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There's plenty of data showing that time spent in school does not strongly correlate with learning, and that kids that start school much later than their peers

There's plenty of data showing that time spent in school does not strongly correlate with learning, and that kids that start school much later than their peers very quickly catch up to those peers [1,2]. School is mainly subsidized daycare, but it's daycare that's important especially for poor kids. [1] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/kids-can-recover-from-missing-even https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/kids-can-recover-from-... [2] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/highlights-from-the-comments-on-missing https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/highlights-from-the-co...

lelandfe 4y ago
I didn’t see anything in this that addresses the concerns around the delays in attaining literacy for young children. It’s also important to note that the original article does touch on some of these points, but it explains that the situation is different, and different points are also made, eg: > Schools in a quarter of countries still have no plans for catch-up, says unicef > A quarter of poor countries are not keeping track of how many pupils have returned to school. Going after dropouts while there is still a chance to tempt them back is urgent. “It could be hopeless in six months”
kjhgkjghkj 4y ago
It may be vaguely educational daycare, but it's the tool that our society has developed that permits one or both parents to have jobs or careers. As you say, taking that away hurts the poorest the hardest (and rich and powerful, not at all. Ask Gavin Newsom how much disruption his kids experienced). As a side note, it's becoming increasingly well-known that one of the side-effects of Covid control polices is a large reduction in the position of women in the workplace. Also - while what you say may be true, and there may be some merit to a lifestyle that does not depend on such "daycare", such a lifestyle was also not possible under lockdowns. https://www2.deloitte.com/uk/en/insights/economy/impact-of-covid-on-women.html https://www2.deloitte.com/uk/en/insights/economy/impact-of-c...
- usrn 4y ago
  I'm not convinced having both parents in most families working is actually a good thing. It seems to depress birth rates in most countries to the degree that you eventually get a pretty serious crisis.
  - InfiniteRand 4y ago
    I think one parent working part time for the first 7 or 8 years or so is a pretty good option if you can make the economics work, admittedly the economics of it may not be easy
ch4s3 4y ago
There’s a lot of data showing the importance of a school-like environment in acquiring language and social skill for young children, who were in no real danger from COVID and poor spreaders on top of that. I keep seeing people arguing that school isn’t important, but also against things like school choice and I really wonder what’s motivating them.
- bryanrasmussen 4y ago
  If you think school isn't important why would you want to spend the extra money on school choice that such a program would entail?
  - DavidSharff 4y ago
    I think his point's logic is as follows: If you don't think the default school is important, why would you care if a kid switched? -- If the response was that it's too expensive to allow them to switch that'd be logical, but I don't think that's the common response. Tbf I am not really aware of people matching the initial premise either. Edit: formatting
    - ch4s3 4y ago
      The argument I’m making is that there is a cynical thread in the politics around COVID in schools in the US driven by teachers’ unions. This leads people to make these self contradictory arguments.
  - InvaderFizz 4y ago
    I think this is a false premise. My understanding of school choice is that there is little to no difference in the overall money spent. It is just that it is assigned to each student. If the student population were then to remain in the same schools, nothing changes. It is only when students move to other schools and take the money with them that there is a change.
    - bryanrasmussen 4y ago
lr4444lr 4y ago
Zero time certainly correlates. There was next to no enforcement of remote attendance or remote assignments being done by the students themselves. Testing was also severely curtailed.
- kspacewalk2 4y ago
  >Testing was also severely curtailed. This is a general trend in (at least North American) education systems. An approach I liken to thermometer removal as a means of combating fever. If outcomes aren't measured, then are failed approaches at education reform really failed? How do you know? It's ingenious in a self-defeating kind of way.
  - toast0 4y ago
    My favorite is changing the tests every few years. You're still testing, so people can't call you on that, but the test results aren't like for like, so you can't compare them and see how things are going on a longer scale. That and the focus on point in time test results to evaluate a school rather than analyzing results taken from multiple periods. X% of Y grade students at grade level in year Z doesn't tell you much about the quality of the school in year Z, unless you know where those students were at in year Z - 1.
  - lr4444lr 4y ago
    The problem is that students and parents are not held accountable for failure in America. It's either the teachers, admins, or politicians who appoint the admins. So it's clear how that reaction to testing is incentivized. It was not always this way. Stuff changed about 40 years ago during the Cold War. The objectives changed, but the attitude that failure was always the fault of the educational system rather than larger cultural forces on students never went away.
themitigating 4y ago
