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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 —

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 1y 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 1y ago
  Yeah I didn't mean to sound condescending toward teachers or educational researchers for that matter. I just meant that I think usually when it gets filtered into policy or curricular discussions at a certain level I feel like the discussions start to be about other things, often unspoken, and things get oversimplified or misused one way or another. Teachers, students, and parents often get overlooked in that process.

bombcar 1y 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 1y ago
Yeah I didn't mean to sound condescending toward teachers or educational researchers for that matter. I just meant that I think usually when it gets filtered into policy or curricular discussions at a certain level I feel like the discussions start to be about other things, often unspoken, and things get oversimplified or misused one way or another. Teachers, students, and parents often get overlooked in that process.