will see that I offered a solution. And the solution is, and may I have the envelope please? Here it is: Go for math and learn to work the exercises. By that, let me clarify -- work the exercises and learn to do that. Now to be more clear, in the relevant math books, there are exercises, lots of them, and the good news for students is to learn to work them, not the students, the exercises, the exercises in the books. Did mention the exercises? Look, guys, it's the exercises. Let me spell it out for you -- e.x.e.r.c.i.s.e.s. Clear enough? No tutors, charter schools, special schools, YouTube, courses, credits, grades, teachers. Q. How to do that? A. First, get a book. Second read the book. Third, and may I have the envelope, please? Here it is: Amazing. Work the exercises. Q. How is a disadvantaged student to know this? A. Uh, I posted it here, and maybe they read it here. Q. But, but, but, how is a disadvantaged student to be able to work the exercises? A. Uh, did I mention (1) get a book and (2) read the book? Sorry, I intended to mention those two. Q. But, but, ..., how can they do anything in a poor school with a disadvantaged background? A. Uh, did I mention work the exercises? I thought I mentioned the exercises. Q. But, how can the disadvantaged students do that in a poor school with poor other students, with poor or no good teachers in math, and poor or no good math courses? A. Gee, I thought I covered that here: (1) Get a book. (2) Read the book. (3) Work the exercises. I guess I've been just too brief; I needed to write a 1 million byte PDF with 90 chapters with the first 30 on "Get a book", with the next 30 on "Read the book", and the last 30 on "Work the exercises". Q. But, but, but, how, how, how, again, again, again, without a teacher? A. Uh, I thought I covered that: (1) Book. (2) Read. (3) Exercises. Q. Impossible. A. BS. Instead, that's not impossible. Indeed, it is a good way. But no sense in my insulting a good idea -- it's the best way. I'm still insulting a good idea -- for my second step, research, it's the only way. Or, for this last, how many full profs do you see in classes trying to learn? None. They teach themselves, alone, no courses, credits, grades, teachers, books, or exercises. So, in fact, learning math is possible even without a good book and exercises. Look, guys, that's how I learned math. Yup, there were some courses. But in grades 9-12, I mostly ignored the teachers. Instead I did (1)-(3) -- we remember those. Indeed in grade 10, plane geometry, the teacher was really ugly and offensive. So, in class I ignored her and had my head down sleeping. She thought I was a bad student. BS. On the objective state exam, I was 1-2 in the class. At my high school, of 1-2-3 on the Math SATs, I was 2. In plane geometry, why? I worked the exercises, not the trivial ones she assigned, not the easy ones in the main part of the book, but the more difficult supplementary ones in the back of the book, 100% of them, about 10 a day. All of them. One took me from Friday afternoon to late Sunday. In class on Monday the teacher couldn't work that one; neither could anyone else. Calculus? I went to a college I could walk too. They wouldn't let me take calculus. So, I (1) got the book, (2) read the book, (3) worked the exercises. Alone. No teacher involved. The next summer I was taking a course in German at a good college with a good math department I was to transfer to. There was one exercise in the calculus book where I did want to ask a prof. So, I walked to the math department and asked the first math prof I'd seen. He was willing to help. Fine, one exercise. I explained I wanted to start as a sophomore that fall with their sophomore calculus, and he gave me a fast oral exam and concluded I was well prepared. Then he said that he couldn't give me credit for the freshman course without my taking it. I told him I wasn't asking for credit and just wanted to start on their sophomore calculus. I did. Made As. So, actually, I never took freshman calculus. Taught it, learned advanced calculus, applied it (once saved FedEx with it), published peer-review original research in it, but never took it. It went on that way: Sometimes the courses helped a little, but the secret was (1)-(3). As a college senior I got a copy of the challenging Kelley, General Topology, got a reading course, used (1)-(3), gave a lecture a week to a prof, one week the material, the next the exercises, through the book. The prof helped me with NOTHING. I did fine. Later I did much more using (1)-(3). Then I went for a Ph.D. at one of the world's best research universities. On the qualifying exams, I did the best on three of the exams, the three where I'd taught myself. Look, guys, if a student in high school uses (1)-(3), does well with that material, wanders into the math department of a college or university, picks the first math prof they see with some gray hair, asks a few questions, shows that they can work the exercises I listed together with others in relevant books, then, dollars to donuts, they, presto, bingo, just got a scholarship as a math major at that college. No damn joke. Look, guys, that was all 99% fully clear from just my first post. Look, guys, some students with disadvantaged backgrounds, with no books or teachers, do really, really well at basketball. Somehow they do. If such a student wanders into the gym at a university, stands at the three point line, and tosses in, nothing but net, 9 out of 10, can dribble, can run, can run the basic plays, then guess how they get through college? Sure, presto, bingo, they just got an athletic scholarship. Are we learning yet? The OP was struggling with such issues, and I just explained that for math there is a solution, (1) get a book, (2) read the book, (3) work the exercises. What books? Okay. In high school, five books: First year algebra. Plane geometry. Second year algebra. Trigonometry. Solid geometry. There are plenty of good books, old, used, cheap. Still in high school, plus one more: Calculus. College calculus. IMHO AP Calculus is junk, written by people who didn't understand calculus. So, do college calculus. The book should have some analytic geometry in the beginning -- that's fun material so learn that, too. There are plenty of highly polished calculus books, old, used, dirt cheap. Learn calculus from such a text. To do still better, also work about half the exercises from two other such books. Do that while still in high school, as soon as get through trig and solid. Then take the SAT that tests knowledge in math. Get at least 700. Walk to a college, walk into the math department, with the SAT paper showing that SAT math knowledge score, with the rest I mentioned, and get a scholarship as a math major. How to pay for the SAT tests? Write up very neatly the solutions to the exercises I posted in this thread, mail them to James Simons at Renaissance Technologies, East Setauket, New York, and ask him to pay the Math SAT fee for you. Dollars to donuts, you will get the fee. For some of those exercises, even Simons may not have seen them or even know where to find them -- no joke, trust me! Then in college, and no law against doing these in high school, books abstract algebra, linear algebra, advanced calculus, measure theory and functional analysis, high level probability based on measure theory, intermediate statistics and then high level statistics. Will then know the statistics in the OP much better than the author of the OP. Maybe also do optimization, linear programming, network linear programming, non-linear programming and the Kuhn-Tucker conditions. For more, read anything by D. Bertsekas at MIT and D. Luenberger at Stanford. For linear algebra, start with, say, Hoffman and Kunze (free as a PDF on the Internet) and, then, by all means, Halmos, Finite Dimensional Vector Spaces (written at the knee of von Neumann). Take the Math GRE, get 800 (I did), and apply to math grad school. Expect to go for free. I did. For some of the exercises I posted, will have to cover much of this college material first. Do some research, publish it, see if you can call it your Ph.D. dissertation. I did that, independently, but used something else I'd done, alone, independently, before grad school for my dissertation.

