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Not sure how that conclusion isn’t obvious or self-evident. Obviously, if you have a high quality school with motivated students, chances are their achievement

Not sure how that conclusion isn’t obvious or self-evident. Obviously, if you have a high quality school with motivated students, chances are their achievement will be an order of magnitude higher than students at a poor quality school. The more important question is, how difficult is upward social mobility in 2018?

lazyasciiart 8y ago
Plenty of people have argued that the problem is not the quality of the school but the quality of the students attending it - a.k.a the "culture of poverty" https://thesocietypages.org/roundtables/culture-of-poverty/ https://thesocietypages.org/roundtables/culture-of-poverty/ In fact, some of them are referred to in the study itself as an example of the debate they are addressing - "Advocates of the community-focused approach argue that teachers and school administrators are dealing with issues that originate outside the classroom, citing research that shows racial and socioeconomic achievement gaps are present before children enter school (Fryer and Levitt 2004; 2006) and that one-third to one-half of the gap can be explained by family-environment indicators (Meredith Phillips, James Crouse, and John Ralph 1998; Fryer and Levitt 2004). In this scenario, combating poverty and having more constructive out-of-school time may lead to better and more-focused instruction in school. Indeed, James Coleman et al. (1966), in their famous report on equality of educational opportunity, argue that schools alone cannot treat the problem of chronic underachievement in urban schools. "
- emodendroket 8y ago
  Considering the free medical and dental care, one might argue that that position isn't really in conflict with the success of this school
dagw 8y ago
if you have a high quality school with motivated students Sure, but how do you motivate the students? Does that come automatically with a high quality school or is there more to it? How big a part of a achievement is the motivation and how big part is the school? If you take a failing kid from a poor school and 'force' him to go to a good school is that enough to get the desired improvements? Could you achieve similar effect by just focusing more on the motivation side? While I do have lots of hunches and guesses, I don't see any obvioulsy self-evident answers to any of the questions.
Andre_Wanglin 8y ago
There is an even greater need to empirically prove the "obvious" and "self-evident" as those are the very things no one sufficiently questions.

lazyasciiart 8y ago

Plenty of people have argued that the problem is not the quality of the school but the quality of the students attending it - a.k.a the "culture of poverty" https://thesocietypages.org/roundtables/culture-of-poverty/ https://thesocietypages.org/roundtables/culture-of-poverty/ In fact, some of them are referred to in the study itself as an example of the debate they are addressing - "Advocates of the community-focused approach argue that teachers and school administrators are dealing with issues that originate outside the classroom, citing research that shows racial and socioeconomic achievement gaps are present before children enter school (Fryer and Levitt 2004; 2006) and that one-third to one-half of the gap can be explained by family-environment indicators (Meredith Phillips, James Crouse, and John Ralph 1998; Fryer and Levitt 2004). In this scenario, combating poverty and having more constructive out-of-school time may lead to better and more-focused instruction in school. Indeed, James Coleman et al. (1966), in their famous report on equality of educational opportunity, argue that schools alone cannot treat the problem of chronic underachievement in urban schools. "

emodendroket 8y ago
Considering the free medical and dental care, one might argue that that position isn't really in conflict with the success of this school

dagw 8y ago

if you have a high quality school with motivated students Sure, but how do you motivate the students? Does that come automatically with a high quality school or is there more to it? How big a part of a achievement is the motivation and how big part is the school? If you take a failing kid from a poor school and 'force' him to go to a good school is that enough to get the desired improvements? Could you achieve similar effect by just focusing more on the motivation side? While I do have lots of hunches and guesses, I don't see any obvioulsy self-evident answers to any of the questions.

Andre_Wanglin 8y ago

There is an even greater need to empirically prove the "obvious" and "self-evident" as those are the very things no one sufficiently questions.