Public schooling was started to keep kids out of the workforce but that doesn't affect your premise "There's plenty of data showing that time spent in school does not strongly correlate with learning," I have issues with your first source who I believe has seriously misrepresented the data, made accusations of bias without providing evidence, was carefully selective about sources, and has a self admitted bias. Let's get into some parts of his paper. ---------------- [The Author makes his points] Section 2: In the Benezet experiment, a school district taught no math at all before 6th grade (around age 10-11). Then in sixth grade, they started teaching math, and by the end of the year the students were just as good at math as traditionally-educated children with five years of preceding math education. the author thinks this is related to the age of the student which I personally think is a heavily weighted variable in learning. However this only means that there is a limit to the amount of time lost (the kids caught up) and age is a factor He then goes on to New Orleans in which they lost one to two years of school, went back, and outperformed their peers, but the author also notes that they switched to charter schools which (not shown in your reference) have a noticeable impact. So again, there's another variable besides time spent. [a] Additional points - immigrants and homework (homework having no value i.e. homework is like being school and less homework doesn't hurt)). These do appear to be valid towards his theory He then mentions home schooling - He shows that by the time kids get to college they have equaled their peers. The author says that home schooling isn't like school because some (I hope some meaningful amount) parent's aren't actually teaching their kids, only answering questions (his words something about unschool). If home schooling was like school then this would work against him because it's time in a school like environment and those kids matched their peers. He provides no evidence that a significant amount of parents are operating in a way that is unlike school. I assume the only way that would be valid was if the kids made the learning decisions themselves. -----------------[Author talks about studies that worked against him] I stopped reading after the intro to section 4 which I will now quote- "The strongest counterevidence to my position comes from a body of literature on the effect of other long-term school closures, mostly from disasters but occasionally from teacher strikes. I’m inherently skeptical of these, because I’m suspicious that education researchers love finding that education has huge effects, that any disruption to education is a disaster, and that kids should be in school much more. This is in addition to the usual bias for positive results. Still, the studies exist and we should look at them." To be fair , as stated, he does start to look into them. However he had no issues with using studies from researches that worked for his theory but if they work against it then he's skeptical. So let's get into his section 3 though where he tries to poke holes in the studies that work against him. His response to counter studies 1 - The more snow days, the less learning - His counter is that in the study the only snow days that mattered were in late February and since they tested in March the kids were missing test prep. My thoughts - Prior he never questioned or looked at when school loss happened as a variable and how it effects learning. Prepping for a test is still studying the material I don't think it's fair to now start digging into the time of the year when that happened to counter studies that work against him He does offer a decent counter after this by citing a study in MA that didn't show less learning from snow days His response to counter studies 2 - Teacher's striking leads to loss learning (US) - He says this in response " don’t entirely understand their methodology, so I can’t critique them very well, but I have to admit I’m skeptical of them anyway" Again he states he is skeptical for no other reason because he doesn't understand the methodology and it goes against him His response to counter studies 2 Teacher's striking leads to loss learning (Argentina) - he says "I can’t find any specific problems with this study. It just seems extreme to me" he then basically accuses the study of being misleading because he doesn't understand it. ------------------------[My final thoughts] I'm going to stop. Basically for your first reference the author didn't look into this with an open mind, admits his own biases (because I guess he's a hero for doing that), and then looks negatively upon studies because researches want to find positive results for schools but only if those researches results go against him, otherwise he accepts them In my opinion this person had an agenda and made the data(studies) work for him. Admitting his own bias is fine but that's only a small part. It appears he hasn't overcome it. [a] https://www.ncsl.org/research/education/charter-schools-research-and-report.aspx https://www.ncsl.org/research/education/charter-schools-rese...
bmj 4y ago
School is mainly subsidized daycare, but it's daycare that's important especially for poor kids. This is an important point in the United States. Many kids have absolutely NO order in their lives outside of school (due to absent parents, economic hardships, etc, etc). Many schools don't fully understand this, and do a pretty poor job of serving the kids, but I've seen public schools that fully understand what their kids need, and do their best to meet those needs. We can argue forever as to whether public schools should be responsible for the sort of things they are forced (by reality) to implement, but without the schools, these kids would be totally lost.
- ishjoh 4y ago
  > This is an important point in the United States Are there other countries where this isn't the case? The handful of other western countries I am very familiar with this is also the case.
  - bmj 4y ago
    I'm only familiar with the U.S., but I wouldn't be surprised if this was a problem in other western countries.
eddd-ddde 4y ago
The amount of knowledge I have and the amount of stuff learned at school is probably just two different circles, and I'm still in college. Honestly, school has done nothing to me other than provide socialization opportunities.

