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"A clear policy story is behind these improvements: imposing high standards while also giving schools the resources they needed to meet them." Resources doesn'

"A clear policy story is behind these improvements: imposing high standards while also giving schools the resources they needed to meet them." Resources doesn't mean iPads and software subscriptions, it means teachers. Good teachers. There's been a catastrophic collapse in numbers in the profession, and many of the leavers are at the more talented end. They're the ones who have the skills and quals to get better jobs elsewhere. There's no point "raising expectations" unless you provide the resources to change what's possible. Individually, students have the least agency in the entire system. They're at the mercy of parents, school boards, and administrators who may be actively hostile to the very idea of a broad liberal education, of corporate opportunists who are trying to sell unproven study aids of all kinds, and of the disapproval of their peer culture. The one thing that can cut through this - sometimes - is inspiration and motivation from educators.

zozbot234 1y ago
The proper job of teachers is to provide far more than simple "inspiration and motivation", especially to students who are at significant risk of failure. Teachers must be given the skills they need to provide clear and understandable information and direction to these students in the course of their job duties. They should actively educate, not just act as coaches who simply expect their "inspired" students to learn the school curriculum on their own, as with the now-popular "sink or swim" approach.
bccdee 1y ago
That it's being framed as "raising expectations" at all is very silly to me. "Raising expectations" costs nothing and requires no external support, yet we see no success stories about schools which raised expectations and had big success. The "Mississippi Miracle" boils down to directing resources toward struggling kids. They hired reading coaches specifically for struggling students, provided teachers with literacy-based professional development resources, and created Individualized Reading Plans for struggling kids and their parents. Yes, they also held back kids who didn't pass a literacy exam (and moved them to teachers who specialized in helping struggling children), but failing more students was not the primary policy improvement here, and on its own it would do nothing. "Low-expectations theory" (and the accompanying suggestion that progressives are somehow to blame) is an absurd diagnosis for a problem that was not solved by raising expectations, but rather by targeting available resources toward problem areas—a solution which is painfully obvious in hindsight. That doesn't have an ideological valence, though, and this article seems intent on sticking it to progressives somehow.

zozbot234 1y ago

The proper job of teachers is to provide far more than simple "inspiration and motivation", especially to students who are at significant risk of failure. Teachers must be given the skills they need to provide clear and understandable information and direction to these students in the course of their job duties. They should actively educate, not just act as coaches who simply expect their "inspired" students to learn the school curriculum on their own, as with the now-popular "sink or swim" approach.

bccdee 1y ago

That it's being framed as "raising expectations" at all is very silly to me. "Raising expectations" costs nothing and requires no external support, yet we see no success stories about schools which raised expectations and had big success. The "Mississippi Miracle" boils down to directing resources toward struggling kids. They hired reading coaches specifically for struggling students, provided teachers with literacy-based professional development resources, and created Individualized Reading Plans for struggling kids and their parents. Yes, they also held back kids who didn't pass a literacy exam (and moved them to teachers who specialized in helping struggling children), but failing more students was not the primary policy improvement here, and on its own it would do nothing. "Low-expectations theory" (and the accompanying suggestion that progressives are somehow to blame) is an absurd diagnosis for a problem that was not solved by raising expectations, but rather by targeting available resources toward problem areas—a solution which is painfully obvious in hindsight. That doesn't have an ideological valence, though, and this article seems intent on sticking it to progressives somehow.