calebl 9y ago

Loved this article. It presents a compelling case that most colleges are providing near-equivalent education, and that the variance is mostly in selection bias. My only objection: at the end, the author takes issue with the fact that it's nearly impossible to get people to take selection bias into account when choosing where to send their kids. However, there's another possible factor that I think parents might be considering: the network of connections that I build when I go to school X. Even if Harvard gives my daughter the same educational quality that, say, Florida State gives her... if she's likely to form a network of friends that are all approximately 100x higher in net worth, then if I care about her long-term economic outcomes, I'd still try hard to send her to Harvard, no? I'm not saying that's ideal, and it's most certainly an outcome of the exact selection bias you're talking about... just that it's a semi-rational choice for the parents, because school choices can often be about non-educational effects. Just my two cents, though... I could be way off. And regardless, thanks for the article.. definitely made me think about the topic more than I had.

fragsworth 9y ago
I think the network is overrated. Everyone I've known has had the same experience - immediately after graduating, everyone gets a job, moves far away from one another, and slowly drifts apart from the friends they met in college. You'll get a similar network working at your first job. And then your second job. The group you met in college is of little consequence in the end.
- taneq 9y ago
  To give an opposing anecdote, I've landed more than half of my full time permanent positions through personal recommendations or references from people I know from university. And these jobs have by far been more interesting and/or better for my career than ones I found through recruiters or vacancy ads.
  - wott 9y ago
    So, recommendations and references from people who never saw you at work. There's something wrong about that. I am not saying it doesn't happen, it does, but it still makes very little sense.

lifeisstillgood 9y ago

""" You believe that making your state’s high school graduates more competitive in college admissions is a key aspect of improving the economy of the state. """ Well there's your problem. The link between educational attainment of a country and productivity is weak at best. (Switzerland being a good example of low university attendance and outrageously good economy) Ha Joon Chang was quite persuasive on this - and suggests that the imaginary governor of the article should look to fix his states economy with focusing on improving the eco system of the economy - longer term more patient capital, regulatory regiemes that force longer term investment and behaviour, picking winners and protecting nascent growth industries. All the bad things.

alejohausner 9y ago

A while ago I read a review of a book called "The trouble with diversity" by Walter Benn Michaels. I was struck by his claim that universities serve to "launder privilege into qualifications". To me, this helps to emphasize the importance of class in America. Rich kids go to Harvard, after graduating from wonderful high schools, helped by private tutors, and, most importantly, knowing that their wealth and their parents' connections will guarantee them success. But since America is supposedly the land of equal opportunity, those kids must put on a facade to the world, which tells other people a lie: I succeeded because I'm smart, not because I'm rich.