lelandfe 4y ago

I didn’t see anything in this that addresses the concerns around the delays in attaining literacy for young children. It’s also important to note that the original article does touch on some of these points, but it explains that the situation is different, and different points are also made, eg: > Schools in a quarter of countries still have no plans for catch-up, says unicef > A quarter of poor countries are not keeping track of how many pupils have returned to school. Going after dropouts while there is still a chance to tempt them back is urgent. “It could be hopeless in six months”

kjhgkjghkj 4y ago

It may be vaguely educational daycare, but it's the tool that our society has developed that permits one or both parents to have jobs or careers. As you say, taking that away hurts the poorest the hardest (and rich and powerful, not at all. Ask Gavin Newsom how much disruption his kids experienced). As a side note, it's becoming increasingly well-known that one of the side-effects of Covid control polices is a large reduction in the position of women in the workplace. Also - while what you say may be true, and there may be some merit to a lifestyle that does not depend on such "daycare", such a lifestyle was also not possible under lockdowns. https://www2.deloitte.com/uk/en/insights/economy/impact-of-covid-on-women.html https://www2.deloitte.com/uk/en/insights/economy/impact-of-c...

usrn 4y ago
I'm not convinced having both parents in most families working is actually a good thing. It seems to depress birth rates in most countries to the degree that you eventually get a pretty serious crisis.
- InfiniteRand 4y ago
  I think one parent working part time for the first 7 or 8 years or so is a pretty good option if you can make the economics work, admittedly the economics of it may not be easy

ch4s3 4y ago

There’s a lot of data showing the importance of a school-like environment in acquiring language and social skill for young children, who were in no real danger from COVID and poor spreaders on top of that. I keep seeing people arguing that school isn’t important, but also against things like school choice and I really wonder what’s motivating them.

bryanrasmussen 4y ago
If you think school isn't important why would you want to spend the extra money on school choice that such a program would entail?
- DavidSharff 4y ago
  I think his point's logic is as follows: If you don't think the default school is important, why would you care if a kid switched? -- If the response was that it's too expensive to allow them to switch that'd be logical, but I don't think that's the common response. Tbf I am not really aware of people matching the initial premise either. Edit: formatting
  - ch4s3 4y ago
    The argument I’m making is that there is a cynical thread in the politics around COVID in schools in the US driven by teachers’ unions. This leads people to make these self contradictory arguments.
- InvaderFizz 4y ago
  I think this is a false premise. My understanding of school choice is that there is little to no difference in the overall money spent. It is just that it is assigned to each student. If the student population were then to remain in the same schools, nothing changes. It is only when students move to other schools and take the money with them that there is a change.
  - bryanrasmussen 4y ago

lr4444lr 4y ago

Zero time certainly correlates. There was next to no enforcement of remote attendance or remote assignments being done by the students themselves. Testing was also severely curtailed.

kspacewalk2 4y ago
>Testing was also severely curtailed. This is a general trend in (at least North American) education systems. An approach I liken to thermometer removal as a means of combating fever. If outcomes aren't measured, then are failed approaches at education reform really failed? How do you know? It's ingenious in a self-defeating kind of way.
- toast0 4y ago
  My favorite is changing the tests every few years. You're still testing, so people can't call you on that, but the test results aren't like for like, so you can't compare them and see how things are going on a longer scale. That and the focus on point in time test results to evaluate a school rather than analyzing results taken from multiple periods. X% of Y grade students at grade level in year Z doesn't tell you much about the quality of the school in year Z, unless you know where those students were at in year Z - 1.
- lr4444lr 4y ago
  The problem is that students and parents are not held accountable for failure in America. It's either the teachers, admins, or politicians who appoint the admins. So it's clear how that reaction to testing is incentivized. It was not always this way. Stuff changed about 40 years ago during the Cold War. The objectives changed, but the attitude that failure was always the fault of the educational system rather than larger cultural forces on students never went away.

