4 ms·

The main problem IMO with lemon laws and other "starve the beast" tactics is that in a lot of cases you basically condemn the offender into a negative spiral. T

The main problem IMO with lemon laws and other "starve the beast" tactics is that in a lot of cases you basically condemn the offender into a negative spiral. This is fine for private enterprise where it's easy enough for new market entrants to take the place of old ones but it's a lot harder and more time-consuming to set up a well functioning school, and in the meantime you'll be doing a lot of collateral damage to children who are stuck there. At least where I grew up and they tried shutting down failing schools, part of the issue was that the new schools that were set up would take less of a percentage of Special Ed or ELL students that are harder to accommodate for and teach, and so they would be left to drag down the schools marked as failing.

chii 5y ago
why can't the metric eliminate outlier students? This is what they do in competitive sports that require judges like ice-skating or diving; you remove the top and bottom score, and average the rest. A school should not be judged on the best students they have, nor the worst. They ought to be judged on the most prominent outcomes for students - the middle. A school could get a higher score, even if they take in bad students or ESL students, or disabled students. The metric for measurement should remove those students' contributions (as they are likely the ones dragging down the metric), unless those students reach some middling score (in which case, they don't affect the over all metric much). Ditto with the super-genius students.
- singron 5y ago
  Student performance doesn't entirely depend on individual circumstances, it depends on the environment and the other students around them. The special ed students require more resources. E.g. they usually have more staff, sometimes 1:1 aides, dedicated rooms, special classes. Beyond the resources explicitly allocated for them, they also take up common resources. E.g. if they are mixed into a normal class, the teacher usually has to spend disproportionately more time on them, either 1:1 in the classroom or in prep for customized learning plans. Informally bad students are worse in some ways since they don't necessarily get additional resource allocation (like an ESL or special ed student would), but will distract the rest of the classroom. It would only make sense if they completely segregated those students, which (AFAIK) is very bad for those students.
- s1artibartfast 5y ago
  Some schools are dominated by outlier students. What do you when you have a school of 500 students in a blighted community and the average GPA is less than 0.15? >https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/baltimore-school-report-failing-students-promoted https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/baltimore-school-rep...
  - hiptobecubic 5y ago
    Then they aren't "outliers" are they?
    - s1artibartfast 5y ago
      For the school, no. For the general population, yes.
imtringued 5y ago
They should have a mentor system where high performing schools become mentors of underperforming schools. The high performing school will get more funding if it is successful in improving educational quality. 10% of its budget must be spent on mentoring.

chii 5y ago

why can't the metric eliminate outlier students? This is what they do in competitive sports that require judges like ice-skating or diving; you remove the top and bottom score, and average the rest. A school should not be judged on the best students they have, nor the worst. They ought to be judged on the most prominent outcomes for students - the middle. A school could get a higher score, even if they take in bad students or ESL students, or disabled students. The metric for measurement should remove those students' contributions (as they are likely the ones dragging down the metric), unless those students reach some middling score (in which case, they don't affect the over all metric much). Ditto with the super-genius students.

singron 5y ago
Student performance doesn't entirely depend on individual circumstances, it depends on the environment and the other students around them. The special ed students require more resources. E.g. they usually have more staff, sometimes 1:1 aides, dedicated rooms, special classes. Beyond the resources explicitly allocated for them, they also take up common resources. E.g. if they are mixed into a normal class, the teacher usually has to spend disproportionately more time on them, either 1:1 in the classroom or in prep for customized learning plans. Informally bad students are worse in some ways since they don't necessarily get additional resource allocation (like an ESL or special ed student would), but will distract the rest of the classroom. It would only make sense if they completely segregated those students, which (AFAIK) is very bad for those students.
s1artibartfast 5y ago
Some schools are dominated by outlier students. What do you when you have a school of 500 students in a blighted community and the average GPA is less than 0.15? >https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/baltimore-school-report-failing-students-promoted https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/baltimore-school-rep...
- hiptobecubic 5y ago
  Then they aren't "outliers" are they?
  - s1artibartfast 5y ago
    For the school, no. For the general population, yes.

imtringued 5y ago

They should have a mentor system where high performing schools become mentors of underperforming schools. The high performing school will get more funding if it is successful in improving educational quality. 10% of its budget must be spent on mentoring.