3 ms·

What if you just have middling kids? I agree with the gist of your statement, but I'd back up a bit. Put 10 kids from families where education is a key concern

What if you just have middling kids? I agree with the gist of your statement, but I'd back up a bit. Put 10 kids from families where education is a key concern under an oak tree and they will do better than 10 similar kids at the fancy school. I'm all for making teacher's unions more responsible, but they aren't whats failing inner city/rural schools. Its culture, family, and community. If a respect for education doesn't exist in a community no amount of money, technology, teacher reform, or grants will make a difference.

kenjackson 16y ago
I disagree. While all those things you note (culture and family) are extremely important... remember that kids spend a LOT of time in school. In fact it might be the majority of their waking hours. Schools make a huge difference. And good teachers do too. I've seen great teachers in horrible schools make a huge difference. The tough part though is that follow-up with kids is tough. You see a class make incredible improvements one year and then over the next four years have less than stellar teachers again. They slowly give back what thy've gained. This is why the Harlem Children Zone is an example of the right step.
- yummyfajitas 16y ago
  You realize that the Harlem Children's Zone was not particularly effective, and simply benefited from a downward drift in difficulty of tests, right? http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/01/education/01schools.html http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/01/education/01schools.html
  - kenjackson 16y ago
    I'm familiar with this data. I'm not sure a downward drift is an accurate way to state it -- some said it became too predictable. All they did was simply change the line for what is considered "proficient". The actual test scores from year to year didn't really change though. Here's a nice graphic from the NYTimes: http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2010/08/01/education/01schoools-graphic2.html?ref=education http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2010/08/01/education/01sch... The real problem is that we have an artificial line for proficiency. If you look at the graphics you can see that they can move that line once again, and again largely affect minority schools downward, even if they make substantial gains over the next few years. It would be far better to have each school release mean/median/stdev or deciles of their scores. This will really give you a much better idea of the improvement in a school. But anyways, back to HCZ. They've still shown great improvement, even if proficiency has taken a step back from 100% in some cases due to a change in the proficiency line.

kenjackson 16y ago

I disagree. While all those things you note (culture and family) are extremely important... remember that kids spend a LOT of time in school. In fact it might be the majority of their waking hours. Schools make a huge difference. And good teachers do too. I've seen great teachers in horrible schools make a huge difference. The tough part though is that follow-up with kids is tough. You see a class make incredible improvements one year and then over the next four years have less than stellar teachers again. They slowly give back what thy've gained. This is why the Harlem Children Zone is an example of the right step.

yummyfajitas 16y ago
You realize that the Harlem Children's Zone was not particularly effective, and simply benefited from a downward drift in difficulty of tests, right? http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/01/education/01schools.html http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/01/education/01schools.html
- kenjackson 16y ago
  I'm familiar with this data. I'm not sure a downward drift is an accurate way to state it -- some said it became too predictable. All they did was simply change the line for what is considered "proficient". The actual test scores from year to year didn't really change though. Here's a nice graphic from the NYTimes: http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2010/08/01/education/01schoools-graphic2.html?ref=education http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2010/08/01/education/01sch... The real problem is that we have an artificial line for proficiency. If you look at the graphics you can see that they can move that line once again, and again largely affect minority schools downward, even if they make substantial gains over the next few years. It would be far better to have each school release mean/median/stdev or deciles of their scores. This will really give you a much better idea of the improvement in a school. But anyways, back to HCZ. They've still shown great improvement, even if proficiency has taken a step back from 100% in some cases due to a change in the proficiency line.