themitigating 4y ago

Public schooling was started to keep kids out of the workforce but that doesn't affect your premise "There's plenty of data showing that time spent in school does not strongly correlate with learning," I have issues with your first source who I believe has seriously misrepresented the data, made accusations of bias without providing evidence, was carefully selective about sources, and has a self admitted bias. Let's get into some parts of his paper. ---------------- [The Author makes his points] Section 2: In the Benezet experiment, a school district taught no math at all before 6th grade (around age 10-11). Then in sixth grade, they started teaching math, and by the end of the year the students were just as good at math as traditionally-educated children with five years of preceding math education. the author thinks this is related to the age of the student which I personally think is a heavily weighted variable in learning. However this only means that there is a limit to the amount of time lost (the kids caught up) and age is a factor He then goes on to New Orleans in which they lost one to two years of school, went back, and outperformed their peers, but the author also notes that they switched to charter schools which (not shown in your reference) have a noticeable impact. So again, there's another variable besides time spent. [a] Additional points - immigrants and homework (homework having no value i.e. homework is like being school and less homework doesn't hurt)). These do appear to be valid towards his theory He then mentions home schooling - He shows that by the time kids get to college they have equaled their peers. The author says that home schooling isn't like school because some (I hope some meaningful amount) parent's aren't actually teaching their kids, only answering questions (his words something about unschool). If home schooling was like school then this would work against him because it's time in a school like environment and those kids matched their peers. He provides no evidence that a significant amount of parents are operating in a way that is unlike school. I assume the only way that would be valid was if the kids made the learning decisions themselves. -----------------[Author talks about studies that worked against him] I stopped reading after the intro to section 4 which I will now quote- "The strongest counterevidence to my position comes from a body of literature on the effect of other long-term school closures, mostly from disasters but occasionally from teacher strikes. I’m inherently skeptical of these, because I’m suspicious that education researchers love finding that education has huge effects, that any disruption to education is a disaster, and that kids should be in school much more. This is in addition to the usual bias for positive results. Still, the studies exist and we should look at them." To be fair , as stated, he does start to look into them. However he had no issues with using studies from researches that worked for his theory but if they work against it then he's skeptical. So let's get into his section 3 though where he tries to poke holes in the studies that work against him. His response to counter studies 1 - The more snow days, the less learning - His counter is that in the study the only snow days that mattered were in late February and since they tested in March the kids were missing test prep. My thoughts - Prior he never questioned or looked at when school loss happened as a variable and how it effects learning. Prepping for a test is still studying the material I don't think it's fair to now start digging into the time of the year when that happened to counter studies that work against him He does offer a decent counter after this by citing a study in MA that didn't show less learning from snow days His response to counter studies 2 - Teacher's striking leads to loss learning (US) - He says this in response " don’t entirely understand their methodology, so I can’t critique them very well, but I have to admit I’m skeptical of them anyway" Again he states he is skeptical for no other reason because he doesn't understand the methodology and it goes against him His response to counter studies 2 Teacher's striking leads to loss learning (Argentina) - he says "I can’t find any specific problems with this study. It just seems extreme to me" he then basically accuses the study of being misleading because he doesn't understand it. ------------------------[My final thoughts] I'm going to stop. Basically for your first reference the author didn't look into this with an open mind, admits his own biases (because I guess he's a hero for doing that), and then looks negatively upon studies because researches want to find positive results for schools but only if those researches results go against him, otherwise he accepts them In my opinion this person had an agenda and made the data(studies) work for him. Admitting his own bias is fine but that's only a small part. It appears he hasn't overcome it. [a] https://www.ncsl.org/research/education/charter-schools-research-and-report.aspx https://www.ncsl.org/research/education/charter-schools-rese...

bmj 4y ago

School is mainly subsidized daycare, but it's daycare that's important especially for poor kids. This is an important point in the United States. Many kids have absolutely NO order in their lives outside of school (due to absent parents, economic hardships, etc, etc). Many schools don't fully understand this, and do a pretty poor job of serving the kids, but I've seen public schools that fully understand what their kids need, and do their best to meet those needs. We can argue forever as to whether public schools should be responsible for the sort of things they are forced (by reality) to implement, but without the schools, these kids would be totally lost.

ishjoh 4y ago
> This is an important point in the United States Are there other countries where this isn't the case? The handful of other western countries I am very familiar with this is also the case.
- bmj 4y ago
  I'm only familiar with the U.S., but I wouldn't be surprised if this was a problem in other western countries.

eddd-ddde 4y ago

The amount of knowledge I have and the amount of stuff learned at school is probably just two different circles, and I'm still in college. Honestly, school has done nothing to me other than provide socialization opportunities.