PeanutCurry 9y ago
I think this depends on what you frame what an opportunity is. Giving everyone the opportunity to try and meet a certain criteria in order for you to accept them into whatever job/institution you represent is a binary opportunity in theory. They'll either meet the criteria or they won't. If you frame being able to cultivate the skills to meet your criteria as being an opportunity in itself then that negates your offering as being an 'opportunity'.
vostok 9y ago
> I succeeded because I'm smart, not because I'm rich. This is a fair point, but in many cases you need to be rich, hard working, and smart. This is a major improvement over the old system where you just need to be rich. This is not a uniquely American phenomenon. Top universities in the UK and top grandes ecoles in France are also dominated by the middle class. I'm sure other countries are like that too if not worse. I think any system with inequality will have this issue. Parents want to help their children and some parents will have a greater ability to do so. This is not unique to capitalism either. I'm sure those of us from the Soviet Union will be intimately familiar with the concept of блат, which is significantly more pernicious than wealthy children doing better because they have tutors.
- frubar 9y ago
  >This is a fair point, but in many cases you need to be rich, hard working, and smart. Like Paris Hilton, Kim Kardasian, etc.? No, rich is still the only requirement. Those other things just give you more options.

ajuc 9y ago

> People involved with the private high schools liked to brag about the high scores their students scored on standardized tests – without bothering to mention that you had to score well on such a test to get into them in the first place. This is, as I’ve said before, akin to having a height requirement for your school and then bragging about how tall your student body is. Of course, that's a bad analogy, because average height isn't correlated with the amount of time teachers have to spend on OTHER kids, but average grades of the kids - is (inversely), so parents still prefer schools where other kids are as "smart" as possible, because that indirectly benefits their kids (more attention of teachers for their kid, higher expectations, peer pressure to perform, etc). So - selection bias is one of the reasons kids do better, but that doesn't mean it doesn't also make teachers do better. By the way, in my country (Poland) public universities are considered better, than the private ones (because of historical reasons, and the way free university education works). There's still selection bias (best students go to public universities and don't have to pay for education, so these universities have the best students and teachers, and the best results), but it's mostly unrelated to students' wealth (apart from extremes where kids don't have food or time to do homework in primary school, etc). Do you still consider selection bias in education a bad thing, if it's only about results, not about your family, connections, wealth, etc.? It's easier to teach a group of people on similar skill level, than a group of people where a third is bored, a third is learning, and the rest don't get what's going on.

AstralStorm 9y ago
Selection bias makes it also easier to implement special measures. You know where the hot spots are and they are not diffuse. (FWIW I live in Poland and had a short run with our private education system on both ends.) What has to be fought is discrimination in employment based on the origin of degrees. All too common. There is enough of this based on connections already.

novaleaf 9y ago

The article's hypothetical gubernatorial scenario is a big turn off. It states that Mississippi has higher SAT scores than Connecticut so Connecticut's Teacher Unions are bad. As the article doesn't at all remark on the suspicious causality of that, it makes me more skeptical of the rest of the article.

cefstat 9y ago
That’s not at all what the article claims. It presents a hypothetical scenario, based on real SAT average scores, where somebody can reach a very wrong conclusion (teacher unions are bad) based on this data. Then the article proceeds to explain how the difference in the average scores can be attributed to self-selection among students who take the SAT rather than unions. So, the article not only remarks on the suspicious causality but the suspicious causality is the article’s main point.
- novaleaf 9y ago
  I understand what you are saying, but really don't think that suspicious causality is what the article is about at all. It's about selection bias. (not the same as causality) Indeed after reading the article I feel it is generally well written and compelling. However the contrived teacher union scenario is a big distraction for me as I was reading the article hoping that issue would be addressed and it wasn't. It would have been much stronger without this gaping logic hole introduced in the beginning.

WalterBright 9y ago

"People involved with the private high schools liked to brag about the high scores their students scored on standardized tests – without bothering to mention that you had to score well on such a test to get into them in the first place." Few private schools have entrance exams. Most only care if the tuition check doesn't bounce.

dalbasal 9y ago

In education this is particularly bad. Students and parents also steer into selection bias under the assumption that peer groups are important. But, to generalize the point into public discourse broadly: "Statistics are a problem." A lot of public discourse revolve around quantitative arguments like this. Police shootings, women's 83 cents on the dollar, British Muslims' on Sharia, unemployment rates... Even in the more intellectual branches of public discourse, bad arguments with a similar flavour can be the dominant ones.

programminggeek 9y ago

Someday, people will wise up to the fact that success has more to do with psychological programming than resources. Actually they won't because they won't ever get enough of the programming themselves to realize it.

nichtich 9y ago

I've read the research about Stuyvesant, and several other articles with similar theme. The data and reasoning seems quite convincing. It's just I can't reconcile it with my personal experience. All these studies seems to suggest it doesn't matter much where you go to school, everything is already decided. But I know I've learned things in school, things that I can't expect to learn quite systematically should I just teach myself. And I also know there are schools that don't teach much, where teachers are exhausted for just maintaining order and keep violence to an acceptable level. It seems pretty obvious that I wouldn't learn much in this kind of environment. Maybe I can still get to a similar level as I am today but it be would much much harder.