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I wish this story dove into the "why" or what these test results even are / validate them rather than finger wag at everyone within shouting distance.

by duxup 2y ago

xadhominemx 2y ago
I think it was because the demographic adjustments move scores for black students higher and scores for white students lower. If unadjusted scores for white students and black students are converging over time, that would explain why Mississippi looks so strong compared to states like Maine, Vermont, and Oregon in the time series.
- bitshiftfaced 2y ago
  If I'm not mistaken, they compare children of similar demographics. This controls for how different states have different percentages of varying demographics. Based on this, I don't see how the convergence of performance over time could explain why Mississippi would be doing well.
  - xadhominemx 2y ago
    Depends if the corrections are static or dynamic. The states with the worst relative moves are all super white, while the states with the best relative moves have large black populations. That suggests something strange is going on with the adjustment.
    - bitshiftfaced 2y ago
      If state A has 30% reduced school lunches and state B has 5%, then I don't think it would be strange to see the adjustment resulting in an increase in state A's ranking relative to state B. For example, in the original raw scoring method, if state B has lower quality education, then it may still outperform state A due to the difference in demographics.
      - xadhominemx 2y ago
        Yes I understand the reason why to adjust for demographics, but if the demographic adjustment results in adjusted results for white states falling off a cliff while more diverse states hold steady, there’s probably something funky going on with the adjustment.
pixl97 2y ago
Yea, the information here is really limited and from only a single source. And in the same sense the entire article was still damning to US education. Yes, Mississippi got better, but is still not at Maine 2019 levels. Also 2020 was covid which we all know had huge upsets in education, so I'd like to see a much broader view among different states to know if this is just the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy.
derbOac 2y ago
Yeah I think the phenomenon is interesting and important to be aware of, but the berating political take isn't really that helpful or productive in my opinion — even though it ostensibly attempts to be unbiased in its criticisms. It would have been more productive to dive into what is working and what might be irrelevant, and how it might or might not generalize to other places. There is a kind of implicit spin to it. I think it's worth a read, but it's also worth reading and thinking a bit about some of the sources it criticizes. For example, in this piece the author admits that some of the sleight of hand can't account for increases in reading per se: https://jabberwocking.com/mississippi-revisited-the-mississippi-reading-miracle-looks-to-be-real-after-all/ https://jabberwocking.com/mississippi-revisited-the-mississi... However, if you think about it, the sleight of hand can still make the scores look better than they are overall. So while the improvements might still be valid, the comparisons to other states might not be — which is part of the primary substance of the essay. I'm often disappointed in discussions about educational policy or curricula because so much of it has this cargo cult feel to it, masking political leanings with "objective" results. I say this about a lot of it, not just left or right-leaning discussions. It's almost like someone needs to make a fill-in-the-blank checklist critique of educational discussions (testing, admissions) like the old ones about email alternatives: focusing on means and not variances, attributing progress to everything in a basket of changes rather than trying to figure out which one(s) were responsible, ignoring who the students actually are, ignoring the counterfactual questions that are the elephants in the room, focusing on single outcome variables in isolation, etc. I always feel like almost everyone is cherry picking data to make a case.
- bombcar 2y ago
  My repeated experience has been that the teachers on the ground (actually teaching the classes) know exactly what they'd like to do to improve things, but they instead have to implement whatever new policy has flowed down from who knows where this year or decade. (An actionable example of a policy that parents can implement today is "redshirting" where you hold a child with a late birthday back a year in pre-kindergarten)
  - derbOac 2y ago
selfselfgo 2y ago
[dead]
WaitWaitWha 2y ago
I think it is sprinkled throughout the article: e.g., the section "Edu-Snobbery Hurts Us All", "Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama climbed the charts because they focused on core academic instruction when much of the country used ESSA as an excuse to focus on anything and everything else. It paid off."

I wish this story dove into the "why" or what these test results even are / validate them rather than finger wag at everyone within shouting distance.

by duxup 2y ago

I wish this story dove into the "why" or what these test results even are / validate them rather than finger wag at everyone within shouting distance.

xadhominemx 2y ago

I think it was because the demographic adjustments move scores for black students higher and scores for white students lower. If unadjusted scores for white students and black students are converging over time, that would explain why Mississippi looks so strong compared to states like Maine, Vermont, and Oregon in the time series.

bitshiftfaced 2y ago
If I'm not mistaken, they compare children of similar demographics. This controls for how different states have different percentages of varying demographics. Based on this, I don't see how the convergence of performance over time could explain why Mississippi would be doing well.
- xadhominemx 2y ago
  Depends if the corrections are static or dynamic. The states with the worst relative moves are all super white, while the states with the best relative moves have large black populations. That suggests something strange is going on with the adjustment.
  - bitshiftfaced 2y ago
    If state A has 30% reduced school lunches and state B has 5%, then I don't think it would be strange to see the adjustment resulting in an increase in state A's ranking relative to state B. For example, in the original raw scoring method, if state B has lower quality education, then it may still outperform state A due to the difference in demographics.
    - xadhominemx 2y ago
      Yes I understand the reason why to adjust for demographics, but if the demographic adjustment results in adjusted results for white states falling off a cliff while more diverse states hold steady, there’s probably something funky going on with the adjustment.

pixl97 2y ago

Yea, the information here is really limited and from only a single source. And in the same sense the entire article was still damning to US education. Yes, Mississippi got better, but is still not at Maine 2019 levels. Also 2020 was covid which we all know had huge upsets in education, so I'd like to see a much broader view among different states to know if this is just the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy.

derbOac 2y ago

Yeah I think the phenomenon is interesting and important to be aware of, but the berating political take isn't really that helpful or productive in my opinion — even though it ostensibly attempts to be unbiased in its criticisms. It would have been more productive to dive into what is working and what might be irrelevant, and how it might or might not generalize to other places. There is a kind of implicit spin to it. I think it's worth a read, but it's also worth reading and thinking a bit about some of the sources it criticizes. For example, in this piece the author admits that some of the sleight of hand can't account for increases in reading per se: https://jabberwocking.com/mississippi-revisited-the-mississippi-reading-miracle-looks-to-be-real-after-all/ https://jabberwocking.com/mississippi-revisited-the-mississi... However, if you think about it, the sleight of hand can still make the scores look better than they are overall. So while the improvements might still be valid, the comparisons to other states might not be — which is part of the primary substance of the essay. I'm often disappointed in discussions about educational policy or curricula because so much of it has this cargo cult feel to it, masking political leanings with "objective" results. I say this about a lot of it, not just left or right-leaning discussions. It's almost like someone needs to make a fill-in-the-blank checklist critique of educational discussions (testing, admissions) like the old ones about email alternatives: focusing on means and not variances, attributing progress to everything in a basket of changes rather than trying to figure out which one(s) were responsible, ignoring who the students actually are, ignoring the counterfactual questions that are the elephants in the room, focusing on single outcome variables in isolation, etc. I always feel like almost everyone is cherry picking data to make a case.

bombcar 2y ago
My repeated experience has been that the teachers on the ground (actually teaching the classes) know exactly what they'd like to do to improve things, but they instead have to implement whatever new policy has flowed down from who knows where this year or decade. (An actionable example of a policy that parents can implement today is "redshirting" where you hold a child with a late birthday back a year in pre-kindergarten)
- derbOac 2y ago

selfselfgo 2y ago

[dead]

WaitWaitWha 2y ago

I think it is sprinkled throughout the article: e.g., the section "Edu-Snobbery Hurts Us All", "Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama climbed the charts because they focused on core academic instruction when much of the country used ESSA as an excuse to focus on anything and everything else. It paid off."